Why are there so many pedophiles?

[leftyladyfrommo]

Does anyone know what causes pedophiles?

I have read that about 4 percent of the male population are pedophiles. And that's not just in this country. It's a real problem everywhere.

I have also read that pedophiles don't think they are doing anything really wrong.

But a some level they have to be incredibly conflicted
Individuals. At some level they have to know that what they are doing is really sick.

Are they just hardwired differently or is it caused by some socal thing?

And it doesn't seem to respond to treatment. They really need to be pulled out of society and kept there.

[redwitch]

1. I think they are wired wrong.

Just my opinion though.

[KamaAina]

2. You're going to pull 4 percent of the male population out of society and keep them there?

[Nuclear Unicorn]

25. What percentage of the population is tolerable to be victimized by pedophiles?

[KamaAina]

26. We already have far too many people in prison.

Letting nonviolent drug offenders out would be a good start.

[Nuclear Unicorn]

28. I'm not worried about prisons being too crowded with peophiles.

I'm just ruthless like that.

[KamaAina]

30. One possible alternative is "chemical castration".

Harsh, to be sure, but less so, and less expensive, than mass incarceration.

[safeinOhio]

34. Easy to get testosterone shots

to reverse it. Works even with castration.

[Truprogressive85]

66. Yup

That's t crazy because I believe in the samething

Pedos are scum

[Ex Lurker]

41. Apparently there are quite a few female pedophiles too

going by the number of female teachers who get arrested.

[KamaAina]

43. Attraction to teenagers is not pedophilia

it has a different name.

[JanMichael]

84. eventually they pull themselves...

...in when they get busted. hence in the slammer.

maybe not 4 percent but working on it. i mean they are.

[KamaAina]

3. Police: 3-year-old girl kept in closet, offered for sex

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10141318586

[leftyladyfrommo]

23. Wasn't that unbelievable?

Guys will have sex with infants.

I just get so grossed out it's hard to even think about it.

What makes someone that sick?

[jwirr]

39. No one seems to be answering your question so I will give it

a stab. My guess is it has something to do with insecurity in regard to themselves. Especially with regard to adult women.

The other guess is that they have a need to dominate.

[3catwoman3]

67. We should not call the activities of pedophiles...

..."having sex."

It is assault. It is abuse. It is rape.

[leftyladyfrommo]

72. Is that a pedophile. Or just psychopath?

Some total lowlife with no conscience might do something like that.

[femmocrat]

4. I wonder if there are more now or we just hear about them more.

Are there factors that make their numbers greater than in the past? Or were they always there but no one talked about it?

[arcane1]

6. Columbus made money selling 9-year-old native girls for sex.

It's definitely not a new thing. Also see Mohamed or the Old Testament.

[femmocrat]

20. I wasn't thinking that far back, as social mores were much different.

I was thinking more about the 20th century. The word is from the Greek, but did not appear until 1900; the noun did not appear until 1951.

Source: http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?allowed_in_frame=0&search=pedophilia

I know it has always existed. BTW, do you have a reference to the verse(s) in the Old Testament? Thank you.

[arcane1]

32. Killing all the Midianites except for the "women children" for example.

That's somewhere in Leviticus, though God generally preferred killing children to raping them

[jeff47]

7. The latter (nt)

[Human101948]

9. It wasn't publicized...

A good example of how things have changed is the Amber alerts that rattle your cell phone. There were never such things 30 years ago.

[linuxman]

5. Some people are born that way. Who knows why.

There really isn't anything you can do about it until they act.

[zipplewrath]

8. They are wired differently

The wrongness is in the involvement of other humans with no real choice.
We get all weirded out about it because it involves sex. But we really consider most things having to do with children to be "wrong" if it is not in their best interest and promulgated on them by adults. It's why kids can't (legally) incur debt.

It's gonna get real weird though when we start building life like robots...

[leftyladyfrommo]

14. Oh, really.

Child sex robots? Oh, man. What a concept and you know the will come up with it.

Too weird for me.

