Child Abuse ‘Professionals,’ The Media, and Psychology

My Experience Last Night 
The Child Abuse Theories 
The Flaws in the Theories 
The Media 
Psychology of the Paedophile 

My Experience Last Night

Its quite an informal heading for introducing the part of this essay which is supposed to be quite heavy intellectually, but I felt compelled to scrap my original introduction last night when I nearly smashed my P.C. in a fit of rage after visiting the Cyber Angels channel on mIRC. I hope that I have succeeded in not letting my rage use emotive language to describe facts in a way that would make them be perceived by the reader in a biased light.

Anyway, Cyber Angels is a volunteer organization dedicated to protecting web users from stalkers, and for stamping out child pornography, paedophilia, and they educate families about how to stay safe online. They get a lot of media coverage, where they are portrayed as a very respectable organization, which is very aware of the dangers of paedophiles. They’re reported on in the exact same style as the statements of other respected child abuse professionals and organizations, and they actively seek publicity.

So, having heard so much about them, I decided to search for their real-time chat channel on mIRC. I introduced myself, being careful not to let on that I was a paedophile, or that would have provoked hostility. Their huge list of rules flashed on the screen about one every 2 or 3 minutes, declaring it as a family chat channel, so no profanity or talk of controversial subjects was allowed. The in-your-face attitude to the dissemination struck me as prudish, but fair enough as it was their channel. (Notice when I was describing the channel as ‘prudish’ I noted that it was how it struck me personally too be, and not how it WAS.)

So I tentatively asked on channel where it would be possible to debate issues pertinent to Cyber Angels. I was given a very solid reply. ‘No debating.’ Not even anywhere else. It was official police that issued were not discussed. I was told that to debate I would have to start my own channel.

There was no way to debate the validity of the goals of Cyber Angels. Not taken aback, (and it is not opinion that my opinion was that I was not taken aback!) I accepted a request from one of the Cyber Angel Operators for a private chat. She asked what my purpose in the channel was, and why I was co-channeling in a child love channel. 

I explained I was researching paedophilia, and I did not mention being a paedophile myself, (which would have been suicide.) I did ask her though if she felt that the fact that the topic of paedophilia, which provokes such emotional responses in certain people, was one that was not as a result adequately understood yet for the purposes of research. Blind hatred leads to a shutting out of alternative explanations. I did not say that I supported aspects of paedophilia, but instead suggested that it would help to combat paedophilia if there were some way that Cyber Angels could keep itself flexible and open to new developments and breakthroughs on the way that paedophiles operate and think. (That was my excuse to them for the need to be open minded anyway.)

She took exception to what I was saying. ‘A molester is a molester. That’s the end of it. We already know what its all about.’ she said. I had it explained that everyone who was a member of Cyber Angels obeyed what the group stood for or they weren’t a member.

‘A molester is a molester. End of story.’ 

How many times have I heard that. It is a way of saying that there is no variation between paedophiles. It is way of saying that such things should not be thought about or debated because the truth is ‘obvious.’ It is a way of saying that anything which the Cyber Angel personally perceives to be distasteful is automatically wrong. What is distasteful is usually anything that has anything to do with children that is not parents or teachers keeping children in the dark about everything except schooling and the obeyal of puritan parental wishes in the interests of the ‘family.’

I made another statement along the same lines about the need for being logical. By now she was definitely on to me. I noticed the hostility in her attitude towards me develop as soon as I started to talk about logic and the need for rationality. It was as though she somehow knew that I was going to argue on the side of paedophilia when I started my tentative questioning about rationality. 

She finished with ‘well, I’m afraid that I already know the dangers of what you are about to defend.’ That confirmed it. Are these people scared of what is rational? Do they realize that it threatens what they stand for? I get the feeling that deep down inside they do know this. Their anger towards debate is a sort of ‘how dare you insinuate that there is scope for questioning beliefs which I hold so deeply ingrained.’

Their attitude would not be so bad if it were only the case within the organization’s members. However, this is an organization which persecutes those people who are not to its taste, and they certainly aren’t members. This attitude towards the choice of groups that should be persecuted by fundamentalist child protection organizations is very dangerous. Their choice is not a rational one. Indeed it is based upon pure personal opinion, is inflexible, and not open to rationality. Such appalling prejudice emanates from an organization which, on the surface of it, appears so professional. I have read that this is true of nearly all other anti-paedophile organizations, although I could not fully believe it until I saw it first hand for myself for the fist time last night.

