debate: what makes a pedo a pedo

[David]

[OEP]

[quote="OEP

Pietillidie was on the money whan he said it is about abuse of power.

David in part was pointing out that the same methods of punshment/rehab/ justice/ we use now have not been working. David was positing some options to consider - I reckon worthwhile options.

Firstly if you know anyone who has been the victim of this heinous crime then ask them how "challenging" they find the post or if they just find them down right insulting.

On your point about the Catholic Church and pedophilia being an abuse of power let me first state that my issue was with the generality of David's post on the matter, it made it sound like the problem was rampant within the Catholic ranks which it isn't. I don't deny the cover ups and denials that took place, that was disgraceful on the part of the Catholic hierarchy, but the number of Catholic Priests then and now that were / are part of this evil but it was a small percentage not the whole. With regards to pedophilia being an abuse of power well of course it is, the basic principle in any non-consensual sex act is power, the actual sex act is secondary to this. Pedophilia is an extension of this in that all the victims are easily overpowered and manipulated thus heightening the thrill for the attacker.
On the point of different thinkings on how to deal with pedophiles the fact is this is an unbelievable strong feeling to willingly give up and in a lot of cases the perpetrator does not believe they have a problem, they believe society does and therefore will never be able to be rehabilitated. Those very small numbers of pedophiles that do want to rehabilitate will never be fully rid of their desires and will always remain a threat to societies children. Further to this I don't see how pandering to a pedophiles needs is a radical way of dealing with this problem, it's merely re-enforcing their view that they aren't doing anything wrong.

OEP, to be clear, I wrote Davids ideas were challenging not victims of paedolphillia. To then ask how victims would feel insulted....about the term is not what I wrote.

Fair call, I was out of order.

[watt price tully]

OEP - cheers mate. By the way, OEM - I work almost daily with victims of abuse & sometimes with perpetrators.


David, Fritz Langs classic "M" brings me back to my uni days when I was studying Marx, Freud back in the '70's & 80's - my friends were studying Cinema Studies...brilliant movie.

Another of Lang's films not related to this thread a US film "The Woman in the Window" is one of my favourites - film noir & flashback with Edward G Robinson...great film.

[rocketronnie]

that was a fantastic read David, thank you.

It was a load of crap from start to finish.

Profiles of convicted child offenders which are taken after the offender has been imprisoned reveal a number of commonalities. Such profiles have been collected for years in this country and also in many other western countries.

1) At least 50% have been sexually abused themselves, and as a result have not been able to develop 'normal' sexual paradigms. Children become sex objects for these offenders because their own sexuality is stuck at that age when they became eroticised themselves often and the child victim is the reliving of their own sexual fantasies developed at that age.

2) It has been found that viewing child pornography exists on a continuum of offending whereby those viewing the images become eroticised towards children as sex objects, and develop eroticised fantasies about the objects of their desires. As such fantasies develop, the ped becomes planful regarding meeting and grooming a child/children with whom he can act out his desires. Once that is actually achieved, it becomes a short step to actually offending. Once the offending has occurred it is highly likely it will occur again and continue to occur, as sexual gratification is a highly significant reinforcer of behaviour. Over a long period of time the behaviour becomes normalized and the offending process becomes more sophisticated.

3) Given the links between viewing child pornography and offending, those just viewing child porn haven't moved along the continuum yet or haven't been been caught yet for their clandestine activities.

4) From both offender profiles and victim accounts child pornography is commonly used to normalize the idea of sex between child and adult by the ped.

5) Child pornography is used to form bonds between peds who reinforce each other's behaviour, encourage each other to offend, become eroticised over other peds offending, and in some cases leads to joint offending. Some peds keep a photographic trophy of their activities, often for their own erotic use but in the age for the internet/P2P networks these are increasingly used to 'boast', recruit and groom other offenders and also potential victims. Thus a 'viewer only' ped may move into deeper offendng networks through such contacts with entrenched peds.