[zipplewrath]

21. More than that

Think about any and every "fetish" not to mention anything the sci-fi community can dream up. And then you can move on to animals.

After the Gutenberg bible, ya know what moveable type was predominately used for next?

Yup. Just like the internet.

[LanternWaste]

61. Textbooks on Latin grammar by Aelius Donatus?

"ya know what moveable (sic) type was predominately used for next?"


Textbooks on Latin grammar by Aelius Donatus?

[zipplewrath]

62. Not with movable type.

It is also the only purely textual work to be printed in blockbook form (cut like a woodcut, not using movable type).

[HereSince1628]

37. Sexual behavior has many expressions, right and wrong a wide range

that is largely culturally acquired.

Penes themselves seem to be structured by evolution to the possibility of returning 'pleasurable' signals when rubbed on and pushed into a variety of things. Not surprisingly, there are reports of penes being rubbed on and pushed into a wide variety of inanimate and animate object to return gratifying sensations to their owners.

It's hard to know what parts of this behavior are due to structure differences in cognitive hardware and what is merely a consequence of exploration/experience that leads to acquired knowledge of behaviors that are sexually gratifying and the interpersonal social psychology that leads to predatory exploitation of circumstance and opportunity.

Are people who live with a sense of social exceptionalism wired differently, or have they merely explored the latitude that they can exploit further than other people? Which is to say are they really different than others or are they simply further along some axis of measurement?

A person who regularly speeds down the highway flouting traffic laws is being exceptional. A person who exploits workplace opportunities and dominance hierarchies to have sex with employees, clients, or customers does the same, even while others in society may frown upon that liberty much more than they do on speeding. A person who purposefully seeks positions of employment or professions to find opportunities among vulnerable people may just be rather further down a path of greater and greater self satisfaction eve as that behavior is looked upon ever more as criminally predatory.

Are these things due to antisocial, or addictively susceptible wiring or merely acquired/learned entrainment and habituation to exceptionalism that overwhelms/extinguishes awareness of social taboos?

Bill Clinton and Lewinsky engaged in a relationship that had it occurred in my life would have caused me to lose my job and my career as a college professor. I don't really have any reason to think Bill Clinton's 'wiring' diagram is particularly different from my own. Rather, I acknowledge that his profession and mine, and my employment and status are different and occur under different social environments with different restraints on sexual behavior.

Deviant behavior is merely different whether it is acceptable or criminal is in large part an interpretation made from within a social context

[leftyladyfrommo]

10. I wonder how many there are that just never act

On their compulsions? As long as they don't hurt anybody. But even watching child port causes incredible damage even though they aren't physically hurting children.

[KamaAina]

13. The strict laws against child porn are based on the harm to the "actresses".

A controversy has erupted over whether they should apply to high-tech all-animated child porn.

[leftyladyfrommo]

17. I wonder if there have been studies about whether

Watching child porn leads to actual child abuse?

[femmocrat]

22. Me too. nt

[jeff47]

31. No, and they can't really be done.

It's too hard to find pedophiles who have not been convicted. As a result, there's no one to study.

[CommonSenseDemocrat]

51. The Supreme Court has ruled animated porn is legal

[jeff47]

16. Depends on the porn.

Child porn with real children causes great harm.

Computer-generated/cartoon child porn wouldn't directly cause harm, since no real children are involved.

It is not known at this point if such "artificial" child porn is a net benefit (provides an outlet that doesn't directly harm children) or not (encourages them to act in the real world). It's not exactly an easy field to study, since pedophiles who have not been convicted are extremely difficult to find.

[Peregrine Took]

11. I read what a disgraced priest said once that shocked me:

He selected boys that he felt were gay anyway but closeted and he helped bring them become aware of their true sexuality. He honestly felt he was doing them a favor and had no guilt at all.

[leftyladyfrommo]

15. Ya. I think they come up with excuses like that.

I could not believe it when I heard that they don't see that they are doing any harm.

How could you possibly not know?

[Calista241]

19. Lol. So he just decided he thought some of them were gay.

What a jackass. Glad that fucker got exposed.