So I went back to my child-love channel. There I talked to someone who had gone to the Cyber Angels channel a year back and they had made him so annoyed he left there shaking. He said that he had tried to explain to them that he had desired and consequently enjoyed a sexual relationship with a man when he was a young child, and that he never regretted it, even in adulthood… the Cyber Angels had actually had the cheek to tell this man, who feels no mental hardship in adulthood, that because it is impossible for a child to enjoy sex with an adult that he must have false memories of what happened! Let me explain a little more about these theories.

The Child Abuse Theories 

Note: Please do not make the mistake of believing that because I justify something as ‘outrageous’ as paedophilia that my ideas can be extrapolated to encompass all ‘outrageous’ ideas. Some people make the mistake of believing that just because I recommend the abolition of laws against paedophiles that I stand for anarchy. I have reasoned my views, and never recommended abolition of laws ‘for the sake of it.’ Complaints of ‘well then where does he draw the line?’ or ‘but the line needs to be drawn somewhere, might as well be at paedophilia,’ are irrelevant.

Child abuse theories exist in mutually exclusive pairs. For example, that if you say you were abused as a child, you are obviously correct and you need to be listened to and given therapy. If you say you weren’t abused as a child though, you are simply repressing the memory, which needs to be searched for through therapy until it is found.

This is a perfect formula for indoctrinating people with your beliefs, leaving them with no room to stray from your teachings. If they disbelieve you, they’re simply in denial, and they won’t want that! Theories like these also serve the emotional hang-ups of child abuse theorists themselves. It allows them to deny the existence of loving forms of paedophilia, the existence of which is an emotional threat to these people because of unresolved issues of guilt with sex from their own sexuality (although this theory is very loosely proven and I am always open to fresh suggestions.)

Put basically, someone cannot be said to be traumatized if he is emotionally satisfied with life, and not stressed, which is the indicator of a true perception of happiness. Remember happiness is only a state of mind and as such is up to the individual’s perception of happiness. The fact that the man who enjoyed sex as a child with adults remembers those events with the same clarity as he remembers any other unrelated events, still feels no ill emotional effects from those events, and to top it all off, now he’s an adult, he sees evidence of the same enjoyment in kids that he felt when he was a kid, all this would seem to prove that the conviction that kids actually do enjoy sex is correct.

 The only reason people don’t believe it is because of mutually exclusive theories which allow people to believe whatever they believe no matter what. To tell someone that he is simply in denial if he believes something different from you doesn’t even need to take into account the facts or likelihood of a situation.

There may be an alien spaceship in your room at this very moment. This alien spaceship is probably an inch in front of your face right now. Its just that its cloaked!!! You see, there is an excuse for everything, but it doesn’t make it likely.

But don’t misinterpret what I am saying. People can genuinely forget what happened when they were children, and children can be made to remember things that didn’t happen if they are told about the ‘events’ enough times. The difference between repressed or false memories of child abuse and memories of enjoyment, are that child abuse is not usually totally repressed, and if false memories are implanted, they are not going to be of something totally opposite. They will be of the actual event, but if it was traumatizing they will be a toned down version, or a version which distances the subject from the traumatizing event, such as a memory which places the victim as an observer. 

If a memory is totally false, it is not going to have an intense feeling of emotional attached to it such as happiness in our example, if no emotion would have been felt at the time of the memory’s creation. Emotion is felt in the context of memory by association, in the same way that a song listened to at the time of feeling a certain emotion will bring back that emotion when re-listened to.

I am also not saying that there is a deliberate malicious plot by child abuse ‘experts’ and other professionals to hide the truth. A malicious character does not have anything to do with it. These people are doing what they genuinely feel to be right for society. It is that they are not recognizing the influence of their own repressions and denials. 

This particular theory is blatantly similar to that used by the child abuse theorists, I know (although the rest of my theories are totally different in structure.) The difference is that my theories are open to debate and logic, are based on observable facts as described in part 2, not assumptions and fancy psychological dogma which has too much room for error, and therefore are not the product of my own emotional feelings. 

Like I said at the beginning of Part 2, a paedophile is capable of believing that sex is bad for children too, and because loving children is what paedophilia is about at the most basic level, it is possible that the fact I am a paedophile would bias me towards either theory. A paedophile would NOT want to have sex with a child that he loved if he thought that it would hurt her. It is theoretically possible he would loose control and rape her, (although its no more likely with a paedophile than anyone else,) but that does not mean he could rationalize that behaviour as justifiable, paedophile or not. We need to look at evidence. Only evidence.

