# the prevalence of pedophilia **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [January 30, 2009, 10:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-prevalence-of-pedophilia/483702 "2009-01-30T10:43:25Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Death\_of\_Rats](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/a6a055/32.png) [@Death\_of\_Rats](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Death_of_Rats)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2009, 4:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-prevalence-of-pedophilia/483702/21 "2009-01-30T16:12:53Z")
> [@Sage\_Rat](#): > > So ultimately, you’ll do better to live in fear of your toddler being knocked over by a blind person, breaking her neck, than that she will be snatched by a pedophile. Thanks, **Sage Rat** , now I have to fear pedophiles AND toddler killing blind people! Are you trying to kill me?!? 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Catamount](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/catamount/32/2840_2.png) [@Catamount](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Catamount)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2009, 4:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-prevalence-of-pedophilia/483702/22 "2009-01-30T16:26:56Z")
> [@Cluricaun](#): > > Good point, however blind people aren’t going around poking out childrens eyeballs to also make them blind. Unless… The only reason they don’t is because they can’t see where your eyes are. I like my trips to Hell. It’s warm there. ---
**Author:** ![Enginerd](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/bcef8e/32.png) [@Enginerd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Enginerd)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2009, 4:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-prevalence-of-pedophilia/483702/23 "2009-01-30T16:41:32Z")
> [@Death\_of\_Rats](#): > > Thanks, **Sage Rat** , now I have to fear pedophiles AND toddler killing blind people! Are you trying to kill me?!? 😃 Are you a toddler? I can’t quite see from over here. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Skywatcher](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/skywatcher/32/254_2.png) [@Skywatcher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skywatcher)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2009, 5:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-prevalence-of-pedophilia/483702/24 "2009-01-30T17:16:04Z")
> [@Harriet\_the\_Spry](#): > > I also think it may be worth distinguishing between “child molester” and any kind of -phile, pedo or ephebo. When I have heard of cases of this from people I knew personally, it generally wasn’t an adult who had a preference for children. It was a situation where an adult who generally had sex with adults but also had a lot of psychological problems got their boundaries completely screwed up and initiated sex with a kid. One example, a woman whose father started having sex with her when she was twelve after her parents divorced. He didn’t have any general “preference” for twelve year olds, he just took what was there. I suspect that when you hear about “convicted of child sex offense,” there is a lot of that in there. Yeah, adults being aroused by pubescent and/or pre-pubescent children don’t seem all that unusual to me. The problem is when they go beyond arousal. ---
**Author:** ![Spoke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a88e57/32.png) [@Spoke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spoke)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2009, 5:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-prevalence-of-pedophilia/483702/25 "2009-01-30T17:19:45Z")
> [@Ensign\_Edison](#): > > I want to see evidence that kids who are sexually abused are LIKELY to become pedophiles. Certainly, those who abuse were often abused themselves, but how this gets turned into the idea that those who are abused will therefore likely abuse is beyond me, especially given how very many people also report knowing lots of women who were abused and yet so few offenders are female. The evidence seems to be that male victims of abuse are more likely than non-victims to become abusers themselves. (Of course, that doesn’t mean that members of either group are LIKELY to become an abuser, only that one group is more likely than the other.) I would say a causal connection is strongly suggested for at least some _subset_ of abusers. It would be very difficult to construct a study showing that kids who are sexually abused are likely to become pedophiles, even if that were the case, because such a study would rely on self-reporting by those engaging in an illegal activity (child sexual abuse). ---
**Author:** ![Ensign\_Edison](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7ab992/32.png) [@Ensign\_Edison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ensign_Edison)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2009, 5:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-prevalence-of-pedophilia/483702/26 "2009-01-30T17:48:39Z")
Again, there is a massive difference between “most abusers were abused” and “most people who are abused will abuse”. ---
**Author:** ![Cervaise](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cervaise/32/16693_2.png) [@Cervaise](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cervaise)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2009, 6:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-prevalence-of-pedophilia/483702/27 "2009-01-30T18:10:25Z")
> [@Annie-Xmas](#): > > You hear more about pedophilia now, and it is a good thing. It is _not_ a good thing. The competition for the sexiest babies has gotten _fierce._ ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2009, 6:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-prevalence-of-pedophilia/483702/28 "2009-01-30T18:20:46Z")
> [@CaerieD](#): > > It turned out that the girlfriend’s child was seventeen and had accused him of making inappropriate comments, which promptly resulted in her mother dumping the man. > > Child molestation is a real problem. Adults taking advantage of teenagers is a real problem. They aren’t the _same_ problem, however, and simply referring to how frequently one hears stories about either one and using that as evidence of the frequency of pedophilia proves nothing. > > If in a given week there are news stories of a 20-something teacher and a 15-year-old student, some controversy about _To Catch a Predator_, new statistics on the majority of teen pregnancies being fathered by adults, and a man convicted of molesting an eight-year-old, then there was only **one** news story about a pedophile. Right. And, as had been said, most true child molestors are close family associates or even memebrs of the family. “Stranger danger” is highly over-rated. ---
