Media reports into the recent child abuse scandal that is threatening the BBC’s reputation as a credible news broadcaster make several assertions that those involved are ‘paedophiles’. However, this definition may or may not be valid if we consider the scientific and psychiatric definitions of ‘paedophilia’.
According to DSM-IV, paedophilia is defined as a
primary or exclusive sexual interest in prepubescent children in people over the age of 16 years. If the person is under the age of 16, then the object(s) of sexual attraction, to be classified as paedophilia, must be more than 5 years younger than the person with peadophilia
This then turns into paedophilic disorder when these desires begin to cause harm to the person themselves, or others – be that physical harm or psychological harm leading to impaired functioning of the ‘paedophile’. DSM-V, due for release in early 2013, makes some recommendations to change the clinical criteria for paedophilia, and strives to encompass another group – those who are attracted to older-age (i.e. post-pubescent) children.
Contrast this scientific definition to the one that is used in popular culture. If you read through the recent newspaper reports on the now scandalous cases of Jimmy Savile, the Bryn Estyn Children’s Home in Wales, and the debacle surrounding the potential involvement of former Conservative politicians in child sexual abuse, you could be excused for thinking that paedophilia was an all-encompassing term used to describe a whole manner of child abuse perpetrators.
As we have discovered through an analysis of the scientific basis for labelling somebody a paedophile, the act of committing a sexual offence against a child is neither a necessary, nor a sufficient criterion. Paedophilia is not a crime, per se, but acting on it is.
If we accept the scientific definition of paedophilia and consider it within the context of sexuality, it is possible to suggest that many paedophiles never actually commit sexual offences. After all, a heterosexual man does not walk the streets and attempt to have sex with every adult woman he sees (despite the ramblings that you may find on the websites of hardcore feminist pressure groups).
It is clear that there is a marked disparity between the actual definition of paedophilia with the way in which it is represented in the popular media. Take, for example, the recent television advert for the bread company, Kingsmill. The piece features a schoolgirl, played by an 18-year-old actress, wearing what can only be described as a provocative school uniform (see picture, above). It should be noted that the way in which the uniform was worn in the advert would not be an uncommon sight among older-age schoolgirls in schools up and down the country, not to mention among hen parties in towns and cities every weekend.
In this today’s Sun on Sunday, a piece written by Sara Payne, a pro-victims activist and mother of murdered schoolgirl Sarah Payne, commented how the advert “plays straight to the hearts of many paedophiles’ vile fantasies”. I don’t want to condemn Sara Payne at all, as she has had a particularly tough time what with the circumstances of her coming into the public eye, but I feel that she, along with Shy Keenan (co-author of today’s piece) need to exercise some caution when making such bold claims. The key piece of information in the definition of paedophilia is the one that qualifies the target of sexual attraction – prepubescent children. DSM-IV goes further and tries to define ‘prepubescent’, suggesting that these children will typically be aged 13 years or younger. With this in mind, I doubt many people would see the image of the girl from the Kingsmill advert and still classify it as paedophilic in nature. Of course, once DSM-V comes into existence towards the beginning of 2013, this could be the case, as the paedophilia subtype ‘hebephilia’ comes into play, but I, along with others, have commented on the validity of this category.
Countless times do we see the words “paedophile” or “paedo” spread across the pages of tabloid newspapers when reporting on sexual offences whereby children have been victimised – regardless of the background on the offender, or the age of the young victim. For example, one offence may be committed by a married man against his 14 year-old daughter, whilst another may be committed by a single man against an 8-year-old girl. Both would be described as acts of monstrous paedophilia, but in reality, only the second one is.
The impact of such misrepresentative reporting is reinforcement of the lay definition of paedophilia, which suggests any sexual offence involving somebody under the age of consent is paedophilia, and the labelling of hundreds of offenders each year. This labelling has a devastating impact on the opportunities for those convicted of any sexual crime involving children in terms of community reintegration upon their release from prison. Naturally, parents will be concerned whenever a convicted child sex offender moves into their neighbourhood. I propose that this is because of the lack of information provided to the public at large about this type of offender. The fact that 80% of child sex attacks take place within the family home, or by somebody known to the child, could be better presented in the public realm by altering some of the laws around victim and offender anonymity, allowing for a more accurate picture of child sex offending to be portrayed. This would then relieve pressure on Governments to introduce and enforce notification procedures, such as the popular ‘Sarah’s Law’, which have very little evidence of success.