Such as on the Anti Paedophile Network’s official website, people may ask how paedophiles can justify even their loving relationships, when it is clear that even these can have the traumatizing effects (described in part 2.) The short sightedness of this comment almost defies belief (in my opinion.) 

What they are saying is that paedophilia is bad because paedophilic relationships cause stress. That statement on its own ignores all of what is known about paedophile justifications saying that the cause of that stress being the result of unnecessary taboo. 

‘Professionals’ are able to scoff at the fact that paedophiles try and justify their actions, and people go along with it, because this scoffing is carefully published in the absence of any explanation of the beliefs being scoffed at. In Jean Renvoiz’s ‘Innocence Destroyed’ there is a short section ‘explaining’ that there are paedophiles who rape children, and that they are sordid enough to justify rape! Of course what is not said is that they were not trying to justify rape, but were trying to show that their actions were not actually rape, therefore justifiable.

Having said what I’ve said, I’d like to complete this section with a summary of criteria for how I believe professionals come to many conclusions. In my correspondence with paedophobes I consistently stress the blindingly emotional nature of their reactions to talking with paedophiles, the consistent reply being along the lines of ‘some things are above rationality. With some things you must go with what your gut feelings tell you to be right, because some things are too horrible for you to even think of entertaining a rationale of!’

To that I can only say that it shows just how futile any attempt at changing the opinion of a paedophobe is. The only way to tell someone they are wrong is to explain to them. Trying to get compatibility between a paedophobe and someone rational is the same as trying to stick an Amstrad disk from 1984 into a modern Microsoft P.C. It just doesn’t compute full stop. Once someone has fallen off the edge of rationality… it simply cannot be done.

Naturally I am not saying that people should be emotionless – only in the context of reasoning does emotion become dangerous. There is no shame in anger against those whom you hate if reason has already shown that those whom you hate are in the wrong. To hate someone blindly and without reason is just as wrong.

I hope though dear reader that you will have the rationality to heed that the opinion that paedophilia should not be thought of rationally is a flawed one for the following reasons:

1. This view assumes that it is correct simply because of its own existence, an assumption which doesn’t take into account any facts (well what do you know!)

2. It does not take into account that the origin of this instinctual aversion will probably be based around unconscious fears of sex itself ingrained in the adult as a child, independently of the facts about the inevitable (as opposed to societally created) harm of sex with children.

3. Any other emotion is the result of what is known to be fact. For example, pain is uncomfortable, so if you were in the presence of a torturer, you would have the prior experience of pain and the intuition about how a torturer would make you feel to become scared, angry, or whatever about the torturer. Emotion, bizarre as it may seem still originates from logic. To ignore logic is to become incompatible with the world.

The Flaws in the Theories

I have already said quite a lot about the way in which conclusions by paedophobes are irrational, but most of it has been rambling about irrationality in general. To get straight to the point, the following list was compiled by researchers of the Danish Paedophile Association from non paedophile sources to explain the flaws in methodology of researches designed to show that all paedophilia is child abuse. Here is the list with some of the accompanying article [*] edited:

[The writer here refers to A. Frederiksen's article which is in full on the Ipce web site: 
Pedophilia, Science, and Self-deception. A Criticism of Sex Abuse Research. 1999.]

The sex abuse industry has produced thousands of articles and books since the early 1980's. The very amount of research projects is in itself an indication that something has gone completely frenzy. There may be scientific reasons for repeating research that has already been done. These reasons are:

These purposes require that results are comparable, i.e. that they use standardized definitions and standardized psychological measures of harm. 

However, the many researchers have never found a commonly agreed definition for any of the concepts: child, sexual, or abuse - let alone child sexual abuse. In fact, 'sexual abuse' is a moral construct rather than a scientific construct. Such a concept should never appear in a scientific text. Few of the research projects are using standardized measures of harm, they fail to make the comparisons with previously published articles that the abovementioned purposes would imply, and there is little or no focus on improving methodology. Therefore, there is every reason to suspect that many of the research projects are inspired by emotional, moral, political, or religious motives, rather than by a scientific need.

