In the news today we frequently hear about pedophiles and child molesters. We have heard the horror stories of priest and bishops molesting boys, public school teachers having sex with students, and family members molesting children. While it is still taboo, the public view of a child molester has changed in the past years. It used to be that when we thought of a pedophile, we thought of a scary man lurking behind the bushes. This is not the case today, most of the cases of child molestation are by a person known to the child, whether it be a family member or a family friend.(Herkov, 2012) A pedophile is a person who is significantly older and has conscious sexual interests in prepubescent children. There are two kinds of pedophiles, the violent offenders and the non-violent offenders. The violent offenders are the minority of offenders. These are the one that pose the greatest risk to the victim and the public. Violent offenders are also known as child rapists. They use threat, intimidation, and physical force to overpower their victims. In most cases the child relinquishes sex for survival.(Bridges, 2012) The non-violent offenders are the most prevalent of all molesters. These are the people who use deception and enticement to lure their victims into submission. In a way, these offenders are using a form of sexual extortion. Sex is often rewarded or exchanged for acceptance, recognition, attention, or material gain. Often times the victim will resist, and since these are non-violent predators, they will increase the efforts to get the victim to accept their advances. If the child is persistent, the offender will most likely move to a more vulnerable target. If the offender does start sexually abusing the victim, the sexual... ... middle of paper ... ...July, 2004. Web. 5 Apr. 2015. http://www.transformationsjournal.org/journal/issue_08/article_01.shtml Bridges, Debbie. "Sexual Addiction Treatment, Signs,Causes, Symptoms." MedicineNet. MedicineNet, 28 July 2012. Web. 14 Apr. 2015. D’Amora, David and Burns-Smith, Gail. How Offender Treatment and Victim Advocacy can Work Together in Response to Sexual Violence," Sexual Abuse: A Journal of Research and Treatment, The Official Journal of the Association for the Treatment of Sexual Abusers,11 (October 1999), 296-297. Deirmenjian, JM. “Pedophilia on the Internet.” Journal of Forensic Sciences, 47.5 (2002): 1090-1092. Herkov, Michael. "What Is Sexual Addiction?" Psych Central. Psych Central, July 2012. Web. 14 Apr. 2015. Lamberg, Lynne. “Researchers Seek Roots of Pedophilia.” JAMA, the Journal of the American Medical Association, 294.5 (2005): 546.
Our text describes pedophilia as a person who “gains sexual gratification by watching, touching, or engaging in sexual acts with prepubescent children, usually 13 years old or younger” (Comer, 2013, p. 411). The movie, The Woodsman describes the story of a convicted sex offender recently released from prison. Walter, depicted by Kevin Bacon shed some insight into the motivations and thought processes that a sex offender, specifically a pedophile might have.
A pervert is not always just sexually molesting children but also women and men in their mature ages. Most guilty pedofiles claim they rape children and individuals because they are afraid of rejection of individuals their own age so they resort to an easily attainable human being (McLeod). Therapy to try and curve the direction of pedofiles sexual needs can help them cope with their abnormal sex drive and mental imperative. Some children experience a situation with their own father. It is actually common for a daughter’s father to rape her starting at a young age. A young woman by the name of Fran Henry, experienced sexual abuse by her own father (“Shedding Light”). She spoke out against child molesting and wanted to create a helpline for those who were victimized or the rapists themselves. Henry stated, “The abuse I suffered was egregious and affected every aspect of my life. But as an adult, I confronted my father. I realized that what I really wanted was not to see him in jail but to make it less likely to see other children suffer from what I had.” The importance of growing up in today’s society and being educated about sexual abuse is an important aspect of knowledge everyone should have. Many parents also do not recognize the warning signs from their children early on to
For a behaviour or action to be labelled as deviant, it will need to violate a social rule or norm, and invoke a negative reaction in the community (Goode 2014). The behaviour associated with paedophilia invokes a negative reaction in majority of Western cultures, as it disregards the accepted structures of a relationships and sexual orientation. For the purpose of this project, this behaviour was observed through a documentary called Danielův svĕt (2014), which follows the life of a self-proclaimed exclusive paedophile and his struggle in the community. Currently, there are various theories to explain the cause of the behaviour but as each theory is unable to give a full explanation; there is no definitive answer.
Generally, the public views women as nurturers, motherly and incapable of harming a child. Research indicates that female sex offenders capable of committing such acts have serious psychiatric and psychological problems. In comparison, research indicates male sex offenders are more callous, more antisocial, and promiscuous, involved in the criminal justice system, and have more victims (Miccio-Fenseca, 2012, slide 7). The consensus is that men commit their acts for sexual pleasure while women commit their acts due to psychiatric and psychological problems. Law enforcement, juries, and judges tend to empathize more when there are additional mitigating factors, such as emotional or psychological problems.