This post is not written to glorify or condone sexual offending against children in any way. Of course, it would be ideal if nobody had sexual urges towards children, but we need to be careful in how we conceptualise and manage these people in the community. Whilst many paedophiles may go on to commit sexual offences, some will not. At the same time, it should be acknowledged that some people who commit child sex offences are paedophiles, the vast majority do not fit that description. Once we understand these facts, and they are widely, openly, and fairly discussed within the popular media, we can begin to move forward with a pragmatic approach to child sex offending, and a sensible, proportional public response to match.
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Good blog post!
If we all listened to Sara Payne and Shy Keenan, we’d have a nation of pale, pasty, obese, vitamin D deficient kids with rickets because the ‘paedofear’ invoked by their campaigns means they’d never be allowed outside the door. Keenan’s current tweets about making prisons essentially slave labour camps are abhorrent. Her quest for ‘victims rights’ ironically appears to allow basic human rights to be ditched at will.
I used to have plenty of time for people like Sara Payne and thought they deserved a voice in the justice debate but I’m wearying of it. I’m now moving far more towards Furedi’s position that ‘victimhood’ has almost become a status to be aspired to.
And I’m afraid once a person starts accepting money from The Sun whittering on about ‘victim’s rights’ – a rotten publication which has created many victims, I have absolutely no interest in anything they have to say.
Thanks for your comments.
Unfortunately (although I suspect I would agree with you), Shy Keenan seems to be of the opinion that I should not debate criminal justice policy with her and, as such, I cannot read her tweets.
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Hi Craig, I’m not sure if you are familiar with dissociation and trauma, especially some of the more recent neurological research. I posted an intro link for you on Twitter just in case. But in essence, it’s a common mechanism for survival many sexual abuse victims suffer from. And it’s linked to denial. Now denial is also very common within families where abuse takes place. So between the child’s dissociation and denial and the denial of other family members, as well as the very skillful covering up of an abusive family member, sexual abuse is buried, silenced, rendered invisible. This is especially the case in “good families” with respectable images, a decent income and standard of living, for obvious reasons. But of course, if you look at current trauma research, we see that CSA survivors in fact suffer a wide array of injuries, psychologically and neurologically. If the sexual abuse of the child occurred when the child was very young, there’s a good chance the survivor won’t have any memories—but they will have the injuries. In fact, the greater the dissociation, research is finding, the greater the neurological injuries and likelihood of PTSD. Check out research by Ruth Lanius for this.
Sexual abuse can also cause all kinds of sexual issues from fetishes and masochism and sadism, gender issues, repression, fears, an inability to have sex or sexual desires, etc. In simple terms, it can mess big time with the victims’ sexuality.
We also have quite a lot of research that points to the fact that while most CSA survivors do not become sexual abusers, most sexual abusers have been sexually abused. And this is despite the fact that denial and dissociation could be resulting in many saying they were not abused, although they were. Some researchers claim that pedophiles are the exception because many say they were not sexually abused. And maybe even family members are brought in and asked. Given the denial and dissociation that exists among CSA survivors, we cannot assume that this accurate. With all the other research and findings in mind, it would seem that it’s likely quite the opposite. Whatever the impulse that sexual abusers who were sexually abused feel to commit the crime against children is could simply be turned into “sexual attraction” in the mind of the pedophile. If this is the case, consider this: a man who was sexually abused as a young child, who is dissociative or was too young to remember, whose family denies it, and whose abuser hides it, finds himself feeling the impulse to abuse. He is horrified by this and doesn’t want to do it, but he rationalizes that impulse as exclusive sexual attraction, especially if he has repressed his sexuality otherwise as a result of the abuse. Now some experts and advocates tell him he is a pedophile. It’s biological. That’s denial and dissociation upon denial and dissociation, and it’s blame the victim. How are we helping him?