While some improvement in methodology can be observed, most research projects are still seriously flawed. The most common flaws are:

The common belief that child sexual abuse is everywhere and extremely harmful, has led to many grotesque efforts to uncover the hidden abuse, and many false accusations. 

In 1983 in California, a psychotic mother noticed that her three-year old son's anal area was reddened and she became obsessed with the thought that he had been sodomized by a teacher at the McMartin preschool. The boy denied this, but after repeated questioning, the boy said that the teacher took his temperature. Convinced that the 'thermometer' was indeed a penis, the mother called the police. The police sent letters to two hundred families whose children currently or previously attended the preschool. 

All children initially denied being abused, but after repeated questioning by parents, therapists and police under a considerable pressure to disclose sexual abuse, many of the children told stories that became more and more grotesque. They told about animals being tortured and slaughtered and children being kidnapped, abused and mutilated in graveyards, hot air balloons, helicopters, and dungeons under the preschool. 

As the accusations spread during 1984, seven men and women were imprisoned, including an old wheelchair-bound grandma, and seven preschools were closed. Police and parents were digging for several years without finding any dungeons. No children had ever been missing, there were no adult witnesses, and no physical evidence of anything unusual. Rather than disbelieving these increasingly bizarre stories, the psychologists came up with the idea that the children had been abused by a satanic cult. It took seven years and many expensive trials before all charges were finally dismissed for lack of evidence.

While the writings of the sex abuse industry is very voluminous and conspicuous, there is a growing body of literature with a different opinion. Three psychologists have researched the sex abuse research and made a synthesis of the results. Rejecting those investigations that used highly un-representative samples (e.g. psychiatric patients) they found that the results were far less alarming than what is commonly believed. Their conclusions were:

The most harmful events are the ones associated with violence or where the child has no escape (i.e. incest). Voluntary sexual contacts do not cause harm. It is worth noting, that these conclusions are based on investigations that were made with the intention of finding harm. If these investigations are biased, it would be in the direction of exaggerating the harm.

While the articles that exaggerate the dangers of sexual abuse are often published in journals that seem to be quite uncritical, the abovementioned research articles that finds harm to be smaller than previously believed have been published in the most prestigious journals with very strict reviewing standards. While the sex abuse industry produces an excessive number of books and articles, they can hardly be said to represent a majority opinion among scientists. Mainstream sexological handbooks and encyclopedias present a far more relaxed view on child/adult sex, as does many books in other disciplines such as history, anthropology, and human biology.

Please note that the sources referred to in this article are not listed here. Go to the Danish Paedophile Association’s website [*] to view sources.

[Or to Frederiksen's article or to the Rind et al. files, to which the author clearly refers.]

The Media

The key to public opinion in western society is the media. The only reason why the Paedophile Information Exchange ever got some favorable publicity was Tom O’Carroll’s experience in a media job, and he is still going strong in the media.

Of course, this is not to say that the media tells the truth except for on occasion. With every personal experience of articles written in the newspaper I have found the papers in question to twist the truth or outright lie. At my school a boy whom I knew personally was in trouble with police for bringing weapons to school, and the local paper said out of the blue that he had brought weapons in which he hadn’t. 

The Mail On Sunday published an article recently in Scotland about a student from Glasgow University whom they claimed in the article had had his computer seized for investigations into paedophilia. He e-mailed me from his computer to confirm that he did indeed still have his computer, and that the newspaper had lied.

There have been many cases like this. So why does the media do this? Unfortunately the evidence I have seen does not point to simple mis-guidedness like with the child abuse ‘professionals,’ as that would imply that news reporters had had significant prior information moulding their opinions, yet the media creates the tone of the news, it is the originator. 

There are many reasons for the manipulation of public opinion.

1. News is a business. Social issues are emotional issues, not objective ones. A newspaper, in order to sell over a different one, must tug on the reader’s emotions, creating a bond with the reader. Exaggeration or lies about the facts of an event leave greater scope for the newspaper to use a tone of mutual sympathy with the reader for a possible victim.

2. If the newspapers in general have solidly set the tone of an issue, it is not in their interests to go back on it, as it would immediately alienate their readers. Opinions on a subject can only continue moving in one direction, until hysteria develops. The tone may change angle, but not basic principals. For example a newspaper may negatively publicize horrific stories of child abuse, and the next weak criticize social workers for harming children by going ‘too far’ in trying to deal with these cases of abuse. Both angles however supposedly have ‘child’s best interests’ at heart, an issue which the reader can sympathize with in tandem with the tone of the article.