6) The reason why peds are notoriously difficult to treat is that sexual pleasure is one of the most powerful reinforcers of behaviour there is. Peds of all degrees, love what they do. They want to keep doing it. They even love talking about it to therapists, profilers, etc because it turns them on. Child pornography assists in the gradual shifting of boundaries which lead to offending. Pedophilia is about skewed boundaries not chemical imbalances. I don't buy a 'biological inclination' to peds behaviour (just as I don't for many other disorders either). Ped behaviour has a behavioural/environmental causation. Peds aren't born - they are made. Even chemical castration has been found not to affect the thought processes of the entrenched ped. He can still get his jollies thinking about it. Most peds and viewers of child pornography convince themselves there is nothing wrong with the behaviour and that it is society that has the problem not them. Treatment programs have been found for adults to be of limited effectiveness because of the (mostly clandestine) cognitive resistance of the ped to change. In fact its been been found that exposure to treatment programs can give some offenders another vocabulary behind which they can hide their offending.

7) A common feature for many ped profiles is events in their childhood/teenage years which have led to the inability to feel empathy for others. This could maybe be major abuse episodes of non sexual abuse but not always so. Uncompleted grief processes in childhood have also been found to play a role in the development of limited empathic reactions.

Peds can either be gender specific or gender opportunistic. From memory I think gender opportunistic offenders have a higher percentage.

8: Intellectually disabled adult males also feature significantly amongst sexual offenders against children. However, the reasons for this is quite different to other offenders, and they deserve to treated as a different category of offenders to the others.

9) Most ped activity occurs within family units. Sometimes these are stepfather families but far from exclusively so. There are often inter-generational links to some of that offending but that is quite hard to prove in such cases. Porn can still play a role in the boundary shifting process for these offenders but so does easy access to 'live erotic' images also. The same lack of empathy is present in the personality of the offender which is possibly of more significant impact in the actions of the family offender, given the level of family closeness etc that exists in most families. For the more planful ped family intervenor offender, its is not so unusual for them to target as a partner someone they believe will assist/take part in the offending also - or are too vulnerable for whatever reason to stop them or notice their behaviour and its impacts on their family.

10) 'Humanistic' approaches to peds for rehabilitation are naive because they ignore the manipulative, planful nature of these offenders, and it simply opens up the Way for the ped to manipulate the system for their own advantage. For some offenders programs building victim empathy can work to a degree though it does little to alter their basic thinking that sex with children is a pleasurable activity, and relapses after those sorts of treatments are far from unknown. For the more entrenched offender (and there are many of those) the only real thing that works is to remove them from society more or less permanently. If they are assessed upon completion of their sentence as being either high or medium risk, then protective custody such as is employed in Victoria with some offenders is the most effective means of controlling their behaviour.Whilst this may outrage some of the civil libertarian amongst us, its the only way to deal with offenders that are assessed as likely to re-offend. This view is also held by many for the leading therapists in the field also. This is not a failure of therapy - its a recognition that this is behaviour, which, once established, is incredibly difficult, in some cases impossible to change. Having seen that kind offender close up, I can only concur that permanent incarceration is the best option for them.

I can't really comment on treatment outcomes etc of those caught with child porn as I haven't read much on that topic.

11) Most ped activity involves a grooming process of the victim prior to offending, often it is the more disorganized offenders who spontaneously offend. Some peds even comment on the 'thrill of the chase' such grooming gives them. Grooming of the child's parent to gain access to the child can also occur. The thing that always disturbed me about the Jackson case was that it seemed from the outside that grooming processes seemed to occur in the accounts given by the alleged victims of Jackson's victims (or potential victims accounts).

There are a lot more things i could say but overall I find David's position naive and ill informed. He shows little or no knowledge of therapeutic practices in the field in this country and even less of the work done recording offender behaviours etc. His differentiation between pedophiles and pedarasts is dangerously glib and flies in the face of years of practice knowledge of thse offenders. The cyber porn option, well, the less said about that the better. Someone touched on this before crudely, but David's position is once again the result of an 'academic' with no connection to the field making ill informed judgements based on the implementation of 'reason'. I have no problem with reason and reasoned arguments per se but i do when it is so blatantly misused in isolation from the existent body of knowledge relating to the issue at hand.