[Prism]

78. Very much a thing

I had a friend years ago who didn't see anything wrong with wanting to sleep with 14-15 year old boys. As far as I know he never acted on it and never would, but I had the longest, most frustrating conversations with him. He was convinced that it was fine since when he was that age, he wanted an older man to have sex with him. Nothing I said about consent, sexual development, or emotional and psychological harm really sank in with him. He was convinced it was love and that "initiating a teenager into adulthood in a loving manner" (barf) was actually a moral good.

I still encounter him once in awhile through acquaintances, and last I saw he had married a man who was very, very, very young looking. Legal and all that, but it still creeped me out. I know this is technically ephebophilia, but the rationalizations he presented were mortifying.

[jeff47]

12. On causes

there is some evidence that victims of pedophilia/childhood sexual abuse are much more likely to become pedophiles as adults. However, it's not strong enough to label as "the cause" yet.

[jwirr]

46. Being a victim of child abuse of any kind can be related to

becoming an abuser yourself so I don't think that relates to pedophiles alone.

[ruffburr]

18. This is -

An unfathomable case of child abuse, What causes this behavior? I really have never been able to comprehend the People motivated to commit such heinous acts upon anyone much less a child of 3 , I'm not a death penalty person , But some type of prison for life, like their own community that they cannot leave, ever, The Children can't defend themselves so it is up to us to come up with a reasonable humane solution , Sick story

[The2ndWheel]

24. What causes any sexual attraction?

And with 7+ billion people and counting on the planet, there's probably going to be at least one of anything, and a lot of most things.

[Oneironaut]

27. The 4% sounds like bull crap.

Fear of pedophiles is mostly hysteria. Yes, kids do get kidnapped, but there's not a man waiting at every corner to jump out and snatch your kids. Most pedophiles attack kids they always know. There really isn't a lot of them - it's something to be conscious of, but not obsess over.

I personally think it's a mental disorder that has less to do with sex and more about control and dominance, but I don't have research or anything here to share. Just my opinion.

[JudyM]

36. "Fear of pedophiles is mostly hysteria." Wtf?

None of us thinks there's a pedophile waiting around every corner. Your post is, I'm sorry, just horribly insensitive and uninformed about how these acts destroy lives. If it happened to a kid you loved maybe your eyes would open beyond a squint.

[leftyladyfrommo]

49. My fears there are a lot more of them out

there than we know about. How many people had a nice
Uncle who liked for them to sit on his lap? Or grandfather.

[JudyM]

53. I know too many women who were sexually molested as children.

Unfortunately, all of them (the ones I know, that is) have lasting emotional damage related to trust, sexual attraction, etc. Emotional intimacy is one of the most beautiful things in life and these women are stymied on that front. Therapy definitely helps, but it's a lasting wound of significant proportions.

[Nay]

76. Well, exactly. The legions of women who have been sexually molested as

children would probably think that there might be quite a few pedophiles around. After all, if your grandpa, your father, or your dad's friend will molest you when you are 8 years old, who the hell else can you trust? Some stranger? Especially if you start reading about the subject and start counting up the number of female writers, actresses, etc., who relate their horrific experiences.

Now, one wonders whether pedophiles can be grouped into 2 groups: one group will callously abuse a child relative because the chances of getting caught are so low, and another group that goes after unknown children at random. I'd bet there is a continuum -- the first group has sex also with adults, the second group rarely does.

[sorefeet]

85. My landlord molested his daughter, stepdaughter and

his two nieces. He is married to an attractive lady. He could only be charged with his daughter because of statute of limitation He is now in prison for 10 years with 20 years probation when he gets out.

[Facility Inspector]

55. Most americans are afraid of their own shadow

if you keep repeating the same media/television messages, you can get them to believe ANYTHING.

If WW2 happened today, we would lose.

[LanternWaste]

64. Creative, though unsupported allegations

Creative, though unsupported allegations. You'll provide objective evidence to support your premise, yes? Or is your statement (and I find this more likely) merely a series of bumper-stickers predicated entirely on your own biases and emotions rather than evidence?

