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Pedophilia
Abstract
Pedophilia is defined as a sexual interest in prepubescent children. It is empirically linked with sexual offending against children: Child pornography offenders and sex offenders with child victims are more likely to be pedophiles based on self-report or objective measures of sexual interests. At the same time, some pedophiles have not had any known sexual contact with children, and perhaps half of sex offenders against children would not meet diagnostic criteria for pedophilia. Pedophilia can be diagnosed using a variety of methods and is an important factor to consider in the assessment of sex offenders because pedophilic offenders are more likely to sexually reoffend and require different interventions. There is no evidence to suggest that pedophilia can be changed. Instead, interventions are designed to increase voluntary control over sexual arousal, reduce sex drive, or teach self-management skills to individuals who are motivated to avoid acting upon their sexual interests.
... Dissimilarities in prevalence are also indicative of dissimilarities in perceived sexual deviance [39]. Another difference between pedophilia and both fetishism and hypersexuality is its demonstrated association with criminal offending [61,62]. Although pedophilia itself is not a criminal offence, its potential corresponding behaviours are. ...
... Following findings from Imhoff [19] and Jahnke et al. [12], it is hypothesised that hypersexuality will be rated higher on intentionality than both fetishism and pedophilia, with pedophilia rated the lowest. It is hypothesised that because pedophilia is highly deviant, rare, and associated with criminality [46,61,62], punitive attitudes will be stronger for pedophilia and fetishism than for hypersexuality, with pedophilia being the strongest. It is also expected that dangerousness, deviance, and intentionality will predict punitive attitudes toward pedophilia, fetishism, and hypersexuality. ...
... Where participants associated a high degree of dangerousness with pedophilia, they also anticipated that PWP would commit child sex crimes. It is unlikely that participants know of the empirical links that exist between pedophilia and sexual re(offending) [61,62], however it is likely high ascriptions of dangerousness emerge from stereotypical cognitions and prejudicial affect propelled by exaggerated and sensationalist film, television, and media portrayals of PWP [24,40]. This stereotypical style of thinking is overwhelmingly evident in pedophilia-stigma literature. ...
Background: Pedophilia is a deviant sexual interest subject to more public stigma and punitive attitudes than others. Pedophilia has received a disproportionate amount of scholarly attention in comparison to other deviant sexual interests. To address this, the present study offers a comparison of the public stigma and punitive attitudes associated with pedophilia, fetishism, and hypersexuality. Methods: Recruited in Australia, one-hundred and twelve individuals participated in an anonymous online survey. Stigmatising and punitive attitudes toward pedophilia, fetishism, and hypersexuality were assessed via sub-scales of perceived dangerousness, deviance, intentionality, and punitive attitudes. Results: Participants held harsher punitive attitudes toward people with pedophilia and thought them to be more deviant and dangerous than people with fetishism and hypersexuality. Participants perceived hypersexuality to be more dangerous and deviant than fetishism. No consistent combination of perceived dangerousness, deviance, and intentionality predicted punitive attitudes toward all conditions. Rather, combinations of punitive attitude predictors were unique across conditions. Conclusions: This research articulates the unparalleled public stigma and punitive attitudes faced by people with pedophilia, compared to people with fetishism and hypersexuality. Findings which suggest that public stigma is stronger for hypersexuality than it is for fetishism are relatively novel, as are the observed predictors of punitive attitudes toward each condition. Knowledge produced by this study contributes to an improved conceptualisation of how the public views individuals who experience deviant sexual interests.
... Nonoffending individuals with pedohebephilia (minor attracted people; MAPs) may suffer from impairments in general psychological and social functioning due to their condition in addition to the perceived or imposed risk to children and thus be facing specific problems in living with this interest in terms of risk management and social functioning (Dymond & Duff, 2020;Walker, 2017). Accordingly, practitioners should understand that pedophilia (psychiatric disorder) and sexual offending against children (criminal behavior) are not equivalent (Seto, 2009(Seto, , 2018. In the general population, research on the concordance between pedophilic fantasies and sexual victimization of children shows moderate effects (r = 0.48; Dombert et al., 2016) with the majority of men who indicated pedophilic fantasies reported no adult-child sexual behavior (56%). ...
