On pedophilia

How we maintain dignity and prevent harm.

I would prefer not to even comment publicly on this issue. Not because I don’t have empathy for pedophiles or because I have a personal history of abuse. I am actually quite comfortable talking about treatment of pedophiles and/or child sexual offenders as well as my personal experiences. The resurgence of demands on society to respond in a particular way in order to be “empathetic” is idealistic and, whether intentional or not, dismissive of experiences millions have had with sex abuse and how humans avoid/prevent harm. It is also dismissive of a society’s prerogative to define morality, virtues, and prudence.

Our brains are wired to track behaviors and traits in order to reduce risk and prevent harm. While not all child sexual offenders are pedophiles and not all pedophiles are child sexual offenders, being a pedophile is a risk factor for offending. This truth necessitates those who desire to reduce risk to create boundaries around pedophiles. No amount of claiming discrimination or shame or offense is going to change the instinct to reduce risk. There a myth perpetuated about child sexual abuse that are unhelpful to us all and need to be addressed.

The majority of children who are sexually abused are abused by someone they know. The incidents of children being abducted by strangers is less than 1% of cases of abduction. The cases of children assaulted by strangers make headlines because they inflame us and instill fear which drives viewership. We struggle to turn away from the train wreck. We have an attraction to the macabre. I could go into multiple theories as to why, but that is another discussion. The news stories that promote images of children abducted and tied up in the back of vans or in hotel rooms as the norm actually cause a lack of awareness that risks to being sexually abused as a child exist within your community and people you know. Those images also paint every pedophile as a predator lying in wait to commit abduction and rape. This is just not true or likely, even for pedophiles who do offend.

We are now locked into a cycle that promotes hostility regarding the topic of child sexual offense that prevents us from protecting kids and exploring additional ways of providing treatment for pedophilia. To be clear, pedophilia is not “curable” as far as we know at this time. A case could be made that for those who desire to rid themselves of it and have a deep faith may be freed from the attraction. However, that is not a communal experience, clinical treatment, or sensitive to those who would rid themselves of the attraction if they could and have not experienced that freedom. It is a bit like stating you can “pray it away” or if you “just have enough faith”. That doesn’t work. It actually creates resentment. Any freedom from a lifelong struggle of intrusive and/or obsessive thoughts would be a miracle. That doesn’t mean freedom from behaviors is unattainable. It absolutely is. We can’t stop thoughts from popping into our heads, we can control are behavior in relationship to those thoughts including reducing time spent indulging those thoughts.

Keeping children safe from child sexual abuse requires awareness of risk factors, reduction of access to risks, and open communication regarding boundaries. No one can determine who is or is not a risk of sexually offended based on declaration alone. This isn’t just true of pedophilia. Women have created multiple behaviors that prevent risks of rape. It doesn’t matter that most men won’t rape. Enough women have been raped (if not multiple times) or harassed that vigilance is understandable. Please hear me when I say the vast majority of men will never rape anyone. That being said if men were to suggest they should have access to women alone who did not consent to that or access to rape porn, it would not increase trust in women or suggest a desire to increase safety for women. Men have to take accountability for not being suspicious. This is much easier when you consider safety rather than feminism. Complementing a woman’s looks is not a safety issue. Attempting to access areas where she is most vulnerable or approaching her in any aggressive way is ill advised. We are seeing this play out in the erasure of safe spaces for women in very vulnerable situations: prisons, shelters, locker rooms, bathrooms, etc. These attempts under the claim of “rights” ignore the truth that men are stronger than women, men have lied in order to gain access to women, and rights require responsibility.

Applying that same concept to pedophilia. Children are inherently weaker than adults and cannot consent to sex. I know there have been arguments made, from several angles that feed into this, that children can consent. Whether it be access to medical procedures, abortion, marriage, counseling, or transitioning; efforts to remove parental responsibilities degrade protections for children and ignore cognitive development. Informed consent requires an ability to understand the consequences of a decision. Permanence and regret are such complicated factors that we have ethics committees to decide whether or not a woman of a certain age can have an elective hysterectomy. While I would argue adults should be able to make decisions about their bodies without an ethics committee weighing in, being honest our ability to do so with less risk probably occurs closer to 26 than 18. I am not advocating for the legal age of adulthood to be changed. I am just acknowledging frontal lobe development and that our laws around age of consent and adulthood aren’t consistent or even all that logical.

I do understand the efforts to give children access to medical decisions and therapy was largely due to concern over children with abusive or neglectful parents. That is a reality we have to deal with. I do not think removing protections from all children is the way to do it. This isn’t a matter of parental “rights”. Parents do not own their children in the sense they override the human rights of the child. That is what creates abuse and neglect. Parents have responsibilities legally, ethically, and morally to their children that predate and override society’s and government’s responsibilities. Children are not the property of society or government any more than they are the property of their parents. Society and government do have a responsibility to protect children, not cause harm to children, and to assist when parent’s fail to meet their responsibilities.