[Kingswood]

do u work in this area RR?

i havent been back to this thread but when i get time i'll read through it all.. sounds like a good debate..

[rocketronnie]

do u work in this area RR?

i havent been back to this thread but when i get time i'll read through it all.. sounds like a good debate..

I work in a a sphere that is closely related to it. Thankfully I'm in an area now where i don't have to have much to do with such types anymore.

[rocketronnie]

Just watched David ='s You Tube contribution. A few quick thoughts.

1) John refers to pedophilia as his 'sexuality' and separates himself from heterosexuality/homosexuality. That's a typical pedo cognitive slip justifying his aberrant behavior. He talks about his 'love' for children and the fact he's already offended. He may be the rare ped with a conscience but for those who have no experience with peds his presentation is quite misleading. Most peds are not like that, I doubt really that he is like that. His 'love' and 'attraction' will consist of planning and grooming in order to reach the object of his desire.

2) The good well meaning Reverend should be well aware that the average age for a first offence for many peds is 14. Given that probably most of his clients have already offended, and probably more than once.

3) No mention of success or relapse amongst the reverend's clients.

4) What work or notification to the relevant authorities is the reverend doing with the families of his clients? Treating them entirely confidentially just increases the risks to the ped's family as he is more or less colluding with the ped if this is kept confidential.

5) I agree that the talk back outrage regarding peds is not helpful as it encourages the view that they are isolated predators - when most are operating a family unit. It will always be the case its a heated issue given the taboos broken by peds.

Personally I found the story well meaning but ultimately misleading.

[Kingswood]

do you mind telling me the exact job and what degree u have?

a pm would do if you dont want it public

its in personal interest, think of it as career advice if you want to answer. cheers

[Kingswood]

OK I read the thread and am surprised at the level of backlash at David's first and subsequent posts. Actually, I shouldn't be surprised but I still thought it was a thoughtful one.

3) Given the links between viewing child pornography and offending, those just viewing child porn haven't moved along the continuum yet or haven't been been caught yet for their clandestine activities.

That goes back to what David was saying about Minority Report - punish them before they actually commit anything because the authority is sure that they WILL. That just seems wrong to me, no matter what the potential offence was. We're not saying that pedos should be left alone, but the current punishment for viewing child porn and the punishment for actually molesting a child is too similar as if its treated as the same thing?

5) Child pornography is used to form bonds between peds who reinforce each other's behaviour, encourage each other to offend, become eroticised over other peds offending, and in some cases leads to joint offending. Some peds keep a photographic trophy of their activities, often for their own erotic use but in the age for the internet/P2P networks these are increasingly used to 'boast', recruit and groom other offenders and also potential victims. Thus a 'viewer only' ped may move into deeper offendng networks through such contacts with entrenched peds.

Yes good point, I'm well aware of how the Internet has just made it easier for child pornography to be viewed and for communities to form. And I don't dispute that child pornography videos and communities in real life and the Internet should be banished. What we're discussing is the treatment of people who are just 'viewers'... rather than treating them as monsters and getting rid of them - as some in this thread have suggested - alternatives should be explored. The idea of animated child pornography is an extreme one, no doubt, but it still stands as the only new, alternative idea presented in this thread. I don't agree with it personally, but to play Devils advocate couldn't you justify it the same way we do with heroin clinics where addicts can get their fix legally rather than driving it underground where it becomes harder to manage?

