Well, it’s easier than it’s ever been before. First of all, there’s the internet. Second, there have been so many laws passed recently telling them where they can and can’t live that they are starting to clump together in the only legal areas left. First, they couldn’t live near a school. Then, they added that they couldn’t live near a park. Now, it’s daycare centers. In the town where I work there is hardly anyplace left that they can legally live. When they add bus stops to the list, as they inevitably will, that will pretty much be the end of sex offenders living in towns. Plus, even if they are legally allowed to live in a place, a lot of people won’t rent to them. Apartment owners are checking the registry and refusing to rent to people if they are on it. In my office we have a large map with all the sex offenders marked with pins. Those pins are clumping into smaller and smaller groups. There is a trailer park outside of town that is, I would estimate, more than 50% registered sex offenders.
Of course, since the vast majority of them didn’t snatch some kid from a park they lived nearby, but instead molested a family member or friend or alter boy, all of this restriction has done absolutely nothing to prevent children from being molested. It has helped some politicians get votes though. I guess people think that if someone wants to snatch a kid from a park to molest, but they live more than 1000 feet from the park, it won’t be worth their time to drive their windowless van a few blocks down the street, and they’ll just stay home instead.
But they still have the same problem as in real life, the risk is still there, only now your secret can be distributed to the world in seconds. Take Cesario. He claims to be an open pedophile. So maybe a closet pedophile might try to contact him. But how do we know what he really is? What if he’s just an actor trying to get real pedophiles to reveal themselves ala To Catch a Predator? Is the risk worth getting caught?
I sympathize with them, and am firmly in the “they can’t help the way they are wired” camp. Throwing them in jail is a death sentence - murderers, thieves and even those who have raped adults all despise “kiddie rapers” and make their time in prison as miserable and short as possible.
I honestly hadn’t thought much about them until I saw the film “Crumb”. I’ve been a big fan of Robert Crumb for years, and was aware that his older brother Charles was a cartoonist as well, but that he had stopped drawing.
If you’ve never seen this film, skip down to the next post.
Charles was a pedophile. His first sexual impulses were while watching “Treasure Island” and he developed an intense erotic obsession with Bobby Driscoll, the little boy in the lead role. All of the comics Charles, Robert and Max (the Crumb brother who may be even more messed up than the other two) drew became about “Treasure Island”. Charles even took to dressing up as a Long John Silver. The film soft-peddled Charles’ pedophilia, but he explicitly admitted it in his letters to Robert that were re-printed in “Crumb Family Comics” calling himself a “homosexual pedophile”.
The thing is, in addition to being a pedophile, Charles was intelligent and well-read with a highly developed ethical system, and knew, as well as anyone, that acting on his desires would be wrong. So he never left home. The film finds him in his early 50s still living in the bedroom of his mother’s house, essentially a shut-in since high school, terrified of his own desires and so doped up that he’s all but castrated.
During the closing credits, we find out that Charles committed suicide before the film was finished.
What were his choices? As an artist, he presumably was able to draw his fantasies (though none of his drawings that have been released contain anything inappropriate), but under some laws that have been proposed, he could be arrested for doing so. He never had a computer, but just looking for masturbatory material could get him thrown in jail.
Again, what were his choices?
I think pedophiles should be allowed to purchase computer-generated/modified porn featuring underage characters, because it’s clear that everyone needs an erotic outlet. I believe that this will reduce the chances of real children being harmed. As a married heterosexual male who has to spend a lot of time away from my wife, I know the ready availability of porn has made these long separations bearable, and I’ve never been tempted to stray. I believe the same would apply to pedophiles - porn availability would make having a socially harmful sexual orientation bearable, as long as no real children were involved.
For what it’s worth, I thought that Robert and Charles seemed relatively normal compared to Max, who was in fact a sex offender. I think it’s one thing to fantasize–that’s what you’re born with. But I’d feel actual discomfort being in a room with someone who had ever committed a sexual assault.