3. Political gain may be a benefit to moulding the opinion of the public through the media. Politicians gain votes at election time by riding the wave of hysteria at election time. Politicians have ready access to the media as a platform for their views, and nothing is as failsafe for getting rid of political opponents than publicizing allegations of child abuse by them. The late M.P. Geoffrey Dickens was the prime example of this.

4. Other interest groups such as the police have a vested interest in having their successes heard by the wider public through the media. If they are seen to be doing a good job, funding is more forthcoming. Without the creation of the child abuse panic, many police departments wouldn’t even exist. Nearly all government funded child protection agencies rely on propaganda, (whether or not they are any longer aware that the rhetoric that it has become second nature to use is the product of propaganda campaigns.)

For the most comprehensive overview of the creation of child abuse panics, read ‘Intimate Enemies’ by Phillip Jenkins.

I am trying not to sound like a conspiracy theorist, because nobody believes conspiracy theorists. I believe that my ideas are not far fetched because I witness the proof for what I believe in my everyday life.

The level of hysteria now rife in western cultures is very evident. Child art is practically banned. Anyone who denies the validity of the claims of child abuse professionals is labeled as a supporter of paedophilia, even if this is not true. You can have vigilantes outside your house for being a pediatrician in Gwent. Even if everything I’ve said about paedophiles in this essay is wrong, this hysteria alone is reason enough to show the need for anti-paedophile sentiment to be relaxed a bit.

There is much irony to the anger directed towards paedophiles. Much of the horror at the idea of child sex doesn’t even have anything to do with paedophiles at all, they are merely used as scapegoats. Just as large a part of the story is the paedophobes' desire to crush the sexual independence of children, not to ‘protect’ them from paedophiles. 

Why else would there have been such outrage at the first screening of ‘Leon’ which led Luc Besson to edit out nearly half an hour of the film? Why was ‘Lawn Dogs’ so badly received, and to some extent, the film ‘Lolita.’ These films were about the sexual realizations of young girls. The girls in the films were depicted as falling in love with, and attempting to seduce men. With the exception of ‘Lolita’ the men were not paedophiles and showed no sexual interest in the girls whatsoever, yet these films were still branded as immoral and paedophilic. What do the age of consent laws making it illegal for two children to have sex with each other show? What does our refusal to give sex education to our children show? What it shows is the unwillingness of the public to accept child sexuality, and consequently, paedophilia.

Central to the continuation of the child abuse panics, which are essential to the survival of so many interest groups, is censorship. Of course all the ‘prefessionals’ are saying the same thing about the evil of paedophilia, because that’s the only opinion we are allowed to hear. If a panic has created the view that a certain opinion is distasteful, then that opinion will simply not get published, and therefore the knowledge of its existence will be kept to a minimum. 

For example, the works of the psychologists Rind, B., Bauserman, R. & Tromovitch, Ph. Their comprehensive independent study revealed that much ‘child abuse’ was in fact not as decisive a factor in the deciding of symptoms in later life as has been recently popularly assumed, not that they were supporting paedophilia as such. Although the work was published, it was inevitable that it was not liked by many powerful interest groups, so the report was attacked by the U.S. Congress itself as promotion of paedophilia. The report is naturally being banned… for what? For scientific inaccuracies of methodology? No. Its purely because its not what the powers that be want you to hear.

The panic has come so far over the last 20 years that there is now no question in the minds of the public that another side if the argument can exist. In their minds, if its to do with paedophilia, but isn’t slugging off paedophilia in the most offensive terms possible, (offensive in my opinion,) then its an intense evil to be exterminated. No questions asked. 

This gives the media and other interest groups a free ride. It is now possible to write whole newspaper articles without revealing any facts, yet still managing to make the ‘events’ sound sinister, for Example, in the article in the Yorkshire Evening Press about the trail that you personally brought to the courts. Although the article was admittedly short, I remember (because I can never find a damned article when I need it) that it kept referring to ‘paedophilic acts’ and acts of ‘indecency.’ They were opinionated terms which described nothing about the events which actually took place. What the ‘paedophilic act’ actually entails is not defined. 

