Attraction To Minors

Attraction to Minors (1 of 24) Are 'pedophilia' and 'child sexual abuse' synonymous? Is it meaningful to classify the former as a mental illness? What's the connection between thoughts/feelings and actions? Might there be more to all this than what we see on Oprah, Law & Order, and the local TV news?

M2 [6] "[A]lthough a history of child abuse or potential for child abuse suggested by testing may be relevant at the time of sentencing, this information often cannot be referenced until the court has determined whether a crime has been committed and/or whether the defendant is guilty. Essentially, the position of the court is that this historical information does not assist the trier of fact [i.e., jury or bench trial judge] to address the immediate question before the court. In other words, even though the defendant may have a diagnosis of Pedophile ...this does not mean the defendant is guilty of the charges for which he...is currently appearing before the court. It is generally felt that this information may unfairly bias the jury." [Emphasis original.]

[Or, the judge . Prosecutor Peter Torncello referenced Nickel's attraction to minors at least 42 times during the trial, well before 'the court had determined whether a crime had been committed and/or whether the defendant is guilty.' Clearly, Torncello's theory of the case -- which Judge Paul Czajka apparently bought -- was that, once Nickel was shown to be attracted to boys, it automatically followed that he must have done each and every thing he was charged with, regardless of the lack of evidence or glaring inconsistencies.]

[98] "Even if testing strongly suggests the child was sexually abused or the alleged perpetrator is a pedophile, these results do not allow the trier of fact to determine that the perpetrator did abuse the child in the manner before the court."

[Well, Albany County prosecutor Peter Torncello and Judge Paul Czajka do not appear to have been aware of this.]

L7 [1339] "Psychiatry reinforces its objection to the mental abnormality definition, clarifying once again that an individual who engages in a sexual act with a child does not necessarily have a mental disorder (pedophilia), and an individual who has a mental disorder (pedophilia) will not necessarily ever engage in a sexual act with a child."

[In fact, Nickel has never 'engaged in a sexual act with a child,' a fact which the prosecution knew all along. How? While out on bail, Nickel corresponded with a minor-attracted friend of his. When that friend was arrested on an unrelated (i.e., non sexual) charge, the local police there discovered several letters Nickel had written to him. Subsequently faxed to the DA in Albany County, these letters went into great detail as to what had -- and had not -- occurred. (See Propensity section of this site.)]

G15 [235] "'Fewer than half of child molesters have Pedophilia,' [Dr. Michael] First told me. 'Often the child is a victim of convenience for an antisocial person.' Without an 'underlying pattern of arousal,' as he put it, there is no mental disorder, at least not in the sex department; there is only criminality."

[It should be noted that, until 1973, homosexuality (between two consenting adults) was also considered a mental disorder; and as recently as 2003, several U.S. states still criminalized it.]

K5 [428] "[T]hose diagnosed as nonpedophiles were more violent in the commission of the offense than those diagnosed as pedophiles."

[430] "Results indicated that the pedophiles had a greater number of victims, offended against more males and fewer females, [but] were less intrusive in their sexual offense..."

[In other words, actual pedophiles' offenses were less severe.]

G36 [468] "With pedophiles in residential or outpatient treatment, lifetime prevalence of mood disorder was found in two thirds, as well as anxiety disorder in two thirds. Cause and effect here is arguable between social consequences of pedophilia and psychiatric problems promoting pedophilia..."

[469] "A unique study at the Institute of Psychiatry of the Maudsley Hospital in London evaluated nonprisoner, nonpatient pedophiles (Wilson & Cox, 1983). The men were obtained through the Pedophile Information Exchange...A total of 77 pedophiles were studied, with an age range of 20-60. They were compared with 400 controls.

"Pedophiles were significantly more introverted. Psychoticism, or thought disorder, was slightly elevated but not to a pathological level. Occupational groups with similar scores to the pedophiles are doctors and architects. Neuroticism scores were slightly higher than controls, but not clinically abnormal. Pedophile scores were similar to actors and students. The lie scales did not differ. Wilson and Cox (1983) concluded that

'. . .the most striking thing about these results is how normal the paedophiles appear to be according to their scores on these major personality dimensions -- particularly the two that are clinically relevant [neuroticism and psychoticism]. . .introversion. . .in itself is not usually thought of as pathological.' (pg. 57)

"Another researcher, Howitt (1988), reached a similar conclusion: 'The possibility of finding a simple personality profile that differentiates pedophiles from other men appeared increasingly unrealistic as the research and clinical base has widened. Simplistic notions such as social inadequacy driving men to sex with children become unviable as highly socially skilled pedophiles are found' (pg. 44)."

"How common is sexual interest or arousal in persons not known to be, or self-labeled as, pedophiles? In a sample of nearly 200 university males, 21% reported some sexual attraction to small [i.e., prepubertal] children, 9% described sexual fantasies involving children, 5% admitted to having masturbated to sexual fantasies of children, and 7% indicated they might have sex with a child if not caught (Briere & Runtz, 1989). Briere and Runtz remarked that 'given the probable social undesirability of such admissions, we may hypothesize that the actual rates were even higher' (p. 71). In another sample with 100 male...undergraduate students, 22% of males...reported sexual attraction to a child (Smiljanich & Briere, 1996)."

"Laboratory researchers have validated physiologially the self-report studies of nonclinical, nonpedophile-identified volunteers. In a sample of 80 'normal' volunteers, over 25% reported some pedophilic interest or in the plethysmographic phase [measuring penis circumference] exhibited penile arousal to a child that equaled or exceeded arousal to an adult (Hall, Hirschman, & Oliver, 1995)...In a control group of 66 males recruited from hospital staff and the community, 17% showed a penile response that was pedophilic (Fedora et al., 1992)."

[Thus, 20-25% of men are consistently found to exhibit some degree of attraction.]

[470] "An early critique of DSM [the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, put out by the American Psychological Association] concluded that '[Inclusion] of the so-called 'sexual paraphilias' in DSM has reinforced the suspicion that they are not, per se , mental disorders, but rather constitute conflicts between an individual and society. . .psychiatry has resorted to the codifcation of social mores while masquerading as an objective science' (Suppe, 1984, pg. 26)."

"The APA position with its DSM catalogue is logically incoherent. Confronted with the paradox that in contrast to other conditions designated a mental disorder, such as with persons who hand wash to the point of bleeding and can't touch a door knob, or who are harassed by voices threatening their personal destruction, many pedophiles are not distressed by their erotic interest, aside from the fear of incarceration. Some celebrate their interests, organize politically, ad publish magazines or books. So to deal with this paradox, DSM dug itself into a logical ditch. If a person's erotic fantasies are primarily of children and msturbatory imagined partners are children, that person does not have a mental illness, without more. Never mind these mental processes, those readers of DSM who are psychiatrists and treaters of the disordered mind. These people with these fantasies do not have a mental disease unless that person translates thought into action. This turns psychiatry on its head. Certainly a society can set rules on sexual conduct and proscribe child-adult sex and invoke sanctions for transgressors. But that is the province of the law and the penal system. The DSM should not provide psychiatry with jurisdiction over a thought."

S61 [473] "It seems to me that one of the prerequisites for a more reasonable discussion is to disentangle the confusion of moral and clinical discourses. This requires that we argue, from a moral standpoint, where morals are at issue and, from a clinical point of view, when it comes to traumatizing effects. Above all, we should not clothe moral judgments in 'expertocratic' language.

"I shall preface my attempt to disentangle the confusion of these two levels of discourse with my own definition of a pedophile, in order to make very clear what I am talking about. Pedophiles are men whose sexual wishes and desires for relationship bonds and love are focused either primarily or exclusively on children who have not reached puberty, whereby the relative importance of each of these three areas -- sexuality, relationship, and love -- may vary, as it does with other people as well. The group is very heterogeneous in terms of what its members desire and what they actually do...[S]ome have fleeting contacts with a series of children while others look for long-term relationships, which may be of the caring or manipulative sort. ® Many are considerate in their behavior toward children; others use force. Only [a] few employ violent means. Some pedophiles take advantage of the offerings of the free market, with its Mafia-style structures that brutalize forbidden forms of sexuality (child pornography, child-trading schemes, child prostitution). Others, a group whose number is unknown but which may actually include a large proportion of pedophiles, remain abstinent for extended periods of time, many even throughout their lifetimes, expressing their desires in fantasy and leading a life of self-denial at significant emotional cost. In short, pedophilia is a type of sexuality which, like heterosexuality or homosexuality, manifests itself in a wide range of forms...[However, it is the] imbalance of power that endangers the child's capacity for sexual self-determination, threatening to overpower it completely."

[ ® The latter part of this sentence actually reads, 'which may be sort of caring or manipulative.' However, given the clumsiness of this wording, as well as the fact that this author's first language is German, the above 'edited' version would appear to be more in keeping with the author's intended meaning.]

[476] "[T]he dilemma of the male pedophile...is tragic because the pedophile's sexual orientation is deeply rooted in the basic structure of his identity. Pedophilia is as much a part of him as is love for the same or opposite sex for the homosexual or heterosexual man [477] or woman, the difference being that one is accepted, while the other is categorically forbidden and virtually impossible to realize. In view of the pedophile's burden, the necessity of denying himself the experience of love and sexuality, he deserves respect, rather than contempt."

N15 [492] "Schmidt ® challenged vehemently the capacity of children to give valid consent to sexual activity with adults. Despite his sound arguments, to the Chinese, who are particularly conscious of the importance and priority of social (and hence, adult) values, to single out for discussion the child consent issue in pedophilic activities is blatantly irrelevant and hypocitical. Even in Western culture, where individual rights are strongly emphasized, how often do the adults try to ascertain valid consent from their children before getting them to do most things? Have the adults sought valid consent from their children before baptizing them soon after hirth? Or, when their children express by words or action that they do not want to eat, sleep, play games with adults, or go to school at certain times, do the adults not use reward, threat, punishment, persuasion, luring, seduction, deception, or any other workable means to manipulate them back to the 'right track'? Have the adults ever explored or studied the 'trauma' that may be caused by forcing all those 'good' things on their children without their valid consent? There are certain occasions when the adults do respect the children's wishes and ask for their consent, but only when the choices given to them are within the adult acceptable range.

[ ® Though this does refer to the author just cited above, we have not actually quoted Schmidt's argumentation on this issue.]

"Hence, the seemingly rigorous and humanitarian debate on child self-determination and consent in sex is just another game adults play to impose their own values on children."

O7 [492] "Unfortunately, after affirming the distinction between wrongfulness and harmfulness, Schmidt muddies the waters by positing that pedophilia is wrong because an 'imbalace of power' between an adult and a child endangers or overwhelms the child's sexual self-determination...History and modern life, though, are replete with examples of power-discrepant relationships that support and maintain sexual self-determination -- a professor and student marry, for example, and live hapily ever after.

More to the point, at least some people claim that their childhood sexual experiences with adults have advanced [493] their sexual self-determination, not overwhelmed it. I've interviewed such people (Okami, 1991). So what do we do with these claims?

"The problem with the 'balance of power' argument is that dyadic power can be in constant flux within a relationship and, in any event, is always multidimensional. Who has the greater power in a relationship? A black man or his wite wife? A smart, beautiful, well-heeled female medical student or her somewhat dim-witted, cab-driver boyfriend (who is built like Arnold Schwarzenegger)? A teacher who is desperately in love with her 15-year-old former student or the 15-year-old who doesn't much care one way or the other and could imprison the teacher for a hefty stretch with a few words?"

"Moreover, there is nothing logically intrinsic in power discrepancy that violates principles of justice or fairness in sexual relationshops that is necessarily harmful to the 'less powerful' participant, unless one views sexual relatonshps as similar to hand-to-hand combat (e.g., heavyweight vs. flyweight contestant). The instability and multidimensionality of dyadic power and the fact that a 'power-balanced' relationship is clearly mythological (in the sense that it can never be logically ascertained) lay to rest as useless the 'power imbalance' argument."

"Schmidt then proceeds to use a hypothetical adult-child sexual interaction (the back rub incident) to buttress his argument that pedosexual experiences always violate principles of 'intimate citizenship' because the adult and child have different things in mind. This is a straw man argument. Schmidt implies that because the child is unaware that the adult has sex on his mind at the outset of the interaction, there can be no consensus regarding sex at any time in the relationship. However, eventually, the child will necessarily know that sex is an issue, i.e., when it is overtly introduced by the adult. At that point, at least barring coercive situations, the child may reach a 'consensus' (Schmidt's term) with the adult to engage in sex or not.

"Schmidt's demand that 'everyone involved is acting in the same play' is absurd because it would not fit any relationship where one partner seeks to satisfy one type of need, whle the other partner seeks to satisfy another. Nor would it fit any interaction where one person only gradually comes to be aware of their own sexual interest in another person, whereas the other person entered the interaction already interested. Schmidt a priori assumes the existence of a world where sexual partners (or at least those in morally acceptavle relationships) are all 'on the same page,' but nowhere has it been shown that this world exists."

[494] "It seems to me that clarity regarding the pedophilia problem can only be obtained by taking very seriously the first part of one of Schmidt's closing thoughts: 'Apart from such reflections on the issue of traumatizng effects, however, it is quite clear that pedophilia in contemporary Western socieities represents a form of sexuality that cannot be lived out.' Schmidt attributes this state of affairs to an intrinsic conflict of pedophilia 'with a central social covenant based upon sexual self-determination and consensual sexuality,' beliefs which I doubt are shared (or even comprehended) by a great many human beings outside of academic and feminist circles. The real reason that pedophilia cannot be lived out is that it is detested, a priori , apparently by the larger portion of humanity and for a much longer time than people have been concerned about 'intimate citizenship,' whatever that may be. People hate pedophilia and child molestation and will continue to come up with reasons to explain their hatred -- none of which strike me as capturing the true origin of this profound distaste.