**Author:** ![Agent\_Foxtrot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9fc29f/32.png) [@Agent\_Foxtrot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Agent_Foxtrot)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2009, 6:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-prevalence-of-pedophilia/483702/29 "2009-01-30T18:22:41Z")
Personally? I think the number of pedophiles and molestations has gone _down_ since “the old days.” Awareness, prevention, and punishments have sharply increased. Do you really think that Catholic priests diddling alter boys is a recent thing? ETA: Additionally, the advent of the internet has allowed for easier access to child pornography than ever. Fortunately, it also allows us to find the creeps a lot easier. ---
**Author:** ![Icarus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/icarus/32/72_2.png) [@Icarus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Icarus)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2009, 6:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-prevalence-of-pedophilia/483702/30 "2009-01-30T18:38:17Z")
One other category I would like to mention that gets lumped in with the statistics - teens getting it on. Jimmy is 16 and a half, he hooks up with Jenny who is 14 going on 15. Normal high school couple, right? They get caught having sex, by Jenny’s dad. The police are called. Fast forward through the legal system - Jimmy is now a ‘registered sex offender’ and adds to the statistics of ‘child molesters - pedophile’. ---
**Author:** ![Harriet\_the\_Spry](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e56c9b/32.png) [@Harriet\_the\_Spry](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Harriet_the_Spry)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2009, 6:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-prevalence-of-pedophilia/483702/31 "2009-01-30T18:42:57Z")
> [@Lute Skywatcher](#): > > Yeah, adults being aroused by pubescent and/or pre-pubescent children don’t seem all that unusual to me. The problem is when they go beyond arousal. I don’t know if I would even say these are all cases of the molester being \*aroused \*by the victim. People have a sex drive, and the victim can just be there. Or it can be about power more than it is about lust. Not that it makes it better or worse, but my point is that pedophilia, in the sense of having abnormal tastes, is only part of the picture. I have no idea if one type of abuse is more damaging than the other. They both seem pretty damn sad to me :(. ---
**Author:** ![Trepa\_Mayfield](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/edb3f5/32.png) [@Trepa\_Mayfield](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trepa_Mayfield)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2009, 6:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-prevalence-of-pedophilia/483702/32 "2009-01-30T18:53:46Z")
> [@Icarus](#): > > One other category I would like to mention that gets lumped in with the statistics - teens getting it on. Jimmy is 16 and a half, he hooks up with Jenny who is 14 going on 15. Normal high school couple, right? > > They get caught having sex, by Jenny’s dad. The police are called. Fast forward through the legal system - Jimmy is now a ‘registered sex offender’ and adds to the statistics of ‘child molesters - pedophile’. Wait…and Jenny’s not? That’s messed up one more than one level. ---
**Author:** ![Stoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/stoid/32/272_2.png) [@Stoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stoid)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2009, 7:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-prevalence-of-pedophilia/483702/33 "2009-01-30T19:14:26Z")
If anything, I would say the number of pedophiles is going down. Or rather, the acts of child molestation. I’m 50 years old and female. Mine was the generation that started talking about this stuff openly. And you know what we learned? That it’s not much of a stretch to claim that females who completely escape any and all instances of sexual molestation before turning 16 or so are the exception, not the rule, with a depressingly large percentage of women having their first sexually inappropriate (it’s a spectrum that runs from that to violent rape) experience before puberty. It seems unbelievable, but not when you look closer. Children obey. Men (and some women) were able to control the children they violated. The children themselves were ashamed and scared to tell. I think that it is precisely because we talk about it now, teach children about it now, that it occurs far less often than it used to. People who in an earlier era would have acted on their impulses with the fairly legitimate belief that they could probably get away with it are not so sure these days, and as a result they control themselves better. I think these days the people who act on their urges are more hard-care, so to speak, and it happened a lot more in the past on a more _impulsive_, rather than _compulsive_, basis. ---
**Author:** ![MichaelJohnBertrand](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/dfb087/32.png) [@MichaelJohnBertrand](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MichaelJohnBertrand)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2009, 7:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-prevalence-of-pedophilia/483702/34 "2009-01-30T19:51:52Z")
> [@GuanoLad](#): > > There ought to be a distinction made between a paedophile and an [ephebophile](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ephebophilia), because a lot of people seem to brand a person who does naughty things with a 15 year old a paedophile, when technically that’s not true. > > It’s certainly illegal, arguably immoral, and it’s true that 15yrs is legally considered to be still a child, but sexual attraction to an adolescent is not paedophilia. It’s a distinction worth making. The fact that current society dictates (I think wisely) that there’s a period after sexuality maturity where the rules are different does fly in the face of basic biology. We’re programmed to start “mating” right away. If you waited till you were thirty to have kids in the Dark Ages, you’d die first! 😛 Whereas pedophilia generally involves an actual rejection of adult sexuality. One might say pedophilia stops where ephebophilia begins. So even pathologically, the two are quite distinct. ---