Nuanced discussion can be had regarding whether there are differences in risks in what is being consented to (an ear piercing versus a major medical procedure for example) but consent to sex requires the ability to manage the consequences of sex. Children cannot do that for multiple reasons including societal norms around labor. I do think legal reactions to some scenarios involving children who have sex (a 16 year old and their 17 year old boyfriend for example) would cause more harm than good. I also think any suggestions a man should be able to tell the difference between a 16 and 18 year old upon sight or not find the adult female body attractive just because a 16 or 17 year old has fully developed are ridiculous, divisive, and attempts to muddy the waters around safety for children or increase hatred of men.

Alas, I have wandered and I digress. Regarding pedophilia, there is no scenario in which a child can legally, cognitively, or emotionally consent to sex with an adult. Thus, those struggling with attraction to children (especially attraction only to children) who do not wish to offend face a lifetime of awareness their attraction to children cannot be lived out. There is agreement between non-offending pedophiles and society on that point. Where agreement between non-offending pedophiles and society appears to breakdown is in why sexualizing is wrong or even if it is always wrong. This is where I become confused as to claims that treatment of pedophiles who do not wish to offend necessitates inclusion of materials that encourage indulging in fantasies of raping children.

I hear claims made from researchers that graphic novels involving the sexualization of children and child sized sex dolls will reduce the risk of offending. That suggests to me that non-offending pedophiles are at risk of offending. If they are at risk of offending, it doesn’t follow that normalizing the sexualization of children as a society by allowing the production of such materials will reduce the risk of offending. I understand that proponents of these materials point to studies of correlations between pornography and sexual crimes in various countries in an attempt to prove access to porn doesn’t not increase sexual crime or may even reduce it. There are a few issues with these claims.

One issue is the suggestion that correlation is causation. Now, I agree that sometimes correlation occurs because of causation. But to claim that is empirically true, there must be proof. The confounding variables are vast in these studies. Here are just a few. Did policing around child sexual assault change because society normalized the sexualization of children? Did the decriminalization of porn/child sexual assault images reduce identification of offenders as many are caught due to their producing or viewing of CSA images? Is access to images protective of offending behaviors for those who otherwise would offend/have offended or does it have no affect on those unlikely to offend? What about research in recent years that suggests the vast majority of viewers of CSA images who are incarcerated have offended but just were not caught?

There is no empirical proof that materials that sexualize children reduce risk of offending. Furthermore, there is no way to identify who is offending and who is not based on declaration alone. While it is unfortunate that non-offending pedophiles are impacted by it, offenders lie about and cover up their offenses. They go to great lengths to do so that cause even more harm to children (threats, coercion, violence). Therapists are not human lie detectors. While therapists can sometimes identify inconsistencies and cognitive dissonance, we cannot predict behavior with enough certainty to place the burden on us to determine who will or won’t offend. Thus, there is no way to ensure materials that sexualize children won’t get into the hands of offenders who would use them to groom children. This risks to children from offenders, in my opinion, far outweighs the desire of adults to have materials that assist them in sexual pleasure. There is also a circular argument involved here.

Non-offenders claim they do not wish to offend and the sexualization of children is wrong. But what do they mean about the word “wrong”? Do they mean simply legally wrong? Do they mean physically harmful? Do they mean emotionally and/or mentally harmful? Do they mean immoral or unethical? Do they mean unhealthy for the child or the offended or both? I have seen arguments for stances from all of these positions.

If the argument is that offending is only legally wrong but otherwise acceptable, then the sexualization of children is considered fine. This point of view disregards the impacts of sexualization on children and is not a point of view safeguarding children. If the argument that offending is legally and physically wrong but otherwise acceptable, it ignores the psychological and emotional impacts of sexualization on children. That is not a point of view safeguarding children. If the point of view is that offending is legally, physically, emotionally, and mentally wrong but morally acceptable, then their is a cognitive framework in which harm is moral. That is not a safe point of view for children more or less the person holding that position. If the argument is that offending is legally, physically, emotionally, mentally, and morally wrong but fantasizing about offending is healthy or moral; then there is an attempt to separate the mind from the rest of the person which is not only unfeasible but also a cognitive dissonance. If something is immoral or unhealthy in practice, it doesn’t become moral or healthy just because it only exists in our head. It may remove a physical victim, but it demands we ignore the effects of sexualization on children on a societal level as well as internally. If you believe an action is immoral, spending time fantasizing about committing that act in spending time fantasizing about an immoral act. That has an effect on the person fantasizing. Even if they do their best to separate their thoughts from their emotions or beliefs; thoughts, beliefs, and emotions all impact each other. In essence, a person fantasizing about an act they believe is immoral is spending time with something they think is harmful. That may not cause them to act out, but it will harm them. Violating our own moral code creates internal harm and guilt. If left unaddressed or there is a continuation to perpetuate that harm, self-disgust and shame builds.