"What is the true origin? I suspect that it is multiply-determined, but the Western version probably has origins in the sexual heritage of St. Paul and St. Augustine, ® which characterizes sex as dangerous, dirty, sinful, ugly, destructive, and so forth (Rubin, 1984). This heritage intersects with a 'surge of sentiment' that has emerged over the past two or three centuries and which regards children as 'priceless, lovable, vulnerale innocents'...if not as sacred...This is a neat reversal from earlier characterizations of children as sinful heathens who need the devil beat out of them. The end result is a powerful desire to save priceless, lovable, sacred innocents from something dangerous, dirty, disgusting, and sinful."

[ ® There is high irony here. In the bible, St. Paul speaks of a 'thorn in the (i.e., his ) flesh,' the removal of which he has thrice prayed to God. At least one religious scholar, Episcipal Bishop John Shelby Spong, makes a strong argument that this 'thorn' was homosexuality. As for St. Augustine, before he 'reformed,' his mother had admonished him for being openly desirous of certain boys' backsides.]

P29 [495] "I find it noteworthy that, other than the exceptional work of Friedrich and colleagues (Friedrich et al., 1992, 2001; Friedrich, Grambsch, Broughton, Houston, & Shafran, 1998; Friedrich, Grambsch, Broughton, Kuiper, & Beilke, 1991), there is virtually no empirical research on normative sexual behavior in children and adolescents."

"We will forever be stymied by the fact that, unlike the onset of physical maturity, the age of emotional maturity is highly variable, leaving us with the obvious conclusion that there undoubtedly are some 12-year-olds who are mature enough to make decisons about sexual activity and there are many more 18-year-olds who are too immature to be making such decisions."

M39 "Which sexual inrerests are proscribed often changes; masturbation, oral sex, anal sex, and homosexuality were once considered mental disorders or symptoms of other mental disorders but are now typically accepted as part of the spectrum of healthy sexual expression."

"The equating of unusual sexual interests with psychiatric diagnoses has been used to justify the oppression of sexual minorities and to serve political agendas."

"Our own, extensive review found no literature to support most of the assertions made in the Paraphilia section of the DSM [which includes Pedophilia] and several studies were found that contradict the text...Objective data to support the classification of the Paraphilias as mental disorders is lacking...The situation of the Paraphilias at present parallels that of homosexuality in the early 1970s...We will suggest that the construct of the Paraphilias is ambiguous and does not describe a diagnosable, distinct mental disorder. A review of the scientific literature does not support the inclusion of this diagnostic category in the DSM."

"In the DSM, it is indicated that it is difficult to define a mental disorder as well as mental health. Nonetheless, the text defines a mental disorder as being '. . .associated with present distress. . .or disability. . .or significantly increased risk of suffering death, pain, disability, or an important loss of freedom'...Individuals who engage in many common activities (scuba divers, gun owners, mountain climbers, inhabitants of many large cities, and criminals) also incur increased risks of death, pain, disability, or loss of freedom, but are not diagnosed with mental disorders. This apparent contradiction demonstrates that social context can affect the application of this definition. To clarify the definition, the DSM further states, 'Neither deviant behavior (e.g., political, religious, or sexual) nor conflicts that are primarily between the individual and society are mental disorders unless the deviance or conflict is a symptom of a dysfunction in the individual, as described above'...There is concern that psychiatric diagnoses can be used inappropriately to discredit dissenters: at least in some venues, criminals have more rights and credibility than psychiatric patients do. The above statement was added to protect against the labeling of unpopular or illegal activities as mental illnesses, but the last clause allows the clinician to disregard this distinction.

"The DSM does not define healthy sexuality, much less healthy mood, thoughts, or personalities. Unfortunately, the range of 'healthy' human sexual behavior is no known, thus creating potential pitfalls in the diagnostic process."

[94] "The fact that specific sexual behaviors are socially unacceptable or illegal is, and should be, irrelevant to the diagnostic process.

"Historically, this was the situation that confronted homosexuals. When homosexual patients presented to a psychotherapist with any [95] problem, it was often assumed that the problem was caused or exacerbated by their homosexual interests."

"The Paraphilias disorders do not have clear boundaries...Non-clinical studies of individuals with unusual sexual interests demonstrate that these individuals are indistinguishable from those with 'normophilic' (i.e., conventional) sexual interests...The clinical studies do not identify a discernible group who have anything more in common than their shared sexual interest. The existing empirical research does not distinguish individuals with Paraphilias from those with other mental disorders. That is, there is no demonstrable and distinct class of 'paraphiliacs,' except as created by defining specific sexual interests, a priori, as evidence of psychopathology. The inability to define 'healthy' sexuality or to distinguish individuals with a paraphilia from those without one, suggests that the distinction does not exist and the category is invalid."

"Even trained clinicians have difficulty distinguishing strong 'unhealthy' sexual interests from strong 'healthy' sexual interests, as demonstrated by previous, failed attempts to define promiscuity (engaging in the act more often than the evaluator)."

[99] 'If the distress can be mitigated, would these individuals cease to be diagnosable as having Paraphilias?"

"One may question why an individual with a paraphilia does not give up the sexual inrerest that results in adverse consequences. This has been interpreted as further evidence of the compulsive nature of these 'disorders.'...[H]ow many 'normal' heterosexuals would be able to eliminate their interests if the laws suddenly changed? We wonder why individuals who refuse to change unpopular political or religious beliefs are not similarly diagnosed.

"It is worth considering the possibility that unusual sexual inerests might enhance one's quality of life rather than diminishing it. Proscribed fantasies, desires, and behaviors may not be pathological; healthy individuals resist giving up life-affirming and enhancing experiences, regardless of social mores. Historically, social and psychiatric sanctions have done little to decrease the incidence of other forbidden sex acts (bearing children outside of marriage, extramarital sex, and masturbation), but have caused the participants significant distress and misery. It is important to distinguish carefully between having the integrity required to follow one's own sexual values, however unpopular, and having a mental disorder. The perseverance of gay rights activists in the face of the 'diagnosis and treatment' of homosexuality provides an excellent example of this courage.

"Discrimination can also lead to distress. It is difficult to argue that individuals suffer from mental disorders solely because they must deal with the consequences of discrimination. This would lead to diagnosing people for being homosexual, African-American, female, Communist, or Wiccan. When individuals in these 'minority' groups present to therapists with problems related to the discrimination that they experience, 'therapy' focuses on the development of coping strategies. Their minority status is not the diagnosis."

[105] "Diagnoses should be removed if they cannot be shown to meet the definition of a mental disorder unambiguously and be substantiated by appropriate research. Failing that, the diagnosis in question should be either considered experimental or removed from the DSM completely."

H9 [from FN185:] "(finding that hospitalized child molesters did not score significantly different on scales of sexually deviant fantasies than college males and those sexually deviant but not criminals)." *

[579] "It is contended...that...there is no medical evidence [of 'child milestation'] deriving from a mental deficiency; rather it is a social construction that pedophilia is linked to a sick mind...Studies have shown that a DSM-based ** pedophilia diagnosis is not correlated with phallometric indications [i.e., measured erections] of deviant sexual arousal to pubescent children. Nor is a diagnosis of pedophilia correlated with sexual recidivism. Actually, a study using a regression analysis method indicates that a DSM diagnosis of pedophilia is not even a significant predictor for sexual recidivism. These results undermine the prevailing risk-based model presumption that a diagnosis of pedophilia is an appropriate proxy for risk assessment supporting legal decisions."

G15 [244] "Sex offenders, especially convicted sex offenders...lie. But penises do not -- mostly, however, because they do not talk. But [Dr. Ray] Blanchard had a solution to this problem; the volumetric plethysmograph, or, as I like to call it, the Penis Whisperer.

"The way it works is that the subject sits down in an easy chair. He slips a glass cylinder over his penis, After he pulls a sheet over himself 'to minimize his embarrassment,' a rubber cuff at the open end of the tube is inflated until it seals against the shaft of the penis. A hose attached to the bottle leads to a pressure transducer, which registers he slightest change in air pressure in the sealed cylinder - like, say, the kind that would be caused by a swelling penis. By mapping the behavior of the bottled-up penis onto the pictures and stories provided by its owner, researchers could chart the true course of a man's desires."

[The other basic plethysmograph design involves an expandable ring device being attached to the penis, which measures its circumference.]

P15 [366] "The diagnostic validity and the operational critera used to diagnose pedophilic disorders, including pedophilia, remain controversial (Polaschek, 2003), despite the common use of these diagnoses in incarcerated populations of sexual offenders. For example, there are no structured clinical interiews or rating instruments for the diagnosis of specific paraphilic disorders [of which pedophilia is one] that have been adequately tested for reliability and validity (Miller, Amenta, & Conroy, 2005)."

[Put another way, no one has ever carefully examined whether a diagnosis of 'pedophilia' meaningfully distnguishes that person from those not so diagnosed. In a purportedly 'scientific' context, this lack of what is termed 'construct validity' is quite troubling.]

F13 [238] "To date [i.e., as of 2011], the APA [American Psychological Assciation] has elected not to field test the paraphilia diagnoses..."

[Why on earth not ? Does the APA fear these will be unmasked as unscientific?]

K5 [432] "This study examined factors that putatively differentiated between pedophiles and nonpedophiles based on four different definitions. While there were some statistically significant differences between the groups on the dependent variables, few clinically meaningful distinctions were found. This finding is consistent with previous research questioning the utility of the DSM diagnoses of the paraphilias..."

[434] "A diagnosis of pedophilia in clinical or judicial procedures can be particularly onerous, imputing certain levels of dangerousness, and may affect the sentencing and disposition of a case. Furthemore, it may bear in required programming of an individual while incarcerated or on community release. Given that a diagnosis, especially pedophilia, is designed to convey clinical information about an individual and address prognosis, the finding that there were few meaningful differences associated with such a designation in the present investigation is concerning. Additionally, the inability of the diagnostic process to correlate with other methdologies used in the literature is troublesome."

W17 [9] "Of the 130 offenders in [this Canadian] study, 106 were released and eligible for follow-up. Fourteen (13.7%) sexually reoffended over an average follow-up period of 8.8...years."

"[I]ndividuals who met a DSM-IV-TR-based diagnosis of pedophilia were no more likely to be convicted of a new sexual offense than those who failed to meet the DSM-IV-TR diagnostic criteria for pedophilia..."

[11] "The finding...[of] no association between [a] DSM-IV-TR [diagnosis of pedophilia] and phallometry [penile plethysmograph, measuring degree of arousal to children] is puzzling, given that these would appear to be the two most common means of diagnosing this condition. Indeed, the fact that an offender who had a deviant profile in phallometric testing was just as likely to be diagnosed as nonpedophilic using DSM-IV-TR criteria as he was to be pedophilic suggests that we may need to rethink our conception of what arousal to children in phallometric testing indicates. It appears that the simple presence of 'deviant' arousal is not necessarily indicative of the DSM-IV-TR constellation of traits associated with pedophilia.

"Although the DSM-IV-TR and phallometric testing methods are arguably the more prevalent pedo-diagnostic schemes, both were not predictive of recidivism [i.e., the commission of additional sexual offenses]...[W]e found it particularly curious that deviant sexual interest -- as measured by phallometry -- was not helpful in determining who would or would not go on to commit future sexual offenses..." [Emphasis original.]

D10 [43] "Significantly, the diagnosis of pedophilia requires the person who is given that diagnosis to experience clinical 'distress' as a result of his sexual interest, where 'distress' is understood to refer to an inner state of the person and not simply the result of having broken the law and been caught."

M13 [684] "In a recent study of recidivism in child molesters, Wilson, Abracen, Picheca, Malcolm, and Prinzo (2003) found that a DSM-IV diagnosis of pedophilia was not related to long-term recidivism.

"In [another] study, demographic, psychological...and offense history variables were compared between pedophilic and nonpedophilic men across four diagnostic methods (DSM diagnosis, deviant phallometric responding, and SSPI [Screening Scale for Pedophilic Interests]; Kingston, Firestone, Moulden, & Bradford, 2007). The authors found that no variables reliably and consistentlty differentiated pedophiles from nonpedophiles regardless of the classification system used...Additionally, results [685] indicated that the procedures used to define pedophilia (i.e., DSM, phallometrics, and SSPI) were not significantly related to one another. This is troublesome given that if a true construct exists one would expect some consistency across diagnostic methods.

"In a previous investigation, Kingston et al. (2007) had failed to identify differences between individuals diagnosed with pedophilia and those who had not received the diagnosis of pedophilia across diagnostic categories, suggesting that those who receive the diagnosis and those who do not, irrespective of diagnostic method, differed little from one another."

[692] "Interestingly, the relationship between recidivism and other indicators [DSM diagnosis of pedophilia, Screening Scale for Pedophilic Interests, Pedophile Index, and Pedophile Assault Index] were not statistically or clinically significant, and in some cases a diagnosis of pedophilia based on DSM resulted in decreases in sexual recidivism."

"[A] DSM diagnosis [of pedophilia] actually decreased the likelihood of recidivism..." [Emphasis added.]

[694] "Pedophiles and nonpedophiles in the DSM group were not significantly different for sexual recidivism..."

[698] "This study suggests that the current use of the diagnosis of pedophilia may not provide clinicians and researchers with additional or relevant information to effectively and reliably predict recidivism for extra-familial child molesters."

L7 [1331] "Psychiatry does not have a precise definition of pedophilia for its own purposes..."

[from FN152:] "It has been argued that the DSM diagnosis of pedophilia is 'virtually ignored' by practitioners and researchers." ***

[1345] "The DSM does not clarify how the arousal of pedophiles is different from that of the rest of the population. The manual does not articulate the relevant control group -- whether fantasies should be measured relative to the general population or only to individuals who have had sex with children."

