C 2005) Archives of Sexual Behavior, Vol. 34, No. 1, February 2005, pp. 3–5 ( DOI: 10.1007/s10508-005-0996-6
Letter to the Editor
Thoughts on Combating Pedophilia in Non-Offending Adolescents1 Pedophilia and child molestation are emotionally charged terms in today’s society. In the heat of public attention, the distinction between the two is often lost and the pattern of arousal is not distinguished from the pattern of behavior. The purpose of this letter is to reassert that distinction and, through a discussion of my own unfortunate journey as a 12-year-old with a pedophilic arousal pattern to an adolescent sex offender, to suggest strategies of early intervention that decrease the suffering both of potential perpetrators and potential victims. Although experts debate the etiology of pedophilia and whether it should be considered a mental disorder, there is a degree of consensus that pedophilic arousal patterns often begin with puberty (Abel & Harlow, 2001; Gaither, 2002; Salter, 2003). The offending behavior, however, often does not begin until a youth is in his middle to late teens (Abel & Harlow, 2001; Fagan, Wise, Schmidt, & Berlin, 2002). This is a significant gap and will be my focus. Before I delve into my youthful experiences and provide my more mature recommendations, let me offer a brief autobiography. I am a convicted sex offender who served over six years in prison, and I first came to have a recurrent, intense sexual attraction to significantly younger children when I was 12. I committed my first sex offense against a child while I was still a juvenile. My diagnosis of pedophilia came in 1992, after my arrest at age 22. During the eight months between my arrest and my incarceration and when I was out on bail, I was treated as an inpatient at the Behavioral Medicine Institute in Atlanta. I then moved to Minneapolis to receive outpatient therapy through the Program in Human Sexuality. I then participated in prison programs run by the Iowa Department of Corrections and the Missouri Department of Corrections and was finally involved in required weekly
group therapy for over a year as a condition of my parole following my release. What follows, then, is based on my personal experiences, on years of therapy with modalities ranging from aversive conditioning to cognitive restructuring to empathy development, and on a review of some of the literature on the subject. I don’t know why I became a pedophile. Perhaps it goes back to a brain injury I suffered when I was three or maybe it relates to the fact that kids my own age tormented me when I was in grade school. Regardless of the origin, however, I do know that as a child with low self-esteem and almost no friends, shortly after puberty, I began masturbating very frequently as a form of escape. The object of my first fantasies was a 6-year-old boy who lived up the street from me. Again, I’m not sure why my first fantasies were about him, but it is possible that I fantasized about him because he was the least threatening person I knew. As a 12-year-old, though, I was completely unaware that there was anything inherently wrong with being sexually attracted to a 6-year-old. All I cared about was that masturbating felt good. The fact that I was masturbating regularly to pedophilic fantasies didn’t faze me in the slightest. Herein, however, developed a problem for me which would have been most effectively been dealt with at puberty. Specifically, by the time I was old enough to understand that my sexual fantasies involving young children were not acceptable, I had been masturbating to these deviant fantasies for three years, and this had pretty much become an ingrained thought pattern I was unable to end. Abel and Harlow (2001) assert that some youth unknowingly condition themselves to become pedophiles by repeatedly masturbating to fantasies about children, and this seems to be true in my case. Twelve years later, after a rape in prison left me with a clear understanding of the harm sex with non-consenting person causes and with no interest in being sexually involved with anyone, I was nevertheless was still troubled by unwanted thoughts about prepubescent children. My first recommendation, thus, has to do with contacting newly pubescent youth to help them to understand that, while they themselves are not bad, having
1 Editor’s
note. A longer version of this letter was submitted as a commentary, but was not accepted for publication. The reviewers and the Editor did, however, share the view that portions of the commentary were of potential interest to the readers of Archives. Accordingly, an invitation was made to submit the material as a peer-reviewed Letter to the Editor.
