Seeing more and more articles like this about paedophiles.

[Miffer]

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-41213657

This is the first mainstream UK one I have come across but there have been a few US ones.

I am not okay with it. If you fancy kids it's not okay, it should not be accepted, it should be shunned, you shouldn't be able to talk about it, your friends should disown you, you shouldn't be able to Google this without ramifications.

From a utilitarian POV I think it's bullshit anyway. The few paedophiles that would commit less harm from support and a more accepting society will be vastly outnumbered by the harm caused by a more permissive attitude towards this.

I think every single paedophile is a danger, including the ones who claim they would never act on it and then in the same breath talk of how they are frightened they might. I think when they say they avoid children because they are afraid they would hurt them what they actually mean is they pretend to avoid children and make a big song and dance about it to support their idea of good and bad paedophiles when in reality they do not avoid children at all.

I'm trying to think of an example....say a boy who gets a girl to send him a sext and sticks it online. That isn't just mucking about.

It is thought there are three pathologies that lead to pedophilia. The most common is that expressed by those who were abused themselves. There exists a major cognitive confusion centred around emotion/sexual development. This is where you have the greatest chance of correcting the problem, but this is best achieved as early as possible with proper support/counseling for survivors. It's much more of a devil to tackle in adulthood.

The other two types are rarer, there does appear to be a small cohort who despite everything just have this attraction, but there is no guarentee that they will actually abuse. The last type is the psychopath that is on a trajectory of torturing animals, other people (especially partners) and the more they abuse the more they desensitize themselves until eventually they abuse children.

I think it's worth pointing out the difference between a kink and a fetish (in psychological terms rather than common parlance). A kink is a preference that doesn't need to be present to enjoy sex, a fetish is a prequisite. Generally I think kinks are in most cases harmless. Fetishes on the other hand can and do get in the way of a healthy sex life as a fetish becomes more important than the other flesh and blood human being you are engaging in sex with. This at the very least is going to render emotional bonding tertiary if not making it harder entirely.

I agree Dervel. The first has been termed 'the vampire hypothesis'. It's controversial because of the suggestion that all offenders are at risk of abusing themselves; but while most victims do not go on to abuse, the majority of abusers have been victims - if that makes sense.

I think the fantasy plus sociopathy is the true danger zone. To even consider actually abusing a child there has to be a pathological empathy deficit. And unfortunately, that cannot be treated.

'OK, looks like we agree then TheSparrowhawk. It's just earlier you said that if paedophiles sought help to prevent them from offending they should be locked up. I'm wondering if you've revised that position at all.'

I think you misunderstood me. If a paedophile has a genuine fear that they can't control themselves, then yes I think they should be locked up - surely letting them out runs the risk that they'll hurt someone?

If someone goes along to a counsellor and talks about fantasies etc I don't think they should be locked up but I think the counsellor will probably be in a very tough position - how will they know that the person hasn't acted on these fantasies? At what point do they decide the person is a danger?

It is thought there are three pathologies that lead to pedophilia. The most common is that expressed by those who were abused themselves. There exists a major cognitive confusion centred around emotion/sexual development. This is where you have the greatest chance of correcting the problem, but this is best achieved as early as possible with proper support/counseling for survivors. It's much more of a devil to tackle in adulthood

Is this true of all who were abused or just males? Do women have the same response?

I also get the kink / fetish thing, but this isn't how it is spoken of in fetish communities.

Is this true of all who were abused or just males? Do women have the same response?

As the research concerning female paedophilia is povertous, it's very hard to say. I should think that abuse is just one predisposing factor, and a culture of male sexual entitlement another that might explain the preponderance of male paedophiles.

I would venture however that within the population of female paedophiles (however small), you would probably find a higher number of victims than in the general population.

No - it should be considered in the same way as any sort of mental illness liable to cause a person to harm others. Treatment by qualified professionals, absolutely.

Like schizophrenia.

Each year in the UK about 30 murders are committed by people living with schizophrenia.

From www.livingwithschizophreniauk.org/advice-sheets/schizophrenia-and-dangerous-behaviour/

Whenever I hear this sort of story, I wonder if the young person has OCD as having thoughts that you are a paedophile is a fairly common obsessional thought and can be very distressing

MissDreamGirl I think that's different - it's less of a sexual urge and more of a neurotic obsession.

To clarify regarding using the MHA to detain people. The criteria are not just the presence of a mental illness and a risk to self or others. The disorder must also be treatable. This is one of the reasons why psychopaths (anti-social personality disorder) are difficult to manage and are generally not detained under MHA without concerns of additional pathology being present. As a paraphilia, pardophilia is classified as a disorder of adult behaviour or personality and is difficult to treat. Most, if not all, personality disorders are resistant to psychological therapy because we are not dealing with disordered cognition but behaviour patterns that are ingrained into someone's personality. The reasons why that has happened are varied. Functional brain imaging may suggest some differences in the brains of paedophiles but studies are far from conclusive.