[1347] "The decision of which pedophiles can constitutionally be civilly committed is a no-man's land because the law inserts a new element into a psychiatric definition and refers to a concept that does not have a precise meaning in psychiatry."

A8 [German metropolitan community sample of men aged 40-79 (volunteers) (N=167), studying paraphilia-associated sexual arousal patterns ('PASAP')]

[1366] 'Over all three realms of experience [general sexual fantasy, masturbation fantasy, and reality]...among the less frequently reported PASAP were pedophilic (10.4%)...PASAP. Regarding sexually arousing behavior ['reality']...[the] pedophilic [rate was] 3.8%..."

[Note that alnmost three times more men had pedophilic fantasies than actual behavior .]

[Of the 38 men who reported PASAP in at least one of the three areas, ten (26.3%) found pedophilic stimuli to be "intensely sexually arousing." The remaining 28 (73.7%) found it to be "mildly sexually arousing."]

[from Table 3: 35 men (9.5%) had pedophilic general sexual fantasy PASAP; 22 (6.0%) had masturbation fantasy PASAP, and 14 (3.8%) had reality PASAP; overall, only 2 (5.3%) experienced distress over these PASAPs.]

"With respect to the clinical diagnosis of paraphilias, what is to be experienced as intensely sexually arousing ought to be of [an] 'unusual' nature...[B]ut far from deserving the label 'unusual,' [10.4%] of the men found...pedophilic [1367] scenarios sexually arousing."

[1368] "[B]earing in mind the fact that the current study did not include the most sexually as well as criminally active group of men, namely those aged 20-40 years, the absolute number of men acting upon their pedophilia-related arousal will most likely be considerably larger.

"In view of [these figures], both mental and real-life sexual experiences that are currently commonly regarded as peculiar and exotic should lose their status as 'rarities.'

"We think it is clear that moral evaluations of PASAP remain a weighty factor that has prevented the reclassification of this 'deviation' as normal.'"

H9 [from FN172:] "(prevalence of fantasies were...13% pedophilia...while the percentages for sexually deviant behaviors were...5% [for pedophilia]" ****

[Note that the ratio of fantasy to action here is 2.6, almost exactly the ratio found in the German study above.]

[from FN240:] "(surveying 193 male university students, finding that nine percent fantasized about sex with a young child, five percent masturbated to fantasies of sex with children, and seven percent were likely to have sex with a child if assured they would not be caught or punished) ***** ...(sampling ninety-four men, finding sixty-two percent reported fantasizing about sexually initiating with a young girl and three percent with a young boy)" @

B8 [242] "In defining heterosexuality or homosexuality...rarely does a description contain language (such as that used in the DSM when categorizing pedophilia) that refers to the presence of 'recurrent, intense sexually arousing fantasies' and 'sexual urges' (ref. 1, p. 572)...Although ordinarily not acknowledged, one reason that an adult sexual orientation does not, in and of itself, lead to a psychiatric diagnosis is because of the explicit assumption that such an orientation is not a bad thing."

[243] "In contemporary society, having a pedophilic sexual orientation...is considered to be a bad thing. In a society that felt otherwise, such a condition might not be construed as psychiatric pathology. To suggest that the inclusion of pedophilia in the DSM is not at least partially dependent on making such a value judgment would be disingenuous."

"[A] person can differ from the norm in experiencing recurrent sexual attractions to prepubescent children. However, if he is in full control of himself, does not act on, and is not distressed by those attractions, under such circumstances, such a difference in sexual makeup would not have to be classified as a disorder."

D10 [46] "One role of the DSM-IV-TR...is as an instrument that can be used rhetorically to establish the boundary between 'us' and 'them': between animals or predators and those of us who are properly civilized.

"The psychiatrist's job...is to circumscribe the predators in our midst, and provide grounds for segregating them. The DSM-IV-TR provides the language in which sex offending may be externalized as an object of disgust. The forensic function of diagnostic categories is to disguise the emotional content of SVP ['Sexually Violent Predator'] statutes."

H9 [544] "While purportedly based on scientific principles, the DSM is, at its core, a political document; the APA is a political organization that clearly came to understand its ability to assert its power in the broader world."

[545] "The APA has asserted its dominion in the criminal arena, more specifically, in adjudging deviance as a mental health issue. In propagating and monopolizing its classification system for psychiatry, the APA discovereed that 'any behavior that produced discomfort or socially undesirable behavior could be asserted as representing a disordered psyche irrespective of biological evidence.' @@ Regarding sexual deviance and paraphilias, as cases in point, critics contend that the DSM categorizes them as mental disorders not because of 'some mental degeneration of the brain but because such behavior is socially construed to be a process of a sick mind.'" @@@

H9 [558] "[The 19th-century pioneering German sexologist Richard von] Krafft-Ebing, on whose work the American psychiatric profession's initial embrace of [559] paraphilias was based, considered any non-procreative activity as perverse. In his view, bestiality, fellatio, cunnilingus, and homosexuality were perversions, while rape was not because it could result in pregnancy."

[562] "It is notable that American psychiatry's conceptualization [of the paraphilias] may be unique in the world. The British Psychological Society issued a statement in 2011 critiquing the inclusion of paraphilias in the DSM:

'We believe that classifying these problems as "illnesses" misses the relational context of problems and the undeniable social causation of such problems[, and] of particular concern are the subjective and socially normative aspects of sexual behavior.' @@@@ Mental health experts around the world continue to express concern with the seeming unscientific basis for the DSM's sexual disorders. Even with the impending new edition, to be referred to as DSM-5 and to be finalized in 2013, the APA has especially chosen not to field test the pedophilia group."

[575] "In sum, because the paraphilias are normatively questionable and scientifically unsound, they provide a poor fit for answering legal questions that intrude significantly upon civil rights."

L7 [1356] "Psychiatry should push for more funding since there is a lack of [1357] funding for the research of pedophiles in the Unirted States...and most research is conducted in Canada."

H9 [571] "The lack of research interest in pedohebephilia @@@@@ is breathtaking in light of the extreme social concern over adults and adolescents who interact sexually with children, and considering that [five percent] or more of males (over [five] million adults and 600,000 teenagers in the U.S.) may be preferentialy attracted to children." #

A5 "One reason that more is not known about the origins of pedophilia is that many American researchers have been loath to have anything to do with pedophiles. The same for American funding agencies. [In the opinion of Richard Krueger, M.D., medical director of the New York State Psychiatric Institute's sexual behavior clinic:] 'The primary rate-limiting factor has been a lack of government or private funding for research in this area.'"

D10 [46] "[T]he American Psychiatric Association (APA) has stated unequivocally, most notably in its Amicus Curiae brief in the Supreme Court's Barefoot v. Estelle, that '[t]he unreliability of psychiatric predictions of long-term future dangerousness is by now an established fact within the profession.'"

A5 "What may come as a surprise to many people, 'there is no difference in sex drive between a person with pedophilia and a person with normal sexual interest,' J. Paul Federoff, M.D., co-director of the sexual behaviors clinic at the Royal Ottawa Hospital in Canada, attested. 'I have seen people with very high sex drives who have perfectly normal sexual interest, and I have also seen people with pedophilia who have extremely low sex drives.'"

F12 [450] "Do not assume that diagnosis of a paraphilia [including pedophilia] implies volitional impairment...It is important to understand that having a diagnoss of paraphilia does not imply that the person also has difficulty controlling his behavior...While it is true that some individuals with a paraphilia have difficulty controlling their behavior, many do not..."

<<>>

F13 [239] "[T]here is no evidence that people with paraphilias [including pedophilia] have higher sex drives or more intense fantasies than anyone else."

F19 "Many people, including newspaper columnists, do not understand the limitations of a diagnosis of paraphilia. Pedophilia, perhaps the most frequently and willfully distorted paraphilia is, in the minds of many, inexorably tied to actually offending against chldren...Thus, for many people, simply finding that an offender is a pedophile is enough to justify further detention."

"There is an obvious reason that a DSM diagnosis alone cannot meet the legal standard for committing someone as a sexually dangerous person. By definition, the legal categories 'mental abnormality and personality disorder' require volitional impairment. In contrast, the DSM explicitly warns that a diagnosis contains no implication about whether the diagnosis affects the person's volition..."

L7 [1330] "With respect to the issue of volitional impairment, there have been very limited 'official' statements. The APA argued in an amicus brief in [Kansas v.] Crane that the volitional impairment notion is conceptually vague and difficult to apply and recommend instead that a more extreme conception of a complete lack of self-control should be used. The editors of the DSM have also made statements regarding the problem of assuming lack of volitional impairment because of a diagnosis of pedophilia (or any DSM disorder for that matter)."

[1347] "Psychiatry argues that a pedophilia diagnosis does not necessarily mean that an individual has a volitional impairment because the DSM's definition of pedophilia includes individuals with self-control and without self-control. Psychiatry argues further that because the volitional impairment concept is too difficult to operationalize, the requisite lack of self-control should be limited to an extreme lack of self-control."

[1350] "The DSM states that '. . .a pedophilia diagnosis in itself does not demonstrate that a particular individual is (or was) unable to control his or her behavior at a particular time.' Volitional impairment is not included in its definition of pedophilia and is not meant to be implied by its definition. Psychiatry indicates that the group of individuals diagnosed with pedophilia are not necessarily more or less likely to have difficulty controlling their impulses in the future.

"According to psychiatry, the assumption that a diagnosis of pedophilia indicates volitional impairment inaccurately homogenizes a heterogeneous group because many individuals with pedophilia have no trouble controlling their behavior."

[1354] "In measuring the volitional impairment that varies from pedophile to pedophile, psychiatry asserts that '[o]ne needs to provide positive evidence that [this particular pedophile] has difficulty controlling his sexually assaultive behavor as a result of the [pedophilia]." ##

Now, to some theories on the etiology of pedophilia:

F20 [49] "The average adult vertebrate male is sexually attracted to individuals more feminine, younger, and more hierarchically submissive than himself...[I]t is reasonable to assume that there are biosocial regulatory mechanisms underlying these processes. In all biological processes, there are variations around means or central tendencies. As a result of inevitable biological variation, there will be some adult males who will be sexually attracted to individuals who are are more or less feminine than average, more or less youthful than average, and more or less submissive than average. When such proclivities exist only to a minor degree, they often go unnoticed; when, however, they exist to a marked degree, they are noticed as well as labelled."

[58] [This author theorizes, with significant evidence backing him up, that pedophilia is a result of differing degrees of brain masculinization and defeminization in utero . This model posits the origins of all sexual orientations. For example, homosexuals are less maculinized than heterosexuals, who are, in turn, less masculinized than pedophiles; homosexuals are less defeminized than pedophiles, who are, in turn, less defeminized than heterosexuals. Therefore, in relation to heterosexuals, pedophiles are more masculinized and less defeminized. "Masculinization" and "defeminization" are believed to be two distinct processes that take places in males in utero . (See below.) (It is also important to note that all embryos start out -- as a sort of 'default' -- as females. That's why males as well as females have nipples.)]

[60] "Some of the coordinated motor patterns involved in both mating effort and parental care are part of the [61] human pedosexual repertoire...[T]here is a certain degree of 'functional proximity' between the moods and coordinated motor patterns involved in parenting and courting...This similarity between sexual and provisioning [i.e., obtaining food, clothing, and shelter] moods is found to a much lesser degree in human femalea and also accounts for why the proclivity toward pedosexual behavior is so much more an adult male than an adult female phenomenon."

"Androgens and their metabolites, infusing through the developing fetus during the last trimester of pregnancy and the immediate neonatal period, are believed to underlie the masculinization and defeminization processes of the brain."

[63] "Most of the myriad adult psychopathologies attributed to the sequelae of previous childhood sexual contact with an adult are without scientific bases."

[67] "Whether or not an adult's pedosexual behavior is child sexua abuse depends on the effects of the behavior on the child. Effects means the immediate effects as well as the long-term effects. One cannot necessarily assume that any sexual contact between adult and a child is harmful."

[69] "If in utero brain hormonalization is one of the determinants of adult age and [70] gender orientations, then these factors are already present in a child or pubescent boy who was engaging in sexual behavior with an adult male. Some children or pubescent boys who do engage in such behaviors may themselves be predisposed to it. Such a statement is in contrast to victimological theory, where the younger participant is always seen as a totally passive recipient of the adult male's targeted 'sexual aggression.'"

"In contrast to the mixed-outcome literature on males, published outcome data on the interaction of young girls with adult males...are definitely skewed toward reporting negative outcomes."

F21 [13] "[M]en are socialized to see their appropriate sexual partners persons who are younger and smaller than themselves...It is less of a contortion for a man [as opposed to a woman] to find a child sexually attractive because children are merely an extension of the gradient along which his appetites are already focused."

Now, to some court cases:

S57 "The issue in this case was not whether [the defendant] is of bad character or whether he possesses a reprehensibly salacious interest in children. The issue is whether he committed the acts with which he was charged. The fact that he may be of bad character and may possess a salacious interest in children is not probative of whether he committed those acts. The one circumstance can well exist without the other...Proof of his bad character and unsavory interests did not address his credibility but placed him in a highly prejudiced posture...It had the effect of converting the trial from assessment of the charges against [him] to a general inquiry as to his character, thus denying him a fair trial on the issues." [Convictions reversed ]

[The above is precisely what occurred in the Nickel case, except for the fact that New York courts (unlike the above Virginia one) had the courage and integrity to reverse the conviction obtained in that particular mockery of justice.]