As someone who has read everything Robert has drawn and written, the only difference is that Max did it to a stranger and was arrested. Robert was lucky in that fame allowed him to get away with behavior that would have resulted in arrest if the women involved hadn’t consented. For some reason people are a lot more forgiving of the behavior of famous “eccentric artists” (Picasso confessed to raping his models).
I could see it if you were the object of their obsession. But if you were with Charles Crumb? Presumably you’re not a nine year old boy (if you are, you’re extraordinarily articulate), so no harm could possibly come to you.
What exactly did Robert do? And if she consented, how would be assault to begin with?
Well, I meant, I’d be comfortable hanging out with Charles Crumb because I’m not a young boy, and also because I don’t think Charles ever acted on his fantasies. I wouldn’t be comfortable hanging out alone with Max Crumb who did confess to committing assault on a woman because I’d be afraid of being victimized.
I have no sympathy for them at all. Maybe they can’t help the way they’re wired. But they can certainly help whether they act on those urges. That’s the bottom line. If they allow their lust for kids to outweigh their common humanity then they have forfeited any right to sympathy.
I suppose it’s not assault if it’s in the context of a relationship, but a lot of it was forgiveness after the fact - jumping on a random womens back for a piggy-back ride at a gallery show, etc. Remember the part in the film where his ex-girlfriend Kathy said “I thought you were kidding”? She thought it was just play, while it was sex to Robert. Robert was luckier than Charles and Max in that the nature of his sexual obsessions and fame allowed him to indulge them without societal opprobrium.
Well…how can that be sexual assault? It’s just drawings. Or are you saying that all that was inspired by actual actions?
Okay, yeah, that’s true. I guess it seems less skeevey when it’s something “safe” like a piggy back ride even though it’s obviously pretty sexual to him. R. Crumb seemed to have a better idea of what was socially appropriate compared to Max who was groping completely random people.
But we’re talking about two distinct groups - those who are sexually attracted to children and acted on that impulse, and those who are sexually attracted to children and did not. Do you have no sympathy for both groups?
Personally, I find an ethical pedophile like Charles Crumb who fought against his sexual desires his entire life downright heroic. I can’t imagine having to do so. Again, I’m lucky in that the objects of my desire are perfectly legal. With pedophiles, even indulging their fantasy life is illegal.
Robert Crumb is quite possibly the most brutally honest artist working today. Most of the stuff that’s drawn realistically actually happened.
Max assaulted one woman. He pulled down the shorts of a woman who was standing in line in front of him at a store. It was a failure of impulse control. Last I heard, he’s in a long-term relationship with a woman who has done quite a bit to straighten his life out (my information came from Robert’s son Jesse).
This, with the caveat that I don’t know that pedophiles are born that way (if that is what you meant by “wired”). It is not wrong to feel that way. It is wrong to act on it, ever.
And I can do without the self-serving rhetoric about how you are doing it because you are liberating children from the societal burden of “the age of consent” and helping them get in touch with their sensual natures and the rest of the horseshit. You are doing out of your needs, not theirs.
And if you genuinely can’t help yourself, then we as a society need to take whatever steps are necessary to stop you.
There are some things for which no excuse will suffice. If an adult molests a child, it doesn’t matter why he did it. The important fact is that he did it. One time is too many; therefore twice is an unacceptable risk.
I agree that it is wrong to act on it. But I’m fairly sure that pedophiles are “born” at the moment of their first sexual attraction. Everyone I know knew their sexual orientation from their first sexual impulses. Some of them fought against these impulses (generally, the folks who felt an attraction to their own gender).
Agreed.
What steps are acceptable and necessary? Personally, I think a budding pedophile like the young Charles Crumb might have been re-oriented if his orientation had been identified early enough, in the same way that young psychopaths have been successfully identified via fMRI before engaging in anti-social activities that harm others. But I suspect that might involve national health care.