6) The reason why peds are notoriously difficult to treat is that sexual pleasure is one of the most powerful reinforcers of behaviour there is. Peds of all degrees, love what they do. They want to keep doing it. They even love talking about it to therapists, profilers, etc because it turns them on. Child pornography assists in the gradual shifting of boundaries which lead to offending. Pedophilia is about skewed boundaries not chemical imbalances. I don't buy a 'biological inclination' to peds behaviour (just as I don't for many other disorders either). Ped behaviour has a behavioural/environmental causation. Peds aren't born - they are made. Even chemical castration has been found not to affect the thought processes of the entrenched ped. He can still get his jollies thinking about it. Most peds and viewers of child pornography convince themselves there is nothing wrong with the behaviour and that it is society that has the problem not them. Treatment programs have been found for adults to be of limited effectiveness because of the (mostly clandestine) cognitive resistance of the ped to change. In fact its been been found that exposure to treatment programs can give some offenders another vocabulary behind which they can hide their offending.

Interesting about the treatment programs not working. I'd like to know more about that, will do some investigation.

But I bolded a part of your post because it reminded me of something unrelated I was reading earlier. It was about how extremists in this world serve to shift the middle or what is considered the norm. For example, on a food scale, the extremist on one side would be a cannibal and the extremist on the other side would be fruitarianism. Most people would fall somewhere in the middle of the scale. If one of these extremes shifted further from the middle, it would make the existing outlying options only seem more normal.

10) 'Humanistic' approaches to peds for rehabilitation are naive because they ignore the manipulative, planful nature of these offenders, and it simply opens up the Way for the ped to manipulate the system for their own advantage. For some offenders programs building victim empathy can work to a degree though it does little to alter their basic thinking that sex with children is a pleasurable activity, and relapses after those sorts of treatments are far from unknown. For the more entrenched offender (and there are many of those) the only real thing that works is to remove them from society more or less permanently. If they are assessed upon completion of their sentence as being either high or medium risk, then protective custody such as is employed in Victoria with some offenders is the most effective means of controlling their behaviour.Whilst this may outrage some of the civil libertarian amongst us, its the only way to deal with offenders that are assessed as likely to re-offend. This view is also held by many for the leading therapists in the field also. This is not a failure of therapy - its a recognition that this is behaviour, which, once established, is incredibly difficult, in some cases impossible to change. Having seen that kind offender close up, I can only concur that permanent incarceration is the best option for them.

If what you say is true, then I would have no problem in agreeing that the only solution would be to remove them from society. However I am still not convinced. Disclaimer: I present no experience/ special knowledge in this area so I too could be viewed as naiive. So be it. You presented a lot of unbacked assertions in your post, but I will take your word for it that they are based on your extensive experience/ knowledge - at least more so than mine.. so thanks for the information.

Personally I still don't know where I stand on the issue. If nothing else, I guess I'm playing devils advocate by agreeing with what Dave says because, in his words.. debate is the way we move forward and I'd like to see this debate continued. As stated by the ABC youtube link most people seem to have two reactions - anger and uproar and wanting to shut them down/ get rid of them without debate or consideration; or silence.. not wanting to discuss the issue. And that has been exhibited by posters in this thread.

[Kingswood]

Some other thoughts:

What do people know about the rational of legal age for consensual sex? It varies from state to state all over the world so I wonder how they decided it. I know the reason for having it there, boundary has to be created, but I do find it funny that a girl who is 17 and 364 days is considered a minor then one day later she's allowed to be touched, like she's a different person all of a sudden lol.

Also - it was mentioned in this thread earlier but its pretty disgusting that child porn is available legally already in so many forms. I remember years back reading about these non-nude sites that present themselves as modelling websites for minors and have 8-14year old girls pose provocatively in bikinis and other revealing clothes. And there are many porn videos out there of girls who are over 18 but look underrage, like they were 14.. and you know the attraction that people have towards these girls is that they look underrage yet they don't feel guilty about getting sexual pleasure from them.

[OEP]

Some other thoughts:

What do people know about the rational of legal age for consensual sex? It varies from state to state all over the world so I wonder how they decided it. I know the reason for having it there, boundary has to be created, but I do find it funny that a girl who is 17 and 364 days is considered a minor then one day later she's allowed to be touched, like she's a different person all of a sudden lol.