U6 "[W]e find serious issues with the way in which the government is trying to use the description of Defendant as a pedophile/preferential sexual offender. We find this unstructured and non-rigorous profiling of Defendant troubling. Even if the Court could conclude beyond any doubt that a person 'has a propensity for conduct typical of a pedophile' (or a drug-trafficker, or a money-launderer, or a terrorist), that, by itself , does not provide a legitimate basis to support an entry into that person's home in search of evidence of that tendency absent evidence of the actual commission of a crime. Such governmental overreaching is precisely why profiling of a subject is not a sound basis for a warrant: basing any judicial deprivation of a person's life, liberty or property on such unrestricted 'profiling' of individuals is contrary to the most elemental principles of due process." [Emphasis original.]

G10 [959] "Professor Reed states:

'Since the close of the eighteenth century, the propensity rule has been one of the fundamental restraints on prosecutorial proof in American criminal trials. The propensity rule excludes evidence offered to establish the accused's disposition to commit crime. The rule had its roots in the accusative, as opposed to inquisitorial, nature of the Anglo-American criminal process. Under an accusative system, the state must establish that the accused did some act forbidden by law. In contrast, an inquisitorial process assumes the accused committed the crime and imposes upon him the burden of establishing his innocence. The courts admit evidence of the accused's prior crimial activity which the accused must also overcome.

'. . .The federal rules' expansion of the scope of the prosecutorial use of evidence of other crimes and the federal courts' willingness to admit such evidence is subtly transforming the American criminal justice system from an accusative to an inquisitorial process.'" ### [Emphasis original to secondary source.]

"Commited to a jurisprudence which judges an accused by actual evidence of the real events, I reject this trend of trial by propensity."

[from FN47:] "'Inflexibly the law has set its face against the endeavor to fasten guilt upon [a defendant] by proof of character or experience predisposing to an act of crime. . .There may be cogency in the argument that a quarrelsome defendant is more likely to start a quarrel than one of a milder type, a man of dangerous mode of life more likely than a shy recluse. The law is not blind to this but equally it is not blind that the innocence of character is accepted as probative of crime. "The natural and inevitable tendency of the tribunal -- whether judge or jury -- is to give excessive weight to the vicious record of crime thus exhibited, and either to allow it to bear too strongly on the present charge, or to take the proof of it as justifying the condemnation irrespective of guilt on the present charge."'" #### [Emphasis original.]

H13 [1715] "Blanchard...recognized that it is 'widely accepted that not all child molesters are pedophiles, and not all pedophiles are child molesters' and that, in reality, a large majority of those who molest children are not pedophiles."

The following is some (more) case law in 'trial by pedophile profile' and the like:

B6 [692] "[I]t is clear from the record that the prosecutor sought to introduce testimony that appellant was a fixated pedophile solely to prove appellant's propensity to molest children and that he acted in conformity therewith when he committed the charged offense. Under both the common-law...and the new rules of evidence...this type of character testimony is prohibited when it is sought to be introduced that a person acted in conformity therewith. Consequentlty, the trial court abused its discretion in allowing...this evidence.

"Although the complainant was unwavering in her testimony, we cannot say that the impermissible testimony did not contribute to the conviction."

"[A]ppellant maintained throughout...that he did not molest his children...That is, he never admitted to having committed the crime as alleged in the indictment -- only that he was a pedophile ." [Emphasis added.]

D6 [649] "The Commonwealth undertook to prove that appellant was a pedophile as central to its case. In his opening statement the prosecutor said 'I think we'll persuade [you] beyond any doubt that this defendant is a pedophile.' This word has never been precisely defined for the purposes of this case, nor [650] has there been any clear explanation of what it is supposed to prove in this case."

[Quoting from prosecutor's closing statement:] 'Ladies and gentlemen, that's a picture of a pedophile, pure and simple. Typical pedophile...[T]his is typical, that's what you do when you're a pedophile.'

"At this point appellant's counsel objected 'to this constant use of a term here.' The court 'sustained' the objection and admonished the jury: 'Don't consider his reference to the defendant being a pedophile.' Of course, by this point it was far too late for such an admonition to have made any difference. Strangely enough, the prosecutor then continued the same line of argument by commenting at length on the contents of 'Exhibit 1,' and the defendant's objection to this was 'overruled.'"

[Much the same occurred in Nickel's trial. Although Judge Paul Czajka admonished Prosecutor Peter Torncello to 'refrain' from using the term "boy-lover," Torncello continued to use it anyway, with no repercussions whatsoever.]

"Unfortunately, although the boy's testimony was sufficient to make a case, the Commonwealth, unwilling to rest its case on the boy's testimony, sought to bolster that testimony with the contents of appellant's bookcase. But the boy never estabished relevancy by identifying any of the evidence seized from the apartment shared by the appellant and his girlfriend [652] as having been shown to him...It is obvious the real purpose, the sole purpose, of the evidence was, in general, to prove that his perversion was pedophilia, and to do so on the basis of reading material found in his possession some of which would offend a substantial number of jurors, prejudicing them against the appellant without regard to whether it proved anything against him.

"We declare, unqualifiedly, that citizens and residents of Kentucky are not subject to criminal prosecution based upon the contents of their bookcase unless and until there is evidence linking it to the crime charged...If this material is supposed to provide a picture of the appellant as a pedophile, such profile evidence is inadmissible in criminal cases to prove either guilt or innocence."

"[T]he testimony of an investigating police officer that an accused has the profile of a pedophile, based on the contents of his library and miscellaneous memorabilia found in his residence, [653] falls short of the threshold of admissible evidence."

"[B]ecause the contents of Commonwealth's 'Exhibit 1' were central to the Commonwealth's opening and closing argument to the effect that the Commonwealth would prove, and did prove, that the appellant was a pedophile, and to the testimony of the investigating police officer in support of this premise, these comments and this testimony were improper...The record shows the appellant objected on some occasions, but not on others, at the continuing effort to label him a pedophile, and to using this characterization to bolster and support the case against him.

"The only conceivable purpose the terms 'pedophile' and 'pedophilia' served here was to characterize the mental state of the appellant as a person with an abnormal propensity to engage in 'sexual activity with children.' This was the framework [654] in which Officer Curtis defined the term, and the major thrust of the prosecutor's opening statement and closing argument as well as the officer's testimony."

[655] [from dissenting opinion:] "A review of the record indicates that there were six references to the use of the term 'pedophile.'"

[Again, in Nickel's case, there were at least forty-two propensity-related references.]

U9 [1088] "[The Appellant's] digital assistant contained over 140 stories about adults having sex with children...[He] filed two motions in limine asking the district court to exclude the stories found in his digital assistant from evidence. The district court denied these motions in limine. On the second day of trial, the government offered two of the stories, 'My Little Sister' and 'Love for the World,' to show modus operandi, intent, preparation, and knowledge. They were admitted over [Appellant's] objection...[R]ecognizing the highly prejudicial nature of the stories, the court held that the story could be entered into evidence only if it tied into [Appellant's] intent, knowledge, preparation, or modus operandi."

[1089] "The following morning, [Appellant] renewed his objection to the admission of the stories, arguing that they were highly prejudicial and were being admitted to show propensity.

"The limiting instruction [to the jury] given was as follows: 'A person cannot be charged or convicted of literature that they read or what they possess...[Y]ou have a constitutional right. You have that right. You would want to protect the defendant's right to have any kind of literature and to read it or not read it. You must not allow this kind of evidence to bias you, generally, against the defendant on the ultimate question of guilt or innocence. You must not do that.'"

[1090] "The fact that [Appellant] was in possession of stories detailing sex with children at the time he went to meet 'Christy' is insufficient to support the introduction of the stories without regard to [Federal] Rule [of Evidence] 414(b). [Appellant] was charged with traveling across state lines with intent to engage in a sexual act with a minor, and with attempting to persuade a minor to engage in sex. The possession or content of the stories was not required for the prosecution to 'offer a coherent story.'"

[1091] "The district court committed an abuse of discretion by admitting the stories."

[1125] "[Appellant's] case involves otherwise lawful reading material that is not similar to the crime with which he is being charged. Essentially, the government here seeks to introduce possession of material that describes one type of crimial conduct, namely incest with minors, to prove intent to commit another type of criminal conduct, namely crossing state borders to have sex with a minor. This is impermissible under our caselaw."

T3 [1215] "[Appellant] appeals his convictions of two counts of sexual battery on...a boy less than 12 years of age..."

[1221] "'This was trial by pedophile profile, which we find to be reversible error.' #####...Whether [Appellant] was a pedophile simply had no probative value regarding any material fact in dispute." [Emphasis added.]

P9 [855] "Generally, evidence of prior bad acts may not be used 'to prove the character of a person in order to show action in conformity therewith.' Fed.R.Evid. 404(b). Such 'propensity evidence' is ordinarily excluded because of the liklihood that juries may misuse it...Propensity evidence 'tends to distract the trier of fact from the main question of what actually happened on the particular occasion.' $ The general ban on propensity evidence has deep roots in [856] our common law tradition."

[See Propensity/Who Cares? section of this site.]

P18 [849] "Defendant...chose not to testify. The prosecutor nevertheless made his sexual orientation the central focus of the trial, as she filled the record with evidence of defendant's propensity to engage in sexual activity with young boys. She introduced evidence that he was affiliated with the North American Man-Boy Love Association (NAMBLA)...as proof of his 'intent' to commit sodomy...Since we are unable to ascertain any justification for these trial tactics and find that defendant was denied the right to a fair trial, we reverse the conviction and remand for a new trial."

[853] "The issue at trial was whether defendant had engaged in several discrete acts of oral sodomy wuth underage youths, not the state of mind with which those acts were committed. Yet, by successfully arguing a variety of inapplicable and implausible theories of admissibility, the prosecutor was able to place before the jury a wealth of prejudicial information about defendant's lifestyle and associations. As the prosecutor's summation makes graphically clear, the true purpose behind the introduction of the evidence was to expose defendant's sexual preferences and attitudes in order to demonstrate a propensity to commit the crimes charged. The use of this evidence for such a purpose was a clear violation of well settled legal principles."

[The following are from the Appellant's Brief in this same case:]

[4] "Appellant chose not to testify, due to a...ruling that would have exposed him to questioning about one of his two prior convictions for sodomy in the second degree. To keep his background out of the case, he had to forego his right to address the charges. Despite his silence, the prosecutor managed to make his sexual orientation into the central focus of the trial."

[45] [Quoting from the trial transcript:]

Defense Counsel: Your Honor, I move for a mistrial. That [prosecutor's] summation dealt not at all with the allegations in the indictment whatsoever. It dealt entirely with NAMBLA...[This] was a total appeal to community prejudice...[46] [and] a request for the jury to stampede the judgment without considering what the allegations are. She went through the entire NAMBLA situation. She went through -- she totally disregarded the facts...And I [have] sat through in excess of 200 trials, Your Honor, and I have never seen a stupider appeal to community prejudice (1454-55)."

[In Nickel's case, prosecutor Peter Torncello also 'totally disregarded the facts' (because they were not on his side), as he, too, focused exclusively on Nickel's attraction to boys.]

[50] "By utilizing a variety of inapplicable, implausible theories of admissibility, the prosecutor placed before the jury a wealth of information about appellant's lawful moral and political beliefs, lifestyle, [and] association...The use which was made of this information in summation demonstrates the true purpose [51] for which it was introduced: to expose appellant's sexual preferences and attitudes. Having foregone his precious right to testify in order to keep these considerations out of the case, their introduction deprived him of a fair trial. Moreover, such trial tactics may well inhibit or 'chill' the exercise of the right to hold and advocate morally unorthodox views.

"The only issue at this trial was whether or not sexual contact occurred , not the intent with which it was done. A properly managed trial would have been a contest of credibility between the two youths who said that sex occurred, and the three youths who supported the defense denial. Instead, appellant's inclination and willingness to have sex with youths was made the focus of the trial, and of the prosecutor's summation, by introduction of his NAMBLA affiliation and advocacy. The NAMBLA activity, which was invincible evidence of his propensities, was inadmissible to prove 'intent,' or any other material issue, and it should be excluded from a new trial." [Emphasis added.]

[52] "Evidence of 'intent' is only admissible were the acts involved in the crime are equivocal; so that 'no particular intent can be inferred from the nature of the act committed.' $$ ...Evidence of intent is admissible only in those sex offenses in which the physical contact itself is conceded, but the intent is equivocal.

"The NAMBLA literature...[was] used only to prove an inclination to do the deed, not the intent with which it was done, which was in no way at issue.

"It is obvious that the court and the prosecutor mistakenly equated 'intent' with 'inclination' or 'willingness,' which is precisely the kind of proof that [People v.] Molineux proscribes. Undoubtedly, appellant's affiliation with NAMBLA...is powerful, but inadmissible evidence of his sexual tendencies and desires. That is all that NAMBLA was used to prove at this trial."

[58] "While appellant's erotica, attitudes, and friendships were powerful evidence of his sexual tendencies, they were clearly irrelevant to prove the deeds for which he was on trial. Instead of applying for the requisite advance rulings that surely would have excluded this [59] information, the prosecutor smuggled it into the jury's presence via improper impeachment techniques. She must not be permitted to reap the benefits of such tactics.

"Even though the pictures from appellant's apartment were not charged in the indictment, and were found inadmissible to prove the indictment, the prosecutor used her examination of [one of the initial complainants, who later recanted] as a vehicle to reveal their existence...Her purpose was to broadcast the [60] nature of appellant's personal effects..."

[61] "[The prosecutor's] method of injecting appellant's sexual orientation into the case was a study in lawlessness and guile." [Emphasis added.]

[62] "[T]he summation went beyond the pale of routine oratorical excess. It was an incitement to convict on [63] grounds that transcend the evidence and the law. The jury, having been exposed to overwhelming proof of sexual orientation, and to weak evidence of sodomy, may very well have taken the prosecutor's advice."