Pedophiles are men whose sexual wishes and desires for relationship bonds and love are focused either primarily or exclusively on children who have not reached puberty, whereby the relative importance of each of these three areas—sexuality, relationship, and love— may vary, as it does with other people as well. (Schmidt 473)
The term sex offender is generically used to describe someone who has been convicted of crimes involving sex, and these crimes include rape, molestation, sexual harassment, and pornography production and distribution. A sexual offender usually differs from a sexual predator because sexual predators usually seek to obtain sexual contact with another person in a methodically “predatory” manner. There are also pedophiles, and they are a categorically distinct form of sexual offenders, as their crimes are geared toward children. Also, they are considered to be sexual deviants. Pedophilia itself is defined as “a sexual perversion in which children are the preferred sexual object.” There has been many cases in the news about pedophiles and pedophilia. In Canada, there was Cecilia Zhang, who was kidnapped and murdered by Min Chen, a Chinese national who was in the country as a student. More recently, in the United States, Ariel Castro was convicted of kidnapping and raping three young girls; Georgina “Gina” DeJesus, Amanda Berry, and Michelle Knight. How can we explain pedophilic tendencies? Are pedophiles born that way or are they conditioned to be that way? There is no definite answer, but there are arguments to support both sides of this statement. This essay seeks to demonstrate that there are both biological and environmental factors that can influence a pedophile’s behaviour, and there are various ways in which they are assessed and treated.
Based on an article by the National Alert Registry by Dr. Herbert Wagemaker, four percent of the population suffers from sexual orientation toward children. In 1999, 93,000 kids were sexually abused. 50% of the abusers were parents of th...
... Resiliency in the victim-offender cycle in male sexual abuse. Sexual Abuse: A Journal of Research and Treatment, 14(1).
Pedophilia is defined as “an ongoing sexual attraction toward prepubescent children” (Tenbergen et al., 2015, p. 1). People with pedophilia are often described as a dangerous criminal. People among this category were considered as a category of offenders, by the criminal justice system, among the highest priority for the system to manage and maintain (Lynch, 2002). The differing views between psychologists and the criminal justice system has been a long drawn out debate. Pedophilia is considered a disorder in the DSM V, but by the criminal justice system it is viewed as one of the worst crimes a human being could commit, needing the most severe punishment.
“Once the etiology of a sexual disorder has been established, treatment can begin.” Most sexual problems can be treated through conventional methods like sexual education a man or a woman is taken into a room with a physician and proceeds with a “general, non-threatening examination of the eyes, ears, mouth, heart, and lungs.” The patient is then asked to lie down so that the physician can further the examination by tenderizing the patients genital areas. After the examination, the patients are then asked about “their thoughts and feelings about the examination.” When this approach to rehabilitation does not work, another method used is called psychotherapy. This procedure uses a very simple and universal treatment in the forms of self-pleasure. “With genital pleasuring, the goal is that the patient should learn to produce and respond to his/her own sexual arousal.”
Sex offenders have been a serious problem for our legal system at all levels, not to mention those who have been their victims. There are 43,000 inmates in prison for sexual offenses while each year in this country over 510,000 children are sexually assaulted(Oakes 99). The latter statistic, in its context, does not convey the severity of the situation. Each year 510,000 children have their childhood's destroyed, possibly on more than one occasion, and are faced with dealing with the assault for the rest of their lives. Sadly, many of those assaults are perpetrated by people who have already been through the correctional system only to victimize again. Sex offenders, as a class of criminals, are nine times more likely to repeat their crimes(Oakes 99). This presents a
One of the most hated, reviled, and public enraging individuals in society is a pedophile. Most equate pedophilia with a sexual molester of children or some sort of perverted freak. There is considerable misunderstanding about pedophilia. In a 1990 research study, the authors state “there is widespread belief among professionals the general public that sexual abuse causes sexual abuse.” The theory is referred to as “abused/abuser hypothesis of child and adolescent sexual abuse” (Garland & Dougher, 1990, p. 448). Fact is the face of a pedophile is not some monster lurking in our neighborhoods ready to pounce on the first child available. He is not necessarily a “dirty old man” either. A pedophile could be anyone: a next door neighbor, a lawyer, school teacher or a relative (Wylie, 1998). Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) categorizes pedophilia as a disorder only if the sexual fantasies or urges involve prepubescent children , if they last at least six months, if the individual has acted on them, or if they cause marked distress” (American Psychiatric Association, 2000).
Since they are so attracted to children and they can relate well with them. They are usually in lines of work that deal with children, but there are special cases where they do not work in an area with children. These perpetrators are usually male adults, but there is a small percentage they are a female perpetrator. On the Whatcom County Sheriffs Office, they list out specific characteristics that indicate a pedophile. They are pretty extremely secretive about their fantasies, due to the fact that they do not socialize with other adults their age. These perpetrators have a way of manipulating people. Since they are have a way with words they are usually non-violent with the children, they use other forms of
Paedophilia: comes from the Greek word; paidophilia, which means friendship. But such a meaning denies the true horror of their beliefs and actions. A paedophile is a person who fantasies about having a relationship with young children. It is a person with a dark, destructive and a disturbed mind. Society in general is revolted by these people but they are encouraged to view it with understanding. Many health officials describe it as a mental illness that has no known cure. This is why they have to hide their tendencies from public view. But who in there right frame of mind would send off their young, helpless child and pass them into the hands of a horrifying, mentally unstable babysitter? Would you leave your child alone? Defenceless and unable to fight them off? No, Of course you wouldn’t.
Crimes against individuals are nothing new. These crimes are in society from the Greek and Egyptian to the present time. With the creation of computer and Internet, typical personal crimes have been substituted for high-tech crimes (i.e. online sex crimes against children). One of the most hideous criminals against children are those individuals identified as pedophiles. Pedophile is defined as “an adult who is sexually attracted to children” (Knetzger & Muraski, 2008). Because this is a crime with an alarming increase rate, law enforcement authorities must be well-educated with typical profile of pedophiles and methods of operation.