I don’t see anything in your cite about re-orienting anyone. AFAIK, it is not currently possible to change someone’s basic sexual orientation. That’s why people deny the effectiveness of the “ex-gay” organizations.
I thought the theory was that many pedophiles had themselves been molested, and had sexualized the experience. Thus they tend to seek out victims who appear to be roughly the same age as they were, when they were attacked. Or else are incredibly immature emotionally, like Michael Jackson appeared to be.
*If a biological basis for psychopathy could be established and pharmacological treatments developed, the idea that many people have at least a little of the psychopath in them could well become accepted. As Kiehl points out, “It used to be the case that it was very hard to meet clinical criteria for depression in the fifties and sixties. However, the definition of depression has been broadened so much with DSM-IV that nearly every person will meet the criteria at some point in their lives. One reason for this is that drug companies have lobbied to change the criteria—because they have a treatment, a drug, that can help people even with moderate levels of depression. It’s a completely different issue whether this is appropriate.” He added that “even moderate levels of psychopathy may someday be considered a disorder—especially if we can treat it.”
*
The “ex-gay” organizations are targeting mature adults who have absolutely nothing wrong with them. They are not mentally ill. This fact may have a lot more to do with the ineffectiveness of the “therapy” as anything else.
Psychopaths are mentally ill, and (I am not a doctor) I believe pedophiles are as well. But, like pedophilia, being a psychopath is not a defense.
This appears to be more “common wisdom” than the results of actual research. I know too many victims of sexual abuse who have never abused anyone to believe there is any particular link. In Charles Crumbs case, their father was a physically abusive bully (in the context of the time, a “strict disciplinarian”), but none of the Crumb brothers has ever accused him of sexual abuse. Charles was gay, and the first object of his sexual desire was a boy of the same age. From Robert and Charles’ writing he appears to not have matured out of it towards age-appropriate sexual attraction mostly due to abuse by peers, who beat him for asking a girl his own age out on a date.
Technically speaking, psychopathy is a personality disorder, not a mental illness. The difference is that people with mental illness, such as bipolar disorder or schizophrenia, do not want to be mentally ill (with a few exceptions) whereas most psychopaths have no issue with being a psychopath. Many of them are even proud of it.
I’m not sure where you’d place sexual disorders on that continuum – it’s been shown time and again that sexual identity is nearly impossible to change.
Personally, I’ve never really grasped what benefit it was to have someone pity you. Maybe it’s just me.
This assessment would be accurate.
It also deserves to be noted that those same liberalization advances came at the same time as a tightening of age of consent laws. Women getting to leave their homes and interact with men who weren’t family members? Used as justification for raising the age of consent from it’s historical levels up to the current levels.
Homosexual rights? A favorite tool of those oposed to them was to create differing age of consent laws for different sex acts so that gays could be roped in on statutory rape charges. And of course, anyone who oposed those clearly discriminatory laws (particularly NAMBLA) was demonized as out “recruiting” children.
Do you exclusively adult attracted individuals really find not raping people to be such a difficult task that you need professional help to keep yourselves in check? If no, why do you assume that pedophiles are different?
You should see someone about that impulse-control problem you’ve got.
And this self-justification isn’t really helping.
Personally, I’ve never found it to be that difficult. I worry that you seem to feel otherwise.
Wait, there’s something wrong with a kid thinking they’re special or awesome? So much for self-esteem.
And why must I descend into a cycle of self-hatrid in order to be something other than a piece of crap to you? Why is my self-acceptance so threatening in your eyes? Hint, low self-esteem is more associated with impulse-control problems. If you already think you’re scum, what reason do you have not to act like scum?
Telling people who are in a position to harm you is an act of extreme trust. So far, I’ve spoken of this to only two people in real life. In an anonymous medium like this, however, it is easier, since the people you’re telling aren’t in a position to harm you unless you do something stupid.