[Substituting 'judge' for 'jury' here, the above paragraph is 100% applicable to the Nickel case.]

"The invocation of extra-legal norms in criminal prosecutions has been uniformly disapproved, because of the risk that these norms will usurp the primacy of reason and of law..."

"Nor should convictions be sought on the basis of perceived dangers to society that are presented by an accused's associations...'Society must protect itself against the violence of its enemies. Attack must be followed by punishment of the guilty, but punishment must be based upon determination of guilt by a jury after a fair trial. Society may be endangered as much by the violence of its friends as of its enemies, and an appeal to prejudice [64] as a factor in determination of guilt is, in the final analysis, an appeal to violence. The majesty of the law must remain unchallenged. It is threatened by each trial where there is a justified doubt of fairness and impartiality.'" $$$

"That the court registered no response to the defense objection legitimated the disgraceful argument."

[This also occurred several times at Nickel's trial. (See Objection Analysis )]

"Having apparently confused her role with that of Torquemada [of the Spanish Inquisition], the [prosecutor] has continued to present this summation in the face of judicial reproval. It may be that reversal is the only stimulus to which she [65] responds. Only the highest professional standards should prevail in the prosecution of sex offenses against young people. When prosecutions (and prosecutors) do not measure up, only reversals send an unmistakable message that the standards will be upheld.

"Balancing the gravity and pervasiveness of the above errors against the weight of admissible evidence, they clearly [were] not harmless."

[66] "The weak and conflicting eyewitness testimony was all but submerged by the deluge of inadmissible propensity evidence that was rained on the accused . This included...

- his personal acknowledgment of 'boy-love'... - his NAMBLA affiliation... - the erotica in his apartment..." [Emphases added.]

"It cannot be earnestly argued that this veritable dossier on the accused was incapable of tainting the [67] verdict. Moreover, a substantial portion of the error occurred with judicial sanction, [and] much of it met with no corrective measures..."

[This paragraph is also 100% true of the Nickel case.]

In the following, we address some of the psychological and emotional issues affecting minor-attracted persons:

M18 [60] "An unrealized need can capture our attention ad impede our ability to focus on other things. Scarcity in one walk of life means we have less attention, 'less mind,' in the rest of life. The concept of less mind is well studied by psychologists. Although careful research in psychology employs several fine distinctions to capture this idea, we use the single umbrella term 'bandwidth' to cover them all. Bandwidth refers to our cognitive capacity and our ability to pay attention, make good decisions, stick with our plans and resist temptations. It correlates with intelligence and SAT performance, impulse control and success on diets. Scarcity creates a powerful goal -- dealing with pressing needs -- that inhibits other considerations. We argue that by constantly drawing us back to that urgent unmet goal, scarcity taxes our bandwidth and our most fundamental capacities."

[63] "The size of these effects suggests that bandwidth tax has a substantial influence on a full range of behaviors, even those such as patience, tolerance, attention and dedication, that usually fall under the umbrella of personality or talent. When she snaps at her daughter, the harried sales manager looks like a bad parent. The financially strapped student who misses some easy questions on a test looks incapable or lazy. Yet these people are not unskilled or uncaring, just heavily taxed. The problem is not the person but the context of scarcity."

[Imagine spending years -- or even decades -- trying to prevent certain thoughts and feelings from breaking through to your own conscious awareness. The amount of mental energy expended is enormous. And, eventually, it stops working anyway. Is it not better to simply acknowledge its reality, and then figure out how you are actually going to live ?]

W18 [1262] "Refraining from thinking unwanted thoughts is so difficult that it can produce an 'ironic priocess' in which people ultimately spend even more time thinking about thoughts they are trying to suppress. When people attempt to suppress a thought, they monitor their mental activity to verify that suppression is proceeding successfully. To do so, however, they must keep the forbidden thought available so that they can compare it to their existing mental state and confirm that they are not thinking the forbidden thought. As psychologists describe it:

'[A]ttempts to influence mental states require monitoring processes that are sensitive to the failure of the attempts. . .[W]hen efforts to implement the intended mental control are undermined in any way, the monitoring process itself will surface and ironically overwhelm the intended control to yield the opposite of the mental state that is desired. Thought suppression, then, is an 'ironic' process in that "[t]he intention to suppress a thought creates the opposite of what is wanted.'" $$$$

"Researchers have used the following example to illustrate the ironic process theory:

'[A]n alcoholic who is struggling to keep thoughts of an icy, cold beer completely out of mind may at various points say to himself or herself, 'I haven't thought about having a beer for the last five hours.' Of course, upon making such an observation, the person has thought of the enticing beverage. This monitoring of potential intrusions of an unwanted [1263] thought paradoxically keeps the thought accessible to consciousness and may lead to a rebound effect, or a resurgence of the thought following attempts to suppress it. . .'" $$$$$

[Aside from the question of what (if anything) may have 'gone wrong' to make you that way (i.e., a pedophile), what are you actually supposed to do ? With whom can you even talk ?]

In an episode of 'The Moth' on National Public Radio, Gil Reyes, talking about his boyfriend, says: 'How close can you be with someone when there's this whole part of your life that they want nothing to do with?'"

N12 "Lying to people can take a toll on you."

B24 "'For a lesson on the riddles of human nature, look no further than Dennis Hastert,' said Frank Bruni. The former House Soeaker was among the Republicans who denounced President Clinton as 'immoral' for the affair with Monica Lewinski, and even championed legislation that would put serial sex offenders behind bars for life. He was widely viewed by colleagues as a 'safe, uncontroversial,' and religious man who participated in a Bible study group on Capitol Hill. Yet as we've since learned, Hastert was hiding a terrible secret all those years: He had sexually molested at least four teenage wrestlers he coached in high school...So who was the real Dennis Hastert? The kind, humble, God-fearing man, or the serial molester? Both. To function, Hastert 'walled off whole parts of himself' and pretended they weren't there. In truth, we are all 'multiple people,' compartmentalized into contradictory selves. Some parts are more hidden than others -- 'even from the person himself.'"

N1 [xiv] "The politics of disgust is profoundly at odds with the abstract idea of a society based on the equality of all citizens, in which all have a right to the equal protection of the laws. It says that the mere fact that you happen to make me vomit is reason enough for me to treat you as a social pariah, denying you some of your most basic entitlements as a citizen."

[xvi] "Like race and gender, sexual orientation is a deep-seated characteristic that has profound meaning for people, affecting their possibilities for self-expression and happiness; it should not be turned into a systematic source of social inequality."

[Xvii] "Disgust relies on moral obtuseness. It is possible to view another human being as a slimy slug or a piece of revolting trash only if one has never made a serious good-faith attempt to see the world through that person's eyes or to experiece that person's feelings. Disgust imputes to the other a subhuman nature. How, by contrast, do we ever become able to see one another as human? Only through the exercise of imagination. Humanity does not automatically reveal itself to strangers. No placard hung on the front of a fellow citizen announces that this one is a full-fledged human being (and not a vile bur or piece of refuse). Seeing the shape of a human being befoee us, we always have choices to make: will we impute full equal humanity to that shape, or something less? Only by imagining how the world looks through the person's eyes does one get to the point of seeing the other person as a someone and not as a something."

[48] "Disgust diminishes the other, making 'those' people look base, more like animals or devils, without the full dignity of a person. Respect for conscience requires, at the very least, the ability to see that the other is a person, with a conscience and pursuing a conscientious search. That ability to imagine what the other person is pursuing and that it is indeed a person (not a monster) pursuing it, is an indispensable step on the way to the thoughts about equal liberty that have become central to our American tradition."

[50] "The combination of equal respect for one's fellow citizens with a serious and sympathetic attempt to imagine what interests they are pursuing is what I have called the politics of humanity...To respect another person as an equal is to see that person in a certain way: as an end, not merely as a means, as a person, not merely an object. That way of seeing requires endowing the other with life and purpose, rather than with dirt and dross, with human dignity rather than with foulness."

[121] "Sexual orientation...is irrelevant to many things for which society confusedly holds it to be relevant. It is also deep and central in people's lives, like religion, in a way that makes us think asking people to give up acting on their orientation is a kind of cruelty."

[204] "It would be nice to think that the United States today is no longer a nation in which disgust at another group of human beings is widespread. In race relations, we have made amazing and wonderful strides from the politics of disgust to the politics of humanity."

[207] "A gay man could be nonthreatening if he were pure or demure; of if he were a failure, like one of [Lord Patrick] Devlin's sex addicts; or if he were tormented and squashed, like the characters of Brokeback Mountain. But [the openly gay, murdered San Francisco City Councilman Harvey] Milk, as [Sean] Penn played him [in the movie 'Milk'], was none of those things. His demand was not for pity (compatible with disgust), but for respect and shared enjoyment. He clearly enjoyed being himself and led a competent life focused on many diverse goals. And this image of the gay man is truly threatening to the politics of disgust."

L5 [560]"[A]s Nussbaum (1999) [N1 immediately above] very effectively argues, this particular emotion [disgust] is problematic in the context of the law in ways that other emotions are not. Because of the power of disgust as an emotion -- its highly economical [561] nature in marshaling a strong aversive reaction, purely irrational and cruel actions and reactions...At its worse, in Nussbaum's words, disgust, 'collaborates with evil [and] offers nothing to keep our political hearts warm' (1999, 55). Further, Nussbaum argues, disgust 'has been used as a powerful weapon in social efforts to exclude certain groups and persons' including Jews, women, the poor, and homosexuals, so it cannot be analyzed outside the context of group dominance/subordination within social-structural relations (1999, 29)."

Throughout this site, for purposes of brevity sources are abbreviated ('A1,' etc.). However the titles of some are so good, they bear repeating outside of the 'Bibliography' itself. The following is one of them:

"How Can We Stop Pedophiles? Stop Treating Them Like Monsters"

B10 "One summer day in the mid-1990s, Spencer Kaplan climbed aboard a bus at the camp where he was a counselor-in-training, sat down next to a little boy of about 9, and thought, 'My God, I want to kiss him.'" [Emphasis original.]

"Spencer -- a pseudonym -- was 14. He was a short, sensitive teenager who wore high tops and backwards baseball caps. As a junior counselor, his job was to help an older counselor with the 8- and 9-year-olds. Spencer had noticed this boy before, sitting alone, cloaked in an endearing shyness. On the bus Spencer coaxed him out of his shell. For the rest of the summer, Spencer took the boy under his wing and basked in their closeness. The attraction Spencer felt was dizzying.

"Spencer was raised in a stable environment by loving, highly educated parents. He had been a cute little boy himself, with a blond-streaked bowl cut, brown saucer eyes, and a dazzling grin -- relatives often needled him about his certain future as a heartbreaker. He even did some professional modeling and acting. In the video for Don Henley's 1989 song 'The End of Innocence,' you can see him running around in the sunshine with floppy limbs. He was never abused of molested.

"Even before that gush of feelings at camp, he'd felt stirrings of attraction toward other boys. At a school assembly, he was entranced by a boy his own age who struck him as the most beautiful person he'd ever seen. When he was 12, he developed a crush on his best friend. The two would sleep with their arms wrapped around each other, and although nothing sexual happened, Spencer adored their intimacy.

"When he got to high school, his sexual and romantic yearnings felt as puzzling as they do for most kids hacking their way through the jungle of adolescence. He liked girls, but they didn't make his heart quiver like boys did. He wondered if he was gay but wasn't sure about it. He was lonely. In his senior year, when he was 17, his regular roller hockey game was joined by 'Josh,' a smart and sweet 13-year-old wirth whom Spencer fell 'madly in love.' They talked for hours after the games. His high school friends teased him about his 'little friend.' Spencer realized that he was getting older, but oddly, the type of boy he was attracted to wasn't.

"He spent a nervous night on the Internet typing in searches on a word he was beginning to think might describe him: pedophile. His confusion turned to terror. He was baffled that the tenderness he felt toward Josh had anything to do with what he read online about predators, psychopaths, violent child rapists, and murderers. He realized that what felt entirely natural to him was despised by our society, and that once he turned 18, it could make him a criminal.

"Spencer went off to college and tried to force himself into something resembling a normal life. He dated both men and women his age, but at the deepest level he missed the emotional connection he'd felt to younger boys. He spiraled into depression, skipping classes and spending days smoking pot and sitting glaze-eyed in front of the television. Halfway through his sophomore year, he took a medical leave from school and went home. The feelings followed him there. Walking the mall in his hometown, he struggled with the effort to look away from young boys.

"After breaking down in tears one day, Spencer decided he had to explain himself to his parents, who couldn't understand why their promising son's life seemed to be imploding. He sat down with them in the living room and stammered. 'The boys at the mall,' he started. 'I can't stop staring at them. I want to be with a boy. I'm attracted to boys.'

"They were alarmed and insisted on him getting help. Over the next 10 years, though, the people Spencer and his family thought could help almost always regarded him as a criminal even though the only crime he had committed was a thought crime. When he shared his attraction to boys with one therapist, she barked: 'You can't do that.' Another therapist suggested getting Spencer into a sex offender treatment program. A youth ADHD specialist wanted to medicate him. Confiding his attraction nearly always led to suspicious inquiries about whether he had molested children, and little help when he answered no. 'Most had not the slightest idea how to deal with someone like me,' he says.

"Spencer is in his early 30s now, with neatly coiffed brown hair and sharp features. He's bright, friendly, and breezily self-deprecating. (Regarding his parents' painful realization that their son was a pedophile who hadn't finished college, he observes, 'For a Jewish family, you don't know which is worse.') He emphatically states that he understands the law and that he has never molested a child. He considers himself a 'minor-attracted person,' a term that some prefer to 'pedophile,' and what he and others like him have been quietly promoting is the idea that society needs to recognize that they exist, that they are capable of controlling their sexual desires and deserve support and respect for doing so.