[Facility Inspector]

81. This is just a website

not a peer-reviewed journal.

It's my OPINION. Take it or leave it.

Whatever you choose, I can assure you that it has no impact on my day-to-day WHATSOEVER.

[JudyM]

69. So the pedophilia reports are overstated, in your opinion?

[Oneironaut]

65. Ok - then we agree?

I'm not sure what your gripe is with the post. You just restated what I just said.

What is insensitive?

[JudyM]

68. Um, no. I restated it with a wtf. Not even close to agreement.

I very rarely criticize anyone on this board. But your suggestion of "hysteria" as a description/explanation of people's being livid about the incidence of pedophila is beyond the pale.

[Oneironaut]

70. Nope - I said people shouldn't live their lives in fear of pedophiles.

There's a big difference between "There aren't pedophiles everywhere" and "people shouldn't be angry at pedophilia." I said one and not the other.

[JudyM]

73. You don't get the point. Nt

[dembotoz]

29. for some the list is easy to go on and impossible to get off

neighbor kid had a birthday which meant because he was now older his girl friend was now under age.

girls father took the opportunity to report it to the cops
to break up a romance he did not approve of

neighbor kid goes to jail and gets put on the list...the da wanted to make an example and in my county unless your rich...if the trail goes to jury you are convicted. just that simple

the subway guy
the dugger guy
someone going after a 3yr old.
different story
but the offender title covers lots of folks who may not have done that much wrong

[Delphinus]

82. Read an article

in The Sun (a literary magazine) from an author on a book of parenting saying why you just did - that the welfare of the child is something relatively new - the last 50 to 60 years.

[Koch Ebola]

35. Arrested development.

It is mainly a mental disorder. A person with low self-esteem feels that they can not have sex with some one their own age, so they exploit some subject weaker than themselves. A few Pedos have an obsession with their own sexual experiences in their own childhood. So they project it on a innocent victim.
The controversial issue with this sexual disorder is: How do you prevent it? How do you control it. If we go after suspects, will innocent people get convicted? This is an psychological issue not just a law enforcement issue.
You ask why so many suffer from this disorder. One answer is: A sexually repressed environment. Social apathy is one reason. In the USA, we mind our own business. There are not many child molester's around. the news media likes to exaggerate. these are sick individuals who need help. Hatred and violence will not solve the problem.

[HereSince1628]

38. Arrested developement or an advanced state of acquired habits?

It seems that this is possibly an outcome of explorations of behaviors that lead to discovery and mastery of a kind of sexual behavior that other members of our society deem predatory.

Many mammalian predators practice and learn how to be efficient killers. What is seen intially as play transforms into lethal behaviors and skills. Why would we not think sexual behavior is also something which is playfully explored and then developed into something more serious?

Just as predators acquire a 'prey image' isn't it possible that sexual practices and preference also involves reliance upon acquired and practiced behaviors that work to provide sexual gratifaction?

Sure, there are many decision points that could be chosen that then lead people's acquisition of orienting predelictions. But seen in that way sexual habits seem not so much arrested as they are moved to an alternate path and developed along different, sometimes socially rejected/criminal paths.

[hfojvt]

47. there are actually quite a few

depending on how you count "many"

I was surprised when the Des Moines paper showed a map of the sexual predators. Because there were like 900 of them in the state of Iowa. I mean, I thought it was fairly rare and might have expect 90. No, it was ten times that.

I cannot find numbers now though, just 800,000 for the whole nation, but apparently includes rapists of adults. http://www.parentsformeganslaw.org/public/meganReportCard.html

[jwirr]

58. How do we stop it? Great question. I have known 4 pedophiles.

That is people who used children as an outlet for sexual drives.

The first was actually homosexual and in the 50s used his little cousin (4 years old) because he could. I am not sure but I think once he grew up he was with men his own age.

Next was a man who was married but used every opportunity he could to take advantage of children. He was always involved in activities both in the community and in his own home with children. He even abused his own children. From the outside he looked like a very good man who was doing everything he could for the community. I would imagine that he is still at it.