A newspaper reader in the early 21^st century will assume that a ‘paedophilic act’ is in itself a matter of concern and a crime. The word ‘paedophile’ is what is of an issue here. For all I know the ‘paedophilic act’ could be a man kissing his daughter innocently on the cheek, but articles regularly phrased like this allow the media to associate the word ‘paedophile’ with all that is too awful to even be described. Unfortunately the article did not enlighten me as to whether or not the man in question was a sex monster… although I’m not disputing that he might have been, and only you, your team, and a possible victim will ever know the truth.

There are many ways that rhetoric is employed in the media. Examples include (pick up any paper to view my source material):

1. The example given above of ambiguous reporting.

2. Stressing the sexuality of a paedophile as being the decisive factor in other non-paedophilic criminal behaviour of a paedophile, while not stressing the sexuality of a ‘normaphile’ who commits the same such non-paedophilia related crimes, like robbing banks.

3. Trying to show that in the case of paedophilia ‘one thing can lead to another.’ For example if a child is killed during a sex orgy by some child abusers, it is played upon as an example of sexual activity with children leading to their horrible end. Violence is typified as being typical of all paedophilic sex, and not just of the one example given in the newspaper.

4. Typifying all paedophiles as being sneaky or cunning, in the shadows. Paedophile activity is described as ‘underground,’ even though the cause of the silence of paedophiles about their activities was selective reporting by the media itself, or fear on the part of the paedophile about being discovered due to hysteria the media generated in the first place.

That was by no means a comprehensive list. The list goes on… and on… and on…

I do not know if paedophilia or child abuse is more widespread, and for the purposes of this essay I don’t care. The point is that ‘true’ paedophilia does exist and it is ignored, regardless of its prevalence, which given the censorship on the subject its prevalence is likely to be very great.

The media often reports about what the police have said. This makes it hard to judge if the source of lies comes from the media or the police itself, seeking to score points. For example the media claimed that the police claimed to have smashed the ‘Wonderland’ child abuse ring. The police scored major points off this one. They claimed it had been a major effort, involving much technological expertise. They claimed that the ring had been totally smashed by cracking the password which was ‘Wonderland.’ In reality there was no password and not all of the men in the ring were caught. In fact, the word ring was an inappropriate word to use, (but is a good catchword,) as the group had no real elite membership or unique rites of conduct.

Psychology of the Paedophile

Unfortunately this essay is not nearly long enough to be able to dispel all of the assumptions surrounding the understanding of paedophilia. Unfortunately it may only serve to create new myths, as unfortunately inconsistencies in my writing style may lead to you believing I am saying something which I am not. I have just remembered a mistake I made in Part 2 – at the beginning of the section ‘What are the Definitions’ I asked questions with the aim of explaining the answers to these questions, thus presenting the questions as valid points of interests. Unfortunately I later asked questions of the reader starting in the ‘Sex’ section which were rhetorical, designed to show the ridiculousness of asking such questions. Someone who is ignorant of paedophile ideology would have had no way of knowing where I was and was not agreeing with the validity of the questions I was answering.

There are many different frames of mind in the paedophile ‘community.’ The mistake I made was exemplified in the sarcasm borne of repression. Because there is a nearly universal sense of being wronged by society amongst paedophiles, many have become accustomed to sarcastic jokes poking fun at paedophobes. 

I have seen websites detailing how to abuse children. They say things such as ‘be condescending, make her feel silly for refusing you, just have sex with her, then she will see that she ends up enjoying it,’ (although I can’t find the sites again to give a word for word account, but I’m sure you won’t disbelieve me. Paedophobes aren’t about to dispute that a paedophile website is saying something horrendous!) Of course, the site was not being serious. It was deliberately designed to read like something that a paedophobe would assume a paedophile website would endorse, to exemplify the ridiculousness of the paedophobe view. 

Unfortunately such jokes do us no favors as the sites say exactly what paedophobes want to hear, to use as evidence against us. Even if they do recognize the humor, they are likely to believe that it is a joke at the expense of abused, suffering children, and not at their own expense! This was the case with the hysteria over the Channel 4 Brasseye Paedophilia special. People didn’t understand it, and characteristically of panics over anything, most of the programmes detractors hadn’t even seen it to try and understand it.

I should think that in today’s social climate, all paedophiles are lead to ask the question ‘why me?’ Although the question is irrelevant because at the end of the day no matter what sexuality you are it does no harm so who cares, we still ask the question ‘why am I a paedophile?’ To a paedophile there has to be some reason as to why the ball and chain has been slung around his neck. Of course there is no divine reason, paedophilia can be assumed to just happen. Of course there will be environmental factors contributing to a paedophilic outcome for someone’s sexuality as well as the innate. 