Also - it was mentioned in this thread earlier but its pretty disgusting that child porn is available legally already in so many forms. I remember years back reading about these non-nude sites that present themselves as modelling websites for minors and have 8-14year old girls pose provocatively in bikinis and other revealing clothes. And there are many porn videos out there of girls who are over 18 but look underrage, like they were 14.. and you know the attraction that people have towards these girls is that they look underrage yet they don't feel guilty about getting sexual pleasure from them.

Why does that surprise you, there has to be a cut off point which means no matter what age was set it was always going to be X years and 364 days.

On the second paragraph, yes their cagey bastards. Only a couple of years ago I was on my father-in-laws computer (and before people start getting ahead of themselves, no he's not child molester) looking up online children's clothing websites, using a basic search engine. I clicked on a site that was clearly advertising children's clothing and was instantly taken to a hardcore children pornography site. I repeated the process to ensure it wasn't an aberration and then phoned through both website address to the authorities.
The people that create and run these sites know the Police, both domestically and internationally, are actively hunting for these sites and are they are adjusting to it.

[Kingswood]

dont find it surprising, but i just think when you think about it that way its funny concept. but i already aknowledged that their has to be a cut off point.
i wonder what the leniency is for someone charged with sex with a minor but she/ he was a few days to turn the legal age

[David]

Kingswood, I reckon age of consent laws exist for a very good reason, and as OEP says, there always has to be a cut-off somewhere. Few people know this, but the minimum 'age of consent' is actually 10 in Australia - provided that the other party is no more than 2 years older - and that continues up until the age of 16 or 17, depending on which state you're in. In every state except South Australia and Tasmania, 16 is the basic age of consent - a 16 year old can have sex with anybody, as long as they are not in an authority role (e.g. teachers, step-parents, coaches). I almost wonder if the age should be raised, as I tend to think that a 16 year old these days is far more mentally immature than a 16 year old would have been 50 or 100 years ago.

As for the child beauty contests, I don't think the parents (the organisers may be a different matter) have paedophilic tendencies, I think they're just mindblowingly stupid. Why would you actively participate in the sexualisation of your child? Not to mention the skewed ideas of body image and 'beauty' that such an event encourages. The tabloid media can be so hysterical about protection of children (the Henson incident was its nadir, in my opinion), yet why don't we hear more about this warped, borderline insane eroticisation of children over in America?

Sorry rocketronnie, I'll respond to your post in depth in a bit - I just wanted to get these out of the way.

[David]

that was a fantastic read David, thank you.

It was a load of crap from start to finish.

Profiles of convicted child offenders which are taken after the offender has been imprisoned reveal a number of commonalities. Such profiles have been collected for years in this country and also in many other western countries.

1) At least 50% have been sexually abused themselves, and as a result have not been able to develop 'normal' sexual paradigms. Children become sex objects for these offenders because their own sexuality is stuck at that age when they became eroticised themselves often and the child victim is the reliving of their own sexual fantasies developed at that age.

2) It has been found that viewing child pornography exists on a continuum of offending whereby those viewing the images become eroticised towards children as sex objects, and develop eroticised fantasies about the objects of their desires. As such fantasies develop, the ped becomes planful regarding meeting and grooming a child/children with whom he can act out his desires. Once that is actually achieved, it becomes a short step to actually offending. Once the offending has occurred it is highly likely it will occur again and continue to occur, as sexual gratification is a highly significant reinforcer of behaviour. Over a long period of time the behaviour becomes normalized and the offending process becomes more sophisticated.

3) Given the links between viewing child pornography and offending, those just viewing child porn haven't moved along the continuum yet or haven't been been caught yet for their clandestine activities.

4) From both offender profiles and victim accounts child pornography is commonly used to normalize the idea of sex between child and adult by the ped.

5) Child pornography is used to form bonds between peds who reinforce each other's behaviour, encourage each other to offend, become eroticised over other peds offending, and in some cases leads to joint offending. Some peds keep a photographic trophy of their activities, often for their own erotic use but in the age for the internet/P2P networks these are increasingly used to 'boast', recruit and groom other offenders and also potential victims. Thus a 'viewer only' ped may move into deeper offendng networks through such contacts with entrenched peds.