Another was a young teen experimenting with his own sexuality using his two young cousins - a girl of 4 and a boy of 5. In this case they were caught and warned to stop. The boy was made to understand that he was guilty of sex abuse and that if he wanted to experiment to do it with his own age. The family then kept a good watch over all of them. He is a normal young teen now but the little children have some issues.

The final one was somewhat like the above. A ten year old girl was flirting with a 13 year old boy on the school bus and using the internet to communicate with each other. Parents did not know about it until the boy talked the girl into putting her naked butt on the internet. Once the parents found this out they had to make a choice - press charges or go to the family. Because the boy would have ended up on the sex abuser list for the rest of his life they decided to go to the family. But they did talk to the cops so that if he continues they will have a record.

I tell about these cases to show how diverse the types of sexual abuse are and how hard it would be to stop most of it. I wish there was an easy way.

[bobthedrummer]

40. "It's a real problem everywhere." It's a constellation of problems leftyladyfrommo. It's evil. K&R.

Chapter 21-Omaha
http://www.democraticunderground.com/1016139460

[Neon Gods]

42. Interesting question.

Where did the 4% number come from, btw. Is that the % that actually abuse children or the % that have been tempted? I doubt if 4% have actually acted on their impulses (I hope!). I really believe most pedophiles know they are doing wrong, I mean it's such a huge taboo and taboos are quickly learned. I'm sure earlier societies probably tortured and killed pedophiles.

This really needs to be studied (and I'm sure someone is). Does being abused as a child increase the chances of becoming a pedophile? If it's hard-wired then we might be able to detect it. Can some be cured? Maybe not but therapy might work on those with a capacity for empathy by showing them just how damaging it is to the victims. It completely ruins their lives, completely. Many eventually commit suicide. Knowing that, anyone who can feel empathy for others might fully understand that their pleasure is not worth damning a child to a hellacious life. But to test that theory we'd have to let some back into society...and what if it fails?

[Yavin4]

44. 4% of the male population is awfully high. I need a reference for that.

Also, I don't think it's that many. It's just that we are more aware of it, and when it does happen, it gets reported widely leading people to believe that the problem is greater than it is.

[librechik]

45. must interject--rape is not about sex, it's about power

Children are easy to control, so vast spiderwebs of fetishism collect around these sociopaths, which serve to rationalize their criminality.

Still rape. And about power. they fantasize about children because they are easy to control.

Sick cowards who have built pedophilia into a worldwide institution of slaves and slaveowners.

[Blue_In_AK]

48. I worked with sex offenders when I was a CO/counselor

in an Alaska prison. While it's true that both pedophiles and rapists have power and control issues, there's usually some different dynamics going on. Most of the rapists I knew (who, granted, were a subset since they got caught) had graduated from other crimes - i.e., a lot of them had been burglars or otherwise lawless, and many had substance abuse issues, most notably alcohol - but the pedophiles generally were "fine, upstanding citizens" whom no one would have suspected, coaches, church workers, etc. Most of them didn't even have a bad driving record. Rapists had little regard for their victims, but the pedophiles had somehow convinced themselves that they "loved" the children and that the children reciprocated.

[CommonSenseDemocrat]

52. Very interesting and profound point

[leftyladyfrommo]

54. Just my opinion

But I think rape is about rage and revenge even more than it is about power.

Those guys hate women.

[JudyM]

74. It is also about sexual gratification. With easy prey. Nt

[CommonSenseDemocrat]

50. Sorry, I don't

In general, I think unhealthy sexual tendencies (generally behaviors committed without consent like pedophilia) need serious psychiatric and psychological intervention before crimes are committed.

[leftyladyfrommo]

56. If there was a way to identify them.

Would be crazy if it was a gene mutation of some kind.

[loyalsister]

57. It's a family issue

That is where it most often occurs. The linked article gives some pretty good information on the link. I also think there is a reasonable argument to be made that the way children are sexualized at a young age is both symptomatic and enabling.