3 C 2005 Springer Science+Business Media, Inc. 0004-0002/05/0200-0003/0
4 and dwelling on sexual thoughts about young children is dangerous. They should also understand that even if these thoughts are only fantasies, they should talk to an adult about it and get help. Such a message could be directed towards middle school students. In addition, parents and teachers could be taught to be aware of known “warning signs” that at-risk youth exhibit, such as when an adolescent “spends most of his/her spare time with children and has little interest in spending time with someone their own age” or “buys children expensive gifts or gives them money for no apparent reason” (Stop It Now!). If my problem at 12 was that I was unaware that my masturbatory fantasies were wrong and becoming ingrained, by my middle teens I came to realize I had a problem, and I desperately wanted help, yet had no idea to where to turn for that help. For the first two years following puberty, I had no real sense of what my sexual identity was. Shortly after I turned 14-years-old, however, I came to believe I was gay; the majority of people I found attractive were male. When I was 15, however, I came to realize that I wasn’t really like other homosexuals in that the males I found attractive were almost always significantly younger than I. Then, after coming across the term in a high school textbook, I came to realize that I was, in fact, a pedophile. By this time, I had already begun sexually touching significantly younger children and there was a time in my sophomore year of high school where I became greatly distressed by both my thoughts and my behaviors. This was not an issue I felt I could bring to my family. In an attempt to get help for my problem, however, I did approach my high school sex education teacher, told her a little about my attraction to young boys, and then told her that I thought I was a pedophile. My teacher’s response, unfortunately, did not get me involved in any type of treatment. Instead, her initial response (which was given in 1986) was one of utter bewilderment. She, like most adults of the time, had no idea what to do with such a disclosure. She eventually recommended to my mother that I get involved in an organization called Growing American Youth, which serves and offers support for gay and lesbian teens; however, this referral provided me absolutely no guidance on how I could live without molesting children. The only thing I got from the being involved in this group was the knowledge that “it’s okay to be gay” (and a couple of offers from a teenage boy who wanted to perform oral sex on me). That was 20 years ago. With the advent of the Internet and the greater sexual frankness over the past two decades, today’s teenager in search of help might have more success than I did, but the odds are still
Letter to the Editor stacked against him. Being a teenager, he is still unlikely to confide in his parents, preferring other sources of information. But in searching for help, he must steer a difficult course between judgmental, condemnatory material which further damages his self image and, on the other side, material which is sexually alluring or provocative in content or intent. So, what can be done to ensure that the teenager who struggles with his attraction to children finds useful and accurate information when he wants help? One idea would be to provide training to teachers, school officials, and youth workers on how to identify youth who may be struggling with this issue and provide training on how to respond in a non-judgmental manner to a youth who discloses that he or she does indeed have such a problem. It would also help to provide workers with actual places to refer the youth to. Additionally, more written resources should be available and publicized. There are currently hundreds of pamphlets and books available for teens which talk about drug addiction, alcoholism, divorce, depression, teen pregnancy, and sexual orientation, yet there are practically no written resources available for teens who struggle with a pedophilic arousal issue. It would help tremendously for written resources to be made available which would reassure these youth that they are not bad people just because they have inappropriate sexual thoughts, that sexual contact with young children is never okay, that there is help available, and that it’s not a good idea to keep the problem a secret (cf. Hossack, Playle, Spencer, & Carey, 2004). Finally, a key component in these interventions– whether in person or written–would involve helping the youth to understand the severe emotional damage sexual abuse causes to young children. For me, the most effective part of treatment, and the reason I no longer have any desire to be sexually involved with any child or nonconsenting adult, centered on developing empathy for my victims and truly understanding the pain I had caused. Similarly, if teens with pedophilic arousal patterns are able to truly understand the pain child sexual abuse victims suffer before they begin offending and before the thinking error that “it’s okay to sexually touch young children as long as force isn’t used and as long as the child agrees to the contact” sets in, I believe their chances of living offense-free lives will be dramatically increased, even if they are never able to completely eliminate their attraction to young children. There is a huge opportunity available for society to reach these adolescents before they offend. By teaching newly pubescent youth that sexual activity between older persons and children is illegal and very harmful and by providing avenues to adolescents struggling with this issue
Letter to the Editor to get help, we can go a long way in keeping troubled youth from becoming sex offenders who wreak havoc on the lives of innocent children. REFERENCES Abel, G., & Harlow, N. (2001). The stop child molestation book. Philadelphia: Xlibris. Fagan, P. J., Wise, T. N., Schmidt, C. W., & Berlin, F. S. (2002). Pedophilia. Journal of the American Medical Association, 288, 2458–2465. Gaither, G. A. (2002). Pedophilia as a sexual orientation? Archives of Sexual Behavior, 31, 485–486.
5 Hossack, A., Playle, S., Spencer, S., & Carey, A. (2004). Helpline: Accessible help inviting active or potential paedophiles. Journal of Sexual Aggression, 10, 123–132. Salter, A. (2003). Predators: Pedophiles, rapists, and other sex offenders: Who they are, how they operate, and how we can protect ourselves and our children. New York: Basic Books Stop It Now! Warning Signs About Child Sexual Abuse [Online]. Available at http://www. stopitnow.com/warnings.html. Accessed May 23, 2004.
Brian E. Oliver, B.L.S. 2358 McCausland, Apt. #4 Maplewood, Missouri 63143 e-mail:
[email protected]