Diagnosing pedohebephilia is fraught with obstacles given the tabooed nature of this sexual preference. The viewing reaction time effect (VRT) provides a non-intrusive indirect measure of sexual interest in minors. In forensic populations, the ability of the difference between the latencies while viewing child and adult sexual stimuli (VRT index) to discern child sexual offenders from a range of control groups has been ascertained meta-analytically. Given that the effect has been studied almost exclusively in forensic samples, its dependence or independence on prior overt (deviant) sexual behavior remains unclear. The present study sought to examine the relationship of prior sexual and non-sexual behaviors with the VRT in a sample of 282 self-referring, help-seeking men with and without pedohebephilia with and without a history of prior child sexual offenses (CSO) or a use of child sexual abuse materials (CSAM) recruited outside a forensic context. We found that (1) the clinical diagnosis of pedohebephilia but not prior CSO or CSAM showed a significant association with the VRT index; (2) the discriminatory ability of the VRT index did not differ significantly between samples with and without a history of prior overt sexual behavior with children; (3) the VRT index correlated positively with a behavioral marker of pedohebephilia in a subsample of individuals with prior judicially detected or undetected overt sexual behavior with children; and (4) in the same subsample, the VRT index correlated positively with markers of sexual interests in minors or hypersexuality but not of antisociality. Equivalence testing failed to refute a potential effect of prior sexual behavior on the VRT index. Our study showed that the VRT may provide an unintrusive diagnostic tool for pedohebephilia. The effect of prior overt sexual behavior with children needs further examination.
... Department of Health & Human Services; 2021). Accurate estimates are likely higher; five cases remain unreported for every reported case of CSA (Seto, 2009). CSA befouls normative development and results in a substantial economic burden. ...
Pedophilia is a significant public health problem. Despite its cost to society, little effort has been directed toward understanding idiographic differences in the development and maintenance of pedophilia. Extant literature emphasizes biological underpinnings and predictors of re-offense. In this article, we posit that pedophilic penchants in males originate due to language, cognition, emotions, and emotion regulation. Adverse childhood experiences, such as emotional and sexual abuse, are posited as a major contributor to the etiology of pedophilia. However, not all individuals attracted to minors present with similar childhood adversities. The development of pedophilia, in the absence of such direct training (childhood adversities), is difficult to comprehend. Relational frame theory, a comprehensive account of human language and cognition, aids in deciphering the idiographic underpinnings of pedophilia. The role of maladaptive emotion regulation in maintaining pedophilia is also described. This article presents examples of how relational frames are established and activated in distressing contexts. Finally, implications for future research are discussed.
... Specifically, the frontal lobe (orbitofrontal and dorsolateral prefrontal cortices) is responsible for CSO. In turn, the temporal lobe (amygdala and hippocampus) accounts for the sexual preoccupation with children often seen in pedophilic men (Seto, 2009;Tenbergen et al., 2015). ...
... At the same time, some paedophiles have not had any known sexual commerce with children, and perhaps half of sex offenders against children would not meet investigative criteria for pedophilia. 1 Pedophilia (otherwise spelt as paedophilia) is a psychiatric condition in which an adult or older juvenile experiences a prime or exclusive sexual desirability to prepubescent children. Even though girls typically begin the process of puberty at age of 10 or 11 where in case of boys at age 11 or 12 criteria for pedophilia extend the cut-off point for prepubescence to age 13. ...
Presently in the society main pathetic and cruel news is sexual harassment as well as molestation towards children, girls, women even old age people also. By keeping this concept to make people aware have taken this initiation to put light on a very interesting topic i.e. Pedophilia. Pedophilia is a type of illness in conventional usage, a psychosexual disorder, commonly affecting adults, manifested by sexual interest in preteen children or attempts to engage in sexual acts with prepubescent children. The word pedophilia originates from the Greek παῖς, παιδός (paîs, paidós) means "child", and φιλία (philía), "friendly love" or "friendship". The term paedophilia erotica was thought up in an 1886 article by the Viennese psychiatrist Richard von Krafft-Ebing. According to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, fourth edition text revised the fantasies, sexual urges or behaviors must cause clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational or other important areas of daily functioning. Some psychological treatment ways for treating this disease are Cognitive-behavioral Therapy (CBT), Psychodynamic Therapy, Neurobiological Interventions etc.
