Just for clarification: I didn’t actually met this guy, tanookie
** lorene** I don’t know whether he wants to be rehabilitated. I know he wanted to be dead. And I stopped him.
I’m pretty confused. Did I do the right thing, or should I have kept my big trap shut.
Thanks for your input and all the best to the victims.
I understood that you did not meet him in person… just saying I did meet one in person. Not fun. I wanted to explain how these guys survive by seeming like decent people…
As I understand it, many of them do rationalize to cover up to themselves just how awful their actions are–a very intense version of what ordinary people do all the time. Lots of others, as tanookie points out, just don’t care and never will. But apparently, therapy (for some percentage of child molesters) in jail is quite a bit more effective than just jail. It seems to take years of therapy for them to face themselves and learn to catch old mental habits before they start; they typically do not feel that they should have to face permanent consequences for their actions, that it wasn’t that bad, and so on. But repeat offenses do go down for those who receive therapy. (Personally, I think repeat offenses would go down a lot more if they just stayed in prison. Therapy is good, life sentences are even better. Or something.)
I don’t think that a session of explaining would do anything at all, however.
I think that article is exactly how they rationalise their behavior. I think even into the 70s there were various articles saying children were too unformed for it to really matter much if they were abused. I wonder what I would have been. Most days I tell myself that I would be a different person and mostly I have come to like who I become. Other days I look at the extra weight and wonder when I will quit hiding.
Not meant to be a snarky answer, furlibusea, but … when you feel safe? Many of the memories of my grandfather molesting his children (not to mention his MIL doing same, and worse) started to come out of hiding when he was dead, and many more when his wife (their mother) died. She ws his enabler, so as long as she was around to parrot the lies he’d been telling, they didn’t feel safe in discussing this sort of thing in any sort of public setting. I only found out about it after being privy to a few discussions. There’s still a lot I don’t know, and probably a lot of memories that will never surface.
I’ve been working on a way to try and treat active pedophiles (in theory, as I have little desire to be around one who has done something to a child), but the thing is that so many of them don’t see it as a problem, or they believe that any ire directed at them is misplaced … sort of on the line with what tanookie cited, only less cute. So many of them, as with my grandfather, just don’t care who they hurt in that respect (or they are incapable of seeing it as hurting someone), at any stage in their lives. Even when he was dying my grandfather was unwilling to be truthful about this subject, and his wife defended him to the end.
A very wise friend of mine is now retired from working as a counselor. I think I’ll draw on what I’ve learned from her, gum, and give you one suggestion, a form of tough love. Say to your acquaintance that, while you are willing to help him, you will not do so if he does not start getting counselling if he isn’t already and if he chooses to harm himself or others and that any form of acting on his pedophilia constitutes causing harm to others. Yes, it is harsh. So is telling an alcoholic you won’t give him money for alcohol. Sometimes, however, harsh is necessary.
You’re a good soul, caught in a very uncomfortable position. I’ll also offer the services ofCecil’s Place, an on-line support group for depressed dopers if you need it. Good luck, and again, e-mail me if you need to.
CJ
This is a truly horrifying thread, and my heart goes out to anyone who has sufferd this way.
iampunha and others have mentioned how the paedophile does not relate to the harm that they cause to the children. Are these people generally incapable of relating harm caused to any other people, or is this reaction only against children.
Is sociopathy the correct term for a person who sees other people as things rather than people?
Siege Thank you. You’ll find me at Cecil’s place soon.
I did tell him to get counseling in my last mail. Haven’t heard of him since.
It’s a bad plan, I think, to go on with this thread, but I wonder what to *do * with these people. What if your child grows up and becomes a paedophile?
Thank you all. My heart goes out to all affected.
I would say that any grown man, and any teenage boy, who wants to have sex with children who have not yet reached puberty is mentally ill.
OTOH, finding post-puberty (but underage) kids attractive is quite normal. Males 18 and over would be well advised to never act on any attraction they feel for anyone under their locality’s official “age of consent,” but so long as the object of their desire is post-puberty, there’s nothing abnormal about feeling the attraction. Once we’re past puberty, we’re supposed to be sexually attractive to our fellow adults.
(Yes, once we’ve reached physical and sexual maturity, we’re adults. Our society doesn’t recognize us as such, and strongly encourages us to continue for several more years to think of ourselves as, and behave as, children. But saying it’s so doesn’t make it so. And it doesn’t really work very well. IMO, our insistance on keeping people children too long is a major cause of teenage rebellion and misbehavior.)