Let’s put this into a different context. If a man believes raping women is morally wrong but spends time viewing rape porn, he is violating his own moral compass by perpetuating the production of material that promotes violation of women and by introducing his mind and emotions to material that promotes the violation of women. Even if it is just graphic novels about the rape of women, he is perpetuating the degradation of women as a group. This is the same with materials that sexualize children. They degrade children as a group. They reduce children to objects that exist for the sexual pleasure of adults. They defy the truth that children cannot consent. They present a lie that a sexual relationship with a child can be a mutual or healthy situation. On a societal level, there is no benefit to society to allow such degradation of children. I would argue society has a duty to protect children from such degradation. We allow the degradation of adults as a society because adults can consent to sexual interactions and we theorize they can consent to being used as objects. I would argue that no one can consent with full understanding of the consequences to being objectified, but that is purely a philosophical and moral argument for another Substack. At any rate, children cannot consent to being objectified.

Claims that child sexual assault materials will reduce the likelihood of offending flies in the face of those who claim offenders will offend because of a predisposition to offending or exposure to extenuating circumstances and non-offending pedophiles will never offend. We are back to the point that non-offending pedophiles are at risk for offending. Society hears the claim that risks of offending is reduced by sexualizing children (even if in thought alone) as a manipulative threat akin to “let us degrade children or we will rape them”. Non-offending pedophiles may disagree with this perspective, but that is the reality. Ignoring that reality will not create an society that seeks to have empathy for or understand pedophilia.

Appeals to free speech won’t make any headway either. Free speech has never been an all or nothing right. There have always been exceptions, especially regarding obscenity and threats to harm. I am not a lawyer more or less a Constitutional lawyer so I cannot argue the legal aspects of free speech. I can suggest that claims that child sexual assault materials are not offensive takes us right back to the circular argument of whether or not pedophiles understand harms to children. Such claims also fail acknowledge society’s prerogative to decide what virtues, morals, and norms around prudence are safeguarded.

I won’t be addressing whether or not pedophilia is innate. It doesn’t change any of what has already been discussed. Non-offending pedophiles are entitled to feel offended that society will not accept their attraction as valid whether or not it is innate. I join them in the need to increase discussion around what treatment should look like. Society is under no obligation to join in that discussion. That is a discussion for clinicians and mental health professionals that can be presented to legislation or courts if laws prohibit treatment. One such instance would be the lack of conscience protection for therapists. I understand that is an attempt to protect vulnerable populations from a lack of treatment or rejection like pedophiles. However, what it does is force clinicians to ignore their own awareness of topics they would be unsuitable to treat. Any claims therapist should be able to treat any topic dehumanizes therapists as we are humans and have our own life experiences and beliefs. We are not robots. If we are aware those could harm a client, it is our duty to protect that client from harm. That should be done in a way that opts is out rather than degrades a population or group. Of course, any desire to change or add laws may be met with pushback from society. Thus, even if mental health community agreed a treatment would be helpful, it may not be accepted by society.

Just like treatment for any other issue, there will be differences in opinion regarding what the best practices are for pedophilia. Much like the debate around gender dysphoria, any claims that explorative therapy is conversion therapy are not only false but do significant damage to the field as a whole. Mental health is going to have to wrestle with the idea of affirmation in general. Political and ideological influences have invaded the profession and cut off access to research and treatment that even suggests there may be epigenetic explanations for sexual orientations, gender identity, and perceptions of offense/harm. I am not suggesting we remove protected rights around sexual orientation. I am suggesting we make a distinction between affirmation of inherent dignity and respect of humanity versus affirmation based on identity markers or ideology. I also suggest we consider carefully what any inclusion of pedophilia as a sexual orientation will do.

From a societal perspective, sexual orientation is protected with regards to work and housing. In 2014 President Obama signed an executive order adding sexual orientation and gender identity into protections for all federal employees. That would not alone be enough to protect sexual orientation for all employees nationwide. IN 2020, the Supreme Court ruled sexual orientation and gender identity are protected by Title VII. The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission confirmed sexual orientation is protected under federal law. Title VII does not apply to employers with less than 15 employees or to independent contractors. While I have heard people make the argument that the ADA would allow employers to refuse to hire a pedophile based on risks of harm, that doesn’t seem to be the case according to the ADA, “While the ADA does not override other federal laws, it will override state or local laws that provide less protection or benefit”. In addition, the ADA protects those with disabilities in their workplace. Being a child is not a disability, nor are children the employee being protected.