... For the most part (barring some subscales of the MSI), they are valid and reliable measures of paraphilic interest. However, while indirect measures may avoid issues associated with bias in self-reporting (Banse et al., 2010;Kingston et al., 2007;Seto, 2009), there have been inconsistent findings with validity (see Marshall & Kingston, 2018). ...
According to the DSM-5, an individual is diagnosed with a paraphilic disorder when there are persistent behaviours or fantasies that cause distress and/or impairment. However, there is limited research on assessing a continuum of paraphilic interest. The current study sampled 1,650 individuals (age range = 18–93 years, M = 33.64, SD = 16.1) from the general population in assessing a novel 53-item scale – Atypical Sexual Interests Scale (ASIS) – that measures six atypical interests: devotism, frotteurism, voyeurism, exhibitionism, sexual sadism, and sexual masochism. Factor analyses identified that the six-factor model was a poor fit, with the former suggesting a four-factor model; 21 poorly performing items were consequently removed from the scale, and a second confirmatory factor analysis was run. While the six-factor model was a better fit on the refined ASIS compared to unitary and four-factor models, three subscales (frotteurism, voyeurism and exhibitionism) possibly ‘tap into’ a single courtship deviation construct.
La déviance sexuelle est l’un des plus importants facteurs associés à la récidive chez les auteurs d’agression sexuelle. L’évaluation de ces intérêts représente un défi, puisque les personnes évaluées peuvent être réticentes à ce que leurs préférences soient sues. Des mesures novatrices, basées sur l’attention, par exemple le temps de visionnement (VT ; viewing time ), pourraient s’avérer des solutions de rechange prometteuses aux outils d’évaluation des préférences sexuelles existants. L’objectif du présent article est de présenter le VT et de faire une revue systématique des études qui ont fait l’évaluation de cette mesure de l’intérêt sexuel déviant chez les auteurs de délits à caractère sexuel. Les résultats sont présentés selon trois grands types d’étude : la capacité discriminante du VT ; les comparaisons de ces capacités discriminantes avec d’autres mesures de déviances sexuelles ; et la capacité prédictive du VT par rapport à la récidive criminelle à caractère sexuel. La majorité des études confirme la capacité discriminante du VT en fonction du sexe de la victime. Cette capacité discriminante est comparable à d’autres mesures, plus intrusives, telles que la pléthysmographie pénienne. Le VT représente donc une voie novatrice intéressante pour l’évaluation de la délinquance sexuelle.
Visual attention plays a central role in current theories of sexual information processing and is key to informing the use of eye-tracking techniques in the study of typical sexual preferences and more recently, in the study of atypical preferences such as pedophilia (prepubescent children) and hebephilia (pubescent children). The aim of this theoretical-empirical review is to connect the concepts of a visual attention-based model of sexual arousal processing with eye movements as indicators of atypical sexual interests, to substantiate the use of eye-tracking as a useful indirect measure of sexual preferences according to sex and age of the stimuli. Implications for research are discussed in terms of recognizing the value, scope and limitations of eye-tracking in the study of pedophilia and other chronophilias in males and females, and the generation of new hypotheses using this type of indirect measure of human sexual response.
Lay summary
Eye tracking has recently been applied as a technique to measure indicators of atypical sexual interests such as pedohebephilia. This review seeks to outline the theoretical-empirical rationale to support the responsible use of the technique and to delineate its current impact and scope in understanding pedophilia, hebephilia, and other chronophilias.
Purpose
Paedophilic individuals are a highly misunderstood and stigmatised group, with the general public tending to equate paedophilia with child sexual abuse. Given that paedophilia is often conflated as a psychiatric/mental health disorder and an extreme violent offence, the current study examined whether the stigma towards paedophilic individuals is related to negative associations with severe mental illness and extreme violence. The authors also used the terror management theory (TMT) to provide further insights into why paedophilia is so highly stigmatised.