Personally I think in my case it was mainly innate as I can remember from a very early age being attracted to girls much younger than myself. However, there have been environmental factors such as the fact that I kept the company of children at the beginning of my pubescence, which probably solidified the preference that had already developed in my childhood. (Then again, who says I didn’t keep the company of children because of an already solidified preference.) 

Other factors included the feeling of being talked down to by adults. I liked to get along with adults when I was a child, but I resented the condescending attitude of some adults, and I also, as a pre-pubescent child, resented the way that children had so few rights in western society. I made a conscious vow to not forget the hardship of being a child in an unfair world, and vowed that when I was older I would remember so that I would not treat children with the same indifference or disrespect as the grownups of my own childhood. I discussed this factor on Girlchat, and here is how a conversation started from Eeyore:

"I was never part of an intimate physical relationship as a child. Do any of you, now that you realize your own attractions to kids, ever think back to your own childhoods and pick out the adults who seemed more willing to play with you on your own level than the "other" adults?

I can remember several such adults in my own childhood. They were almost always male. They were people such as the goofy uncle who used to have a few drinks at a family gathering and then suddenly joined in on all the kid games going on outside, by himself. He would toss us in the air, tickle us, make us laugh hysterically. Eventually he would be on the bottom of a giant pile of kids grabbing at him and giggling that they had an adult pinned on the ground. Usually his wife would end up having to come outside and call him an idiot and to come back in to join the adults. We would be so excited to see him, because he would be the one adult who was not so serious and boring and telling us to behave ourselves or to settle down. 

Were these guys like us? I'm sure not all were, but maybe some? I can also remember one or two very gentle male teachers growing up. Were they? What about the guy at the store I used to visit so often by myself when I was 10 or 11? He made me feel comfortable, talked softly to me, and seemed to really care. Adults usually scared me. These people did not. I liked them. Who were the pedophiles who crossed my own path when I was young? This is a question I often search a cloudy early memory or two for. Searching....for an understanding of myself....through my experience of them."

Here is Kero’s heart wrenching reply:

"To meet an adult who wasn't always serious and stuck up. I'm finding out that I was an exception, but my childhood saw nothing BUT the serious all-too-grown-up adults. Basically, every adult I ever encountered hated kids or at least disliked them, or considered them an inconvenience, or even wished them all dead or liked to hurt them...
One wonders why I hate adults so much now. I DO NOT want to EVER be like them. I feel this so strongly... that capitalized letters don't really do it justice. Let me try again:
I DON'T WANT TO BE LIKE THEM!
If I had met a single adult friend who actually treated me as a real person, I might have had a much easier life.. At least a place to run to... I probably would have run away WITH the person, I was so desperate at times. But then, I was under 24/7 supervision by my parents, who thought that any type of self-expression was a sign of being gay... and I was NOT ever to be gay. 
Heh, funny. I didn't turn out gay, but I turned out to be something my parents hate even worse: pedo. Woo! Ain't the love grand?
"I love you son" means nothing to me.
If there had been a person out there... an adult... to tell me they LIKED me... I can't really describe how that would have felt.

Probably why it feels so right to want to give that sort of comfort to children now... because I yearned for it so much at that age.
Ah well. On with life, then death.
snif
Kero"

Do not interpret Kero’s post as trying to show that a bad childhood causes paedophilia though. There are innate factors, and my childhood was not all that bad, and many paedophiles remember a distinctly happy childhood. 

However it is inevitable that all children will be on the receiving end of injustice though at some point, so this is probably a factor in the development of paedophilia in all paedophiles. Innate and other environmental factors, and social intelligence level will no doubt be all just as much to do with it. A paedophile has the social skills to interact with both children and adults, and the injustice a paedophile is subjected to will no doubt force him to question himself and his surroundings throughout his life, even as a child. Social intelligence may be a result of being a paedophile, but is just as likely to be a causing factor in paedophilia.

There are a large number of paedophiles whom realized their sexualities at puberty after having had childhoods in which they could have guessed they were paedophiles but never made the connection. There are probably just as many though who don’t make that connection until well into adulthood. They may be married with kids of their own. 

I have so far though only come across one paedophile who would contemplate incest. Of course a paedophile is more likely to be single and to not have kids of his own anyway. Sometimes male and female paedophiles find themselves compatible as soul mates through the mutual nature of their sexuality.

