I’m looking for opinions (professional or otherwise), explanations, theories, personal feelings, and any other ways to express oneself.
This is a fact (dispute if you like): Mental illness still carries a strong stigma. There is a certain percentage of the population (and I don’t mean this in a derogatory manner) that is ignorant about mental illness. Either because of lack of understanding or the most uncomfortable feeling that can come with being confronted with it or having to discuss it.
Here’s the tough part.
Can being molested as a child possibly cause that child to grow up and have pedophilic behavior? Either just in their mind or much worse, acting out?
I have read where a child, through heredity, can be predisposed to this behavior. That is a theory. Others say the abuse catastrophically interrupts the child’s development and can be the catalyst toward such behavior. Others say it is a mental illness for which there is no cure. Many can bothered by this abhorrent condition and never ever act out but live a life of misery with guilt, self hatred, low self esteem. Others, sadly, act out with dire consequences for themselves and the victim.
These people are reviled by society which is only logical as children are to be protected and never become prey to one of these people. We have all heard of instances when one is put in prison, even the most hardened criminals (murderers, armed robbers, adult rapists, etc.) will not tolerate them because the crime involved a child or children. So they end up dead in prison. That’s prison justice…so be it.
What is perplexing is there doesn’t seem to be a definitive cause for this type of behavior. There are lots of beliefs, theories, possible answers but nothing concrete. Even from professionals who study this.
I realize this is a most volatile subject but I wanted to ask.
Since the OP is seeking (at least in part) personal opinions, I’m going to send this to IMHO, although it may well end up in GD. Of course, cites of published studies can still be posted in IMHO.
I have also added a clarification to the thread title.
It’s well established that many abusers (including sexual abusers) were themselves abused as children. This of course does not mean that everyone who was abused as a child is going to do it to others, but it is not uncommon for a cycle of abuse to continue through generations.
The grand majority of instances of pedophilia are not from people who are fixated on children. There have been polls on this board, for example, of whether people find young girls (like 12-16) attractive. A fair amount say yes. Humans are likely naturally built to be attracted to any sexually mature body-- and that happens to arrive some 5-6 years before when the law says it does. What this means in practical terms is that if you have somebody who’s not all that moral, drunk, and has access and power over a young teen, he’s liable to take advantage of her. If he’s caught, this will be reported as pedophilic behavior, regardless that he’d probably do the same thing to a 30 year old woman if he happened to think he could get away with it at the time. The primary difference is that he won’t have the advantage of being in an authority position to a 30 year old woman – hence he’s not as likely to get away with it. Ultimately, the problem with him isn’t pedophilia, it’s probably some mixture of sociopathy, liquor, and stress. Sociopathy of this kind may well be due to physical or sexual abuse as a minor.
As to honest to gosh pedophiles, it’s hard to pin down how they are created. It is possible that their genes are messed up so that the bit which decides sexual maturity is simply wrong. It’s also possible that they were screwed up as a child either by being sexually abused themselves or suffering plain old physical abuse. Like anything, I’d venture to guess that it’s a mixture of various factors which vary by the individual. Unfortunately, many of them lie about their history so as to get sympathy, plus they’re in the minority of all cases, which get conflated. Between these two issues, getting reliable data is difficult. And the debate of nature versus nurture is still up in the air for thousands of things, overall.
One issue with this area is perpetrators claiming abuse as an excuse for their behaviour. The majority of paedophiles were not sexually abused as children according to this study:
Only about 1 in 8 sexually abused people became perpetrators themselves.
More importantly, about 2/3s of perpetrators werent sexually abused themselves.
The study does find evidence for a cycle, but it only covers a minority of cases where a female perpetrator and male victim was involved. The study unfortunately isnt ‘definitive’ but does suggest caution is warranted about seeing a cycle of sexual abuse as the primary causal mechanism.
Wiki covers various biological associations that are thought to be possible factors.
Just what I was going to say. A big problem with studies linking childhood sexual abuse to adult offending is that the studies done so far have relied heavily on self report, and the offenders have a big incentive to be less than truthful (i.e., “I’m a victim, too!”). One study showded that offenders reported half of the rate of childhood sexual abuse when hooked up to a polygraph as did offenders who weren’t.
Perhaps the same could be applied to being gay. Predisposition, environment, conscience choice…all could apply as well. Something isn’t right somewhere but the argument will forever continue.
as I understand it, plenty of mental illnesses, since they can have biological components, can be passed on to offspring. Under such circumstances, I would wonder if pedophilia was more of a symptom of underlying issues and not a “standalone” problem.
So a genetic predisposition to mental illness + abuse = not much of a leap of logic that this person can display problematic behaviors later in life.
IIRC, studies have shown that there is a statistic correlation between being molested or abused as a child and being a molester or abuser when adult, but only if the child is genetic; adopted children show no such link. That does point towards a genetic influence. Which is to be expected; I doubt that many human behaviors have no genetic component.
I thought that “pure” pedophilla was really rare. I seem to recall reading that most pedos had co morbid issues.
Yes, there’s the danger of self reporting, and of course there are some sociopaths who use their charm to be all" Oh it wasn’t MY FAULT!"
BUT on the other hand, we’re talking about a not exactly mentally healthy population. They have distorted thinking, and they think that if they can reinact the molestation, they can “heal”
Strange yes, but we have women who think that they can “heal” from a rape by having sex with every thing that moves.