Child sexual abuse impacts more Americans annually than cancer, AIDS, gun violence, LGBT inequality, and the mortgage crisis combined

Here are some statistics that should be familiar to us all, but aren't, either because they're too mind-boggling to be absorbed easily, or because they're not publicized enough. One in three-to-four girls, and one in five-to-seven boys are sexually abused before they turn 18, an overwhelming incidence of which happens within the family. These statistics are well known among industry professionals, who are often quick to add, "and this is a notoriously underreported crime."

http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/01/america-has-an-incest-problem/272459/

[leftyladyfrommo]

60. What an interesting article.

As far as I know we didn't have any child molesters in our family. I never heard r saw anything weird.

[leftyladyfrommo]

59. I got the 4 percent figure

from an interview was watching about pedophiles in the priesthood. The said that the number in the general population was 4 percent and that was about the same as in the priesthood.

Just as an aside, I saw that the number of sociopaths in the population is also 4 percent. That was according to the book The Sociopath Next Door.

[Warren DeMontague]

79. I have trouble believing that it's anything like 4%. That seems insanely high.

If you got it from a story about Priests consider that you may have seen someone trying to spin apologia for the RCC, like "they're everywhere so of course we're going to find them all over our ranks, too".

(I do believe that expecting people to take a lifelong vow of no sex is fundamentally unnatural, and as such why it would tend to appeal to people who may be overtly or subconsciously trying to run away from their innate urges, isn't that hard to figure out)

I suspect the number is much smaller. As to what to do, I don't know. It seems to be hard-wired, which to my mind renders people with that condition pretty much unfit for general society.

[LanternWaste]

63. Right-handed, shorter than average, ten-point-IQ-lower-than-norm men.

Right-handed, shorter than average, ten-point-IQ-lower-than-norm men seem to be the predominant aggressors...

Among psychiatrists, views on pedophilia differ. Some researchers liken it to an addiction, others to sexual orientation; still others put their faith in brain scans. Yet pedophilia is consistent in the criteria that define it: erotic desire directed wholly or partially towards pre-pubescent children, typically under the age of thirteen. And for reasons not definitively established, there are undeniably more male than female pedophiles; by some estimates, men perpetrate as many as 94 percent of sexual offenses against children.

Cantor’s most potentially consequential finding, however, is his most recent one, published in a 2008 study. Using brain-scanning technology, he discovered significant differences in the white matter—the substance that connects one brain region to another—of pedophile versus non-pedophile brains (both groups were composed of convicted criminals, to rule out the confounding variable of criminality). In the pedophile group, Cantor found significantly less white matter in two different regions, suggesting a connection deficit.

Cantor doesn’t shy away from talking about causality. “The brain has a network that’s responsible for detecting what in the environment is a potentially sexual object,” he said. “And when there’s not enough white matter, that network doesn’t function like it’s supposed to.” He theorizes that, due to abnormal functioning in these networks, the instinct that children provoke in pedophiles is erotic, rather than the typical urge to nurture and protect. He also believes that the finding is one more piece of evidence for the case that pedophilia is caused by a biological susceptibility that starts before birth.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/12/06/what-science-reveals-about-pedophilia.html

[leftyladyfrommo]

71. That's a great article.

I hope I don't start being suspicious of all left handed people. He ones I have known all seemed pretty normal.

Short, lower IQ and left handed. Interesting. I am only aware of one pedophile that I knew was a pedophile. His wife was a social worker and was separated from him. He could only visit with his kids if there was someone there to supervise. I saw the court order. He was a shorter guy but I don't know about the owner IQ or being left handed. I think he had been in prison.

[JudyM]

75. Thanks for posting this. Nt

[ebayfool]

80. ... significantly more likely not to be right-handed (i.e. they’re left-handed or ambidextrous). n/t

[ghostsinthemachine]

77. MUST Watch! Conspiracy of Silence..... (Discovery channel doc pulled at last minute)

This will freak you out. Big time.

[leftyladyfrommo]

86. Here are some interesting statistics on child molesters.

http://yellodyno.com/html/child_molester_stats.html