In any case, I think it’s a mistake to say that the the 22 year old guy with a 15 or 16 year old girlfriend is comitting a crime at all, let alone a crime equivelent to the the 42 year old guy who molests or rapes a five or six year old. Chances are, when a guy in his twenties has a 15 or 16 year old girlfriend, it’s because he’s operating on about a 16 year old level himself, due to immaturity, low intelligence, or both.
I second Bibby’s question: is a pedophile who acts on his desires a sociopath? Some of them, many of them, all of them? Assuming “sociopath” is a valid concept?
I agree with Genie about life sentences. It’s never going to be safe for them to have any access to children. Seems to me that molesting or raping a prepubescent child is one crime where we really should lock them up and throw away the key. How else can we keep them away from children?
I wonder why this isn’t seen as a crime worthy of a life sentence. Do most people really think it’s insufficiently bad? Are people dismissing the idea on the grounds that we haven’t got room in the prisons? If so, shouldn’t we be working to come up with ways to make room? It does not seem to me that it would be at all hard to do so. Just legalizing or deciminalizing marijuana ought to be enough.
Not a net cite, but I remember reading something in the book What Cops Know by Connie Fletcher (interviews with over 100 Chicago police officers, that includes a police perspective of paedophiles in the sex crimes chapter).
The consensus opinion in the book seemed to be that paedophilial desires did not appear to be a choice, in the same way that any other inborn sexual preference is not a choice. I paraphrase a quote from one detective that said, to this effect:
“The thing is, many of these people really love children - everything about children - it goes beyond our concept of sexual predators. And this interest in children, unfortunately, often initially manifests as someone who has a child’s best interests at heart. I believe they realise from a very early age that they have these desires, and so they are inclined to professions that will allow them to have contact with children.”
Obviously, acting on those desires is always wrong, and can never be justified, but it seemed significant to me that many in the police force see it as coming from an inborn desire. I tend to agree with this theory. I can’t think of any benefit there would be in choosing to be a paedophile, can you?
Again, not advocating the opinion in the OP article (or excusing paedophiles, or minimising the damage to their victims), but a better awareness of the condition would probably aid in prevention/intervention of paedophiles acting on their desires.
Thanks annaplurabelle so that book would rank paedophilia as an actual (though distructive, and terrible) sexual orientation. Rather than a sociopathic need to dominate, coupled with the weakest prey being children.
I suppose a test of whether a paedophile fits one group or the other might be a question of whether the paediophile can in general find adults sexually atractive.
btw Hazel it’s Bippy not Bibby, and don’t you forget it (smiley would be added here, except such a symbol would seem way out of line in this thread)
Hazel - While I admire your post for making the distinction between hebephilia and strict pedophilia, you forgot one thing. While post-pubescent children may be as physically/sexually mature as any adult, they are not yet emotionally mature. The teenage mind works very differently – they still see the world in child-like, black and white terms, and their emotional responses are way off the scale. Which begs the question…at what age, does the child reach an adult’s level of emotional maturity? Each one is different. Some kids reach it before age 13 or 14. Some NEVER reach it. (For example, that hoochie Kobe Bryant supposedly shagged. Yeesh.) Hence, we have AOC (Age Of Consent) laws. American society draws a line at age 18 and says, anything below this line is WRONG. Fair enough. But, in Europe it’s 16. In some countries, even lower. Does this mean, a 12-year-old child in Spain is 100% emotionally and sexually responsible, yet if he emigrates to America, he’s suddenly a helpless, victimizable child again? It’s a tough call.
Also, we need to make a distinction between “true” pedophiles – that is, adults who are possessed with a sexual attraction towards inappropriately aged children, whatever the reason – and those sociopathic, twisted adults who abuse their position of authority over children. I notice in all the confessionals given in this thread, the abuser was a parent or older family member. Guess what? More likely than not…and this next line’s a bit heavy, so be prepared…they are NOT pedophiles. Not at all. More likely than not, they won’t even look twice at some random neighborhood prepubescent kid running around their lawn in speedos. That random child is not a part of them. Their own children, or at least the ones they have control over (and this applies to teachers, camp counselors, and yes Catholic priests as well) are their main targets of attraction, and the “attraction” I speak of is not necessarily a sexual one, either. Kind of like how rape itself is not classified as a sexual act anymore…it’s an act of violence, perpetrated by a violent, abusive mind. It’s an act of CONTROL.