"'It doesn't protect children to have a stigmatized group of outcasts living on the fringe of society,' Spencer told me. 'Anyone who's serious about protecting children from abuse has to be just as serious about the needs of minor-attracted people.'

"He doesn't mean their 'need' to have sexual contact with children, but their need for safe avenues to seek therapy, feel understood, and thrive as non-offenders. It's a perspective being embraced by a growing number of clinicians, researchers, and therapists as well. Child sexual abuse is typically viewed solely as a crminal problem -- something for cops to catch, courts to adjudicate, and everyone to fear. But some in the psychiatric community believe that preventing abuse calls for a much broader public health approach, one in which the potential abuser himself is reached and treated before doing harm.

"As Cord Jefferson reported recently in Gawker, new research suggests that pedophilia -- the attraction to children, not the act of molesting them -- is essentially impossible to change.

"In the meantime, one way to protect kids may be to reach pedophiles preemptively, to give them the therapeutic tools to control themselves and still lead fulfilling lives. A non-offending pedophile like Spencer is preferable to one who's forced into treatment after committing heinous acts, or even worse, one who is never treated because his acts go undiscovered. The opposite of a non-offending pedophile is not a non-pedophile, which people would obviously prefer, but an offending pedophile.

"There is, by now, a sobering familiarity to child sexual abuse scandals...First comes the shocking news. Then there's a period of mass absorption in the story, a combination of revulsion and chewing over every graphic detail. The perpetrators are decried as monsters.

"'All of the attention is on known sex offenders and just heaping on the punishment,' [Elizabeth] Letourneau [of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, who studies child sexual abuse] told me. 'This is said to be due to an interest in prevention, but it's really about retribution. If people are really serious about preventing children from being molested or raped, it may very well necessitate the uncomfortable acknowledgment that some people are born as pedophiles. All we do is drive it underground.'

"Fred Berlin, the founder of the Sexual Disorders Clinic at Johns Hopkins University, has studied pedophilia for more than four decades and is leading efforts to consider it a public health issue. 'It appears likely that the percentage of people apprehended is just a fraction of those out there who have these attractions, or even act on them,' he said. 'We as a society do virtually nothing to reach out to them before the fact.'

"Almost nobody comes forward these days without having done something [sexual with a minor] first, which Berlin attributes largely to mandatory reporting statutes. Every state has laws that require health care professionals to report suspected child abuse...Many mental health workers, fearful for their own liability, may rush to report a client who says he has been thinking about [doing something sexual with] children, concluding that he must be an imminent threat. The result is that men who are grappling with the attraction and other mental health issues that emanate from it -- depression is common -- have nowhere to go."

"[Berlin asks:] 'When do we ever hear, "If you're a 17-year-old worried about being attracted to a younger kid...for goodness sake, please come in and seek help"?'

"On a cool day in March, Spencer and 12 other pedophiles gathered in the conference room of a hotel near Baltimore-Washington International Airport. The door was closed and the shades were drawn. There were about 30 mental health professionals and students in the room as well. Everyone sat at large round tables under fluourescent lights, sipping coffee and leafing through handouts of the day's schedule. The pedophiles were mostly guys in their 20s and 30s. One goateed man looked like someone you might see mowing the lawn of a suburban family home. Another one in jeans and hiking boots looked like he could have been an Outward Bound leader. A well-groomed youg man in pressed slacks, a starched button-down and cufflinks never lifted his gaze from his hands folded before him on the table. His face was fixed in an expression of pure anguish."

['The door was closed and the shades were drawn.' That was also true of 1950s meetings of the Mattachine Society in California, one of the first homosexual rights groups in the United States.]

"They were there for a workshop being held by B4U-Act, an organization intended to create a dialogue between mental health professionals and 'minor-attracted people.' There were PowerPoint presentations (Spencer shared his: 'One Minor-Attracted Person's Experiences Navigating the Mental Health System') interspersed with group discussions. A handout contained testimonials from pedophiles associated with the group who couldn't make the meeting. (Iggy, age 20: 'I think it's morally wrong to have any kind of sexual relationship with boys, but it's also immoral to hate and try to shame those with a sexual orientation which they didn't choose.') Many had begun to realize in their early teens a pattern of attraction that was different from their peers. Suicidal thoughts and attempts were a common theme.

"B4U-Act was cofounded by Russell Dick, a clinical social worker, and Michael Melsheimer, a pedophile and convicted sex offender. In 1995, Dick was the social work director at Springfield Hospital Center, a state psychiatric hospital in Sykesville, Md.; Melsheimer, a former YMCA director who had served four years in a federal prison for aggravated sexual assault involving children, was a patient there. The served together on the residents' rights committee and became friends.

"After leaving the hospital, Melsheimer spent years haranguing the state of Maryland about the dearth of mental health services available to people like him, and eventually won an $8,000 grant to address it (or, as Dick recalls, 'to shut him up'). The two started B4U-Act in 2002 with the goal of making mental health care available to people who 'self-identify as minor-attracted and who are seeking assistance in dealing with issues in their lives that are challenging to them,' the group's Web site says.

"Dick has received hate mail and death threats from around the world...Mental health professionals who associate with the group have been blasted as 'predators with Ph.D.s' and the organization has been called 'NAMBLA with a Ph.D. and a marketing plan.' One of the loudest voices against the group is Judith Reisman, a conservative activist associated with Liberty University, the evangelical school founded by Jerry Falwell. Reisman set the right-wing blogosphere ablaze last year after she attended and reported on a B4U-Act symposium."

[In the 1960s, Jerry Falwell was instrumental in setting up all-white 'Christian' schools in the south, as a way of getting around desegregation orders. In the 1980s, he was a major opponent of the gay rights movement, who was caught on videotape telling his church congregation that "a homosexual would just as soon kill you as look at you."]

"To Reisman, pedophilia is not some fluke of nature, but the product of an evil culture.

"'We're breeding a nation of pedophiles,' she told me. 'All the stimuli to which billions of people have been exposed over the last 60 years has manipulated the human mind. All the pornography they've been raised in and pharmaceutical products they've taken made them crazy. Some of the crazy people are pedophiles. Some of the crazy people are scientists. Scientist-pedophiles. They will conclude that we're born this way because it's the easiest way to get away from the fact that we need to go back to the drawing board.'"

[...and...some of the crazy people are unhinged professional homophobes. The fact that Reisman used the phrase 'the last 60 years' is significant. In 1948, sex researcher Alfred Kinsey's book 'Sexual Behavior in the Human Male' came out. It was a bombshell, in no small measure because of what it had to say about the prevalence of homosexual behavior. Social conservatives' hatred of Kinsey is still strong today. Anyway...just what does she mean by the phrase, 'we need to go back to the drawing board'? Presumably, getting rid of all pornography and (mind-altering) pharmaceuticals, for a start. Or perhaps she means this far more broadly; i.e., that we should go back to how things were right after World War II. In any event, the reason scientists are concluding that minor-attracted persons really are 'born that way' is because that's where the actual facts are leading them.]

"Her writing and radio appearances claim that conditioning for pedophilia is driven by the homosexual agenda, and that the ultimate goal of gay men is to 'obtain sex with as many boys as possible.'"

[Ah yes, 'the homosexual agenda.' They even put put a video (entitled 'The Gay Agenda'), which was rather redolent of the infamous Nazi production, 'The Eternal Jew.' The vast majority of gay men would laugh at Reisman's statement here, because it's the macho, 'beefy,' full-grown man that most interests them .]

"What then, I asked, was her suggestion for men like those who turn to B4U-Act, self-identified pedophiles who don't act on their urges, want support, and are trying to lead healthy lives?

"'They should go isolate themselves totally. If it was me, I'd try to find myself on a mountain somewhere and never go anywhere, like people who cannot go outside because they're allergic to everywhere outside their home.'"

[We are aware of more several TV news/documentary segments, in which the reporter/documentarian wonders aloud (as they're trying to track people down) why 'all pedophiles seem to live in the middle of nowhere.' It would seem that, to paraphrase Gunnar Myrdal's statement about the 'American Negro' in 1944, 'No matter what the pedophile is or does, he is condemned.']

"It might feel emotionally gratifying to propose that people with these...urges essentially imprison themselves, or as many online commentators say, put a bullet in their head. But putting aside any whiff of science or sympathy, advocating isolation or suicide as public policy is simply not very practical.

"In addition to B4U-Act, other approaches to pedophilia are percolating that may ultimately protect kids by putting the focus on prevention. A website called virtuous pedophiles was created this year [2012] to 'provide peer support and information about available resources to help virtuous pedophiles remain law-abiding, and lead happy, productive lives.' Some experts are looking for a model in Prevention Project Dunkelfeld, an initiative in Germany that has provided free confidential therapy and pharmaceutical options to hundreds of men who are attracted to children, reaching out to them through billboards and television commercials. Some also advocate amending U.S. laws in a way that would mandate the reporting of suspected child abuse but would present therapeutic havens for pedophiles who have not offended or who many have offended in the past and don't want to again."

"None of this might register for truly unrepentant pedophiles. But if even a fraction of them can find safe routes to treatment, and if that prevents any portion of child sexual abuse, the efforts seem hard to discount. The alternative is unconscionable."

T11 [141] "There is scarcely any allegedly taboo subject that has been talked about as much as pedophilia. Everyone is able to offer his or her opinion on the issue, everyone is well-informed about child molesters and their worldwide criminal network -- and they usually also have suitable solutions at the ready, with which people everywhere would agree.

"Scarcely anyone will learn that the reality is far more complex. The media and politicians almost always talk about 'perpetrators,' 'perpetrator strategies' and 'sexual violence'; statistics are used, reflexively ir consciously, as evidence of the allegedly sharply-increasing activity of so-called 'pedo-criminals.' Interest in the pedophile's life-world and in the social as well as psychical situation of culpable and non-culpable pedophiles is essentially limited to the goals of painting an image of disease and guiding the 'patients' towards abstinence. Moreover the focus is not actually the pedophile, but rather the protection of potential 'victims.' Consequently, whoever does not happen to have a pedophile in their inner circle and come to grips with it has a difficult time gaining insight into the actual life-worlds of pedophiles, which in truth are anything but criminal.

"In the years that I have been active -- counseling and accompanying pedophiles -- I have met well over a thousand men, of all ages, who fall in love with boys. Their age-preference usually hovers between the ages of eight and fourteen. I know barely ten girl-lovers...I will therefore confine my comments to boy-lovers...It should also be mentioned that, to the best of my knowledge, not one of the pedophiles in my care has ever recklessly pursued his own needs at the expense of the child; none would consciously manipulate and really push a child in order to use him to satisfy his own lust. Of course there are -- among pedophiles -- also those who perpetrate violence, just as there are among heterosexuals and homosexuals. But these pedophiles obviously do not seek out my counsel, which is why I myself am not able to relate to them or their situation. I have, however, no reason to assume that the proportion of pedophiles who are prepared to use force would be higher than that among heterosexual and homosexual persons.

"Most pedophiles I know renounce sexual activities with boys. Nevertheless, based on their sexual orientation alone, they are criminalized and ostracized by society: In everyday life they are constantly confronted with the stigma of pedophilia, which they encounter in an exclusively negative and usually criminal context. Particularly for young pedophiles who are not yet at the coming-in stage ['the point in time at which a pedophile becomes conscious of his disposition and begins to come to grips with it'], this stigmatization has far-reaching consequences: The contrast between their self-perception and the extremely negative public image of pedophilia can lead to psychical crises, social banishment, suicidal ideation, and suicide attempts. The threat of sanctions compels those affected to hide their disposition from family, friends, and acquaintances, which prevents them from seeking out assistance and support in their coming-in, because otherwise they would have to abandon their identity."

[142] "Therefore my counseling center allows them to establish anonymous, free-of-charge contact via e-mail, telephone, and Internet telephony. In this way, those affected have a chance to gradually build up trust, without having to deal with the consequences of a personal outing. Establishing this trust is a first, important step in my work. I accompany those affected on their life-journey, so long as they themselves want me to -- and not only as far as worries and problems associated with their sexual orientation is concerned but with regard to everything in their lives that occupies them. In any event, specific sexual or psychological problems would not be readily separable from other facets of their lives.

"Lastly, many of those affected are not seriously depressed and/or sociophobic as a result of permanent social attention and exclusion. In my counseling with these persons, I also try to convey the importance of psychiatric or psychotherapeutic treatment. Even when I am successful in this, the search for appropriate psychiatrsts or psychotherapists is often still painstaking, because in their training and studies, the subject of pedophilia is barely touched on. Frequently, those affected are refused treatment because the therapist openly admits that, due to a lack of expertise and knowledge, he or she is simply not up to the task. Other psychiatrists and psychotherapists rely, in terms of their knowledge and professional experience, on methods and findings from the forensic area, or have only dealt with pedophiles who had already been found criminally culpable. In such a context, the widespread general view of pedophiles as potential violent criminal perpetrators is not surprising -- a position which, based on my own experience, I cannot share at all; but which unfortunately leads again and again to pedophiles having problems with their psychiatrists and psychotherapists, which then get mediated by me.

"Many pedophiles have, subsequent to their coming-in, definite ideas about their involvement with children. Many hope for a strong, couple-like relationship, and expect that their younger counterparts will have the social competence of adults. Others must be conscious of the fact that the playful, seductive gestures of a child are not expressions of a desire for sex with adults. Still others possess a marked ability to perfectly transpose themselves onto a child's level, and must learn to assess where they can take on tasks related to the child's upbringing, and where they cannot. I escort those affected through these processes, providing corresponding food for thought, and also serve as a sounding board for difficulties and concerns.