**Author:** ![MichaelJohnBertrand](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/dfb087/32.png) [@MichaelJohnBertrand](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MichaelJohnBertrand)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2009, 8:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-prevalence-of-pedophilia/483702/35 "2009-01-30T20:03:45Z")
> [@Harriet\_the\_Spry](#): > > I also think it may be worth distinguishing between “child molester” and any kind of -phile, pedo or ephebo. When I have heard of cases of this from people I knew personally, it generally wasn’t an adult who had a preference for children. It was a situation where an adult who generally had sex with adults but also had a lot of psychological problems got their boundaries completely screwed up and initiated sex with a kid. One example, a woman whose father started having sex with her when she was twelve after her parents divorced. He didn’t have any general “preference” for twelve year olds, he just took what was there. I suspect that when you hear about “convicted of child sex offense,” there is a lot of that in there. I like your screen name. I feel so boring for just using my actual name now. 😛 Anyhow, that’s one of the categories of pedophilia. I guess you’d call it “situational”. The pedophiles like you describe tend to be people with poor boundaries between their emotions, and a great deal of dependence on others to meet their emotional needs. They go from one dependence object to another. The ones you tend to hear about on the news who get in trouble with the law for actual molestation (as opposed to just porn possession) are the personally immature pedophiles. They generally “seduce” children by befriending them, and introducing the sexual element slowly over time. They are often people who are very good with children, which is the scary part. I suppose they’re inspired. ☹ ---
**Author:** ![MichaelJohnBertrand](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/dfb087/32.png) [@MichaelJohnBertrand](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MichaelJohnBertrand)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2009, 8:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-prevalence-of-pedophilia/483702/36 "2009-01-30T20:09:33Z")
> [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > To the OP: FYI, I think you meant to use _incidence_ rather than _prevalence_. Oh! I think you’re right! Woops. ---
**Author:** ![Freudian\_Slit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/5daacb/32.png) [@Freudian\_Slit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Freudian_Slit)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2009, 8:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-prevalence-of-pedophilia/483702/37 "2009-01-30T20:11:02Z")
What about the fact that most victims of pedophiles tend to be female, and the fact that most child molesters male? Or are these victims also getting sex change ops? ---
**Author:** ![MichaelJohnBertrand](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/dfb087/32.png) [@MichaelJohnBertrand](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MichaelJohnBertrand)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2009, 8:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-prevalence-of-pedophilia/483702/38 "2009-01-30T20:16:23Z")
> [@Stoid](#): > > If anything, I would say the number of pedophiles is going down. Or rather, the acts of child molestation. > > I’m 50 years old and female. Mine was the generation that started talking about this stuff openly. And you know what we learned? That it’s not much of a stretch to claim that females who completely escape any and all instances of sexual molestation before turning 16 or so are the exception, not the rule, with a depressingly large percentage of women having their first sexually inappropriate (it’s a spectrum that runs from that to violent rape) experience before puberty. > > It seems unbelievable, but not when you look closer. Children obey. Men (and some women) were able to control the children they violated. The children themselves were ashamed and scared to tell. > > I think that it is precisely because we talk about it now, teach children about it now, that it occurs far less often than it used to. People who in an earlier era would have acted on their impulses with the fairly legitimate belief that they could probably get away with it are not so sure these days, and as a result they control themselves better. I think these days the people who act on their urges are more hard-care, so to speak, and it happened a lot more in the past on a more _impulsive_, rather than _compulsive_, basis. Oh, I definitely agree. In previous generations, dedicated pedophiles had a much easier time and stood almost no chance of getting caught. It’s a much, much, much less safe world for them today. However, this doesn’t make them go away. 🙂 Although hopefully, it does keep them away from actually molesting children. My OP was about how many are out there, as opposed to how easy they have it. ---
**Author:** ![MichaelJohnBertrand](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/dfb087/32.png) [@MichaelJohnBertrand](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MichaelJohnBertrand)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2009, 8:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-prevalence-of-pedophilia/483702/39 "2009-01-30T20:19:48Z")
> [@Freudian\_Slit](#): > > What about the fact that most victims of pedophiles tend to be female, and the fact that most child molesters male? Or are these victims also getting sex change ops? Well, this goes into some fairly complex sociology/psychology, but the way gender roles are set up these days, male victims of child abuse by females are far less likely to admit to it. And if they do, they might well be told they were “lucky”. And of course, obviously, most men are heterosexual. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![clairobscur](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/839c29/32.png) [@clairobscur](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/clairobscur)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2009, 8:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-prevalence-of-pedophilia/483702/40 "2009-01-30T20:23:00Z")
> [@Ensign\_Edison](#): > > Again, there is a massive difference between “most abusers were abused” and “most people who are abused will abuse”. Especially since abusers might _pretend_ to have been abused in order to benefit from extenuating circumstances. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-prevalence-of-pedophilia/483702.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-prevalence-of-pedophilia/483702.md?page=3)