I have only come across one paedophile with any form of sadistic fantasies. She horrified the Girlchat community by describing fantasies of ‘raping screaming and snapping of little bones.’ So she got banned. Her mental instability though was a sad reflection upon the repression of paedophiles, as I was saying in Part 2 about young paedophiles not realizing or admitting to themselves the ‘true’ nature of their feelings. This young woman constantly describes worryingly irrational and intense feelings of disgust over her sexuality, and consequently over sex itself, and this has no doubt messed with her head.

This also brings me to another point to try and shatter the stereotypical view of the paedophile.

Paedophiles are of course not all men. On the web most forums are for men and women, and consequently attract both, although there are more men than women on such forums. To compensate though there are forums especially for female paedophiles. This may be due to the assumption that paedophile discussion forums are mainly for men anyway, because the paedophile community is in the popular perception dominated by men. It would seem then that the internet is populated by mostly male paedophiles, although the women paedophiles are hardly a small minority. I would estimate a about 1/3 ‘out’ paedophiles to be women.

It is believed by those psychologists not practicing the modern pseudo science (there are psychologists who’ve been practicing more than 25 years you know!) that women report paedophilia far less often because they do not recognize paedophilic feelings as being as such.

For example in our society it is clearly acceptable to have erotic contact with a baby or small child… providing you are female. Breast feeding, bottom wiping, cleaning etc are standard parts of the rearing of babies and toddlers. Women are traditionally depicted as actively enjoying the care of their young. Magazine covers on mothering unashamedly depict nude little girls in front of a smiling mother, or there’s the Johnson’s baby wipes advert describes a product which passes the kiss test, requiring a mother to deliberately kiss her child’s bottom. 

When a woman does these activities, because it is a woman, the activity is associated with the word ‘motherly’ and the word ‘motherly’ is consequently associated with the words ‘nurturing’ and ‘good.’ If a male engages in such activities it is associated with the word ‘paedophilic’ and we all know that the word ‘paedophilic’ is associated with words such as ‘pervert’ and ‘evil.’ 

Of course, in the context of women, paedophilia is recognized as nurturing, not abnormal, and therefore not requiring any special support groups or ostracizing. It is different if a man says ‘I want a small child to suck my erogenous zones.’ A nipple is after all an erogenous zone. 

I hear you protesting though dear reader! May I remind you that a large part of paedophilia is probably just the fatherly instinct trying to burst through. Why else would male paedophiles be amongst the only males in the world to actually care about children? Is there really much distinction between the affectionate and the sexual? There is no clear line to draw, as both affection and sex share so many of the same types of expression, such as the kiss or the caress.

I have even overheard women talking light heartedly on the bus about how one of their female friends was a paedophile, and how funny her oddity was. ‘Perversion’ is just not a word that is associated with females.

As for mental illness, the most common mental illness among paedophiles is usually depression or stress. This is brought about by the intense feeling of injustice from being wronged by the society that they are supposed to belong to. It is difficult for some to keep their sanity in the face of such a burden. Some seek therapy to prevent violence towards their surroundings or themselves. Suicide is quite common. 

A man from Girlchat committed suicide last year, as did one of my best paedophile friends. Most ‘out’ paedophiles are the fighters though, the ones who have the courage to admit who they are to themselves and others like them, to sense the injustice, and to keep a ‘stiff upper lip.’ Although I have no way to verify or disclose any actual figures, I would guess that paedophiles I come across are likely to be quite emotionally stable, whereas the ones who have not come ‘out’ are more likely to be suicidal.

I was intending in a section about psychology to explain the findings of Sigmund Freud, upon whose work all knowledge in the field of psychology is based (whether or not the modern pseudo scientific victimologists', or child abuse professionals' community will admit it.) It is curious that all that Freud discovered tallies with a libertarian view of the sexual freedom of the child.

 However, to explain his theories and to annotate them to that end would require another essay equal in length to the one that this has already become, and such a work will appear when I have 

To conclude, the problems I have discussed her can only be resolved in the short term by tough legislation. It will take a while for the public to accept my beliefs as truth. It will not happen overnight. 

In the meantime though more innocent paedophiles will be being persecuted for their beliefs. Perhaps laws against paedophobia could be discusses, in much the same way as homophobic comments or discrimination against homosexuals in the workplace on the grounds of sexuality is illegal. Lets work for a better future for minority groups.