Being Attracted To Kids Is Not A Choice, It’s A Monstrosity

Recent years have seen an increase in calls to reduce the stigma of pedophilia, borne from parallel movements of destigmatizing mental illnesses, such as depression and anxiety. However, not all disorders were created alike—unlike most common mental illnesses, pedophilia is inherently predatory and a danger to our society. Though pedophilia is a paraphilic disorder, phrasing it simply as a “sexual preference” is a colossal injustice to the millions of lives destroyed by pedophiles. A sexual preference is “I prefer bigger women,” or “I like men with beards”; pedophilia is the most severe atrocity known to man.

Pedophile sympathizers argue that encouraging pedophiles to openly take part in society helps them avoid criminal behavior. This is an unnerving mentality, for the simple reason that pedophiles pose a greater threat in their potential proximity of children than when pushed to the fringes of society where they belong. The reputation of pedophiles as skilled manipulators of children is not an undeserved one. According to a 2003 National Institute of Justice report, three out of every four adolescent sexual assault victims knew their attackers well. This throws a wrench in the attempt to portray pedophiles as victims petrified by desires that take over and cause them to pounce on nearby children in the heat of their impulses.

In reality, pedophiles gain access to their victims by integrating themselves into the lives of children close to them (through schools, churches, family friends, youth sports teams, etc.), and then by winning the trust of the child, who instinctively turns to the adult for support and attention. The adult then initiates the gradual process of sexualizing this relationship and desensitizing their victims to inappropriate behavior. Once successful, they continue to escalate their harassment until their victim is fully under their control, emotionally isolated, and not likely to speak out against them. This system is carefully controlled, purposeful, and requires caution and patience from pedophilic predators—nothing about it is impetuous or “compulsory.” The fact that they blend in well with ordinary society, that they could be your next-door neighbor or local Little League coach, makes them more dangerous, not more sympathetic.

The juxtaposition of gay people and pedophiles stems from the same foul logic as pedophile apologism itself. Yes, parallels can be drawn between the way gay people and pedophiles were and are viewed; parallels can also be drawn between the way pedophiles and kinksters are viewed, or the way pedophiles and prostitutes are viewed. However, none of these parallels are relevant or add credibility to the case for pedophile sympathy because they aren’t comparable to the inherent predatory nature of pedophilia. Correlation never implies causation: just because homosexuality and pedophilia were once reviled does not mean it was deservedly so for both, and just because society has become more tolerant toward the LGBT community doesn’t mean pedophiles deserve the same. Furthermore, considering the history gay men have had with being accused of being perverts and lumped in with pedophiles by virtue of their sexuality, another attempt to create a catch-all category with “sexual deviance” as the criteria—the only trait desperately straining to connect pedophilia and homosexuality—falls spectacularly flat.

Not only is victimizing pedophiles misguided, it’s also actively harmful. Painting pedophiles as suffering victims imparts the wrong message upon impressionable children, especially when reporting rates are already at such an astonishing low. Even with pedophilia as widely stigmatized as it is today, only an estimated one in 20 cases of child sexual abuse, or CSA, are reported. Within that narrow margin, even with definite proof of penetration, only five to 15 percent of child victims will have genital injuries consistent with recognized sexual abuse. This isn’t even accounting for the fact that CSA isn’t solely limited to physical contact; it includes exposure, voyeurism, and child pornography, which are much harder to expose and successfully prosecute without the testimony of the victim or video footage of the crime. Even in cases when the victim was not manipulated into staying silent, the odds are stacked against them. These facts form a grim image: in a world where pedophilia is chased in the shadows, shining a sympathetic spotlight on pedophiles drives their victims further into the dark.

If pedophilia can indeed be curbed to an extent, our society’s heavy moral stigma is what is keeping those “hidden” pedophiles terrified to offend. Plenty of pedophiles already create justifications out of thin air for their desires and actions, such as claiming they were seduced by their victims or arguing that they were providing their victims with a higher level of spiritual education. Without the stigma attached to pedophilia, these pre-existing trends of rationalization will skyrocket—after all, destigmatizing pedophilia validates pedophiles’ acts of self-victimization.

There are many who believe that pedophiles can be rehabilitated, and that the risk of allowing pedophiles to roam freely is well worth the reward of treatment that has supposedly proven to be successful. It’s important to remember that there is no way to measure the efficacy of a treatment of this kind with complete accuracy because of the high rate of unreported cases, and because in this situation, it’s impossible to ethically conduct an experiment to test if a treatment is working, as is done with other forms of treatment.

That said, there are still a variety of methods used to attempt to treat pedophilia. One such method is the use of hormone treatments, such as Androgen Deprivation Therapy and progestogens as libido inhibitors—in other words, chemical castration. Though it was partially effective in reducing the libidos of participants, sexual desire cannot be completely eliminated by chemical castration, which led to rising doubts about the efficacy of the treatment and the potential risk of releasing sex offenders who still experienced sexual desire for children. The treatment is also unreliable by its very nature because the patient must be depended on to regularly take his medication. Additionally, sex drive is not the only factor involved in CSA; in fact, it’s not even the primary factor. Stemming from their emotional and mental attraction to children, some pedophiles often believe that they have a uniquely close relationship with their victims, and that they love and care for them in a special way. This denial runs deep; there are pedophiles who even believe their victims asked for their “bond.” For other pedophiles, sexual contact with children is a way for them to feel powerful and in control of their own lives while simultaneously fulfilling their needs. Neither of these issues can be touched by libido inhibitors.

Another common treatment utilized for pedophilia is therapy. There are only a few therapeutical studies on patients with pedophilia, but the results those yielded are mostly negative or inconclusive. A group of researchers, published in the International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology, found that sex offenders who completed therapy weren’t any more likely to be empathetic toward their past victims than sex offenders who hadn’t completed therapy. One randomized controlled trial meant to evaluate the efficacy of a relapse prevention program showed that after eight years, sex offenders who underwent the therapeutical program and control groups who did not both experienced the same rates of recidivism.

Some protest that the U.S.’s mandatory reporting laws, which require that professionals who work with children be trained to spot signs of child abuse and report it, keep pedophiles from seeking treatment that would ultimately better them, but the evidence above illustrates the futility of such efforts. In fact, mandatory reporting laws need to be enforced, not relaxed. The dismissal of Syracuse assistant basketball coach Bernie Fine and the arrest of Penn State assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky—both for sexually abusing young boys—demonstrates the need to seal loopholes in our child protection system. Though both men and their staff worked with college students officially, they regularly worked with kids of all ages in summer camps. Since the staff were officially employed at a university, they were not trained as mandated reporters. As a result, these tragedies quietly slipped through the cracks.

The case for minimizing pedophilia in our society seems bleak, but if we look past our myopic emphasis on victimizing the child predators responsible, heartening news lies ahead of us. According to the records of law enforcement agencies, sexual crimes against U.S. children declined 53 percent between 1992 and 2006. The most likely causes were increased amounts of police and CPS workers and stronger efforts to prosecute child sex offenders. This demonstrates that what we need to crack down on child molestation isn’t misplaced sympathy, but the enforcement of our current protective laws and a firm emphasis on pedophiles’ status as monsters, not sufferers. Public education programs (such as stopitnow.org) educating bystanders on how to act on their suspicions of CSA have also proven useful. Instead of investing any kind of energy into caring about pedophiles, we need to band together and return to prioritizing child safety over pedophile feelings.