Meanwhile, those sexual abusers who are advocating for acceptance of pedophilia, men and women who are truly predatory, who turned their own victimization into the desire to victimize and rape children are gaining much from the argument that pedophilia is biological. If it ever was accepted as sexual orientation under the law, you can bet the legal arguments in their defence would play on this.
Whilst I accept your premise that many sexual abusers have previously been victimised themselves, I’d exercise some caution as linking the two as ‘abuse = future offending’, especially given meta-analytic evidence to the contrary (granted, there are serious methodological questions to be raised about some meta-anlyses in the social sciences, but they’re all we have at the moment). Additionally, whilst many child abusers may seem to fit criteria for paedophilia, it is also worth noting that many do not. Additionally, there are many ‘paedophiles’ (those with primary/exclusive sexual interest in children) that do not act on their fantasies, and this is something that should also be considered.
The issue of denial as a type of repression (which I think you may be alluding to) is a very interesting one. However, I don’t think we can extrapolate for this evidence that most paedophiles were sexually abused in childhood when the available evidence shows otherwise. To do so would be misleading and generalising evidence to fit your own theory. It is something, though, that could make an interesting research programme, should you be able to find an appropriate way of approaching it. I’ll check out the current research and write a post on it if I find something interesting.
For me, the key thing to bear in mind is that paedophiles, with their distinct sexual interests, cannot be cured. At this same time, this does not mean that they should be automatically considered a danger to society (in the same way that a heterosexual man is not automaticaly a risk to all women). ‘Treatment for paedophiles should focus on behavioural control, as opposed to trying to eliminate the underlying desires.
I hope this makes sense?
Craig
Craig, there sure are a lot of problems with meta-analysis, especially when based on studies that are outdated–and in the field of trauma and CSA, research can be outdated pretty quickly. If I’m correct, the meta-analysis you refer to goes back to the 1980s and 1990s. The link between sexual abuse as a child and sexual abuser (though it remains a minority of survivors) is very strong and based on many recent studies.
My observations are based on reading up on research from the various silos— dissociation and trauma, neuroscience, study of survivors, study of offenders, as well as media reports on CSA cases, talking to survivors, as well as my own personal experience as a survivor. It’s unfortunate so many experts in various fields don’t pay attention to each other’s work. Their combined knowledge is far more than they seem to realize.
I don’t think controlling behaviour is treatment. It’s simply controlling behaviour–always risky and Band-Aid. Society’s first priority is protecting children and preventing a horrific crime against them being committed. Defining the urge to commit a crime that causes physical, psychological, neurological injury to a child victim that can destroy their lives, shorten them through suicide and all kinds of other physical illnesses related to the neurological trauma injuries CSA causes is nonsensical. It is similar to the argument made in Islamist societies that rape occurs when a male is sexually attracted to a woman, hence sexual violence is prevented by women being covered from head to toe in public.
Most heterosexual and homosexual people do not go around suffering desperately trying to fight off the urge to commit rape, to have sex with someone knowing it will cause them devastating and lifelong injuries and shorten their lives possibly. Sexual attraction is just attraction. Sex is not always available to all heterosexual and homosexual people and for numerous reasons there are many who have to live a life of celibacy, either by choice or due to circumstances.
Pedophiles who claim they don’t want to act on their desires describe the angst, the pull, the fight to not do it, as if it is almost beyond their control. That is a sign of a pathology that has nothing to do with sexual attraction. It is the pathology of the urge to commit a crime against another. Sexual attraction is a rationalization of a criminal urge.
Pedophiles who lobby for legalization of CSA, of course, are lobbying in order to commit the crime without any consequences to themselves. When they lobby for pedophilia to be recognized as a sexual orientation, they’re trying to make us believe that that urge to commit a crime is sexual attraction. They also lobby against all science and knowledge about CSA and the extensive injuries it causes by claiming it does not harm the child.
If society defines that urge as sexual attraction, then it has to be consistent and redefine all sexual attraction as an almost uncontrollable urge that requires treatment, chemical castration, or whatever the equivalent is for females (because the evidence is increasingly pointing to the fact females sexually abuse likely as often as males) and accept rape, CSA, and all other forms of sexual crimes are simply due to individuals being overcome by the power of sexual attraction, which only the strongest or treated or medicated can control.