Maybe this information will help:
Agreed. It both declares that I’m destined to one day rape someone, and offers an excuse for doing it in the same breath. Not to mention the implication that, deprived of consensual partners, people are expected to resort to rape.
I would agree with this sentiment completely.
You earned those eyerolls legitimately. If I can’t tell it’s happening, and the kid can’t tell it’s happening, and the parents who are watching the whole thing can’t tell it’s happening, in what sense can it be said to be happening at all?
Ugh, the shoddy work of Dr. Abel continues to inspire wrongheaded approaches to dealing with the situation.
My thoughts on anyone who would treat her statistics as gospel:
There is no such thing as a convicted pedophile. Pedophilia is not a crime. Child molestation is a crime, but thinking little kids are hot is not illegal.
People who can’t manage that have a massive impulse-control disorder that has nothing to do with pedophilia.
Personally, I would chose death over that kind of mind-rape.
For more information on why it’s scarce, you might want to look up the Rind et. al, contravercy.
Doping me up for the rest of my life, lobotomizing me, yeah, I stand by my “I chose death” stance.
In other words, so long as they don’t ever contemplate the possibility that our current, mutually contradictory, arbitrary age lines based on nothing are anything but divinely ordained perfection, they retain your sympathies. Got it.
Considering the amount of effort people spend keeping kids ignorant and artificially extending childhood well past its biological and historical norm, is there really an argument to be made against the idea that society infantalizes kids? You may argue that it’s a good thing for society to do, but to argue that it doesn’t do it?
The whole point of stopping the kid is to prevent harm. If all the harm that’s going to be done has already been done, that motivation doesn’t work anymore.
And this is why repression and self-hatrid is a bad idea.
I just love how the exact same act, which is perfectly innocent and harmless for everyone else, suddenly becomes a soul-destroying act of abuse when someone thinks slightly different thoughts while doing it.
Considering that nonpedophiles are more than twice as likely to molest kids…
Interesting. How do these numbers compare to other offenders? Violent offenders? Nonviolent offenders? “Normal” rapists?
And some of them had to pee in an area devoid of public restrooms.
And those of us who don’t touch kids?
It’s wrong to harm a child. I’m not prepared to agree until I know the extent of your definition of “act on it”, since at some point, I seem to recall a standard that would prevent me from going to a grocery store because I’d gasp look at kids there (since looking at the is unavoidable if you want to avoid a colision, which said individual would describe as even worse (if that’s possible)).
Or more accurately, the needs of my ten year old self, who was feeling damn opressed at that point, and who resolved that no one should have to suffer like he did.
Yes, people with impulse control problems need to be prevented from causing harm.
Do you feel the same about adult rapists?
It might also involve a war. There isn’t a lot that’d motivate me to kill, and very little that would motivate me to risk dying, especially for total strangers, but preventing brainwashing like this would be one of those things. I don’t believe I am alone in that assessment.
This has not been my experience, nor has it been the experience of pretty much any of the pedophiles or molestation victims I’ve spoken with. Still, I admit my evidence is anecdotal, and would gladly conceed if presented with a valid academic source.
I wonder, if a lot of them are stunted emotionally, and that’s why they feel sexually attracted to children. It really does seem like a lot of them for whatever reason never made the maturity leap to being attracted to adults.
I also thought that the percentage of “pure” pedos was very low. I could have sworn that I read most pedos had extremely complicated emotional issues.
It’s possible that a psych could help a pedo mature, emotionally so they wouldn’t be attracted to kids any more. I honestly think that its being emotionally stunted which is the root cause of peodphillia.
There used to be some online messageboards. The only reason I know about them is b/cI was doing some reading on the book " I Know My First Name Is Steven" ,which in turn led me to Better a Millstone which then had links to the online messageboards. I used to lurk at them…Many of them were kind of ambigious…(ie attracted to young teens) but some of them…
So much for self-esteem.