6) The reason why peds are notoriously difficult to treat is that sexual pleasure is one of the most powerful reinforcers of behaviour there is. Peds of all degrees, love what they do. They want to keep doing it. They even love talking about it to therapists, profilers, etc because it turns them on. Child pornography assists in the gradual shifting of boundaries which lead to offending. Pedophilia is about skewed boundaries not chemical imbalances. I don't buy a 'biological inclination' to peds behaviour (just as I don't for many other disorders either). Ped behaviour has a behavioural/environmental causation. Peds aren't born - they are made. Even chemical castration has been found not to affect the thought processes of the entrenched ped. He can still get his jollies thinking about it. Most peds and viewers of child pornography convince themselves there is nothing wrong with the behaviour and that it is society that has the problem not them. Treatment programs have been found for adults to be of limited effectiveness because of the (mostly clandestine) cognitive resistance of the ped to change. In fact its been been found that exposure to treatment programs can give some offenders another vocabulary behind which they can hide their offending.

7) A common feature for many ped profiles is events in their childhood/teenage years which have led to the inability to feel empathy for others. This could maybe be major abuse episodes of non sexual abuse but not always so. Uncompleted grief processes in childhood have also been found to play a role in the development of limited empathic reactions.

Peds can either be gender specific or gender opportunistic. From memory I think gender opportunistic offenders have a higher percentage.

8: Intellectually disabled adult males also feature significantly amongst sexual offenders against children. However, the reasons for this is quite different to other offenders, and they deserve to treated as a different category of offenders to the others.

9) Most ped activity occurs within family units. Sometimes these are stepfather families but far from exclusively so. There are often inter-generational links to some of that offending but that is quite hard to prove in such cases. Porn can still play a role in the boundary shifting process for these offenders but so does easy access to 'live erotic' images also. The same lack of empathy is present in the personality of the offender which is possibly of more significant impact in the actions of the family offender, given the level of family closeness etc that exists in most families. For the more planful ped family intervenor offender, its is not so unusual for them to target as a partner someone they believe will assist/take part in the offending also - or are too vulnerable for whatever reason to stop them or notice their behaviour and its impacts on their family.

10) 'Humanistic' approaches to peds for rehabilitation are naive because they ignore the manipulative, planful nature of these offenders, and it simply opens up the Way for the ped to manipulate the system for their own advantage. For some offenders programs building victim empathy can work to a degree though it does little to alter their basic thinking that sex with children is a pleasurable activity, and relapses after those sorts of treatments are far from unknown. For the more entrenched offender (and there are many of those) the only real thing that works is to remove them from society more or less permanently. If they are assessed upon completion of their sentence as being either high or medium risk, then protective custody such as is employed in Victoria with some offenders is the most effective means of controlling their behaviour.Whilst this may outrage some of the civil libertarian amongst us, its the only way to deal with offenders that are assessed as likely to re-offend. This view is also held by many for the leading therapists in the field also. This is not a failure of therapy - its a recognition that this is behaviour, which, once established, is incredibly difficult, in some cases impossible to change. Having seen that kind offender close up, I can only concur that permanent incarceration is the best option for them.

I can't really comment on treatment outcomes etc of those caught with child porn as I haven't read much on that topic.

11) Most ped activity involves a grooming process of the victim prior to offending, often it is the more disorganized offenders who spontaneously offend. Some peds even comment on the 'thrill of the chase' such grooming gives them. Grooming of the child's parent to gain access to the child can also occur. The thing that always disturbed me about the Jackson case was that it seemed from the outside that grooming processes seemed to occur in the accounts given by the alleged victims of Jackson's victims (or potential victims accounts).