Moreover it has become clear to me in my years of work that via social contacts with children, pedophiles are able to attain a degree of equanimity that remains elusive to them without these encounters.

"A major focus of my counseling work is to attend to them following their coming-in, as well as to attend to their parents and friends following the coming-out of their son or friend. This form of counseling is, to the best of my knowledge, unique in Europe and even the entire world, which is something that my clients far beyond Europe also point out.

"Supporting scientific work is also of interest to me. Unfortunately, at the current time, little work is being done on the complex subject of pedophilia, and many studies are interest-driven, or at least have a certain sort of uneasy relationship with their subject in order to not be misconstrued or ignored. In particular, the critical question as to the harmfulness of agreeable sexual contacts between children/youth and adults is -- for sociopolitical reasons -- intentionally avoided.

"The media bears a significant degree of responsibility for the public misinformation and the over-heated, hysterical climate regarding the complex subject ofnpedophilia. Stories must be prepared under very tight time constraints, which makes a detailed discussion [143] of the topic difficult from the very beginning; huge handicaps exist with regard to the subject and the preparation of the piece; in addition, what gets published is what the public is presumably most interested in and captivated by -- clearly, reports about sexually violent perpetrators receive far more attention than reports about difficulties in the lives of pedophiles.

"Of course on the other hand, the myth of child abuse as taboo subject -- which must be shoved again and again into the public spotlight in order to not be swept under the rug -- is retained. Journalists want to be critical -- critical towards any alleged attempts to depict child abuse as harmless. Equating child abuse with pedophilia precludes a frank and open discussion of pedophiles' human and minority rights.

"In addition, journalists naturally resort to the same mechanisms as the rest of the population: Everyone believes him/herself to be well-informed about child abuse and pedophilia and qualified to judge them. Contradictory information is scarcely even acknowledged; the sales figures are right -- and so, obviously, is everything else.

"In such a discursive context, it is understandable that those in the field are no longer prepared to fundamentally and openly express their views on the complexities of pedophilia. Because anyone whose professional opinion deviates from that of the universally-valid moral norm (which is not rarely the case) is immediately attacked, and sometimes silenced.

"Over the course of many years, I myself have learned that the half-truths of self-appointed experts on this subject are usually given more weight than my own experiences and knowledge gained from long-standing professional activity. Quotations are deliberately cited out of context; and though journalists know very well the difference between a pedophilic disposition and brutal abuse, in the end the talk is, once again, flatly of 'pedophiles,' when in fact what are actually meant are violent sexual perpetrators with various preferences. The consequence of this for me is that for several years now, I have simply refused to cooperate with journalists -- a position which I have returned to following repeated bad experiences.

"The consequences that mixing reality and fiction and constructing criminalistically appealing stories can have for affected pedophiles are obvious: In order to fill the space allotted, in investigative reporting details are intentionally omitted and assumptions are peddled as truth. Neighbors suddenly show up in front of the alleged perpetrator's home, and it gets to a point where he is brutally assaulted. Later it emerges, following the report and a search of the person's home, that the allegations were baseless; but this has so stigmatized him with his inner circle that he is forced to make a new start elsewhere. This is not a made-up case, but one familiar to me from my own experience -- and one which, by the way, could just as easily affect a homo- or heterosexual as a pedophile.

"The media -- private or public, press or television -- is, in my opinion, primarily responsible for the present-day hysteria that acks any sense of reason and at the same time makes the lives of human beings run the psychological gauntlet.

"But what could the lives of pedophiles within society look like? The distorted public image of pedophiles makes this question seem heretical.

"It is in this or a similar way, against a background of psychological and sociological half-truths, that one dares to join the pedophilia discourse. It is in this or a similar way that pedophilia is a profitable subject, via which one can attain wealth and prestige, provided that one knows how to properly [144] market oneself. Or, one can make oneself stand out through a corresponding statement to one's circle of friends, to one's co-workers, during the family supper..."

"However what is ignored in all of this is the fact that pedophilia, like all sexual preferences, has not only a sexual but also (and of course in constant interaction with one another) a psychological component. Pedophiles fall in love with children in precisely the same way that homosexual men fall in love with other men and heterosexual men fall in love with women. This ability to love, to adore the beloved, to suffer because of him and want to do every imaginable good by him is -- again and again -- simply denied or ignored as far as pedophiles are concerned. Also disregarded is the fact that many pedophiles relate to children particularly well, and that it is easier for them to gain a child's trust -- and indeed not with any sort of ulterior motives but rather than on the basis of their ability to empathize with them.

"Who even wants to know that without pedophiles there would be far less youth work? That many children would be missing an important adult careperson who is interested in their whole personality, with all its strengths and weaknesses? As more and more pedophiles pull themselves back, there will be more and more children and teenagers who no longer have anyone to look out for them.

"Pedophiles do not have to find their place in society, because after all, they have done so since time immemorial.

"Therefore pedophiles also fall in love, like all people -- just exclusively or predominantly with children. However they are not allowed to accrue any experience in this respect in the way that other young men do. Learning from their own nistakes remains denied to them. Even worse: Every mistake is punished with all severity and (with sexual experiences) often also with judicial inquiries, house searches, and imprisonment. Such a perspective makes them understandably and deliberately fearful.

"In order to be able to avoid this risk, many withdraw into isolation. This contributes to the establishment of make-believe worlds, which in turn can lead to pedophiles measuring reality by the yardsticks they construct for themselves, which in truth can result in some irrational acts over the medium-term. Another just as disastrous possibility for escaping this system are suicide attempts..."

"In our culture, and due to the prevailing attitude towards sexuality, the living-out of pedophilic sexuality -- even with the consent of a physically and mentally mature boy -- is taboo. This reality is reflected in the law, which in German-speaking countries fixes the age of consent between 14 and 16. An elevation to 18 of the cutoff age for childhood has already been ratified in the countries of the European Union, and will go into effect shortly.

"Concerning possible injury to the younger partner, a distinction must always be made between primary and secondary harm. As was mentioned above, no definitive statement can be made regarding primary harm because this area is not investigated, and at the moment there aren't even any efforts being undertaken along these lines. Nevertheless, due to the stigmatization of pedophilia, secondary injuries are likely: Even if it hardly ever reaches the point of actual intercourse, genital caresses are, under certain conditions, enough in and of themselves to arouse in the child a sense of shame, insecurities with regard to his sexual identity, or concerns about possible legal consequences. It is understandable that something which is stigmatized everywhere, has to be kept a secret, and in any event is completely new to the child, is hardly able to be experienced as natural or unreservedly pleasant; just as rarely as it is on the pedophile's side. Such a relationship also becomes unnatural in the event of a quarrel or crisis: Neither of the participants -- but especially the boy -- is able to unreservedly confide in a third person without risking discovery."

[145] "Add to that the fear that a close friend could be punished -- not to mention the consequences that would ensue if the two were actually discovered: separation, interrogations, further and subsequent stigmatization, therapy(...) 'One must make it clear to the children that they are victims,' sensibly asserted Jrgen Lemke of the Berlin abuse counseling agency 'Child at the Center'; perhaps without being completely cognizant of the significance of this statement.

"It is extraordinarily difficult foe a young man to decide to renounce the basic need of a lived-out, partnership-orientd sexuality for his entire lufe. The decision is a painful ne, and results in some hard times and depression being brought to my door. Nevertheless I see it as important and necessary: or this decision makes it possibe to prevent the above-described catastrophes in the lives of pedophiles and their young friends."

July 2005 SylviaTanner

Member, Society for Sexual Science, Leipzig (GSW)

(Mrs. Tanner has been providing counseling to pedophiles and their family members since 1994. Having now served over 2,000 such clients, she is a true expert in this field.)

[FN1:] "Contrary to public perception, a non-negligible portion of criminal sexual acts against children -- especially girls -- are perpetrated by non-pedophiles. Because distinctions are seldom made in cases of this type, the public's perception of the number of pedophiles committing criminal acts is higher than it really is. In addition to journalists, those responsible for this disastrous generalization also include self-appointed experts and more or less comperent advocates of various child-protection initiatives, to whom there is of course ascribed a high degree of competence on the subject by politicians, journalists, and the population at large. Because their social exclusion makes it considerably more difficult for those affected to intervene in this process, the largely paralyzed pedophile minority largely serves as society's bogey-man."

T4 [14] "[Reporter] Luke Malone : My interest in pedophiles began in the wake of the Jerry Sandusky trial. He had just been sentenced on 45 counts related to child sex abuse. It got me thinking about how all this starts and if there's a way to prevent it. I mean, Sandusky wasn't born a 68-year-old child molester. How old are pedophiles when they start thinking about kids this way? Do they ever want to do something to stop themselves? And if they do, who can they turn to?

I spoke to experts and dug around online. I came across a site, a group of people who acknowledged their attraction, but want help dealing with it. Most of the men I spoke with first noticed an interest in children when they were about 13 or 14. I had no idea. I asked how they reacted when they first knew something was up.

For most of them, this was going back 40 or 50 years. And I realized that I needed to speak with younger guys, ones who were going through this right now. I asked the men if they knew anyone like that. And a week or so later, I got an email.

My name is Adam, it read. I'm 18, and I'm the leader of a support group for pedophiles around my age. I'll be very happy to talk with you. Adam is now 19. Just to remind you, Adam isn't his real name. And his voice has been altered to protect his identity. But even knowing he'd be anonymous, he was uncomfortable.

Adam You know, nervous.

Luke Malone Why?

Adam Just don't think I'm a very [vocal? ® ] person. It's even weird for me to say it out loud. You know, it's something I type, probably 50 times a day, [15] just chatting with some people online, but actually saying it out loud is not very easy for me.

[ ® This is a printed transcript of a radio program, which appears to have been computer-generated, and not proofread by an actual human being. We say this because a few words seem to be close homonyms to words that would actually make sense in their given contexts. Thus, those 'sensible' words will replace (in brackets) the actual words printed in the transcript.]

Luke Malone Do you see yourself as a pedophile?

Adam Uh, yes.

Luke Malone And have you ever acted on your attraction?

Adam No.

Luke Malone Here's the first of many distinctions, I wasn't clear on when I first met Adam. And it's an important one to make. Technically, you don't have to act on your desires to be a pedophile. Pedophilia marks the attraction, not the behavior. Adam doesn't want to act on his attractions...

Guys like Adam hit puberty and discover they're attracted to little kids. And what's remarkable is that they have to navigate that all on their own, with no frame of reference. Everything they're going through, they have to figure out for themselves at, like, 11. I was surprised when Adam first told me the specifics of his attraction. It was hard to relate to, and so you're prepared, difficult to hear.

He's most attracted to kids between the ages of eight and [thirteen?]. He was 14 whe he started watching porn, porn involving children. For privacy, he found a way to connect an old computer that he had in his room. Before long, he was downloading it on a daily basis. He couldn't believe how easy it was.

Adam It was exhilarating. That's the most accurate thing I could say about it.

...

Adam And it was a little while later, as I started watching this stuff more and more, when I kind of realized that I was getting older, and it wasn't some phase I was going through, but the children I was interested in were actually getting younger.

Luke Malone Did is strike you as wrong?

Adam At that age, no. I knew it was illegal. I knew it was considered wrong. But I did not know why it was considered wrong. I figured it was something that wasn't allowed. I'd been using it for two years, before I started to think these children are real people. And they could potentially be hurt with this.

Luke Malone The way Adam figured it out was particularly brutal. He was 16, and he came across a video he wanted to use. There's no wasy way to say this. It involved a very small child. An 18-month-old.

Adam I remember thinking that I wanted to reach though the computer screen and kill the person. I was just so horrified at what I saw. At that point, I knew something was really wrong.

Luke Malone He began reading up on child abuse and was upset at what he learned. He decided he wanted to stop watching child porn, and he needed help if he was going to do that. For that help, Adam turned back to the internet. He posted on a mental health forum, explaining his situation and asking for advice. Two women who were child abuse survivors befriended him. With their help, Adam says he stopped watching porn. But in its place grew a deep depression.

It wasn't like he's stopped having sexual thoughts about kids. He says he felt like a monster for having viewed the videos, but also just for having the attractions. Some days, he thought about killing himself. He didn't know what else to do. He was 16. He wanted to talk to someone. So he started with a cautious letter to his mum.

Dear Mummy, it begins, I'm writing this letter to you, as I cannot bring myself to say what I need to say to you to your face. It would simply be too painful to me. I am always overshadowed with feelings of depression, guilt, and shame. I'm really sick and tired of covering these feelings up. I want you to let me see a psychologist. I [17] understand you probably have a lot to ask me. But I need to get my head wrapped around things. Love, Adam.

He didn't explain the source of the problem, and his mother never asked. Instead, she made him an appointment at a local therapist for a week or so later.

Adam I remember it was a Friday morning, very early in the day. I was her first patient. We got there, even before she got there. And I was just very nervous. I knew exactly what was coming. I'd known for so long that I was going to walk in there and what I was going to say. And I'd rehearsed it in my head.

Luke Malone And what was the script you'd been playing over and over in your head?

Adam I am a pedophile, and I'm addicted to child pornography. And I remember I walked in there, and we started talking. And then she kind of said, so what are you here for? And I said, well, I'm very anxious. And she said, well, why are you anxious? And my heart was beaing. I'd never been so terrified in my life.

But I uttered the words. I said, well, this is difficult to say, but I'm a pedophile, and I'm addicted to child pornography. And I saw kind of a look of horror on her face, and she asked me to repeat that. She must have thought that she misheard me or something like that. But I repeated it. Then immediately, she went from being this very nice, gentle person to very harsh and critical.

Luke Malone What did she say to you?