That does not excuse their actions, obviously. Just reading some of these stories makes me want to crush their testicles in a slowly tightening vise. (Oh, and Jay Leno? Those jokes about child-molesting Catholic priests? NOT FUNNY. Hire new writers, and write a letter of apology to each individual victim, immediately.) Plus, you are not alone…the overwhelming majority of child sex abusers fit that profile. And yes, some indeed are classic pedophiles. But many are not.
I should add my own perspective here…for all of my formative years, I was psychologically abused (not sexually, thank God, although for a long time my shrink convinced me I was) by a parent who fits the same profile of domination and control. Funny thing is, most people saw him as the perfect parent. “He’s so great with children!” they’d all say. And you know something? They were right. He WAS great with kids. He would have made a great Sunday School Teacher. He just never should have been allowed to raise children of his own. I’m okay with it now, though. He’s drawn so far into his obsessions and other narcissistic behaviors, that he’s slowly destroying himself. Mentally, physically, and financially. None of it has anything to do with me, of course. But it’s a beautiful thing to watch. I hope it lasts a long time.
(I was gonna add here my own “Devil’s Advocate” perspective about how the whole anti-pedophile hysteria has gotten so out of hand, you can’t even rent The Tin Drum or take pictures of your baby in the bath without risk of jail time, but…phew! Those last few paragraphs took a lot out of me. I’ll have to wait for another thread.)
I’ve always wondered if children aren’t harmed more by the reaction to their abuse than by the abuse itself. Are there any accounts of children who have engaged in sex with pedophiles, didn’t think it was wrong or want it to stop, weren’t treated as victims by concerned adults, and yet were still harmed by the experience?
Please explain how this relates to the ability to consent to sex.
If this is true, there must be some way to tell whether an individual teenager is an “adult” or a “child”. Can the same test be applied to people over age 18? If so, and we decide a certain 21 year old isn’t “emotionally mature”, should she be considered a victim whenever someone has sex with her?
ByKGS:<snip> “American society draws a line at age 18 and says, anything below this line is WRONG.” <snip>
Well, not really. The age of consent range by states varies from 14 to 18, with most being at age 16. There are exceptions on the young side when both partners are within a few years of being the same age.
In many states, a 16 yr. old may have consentual sex with any older person they choose, regardless of the age of that older person.
Well, Mr 2001, I can only speak for myself. I remember my father molesting me as far back as age 3 or 4 (where my memory begins) I did not know what he was doing to me/making me do was wrong. I thought it was a perfectly normal thing and that every daddy did those things. And even at that age I hated every second of it. I also hated myself because I thought I was a bad child for not liking what my father did. I thought ‘he’s my father so of course he would never do anything bad for me therefore I must be bad for feeling like this about the abuse.’ You have no idea how relieved I was to learn this was abuse and that my feelings were not aberrant!
The reaction of the first person to find out what was happening to me was my mother concluding that since I wasn’t a delinquent the abuse wasn’t harming me and therefore it was more of a pain for her to stop it than to turn a blind eye to it.
I can say that even as a small child with no exposure to people telling me this was wrong I still knew inside that it was horribly wrong. This does hurt the children it touches.
It doesn’t. I wasn’t talking about “consent” at all, just the ability to understand the implications and consequences of their actions (which is not the same thing as “consent”.)
If such a test exists, I’ve never seen it. And I’ve looked.
Hmm, I always thought that list applied to legal age for marriage (or rather, sex within marriage…I’ll have to check more closely.) In any case, you must agree that most Americans see 18 as an inviolable age barrier, when it comes to consentual sex. For instance, if Kobe Bryant’s accuser was 17 instead of 20ish(?) you’d have a completely different type of media story, despite Colorado’s AOC of 15/17.
Oops! Sorry, Bippy.
Yes, teenagers tend to be immature and overly emotional – as do many people in their 20s and beyond
I think much of this immaturity and emotionality is a result of having grown up in a culture that tells them that they will not be adults until they’re out of their teens, a culture in which they are treated, in all possible respects, as children untill they are out of their teens.
gum, that is scary.
I could potentially feel very sorry for the chap you’re emailing - he didn’t ask to have those desires and is not acting on them. (God, I hope not!) Just imagine how terrible it would be to feel only those sexual desires, and not any desire for any fellow-adult. To be unable ever to have a lover, a relationship, a family… Can it ever be cured? Sexuality seems so solidly set; those “curing homosexuals” things never work (nor are they valid, IMO). Poor guy.
But what is very, very scary is that he might be rationalising it into something possible. I’m not sure from what you’ve said - did that article come from a reference he gave you? Or was that you trying to understand and stumbling on it?