First of all we don't know they are 'teenagers' on a website.

Secondly, these are people who know, absolutely, that having sex with someone young is doing so without consent.

Thirdly, it could be a way of not wanting to grow up and mature. Children are equal in terms of physiological biology and sex - both are immature.

Fourthly, I wouldn't believe a word they said. Sorry if that is harsh and lacks empathy, I do have empathy for people who have these thoughts, but I wouldn't trust them ever!

Functional brain imaging may suggest some differences in the brains of paedophiles

The problem with fMRI data is that, yes, there may well be differences or similarities between the fMRI of group A and group B, but all it proves is that the difference is present, not what it represents.

fMRI in producing results with regards to thoughts is fraught with contamination in correlating the results. As in, is it a double blind test for starters?

And it really is bordering on risky ethical issues to produce such tests as a given.

These tests are pioneering at best.

My point on fMRI was not that they support brain differences in paedophiles, in fact quite the opposite. My understanding is that the results of studies are contradictory and as you say open to the effects of different variables and confounding factors. Apologies if that wasn't clear.

We know that paedophiles marry or partner women who already have children. Or marry them to create future partners. This isn't violent misogyny at work though, it's subtle (though the relationship between the paedophile and the mature woman may well end up abusive and controlling as in lack of sex and intimacy).

Poppy my post was not a criticism of your post.

Nor was mine Poppy.

Spartacus I haven't seen much data on female offenders so I wouldn't like to comment, something doesn't add up though.

• Most offenders are men.
• Girls are more likely to be abused than boys.
• Abusers tend to abuse along sexual preference lines ie straight/gay.
• Most abusers suffered abuse themselves.

So either the comparatively smaller number of male abusers who abuse same sex ie boys are producing larger number of abusers who grow up to abuse girls or there is a larger cohort of women who abuse about whom we are not aware of, but there is really no data to be able to assert the latter at this point.

Although when it comes to non-sexual abuse ie smacking and physical punishment boy are more likely to be physically disciplined than girls, and it is more likely to be mothers that do it, and when I've read studies that say sexual abusers were more likely to have been abused do they mean sexual or non-sexual abuse? As to that I'm not sure.

Although when it comes to non-sexual abuse ie smacking and physical punishment boy are more likely to be physically disciplined than girls, and it is more likely to be mothers that do it, and when I've read studies that say sexual abusers were more likely to have been abused do they mean sexual or non-sexual abuse? As to that I'm not sure.

That's your viewpoint on this. Personally, I think it's rubbish. That's not to say that women do physically and sexually abuse their children. But women are certainly physically abused.

I don't think Dervel was saying girls aren't physically abused.

I am late to this thread, so forgive me, but I read it the other night and it is bothering me.

It seems to me that children may well explore their bodies in a natural and harmless way, and our job as adults is to teach about privacy and bodily autonomy, as well as what are appropriate boundaries.

But sexuality is an adult concept, which applies to adults. Freud talks about sexuality in adults and children as different things, not the same. Indeed, I think most turn of the century sexologists would have argued that child and adult sexuality are not homologous.

So I am curious JWreck where you have seen, in the mainstream, I mean, talk of 'childhood sexuality' and children being sexual beings? That is equating an adult concept with childhood and it doesn't sit well with me. It is not to say that children don't discover their own bodies and later, sexual feelings, but childhood sexuality implies a sexuality analogous to adult sexuality in children, which is surely not correct, really.

SummerflowerXx children's sexuality is categorically different, but there isn't a clear dividing line, and I don't think Freud drew one at all. Indeed, his very argument was that infantile sexuality is continuous with much of adult sexuality, with adults having no end of oral, anal and oedipal fixations. So I don't think there is this sudden point when a human being crosses over from one form of sexual experience to a completely alien one.

Indeed, an understanding of this fact is a very precondition of establishing firm boundaries between adult and child sexuality. Far from legitimising paedophilia, an understanding of the reality of child sexuality underlines the true moral horror of paedophilia. When you think about, it is a fact that children who are abused do sometimes sexually respond to their abusers - have orgasms etc - and are left with a terrible guilt. It is not the case that a sexualised adult abuses a completely non-sexual being: in that case the damage would not be as bad. No, it is the fact that the child is a sexual being that makes the crime all the more heinous and damaging.

Thank you for the reply.

A continuum is not necessarily a similarity, though. A two year old say may be at one end of the continuum with a fifty year old getting towards the other end, if one takes it as a developmental continuum of sexuality. It doesn't mean the meanings attached and experiences are homologous, they are clearly not. Or that the fifty year old is doing anything other than a crime if he responds to a two year old's incidental curiousity about adult genitals by touching back, for example.

I really don't know that Freud equated infantile sexuality with adult sexuality - adults can have fixations which may have childhood origins, but that is not the same thing.

I am going to have to read some more Freud - i read the badly named Seduction theory, which he recanted, but I got a bit bogged down trying to understand his later work.