You just touched on an interesting topic. A while back, I joined in at the tail end of a discussion elsewhere about defining when a person becomes a pedophile (and we will use the broad brush definition here, meaning attracted to children under 16 or so).
If someone fantasizes about sex with a minor, but never makes a move on a minor, are they a pedophile? Is it the thought or the action that defines them? I tend to lean toward the action part. What goes on in your skull is your private business; it’s when it leaks out of your skull and affects others that is important.
The group was split about 50/50 on this. It was an interesting discussion.
I don’t know much about the treament programs in the private sector, but I know the treatement programs used in prisons are not effective. There’s no way they could be, considering the intensive nature of the therapy needed and the pinch on prison budgets.
There aren’t really pre-release screenings any more. Many states have begun to phase out the parole system in favor of “flat-time” sentencing, meaning that they get a certain number of years, and then they let them walk out the gate with no post-release control. Under this system, even if the staff *know *that this offender is at a substantial risk of repeating his acts, there’s nothing they can do about it. Once they’ve served their time, they’re done.
In many cases, I agree with you. I’ve gone on record before saying that a huge part of the dysfunction of molestation and rape victims stems from the way we’re treated (as irrepairably damaged) by society at large, long after our physical wounds have healed. If we didn’t make such a big deal about it, it wouldn’t be such a big deal. Plenty of cultures have genital manipulation of children without everyone needing years of therapy. Ours isn’t one of them, however.
I certainly don’t think two kids of equal sexual developmental level messing about or “playing doctor” is anything to get upset about. I agree that a whole lot of that type of behavior is simply curiousity because they’ve never SEEN opposite gender plumbing. I (with the knowledge and agreement of all the parents) make it a point to have the kids I babysit “help” me with holding diaper wipes and handing me diapers when we change another gendered kid’s diaper - lets everyone see what there is to be seen in a non-secret, non-sexualized context. I think partly as a result, I’ve never had a case to worry about.
But just because lots of kids have genital curiousity that’s completely harmless doesn’t mean that *some *of them won’t go on to pedophillic behaviors. Please just trust me that this one has a great likelihood to do so if nothing is stopped. The manner of the incidents (he was masturbating at each one, not “just looking”, and the other kid in each case was dramatically younger then he), his antisocial and asocial behavior (is asocial a word? It should be - I mean he removes himself from social situations, either phsyically or by intently zoning out with video games.) increase our worry, and everyone involved just “feels” that something is not right with this kid. His therapists are quite concerned that after the first incident turned his life upside down (school kicked him out and his custody needed to be reworked to accomodate a new school) he still repeated the behavior.
So thank you, Marienee, I will pass on that link and hope that it helps him and his family.
I think so, too. But to my own way of thinking, a pedophile is a person who has persistent fantasies/thoughts/ what have you about children; a child molester (or sometimes a perp, it depends on how slangy I am feeling that day) is a person who has acted on those fantasies. There are any number of pedophiles who never act or who don’t act for years; this does not mean that they don’t have a problem and they are often extremely distressed by it.
People who are distressed ought also to be able to get treatment it seems to me.
sigh I gotta figure out how to preview. I forgot to mention, the reverse is also true: some number of child molesters are not pedophiles at all, just as some number of sad people are not clinically depressed.
One of the definitions in Marienee’s link concerned a power imbalance between the kids - generally a 5-yr age difference, sometimes 3 years.
But 12-yr-olds “playing doctor”? Nah. Four-yr-olds play doctor; 12-yr-olds have little romances, at least we did when I was a kid (his name was Shawn, we held hands at the roller rink, so that made it official).
Well, it’s kinda both. Theoretically: someone is jailed for molestation. They get therapy, and that person is really, genuinely, cured. But since the person is on a Sex offender regstry for life, society will be aware of it and at least from watching the soundbites on the news, he (and more frequently as of late, she) will be persecuted for life.