There are a lot more things i could say but overall I find David's position naive and ill informed. He shows little or no knowledge of therapeutic practices in the field in this country and even less of the work done recording offender behaviours etc. His differentiation between pedophiles and pedarasts is dangerously glib and flies in the face of years of practice knowledge of thse offenders. The cyber porn option, well, the less said about that the better. Someone touched on this before crudely, but David's position is once again the result of an 'academic' with no connection to the field making ill informed judgements based on the implementation of 'reason'. I have no problem with reason and reasoned arguments per se but i do when it is so blatantly misused in isolation from the existent body of knowledge relating to the issue at hand.

A main flaw in most of your points, as with most scientific research into this field, is the use of criminal offenders as a solitary case study. How does this help us to understand paedophiles as a whole? The data we are left to work with is the grouping paedophiles who go on to offend, which provides no clue as to what percentage of the paedophile population they make up, and leaves us with assertions that have almost as much to do with criminal behaviour in general as paedophilia. Of course the criminal offenders will have less empathy towards other people for whatever psychological reason, that's just common sense; of course most (presumably, serial) offenders will be less treatable and rebabilitatable - but what does this say about paedophiles who don't offend? Do you deny their existence?

You say that there is a continuum between viewing child pornography and abusing children. Is this not a simple logical error: all X and Y, so therefore all Y are X? Child abusers generally learn their trade/augment it with the viewing of child pornography, so all people who view child pornography will abuse children? In saying this, I don't deny that these networks are a huge breeding ground and encouragement for pederasts, no doubt, but that only serves to support my point: in stigmatising paedophilia and forcing people into these underground networks, the only support they will receive is from (presumably) pederasts, and you wind up with a downward spiral into addiction (if you like) and abuse. If people who realise they have these tendencies and are made aware of confidential services that can assist in dealing with them, they may avoid reaching the stage where their desire overwhelms any sense of empathy or ethical concerns. It will also assist medical professionals and society at large to understand exactly what paedophilia is and how it originates (an area that, whatever you say, still does not appear to be completely understood). Sexual pleasure and the reward principle is basic psychology, but this on its own certainly doesn't infer the impossibility of cure, treatment or proper integration into society, otherwise we'd all be rapists. What it does imply is that the 'undergrounding' of sexual desire into a completely amoral environment (p2p networking in a sexual-desire based framework - anyone who's visited a mainstream porn site and seen the comments left by viewers will be aware of how degraded people can get when united in such a fashion) only further serves to promote outlets of these desires without the normal tempering effects of acceptable social behaviour.

Taking into account what you said, it is certainly important that these networks are monitored, but the way that the legal system treats viewing and downloading pornography still, to me, seems wrong-headed. It assumes, like you wrote above, that the viewing of child pornography simply exists on a continuum that ends in abuse, when, in fact, if the primary data is being taken from people who have gone on to offend, the assumption is logically flawed and probably only partially true.

You place intellectually disabled males to one side, but, as you say earlier, most paedophiles are probably damaged in one way or another. I fear that too often people use 'biological inclination' arguments as an extension of their own moral judgement of a person's nature. Genetic or environmental factors are ultimately irrelevant when it comes to such questions - we are who we are and thus do what we do because of a combination of causes and effects out of our control, and, as the old saying goes, there but for the grace of god go we. There needs to be a far more humanistic approach to paedophilia, of that I am certain, if only for the sake of further understanding of the disorder, further research into treating it, and further work with developing/pre-offending paedophiles who might yet be able to be treated. How many more cases of child abuse could be prevented under this scenario?

[OEP]

dont find it surprising, but i just think when you think about it that way its funny concept. but i already aknowledged that their has to be a cut off point.
i wonder what the leniency is for someone charged with sex with a minor but she/ he was a few days to turn the legal age

In that case the burden of proof is on the defendant to prove he / she honestly believed the complainant was of legal age, and that belief was reasonable to the average person.

A good example is going to a nightclub and picking up a woman, taking her home and having consensual sexual intercourse then having the Police knock on your door a week later because she was underage and has made a complaint (in this case it's usually at the behest of a family member).
During the court case the defendant could successfully argue the fact he was in a nightclub it's reasonable for him to assume that all other parties within the nightclub are of 18 years of age or older, due to age restrictions for entering a nightclub.