Design/methodology/approach
A sample of 126 participants was split into one of six conditions and provided punitive and moral character judgements, as well as salience of death thoughts. Conditions were divided into three main stigma conditions (paedophilia vs schizophrenia vs homicidal ideation), which were further divided into two conditions (offending vs non-offending).
Findings
Results showed that judgements were harsher in the offending conditions than the non-offending conditions. Results also showed that the stigmatisation of paedophilic and schizophrenic individuals may be mediated by terror management processes. These findings suggest that paedophilia is believed to be associated with severe forms of mental illness where an individual is not able to control their own state of mind.
Research limitations/implications
Thus, addressing perceptions of dangerousness towards individuals with severe mental illness is a crucial step towards developing effective strategies to help reduce such stigma.
Originality/value
As one of the first studies to use TMT in this way, the current study provided much-needed insight into an important and under-researched area using available methods for such a sensitive topic.
Based on the hypothesis that unobtrusively measured viewing time reflects sexual interest, it was predicted that viewing times should correlate with ratings of sexual attractiveness and with phallometrically measured age and gender preferences. Four additional predictions were derived from the Symons (1979) evolutionary theory of human mate preferences: (1) male and female subjects should view slides of young adults of the opposite sex longest and adults of the same sex and prepubescent children of both sexes the shortest, (2) the correlation between viewing time and sexual attractiveness ratings should be higher among males than females (3) males should look at slides of pubescent females longer than females look at slides of pubescent males, and (4) males should look longer at adult females than females look at adult males. Two studies involving 24 heterosexual females and 58 heterosexual males provided statistically significant support for all predictions except the last one.
Among child molesters, phallometrically measured sexual interest in children is associated with having male victims, multiple victims, younger victims, and extrafamilial victims. These sexual offense history variables are also associated with risk for sexual recidivism. The present study of 1,113 child molesters was conducted to determine if these sexual offense history variables could be used as items in a brief screening scale to identify pedophilic interests (SSPI: Screening Scale for Pedophilic Interests). Using a cutoff score that classified 90% of a sample of 206 nonchild molesters as not having pedophilic interests, SSPI scores identified pedophilic interests among child molesters significantly better than did chance. In phallometric testing, individuals with the highest SSPI score were more than 5 times as likely to show pedophilic interests than individuals receiving the lowest score. The SSPI is not intended to be a substitute for phallometric testing, but it may be useful for triage and risk management when testing is difficult to conduct, or as a research instrument when phallometric data are unavailable.
To examine and describe hidden child sexual molestation committed by adolescent males, 582 college men were surveyed via an extensive questionnaire. Three percent (N = 16) of the men reported activity that met the criterion for sexually molesting a younger child. Most of the victimization experiences were initiated by the men (86%), and most involved female victims (67%). Few differences emerged between the molesters and nonmolesters on the family background variables, current adjustment measures, or measures of attitudes conceptually linked to sexually aggressive behavior. Compared to nonmolesters, however, the molesters were more likely to endorse rape myths and were more likely to have been sexually victimized as children.
Interest in the pharmacotherapeutic treatment of paraphilias is growing. Two classes of drugs have been tested: drugs that interfere with the normal production and action of androgens and psychotropic medications, in particular, anti‐depressants. We present a review of the supposed modes of action, the usual dosages, and the effectiveness of these drugs. Although the empirical validation of pharmacological interventions shows many methodological shortcomings, we conclude that pharmacological strategies as part of a “complete” psychotherapeutic programme can make a limited, yet relevant contribution to the treatment of paraphilias. More specifically, and provided that there is informed consent, antiandrogens should seriously be considered in the case of paraphilias, which are characterized by intense and frequent sexual desire and sexual arousal predisposing someone strongly to paraphilic behavior. Psychopharmacological interventions, also on the condition of informed consent, can be considered in the case of paraphilias, which are associated with obsessive‐compulsive or depressive disorders. Nonetheless, methodologically well‐designed studies remain a prerequisite for a definitive assessment of pharmacotherapy for paraphilias.