Society has deemed it important that a person wears a scarlet ‘A’ (‘P’) for life, and society will act on that designation…presumably for life or until the person finds a place far enough removed from society, that he’s left alone. If you think about a metropolitan area, it’s developed with housing…local to the housing is schooling. You CANNOT live in an urban area and not be close to schooling. Since the law requires this person to be listed, and the residents of the area are notified to protect their children, the person most likely will not be able to live in an area with any reasonably large population.
It seems funny that a sociey that looks down on any kind of segregation due to race, religion, physical disability, had developed this particular blind spot.
The worst part about it is that often, offenders get so frustrated at trying to “go by the book” and being rejected over and over that the eventually go underground and don’t update their registrations. Being off the radar like that makes it more likely that they’ll reoffend.
Society wants their criminals to dissapear into some sort of black hole. It’s extremely difficult for any sort of ex-con, let alone a sex criminal, to get a good job after they’re released. No one wants to hire them. The only work they can often get is the lowest-paid types of manual labor, and it’s really hard to feed a family on that sort of money. Going back to lucrative crime can seem a very attractive alternative.
Children are special. They are uniquely vulnerable and their parents and society as a whole are instinctually driven to protect them.
People are not more likely to present a danger to your child due to their race or religion or physical disablity.
People who have abused a child before ARE. (I say ‘abuse’, because non-sexual assaults on children also occur.)
So, those ex-offenders who must live with extra scrutiny on them the rest of their lives? No sympathy from me. That’s the way it should be.
But what caused that person to abuse a child? Can that be headed off before the damage occurs? We, as a society, have recognised that homosexuality is not a choice. In learning that, we’ve cause a bunch of ‘harm’ to a bunch of people because society is ignorant.
I’m not advocating including pedophilia as an acceptable behavior, but your lack of sympathy strikes the same cords as someone 50 years ago talking about ‘them damn faggots’. It’s entirely possible (likely even) that the motivations of a pedophile are just as hard to avoid as the urges a homosexual has towards their sexual preference, or the urges a hetrosexual has towards a member of the opposite sex.
I dunno about you, but the uges I’ve felt have been fairly strong…I’m glad they happen to jive with what society thinks is acceptable. If Pedophilia is unacceptable to society, then something needs to happen to bridge that schism.
Oh, I dunno, there’ve been a few strong urges in my life that I’ve needed to quell. Like the desire to run someone off the road in response to their bad driving. Stuff like that.
Just b/c something is an “urge” doesn’t mean it’s automatically OK. That’s why we work hard to raise kids, as opposed to just giving them the green light to do whatever they please.
And the question becomes…what do you do about it if you’re the one having those urges?
Big dirty secret #42: Breastfeeding feels really good sometimes. Yes, in “that” way. I can’t tell you the number of horrified mothers who have confided in me that they had arousal or even orgasm feelings while nursing and are now convinced that they’re pedophiles who are going to molest their babies, or that breastfeeding itself IS molesting them because it feels good.
I mean, obviouosly, feeling good feelings when someone sucks on your nipple does not make you a pedophile, right? But what if it did? What if you, personally, felt even more inappropriate sexual urges towards prepubescents? Where would you go? Who would you talk to? What could you do about it if you had those urges and wanted them to go away?
This is, for me, the reason we need to seriously think about de-demonizing pedophilia. Still make the action criminal, but make the urges, or orientation, or paraphilia, less evil and demonic and more of an…I don’t want to say “acceptable”, but *treatable *mental illness that doesn’t have the horrific stigma attached as it is today.
If you were someone who had those feelings, and you knew that the mere act of seeking treatment would very likely get you ostracized by your whole family and community forever, and treated like a monster, would you get treatment? Or would you just hope and pray and try real hard not to act on your feelings, only to fuck up when you got drunk one day or let your guard down a little bit?
If you knew a guy who told you that he had sexual urges towards kids and promised never to act on them, would you marry him? Hire him as a babysitter or teacher? Elect him to office?
What if he had been through a treatment program with a 95% success rate? Any different? Is there anthing at all he could do and be viewed as safe or normal ever again?