Adam Well, she raised her voice, telling me this isn't OK. And we talked about it a bit. I mentioned that at that point, I'd been, I think, 11 weeks clean of child pornography. But I was terrified the whole time. And I remember she tried talking with me about why I have these attractions.

And she was obviously convinced that I had trouble talking with people my own age, so I felt less judged by younger kids, and that's why I was interested in them. Ad that's apparently a very common thing for therapists who aren't at all trained in this area to think.

Luke Malone So she didn't even believe that you were a pedophile. Just that you couldn't kind of make it with kids your own age, essentially, yeah? Is that what you're saying?

Adam Yes, yes. [18]

Luke Malone And what did you say to her in response?

Adam Oh, well, I disagreed. I said, no, I really firmly believe that's not the case. I know what I'm attracted to. And it's not like I'm -- I had friends. It's not like I didn't have a single friend. I said, look, these attractions are more intense than they are towards any adult I've ever met or seen. And I'm really confident that it's not just being scared to talk to people my own age.

Luke Malone Was it kind of weird or frustrating kind of disclosing this massive thing about yourself and then having to kind of just really drive it on home and prove it to her?

Adam Yeah, it was definitely -- it was annoying. But I'll tell you the feeling that overcame me most the whole time was that I was being judged. That's definitely what I felt most when I left later. I considered writing an email to her, apologizing for dropping such a bombshell on her. And I saw her again.

Luke Malone And wha happened in that second session?

Adam So she was a little calmer. She'd obviously had some time to think about it. She basically told me, pretty much instantly, that she couldn't help me. And she said that she'd looked arond, but she really couldn't find much.

And then within a few minutes, she asks, how I'd feel if she told my mother about what was going on. So first, my heart obviously started beating much faster, and I became incredibly anxious. And I said, I really don't want to do that. So she left the room for a minute, and came back in with my mother.

Adam's Mother And I sat down. And the first thing that I recall the therapist saying is we've got a problem.

Luke Malone This is Adam's mum. Her voice also has been altered.

Adam's Mother The therapist looked at me, and I can't remember her exact words, but it was something like --

Adam Adam is addicted to pornography. Ad then she paused for a little bit, and then she said, a very specifc type of pornography. Then she said it's child pornography.

Adam's Mother And she continued to say that she couldn't see him. We then talked a little bit, not details, about what had been going on. And Adam did not contribute at all. He sat there just shaking and looking at the floor. [19] And I do remember that she then turned to Adam and said, how do you feel? And he said, I feel like I'm going to throw up.

Adam You know, my mother, I'm sure, reacted the best I really could have hoped for. She kind of put her arm on my shoulder and squeezed a little bit. She seemed to be supportive. I'm sure she was in shock, probably kind of horrified but at least she was able to hide that. And the fact that she was able to do that, it meant so much to me.

Adam's Mother And I looked at him, although he wouldn't give me eye contact. I looked at him, and I said, Adam, we're going to help with this. Whatever it is, we can help with it. And don't worry, I'm with you.

Luke Malone On the car ride home, Adam told her that he wasn't just attracted to children, but also to adults.

Adam You know, and I explained that I'd never done anythng to hurt someone before and that I never would do something to hurt someone.

Adam's Mother When I had moments to be alone afterwards, I was very devastated in realizing the enormity of what we were dealing with. I was shocked. It was the last thing that I could have fathomed that was a problem for him. There were absolutely no signs. I have no earthly idea how Adam may have developed his attraction to children.

Luke Malone She and Adam both say he wasn't abused. His home life was stable. He had good relationships with his siblings. Adam's mum did find him a new therapist, one who specialized in porn addiction. This one normally didn't treat minors,and was reluctant to take Adam on. She had to plead with him to accept her son as a client. He eventually agreed.

She says until our interview, his two therapists are the only people she's spoken to about Adam's attractions. She hasn't told a friend, not a therapist of her own, not her husband.

Right now, if a pedophile shows up in a therapist's office wanting treatment, it puts a therapiust in a difficult situation. First, there are no guidelines on how to treat pedophiles who haven't offended. There's a lot of confusion in the field about how to handle them. Also, they're in a tough legal position. If a therapist thinks someone poses a threat to a child, they're legally obligated to turn them in, because of mandatory reporting laws. They can lose their license if they don't. So when it comes to counseling a pedophile, therapists have to gauge how likely that person is to act. They're in a sticky situation where they have to make a judgment call about how dangerous someone is. [20] Professor Elizabeth Letourneau is one of the top researchers on child sexual abuse in the world. She has done this work for 25 years. She says the great thing about mandatory reporting laws are that they've brought to light lots of crimes against children. But as they got more popular, she saw it affect the number of people reaching out for help.

Elizabeth Letourneau Self-referrals for help really dried up. And people watched helplines just go silent, because folks are too afraid to reach out for help. The consequences are too high.

Luke Malone Professor Letourneau is the director of the Moore Center for the Prevention of Child Sexual Abuse at Johns Hopkins University. And it's with that mandate, the prevention of child sexual abuse, that she's pushing hard for research into people like Adam. We don't know much about the sexuality of adolescents, let alone what might make someone a pedophile.

Elizabeth Letourneau It is a gigantic black hole in science.

Luke Malone Among things we don't know, we don't know that there's a connection between being abused and developing an attraction to kids. Crazy, right? We don't know what's normal, when it comes to the sexual development of children. It might be normal for a 12 year old to be attracted to a six or eight year old.

Another thing that has not been researched in-depth is if having an attraction to kids makes it more dangerous to be around them. On its face, it seems obvious. But there is no evidence to support it.

The research that we do have, and this is from a very small sample size, suggests that pedophiles are more [likely?] to be shorter, left-handed, and have a lower IQ. Another study says that being knocked unconscious before the age of 13 may be a factor. It shows just how little we've scratched the surface.

For years, Letourneau has been trying to change all this, to get money for research, and for prevention programs. But there's not much money for that. Funders don't want to be associated with pedophilia research. The stigma is too great. Even someone like Letourneau, who wants to do this research in order to prevent children from being abused, has been called a pedophile sympathizer, simply for advocating these programs.

Elizabeth Letourneau If we can prevent this, we can prevent a lot of harm and a lot of cost. And we just don't. It's nuanced. It's difficult to wrap your head around. Let's put them on a registry. Let's put them in civil commitment facilities. And forget about them. [21]

Luke Malone The place that research is the most solid is in the numbers. Studies suggest that an astonishingly large number of men are pedophiles. A respected survey by Michael Seto, director of the Forensic Unit at the University of Ottawa, found that 3% of all men have sexually offended against a prepubescent child. Though not all these men would be considered pedophiles.

But he goes on to estimate that 1% to 3% of men would meet the diagnostic criteria for pedopulia, which equates to anywhere between 1.2 million and 3.4 million pedophiles in the U.S. alone. That means there are lots of people who presumably try not to offend, with nowhere to turn for help. There's almost no research to explain why they are the way they are, and no known treatment. Which is how a teenager might conclude that his best option is to invent his own way forward.

At 17, Adam started searching online for other guys like himself, young men struggling to deal with their attraction to kids. And some responded. They got to talking online. And soon there were a bunch of them, communicating on a daily basis. Before long, Adam realized that he had inadvertently formed a support group for young pedophiles.

There are currently nine members, ranging in age from 16 to 22, eight men and one woman. They communicate in the same way that any bunch of teenagers do -- Gchat, text, email, the odd phone call, or video chat. And there's usually at least a few people online each night. I've talked to five of them, and met three of those in person. They all said they're glad to have found the group. And for most, it's the only outlet they have. Everyone I've spoken to has a story about how the group saved them. A 22-year-old college student told me this one.

Anonymous College Student There was a time when I was really running out of hope for the future. I was unemployed, and I felt like no one was going to give me a shot. And I felt like I literally had no shot in life. And I kind of wanted to kill myself. I didn't do it. The first thing I thought of was especially Adam, in specific, but the rest of them as well, that I couldn't let them down like that.

Luke Malone The governing principle of the group is that you can only be a part of it if you agree that it's wrong to have sex with kids. There are other pedophile support groups online who feel the opposite, who advocate for the abolishment of age of consent laws. Others suggest that molesting children is wrong because it's illegal, but stop short of taking a moral stand.

[22] Here's another important distinction. Eight out of nine in Adam's group say they are nonexclusive pedophiles, which means they are also attracted to their peers or adults, in addition to kids.

...

When I first started talking to Letourneau a year and a half ago, she told me that in her 25 years in the field, she'd talked to lots of young guys who've abused children. But she'd never spoken to a pedophile who hasn't, which I found pretty incredible. I told her about Adam's group, and she asked if I could put them in touch. She's since spoken to several of them ad has been talking to Adam regularly. And she's started to notice patterns, patterns that she can use to inform a treatment plan that she's getting off the ground.

Elizabeth Letourneau You know, before talking to Adam and the other young men, I didn't know when it really crystallized for them that this wasn't going away. I didn't know what the experiences were. I had no idea about the deep depression and the self-loathing and the fear that really characterized all of their adolescence.

...

[23] Luke Malone Imagine being a teenager and being told never to act on your sexual feelings for the rest of your life. That's what we're asking of these people. At the moment, there is no clear plan for how to do that. But maybe there should be."

O6 [292] "Am I not also to love and be loved?...It's tiresome knowing oneself evil always. That man up [293] there drips goodness like a sweat. I should just like a feel of it myself for once...They make a thing so deeply wrong that no morality can after apply. It doesn't matter how we go about it, kindly or coldly. No good is so good as to mitigate; all further wrong is a feather's weight upon the deed itself. One can be a gentleman thief. One can be a love-struck murderer. We're just unspeakable...The struggle is for the heart, for its claim to stand in the light and cast a shadow its own in the sun. [295] Help those boys build a nation of their own. Ransack the histories for clues to their past. Plunder the literature for words they can speak. And should you encounter an ancient tribe whose customs, however dimly, cast light on their hearts, tell them that tale; and you shall name the unspeakable names of your kind, and in that naming, in each such telling, they will falter a step to the light."

from 1984 , George Orwell, Signet Classics, 1949:

[217] "Being in a minority, even a minority of one, did not make you mad. There was truth and there was untruth, and if you clung to the truth even against the whole world, you were not mad."

-----

* Jerome V. Baumgartner et al., Assessment of the Wilson Sex Fantasy Questionnaire Among Child Molesters and Nonsexual Forensic Offenders, 14 Sexual Abuse 19, 25 (2002).

** 'DSM' refers to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Psychological Disorders, which is published by th American Psychological Association. The most recent edition is known as the DSM-V. (There are also references herein to the preceding version, DSM-IV-TR, where the 'TR' refers to a text revision of the previous DSM-IV.)

*** William O'Donohue, Problems With the DSM-IV Diagnosis of Pedophilia, 12 Sexual Abuse: J. Res. & Treatment 95, 96 (2000) (citing William L. Marshall, Pedophilia: Psychopathology and Theory, in Sexual Deviance: Theory, Assessment, and Treatment 152 (D. Richard Laws & William T. O'Donohue, eds., 1997)).

**** Kevin M. Williams et al., Inferring Sexually Deviant Behavior from Corresponding Fantasies: The Role of Personality and Pornography Consumption, 36 Crim.Just. & Behav. 198, 205 (1989).

***** John Briere and Marsha Runtz, University Males' Sexual Interest in Children: Predicting Potential Indices of 'Pedophilia' in a Nonforensic Sample, 13 Child Abuse & Neglect 65 (1989)

@ Claude Crepault & Marcel Couture, Men's Erotic Fantasies, 9 Archives Sexual Beh. 565 (1980).

@@ [from FN61:] Steven K. Erickson, The Myth of Mental Disorder: Transsubstantive Behavior and Taxonomic Psychiatry, 41 Akron L.Rev. 67 (2008), at 99.

@@@ [FN62:] Id., at 93.

@@@@ [FN62:] C.A. Allan, The British Psychological Soc'y, Response to the American Psychiatric Association: DSM-5 Development 25 (2011).

@@@@@ 'Hebephilia' is the attraction to pubescent minors, as opposed to 'pedophilia,' which is an attraction to pre-pubescent minors. Thus, 'pedohebephilia' refers to the attraction to either or both.

# [FN241:] Richard Kramer, APA Guidelines Ignored in Development of Diagnostic Criteria for Pedohebephilia, 40 Archives Sexual Behav. 233 (2011).

## [from FN244:] Michael B. First & Robert L. Halon, Use of DSM Paraphilia Diagnoses in Sexually Violent Predator Commitment Cases, 36 J. Am. Acad. Psychiary L. 443, at 450.

### Trial by Propensity: Admission of Other Criminal Acts Evidence in Federal Criminal Trials, 50 U.Cin.L.Rev. 713, 713-714 (1981).

#### Payne, The Law Whose Life Is Not Logic: Evidence of Other Crimes in Criminal Cases, 3 U.Rich.L.Rev. 62, 67-68 (1968) (quoting People v. Zackowitz, 254 N.Y. 192, 466, 468 (1930)).

##### Phillips v. State, 589 So.2d 1360 (Fla. 1st DCA 1991).

$ United States v. Johnson, 439 F.3d 884, 887 (8th Cir. 2006) (latter portion quoting Fed R. Evid. 404 advisory committee notes (1972)).

$$ Matter of Brandon, 55 N.Y.2d 206, 211 (1982).

$$$ People v. Malkin, 250 N.Y., 185, 201 (1928).

$$$$ [FN47:] Daniel M. Wegner & Ralph Erber, The Hyperaccessibility of Suppressed Thoughts, 63 J. Personality & Soc. Psychol. 903, 908 (1992).

$$$$$ [FN48:] Anita E. Kelly & Margaret M. Nauta, Reactance and Thought Suppression, 22 Personality & Soc. Psychol. Bull. 1123 (1997).