Thus, if pedophilia is determined to be a sexual orientation, then no employer including day cars, schools, churches, etc. could refuse to hire a pedophile. I understand non-offending pedophiles may see this as not a problem. However, there is no way for an employer to determine who is or is not an offender and pedophilia is a risk factor for offending. Remember the human nature to track behaviors and traits that increase risk? You cannot talk your way around or force your way around the human instinct to resist harm. It is biological and at the base of our right to life. In addition, sexual orientations are protected from conversion therapy. If there is success in law (as we have seen in some places) to redefine any therapy other than affirmation therapy, any child or adult who can consent to counseling who claims to be a pedophile will be affirmed and told their attraction is normal. Imagine a teen boy with a 5 year old sister being told his attraction to her is normal. Are we expecting a 13 or 14 year old boy to be able to navigate the “normal but wrong to act on” theory of pedophilia? What will sex education look like if pedophilia is declared a sexual orientation?

Pedophilia would become the only sexual orientation that is necessarily based on attraction to rape. While some pedophiles are under the impression they can woo and maintain a romantic relationship with a child, their beliefs are not based in reality. What they see as perfectly innocent actions and behaviors are actually grooming. They breakdown safeguards for children and damage (sometimes irrevocably) children’s formation of trust, body integrity, relationships, and sexuality. Society has not obligation to affirm an attraction that always involves sexual assault as normal, healthy, or protected.

Non-offending pedophiles and researchers who proceed with attempts to force society to accept pedophilia as normal and/or healthy, produce materials that sexualize children, and loosen safeguards via laws regarding sexual orientation in order to feel affirmed or find a way to increase sexual release do so at their peril. These actions will not reduce child sexual offending. They will increase hostility towards pedophiles. They may also create a backlash that results in protections for LGBT+ being stripped in order to counteract increased risks to children. You don’t have to like it, but that is reality.

My opinion would be to embrace reality and responsibilities to increase rights. Non-offending pedophiles who want to build a bridge with society must acknowledge they cannot separate themselves from the damage offending pedophiles cause. There is no way to prove they haven’t offended or won’t offend. I understand that may be frustrating because for recognized sexual orientations there isn’t a requirement to prove one won’t rape in order to have rights protected. However, pedophilia is different in that attraction is always to someone who cannot consent. There is never an assumption of consent as with heterosexuality or homosexuality and thus an acceptance that it is safe. Thus, the burden is upon the pedophile to safeguard children in a way that sacrifices their own need to have their attraction affirmed or avoid rejection. Here are some suggestions.

1. Agree to never work with children.

2. Attempt to prevent having children.

3. Avoid being alone with children. This isn’t to suggest you cannot control your attraction or will become overwhelmed with desire and offend. It is to build trust with the community. You are in a relationship with society and your community. You must acknowledge harms that have been caused and the need to increase transparency to build trust.

4. Be open to friends and family about your attraction and the ways you manage it.

5. Take time to honestly and openly consider whether fantasizing about children reduces them to objects for your pleasure as they cannot consent, degrades their natural innocence and ability in your mind, and reduces awareness of damage to children who are exposed to child sexual images or assault.

6. Seek therapy to address #4 as well as manage the emotional and mental distress involved with being unable to pursue romantic relationships and the effects of stigmatization on you. Make sure to review confidentiality and mandatory reporting laws in your state/area both independently and with the therapist.

7. Refuse to perpetuate or consume any materials that sexualize children.

8. Withdraw from interactions, especially alone, with any child you fantasize about and discuss ways to increase empathy for children by identifying harms to children when they are sexualized.

9. Create transparency with the public regarding any organizations and/or support groups you create. Encourage review of such activities by independent professionals.

10. Report any child sexual abuse or viewing of child sexual abuse imagery you are made aware of or engage in.

11. Agree to participate, when healthy for you, in research to learn more about pedophilia.

While some in society won’t understand my desire to increase empathy for and treatment of pedophiles, it is born from the same adherence to the inherent dignity of humanity that demands I treat all humans with integrity.

While some pedophiles will not like my point of view or recommendations, it is born from a sincere desire to increase empathy and healthy relationships between pedophiles and society.

Robin Atkins, LMHC

Addendum added after initial publication: There is a misunderstanding of the differences of morality involved in this discussion. I think pedophiles see those who think attraction to children is immoral as prejudiced, when it is not a prejudice but a worldview about the value of children and humanity at large that is opposed to sexualizing or objectifying children. I think those opposed to pedophilia think pedophiles have no morals, when it is a position that sexualization and objectification can be nuanced to be appropriate sometimes (in fantasy) and not others without violating morals. I don’t know if there is a way to reconcile this. I have already written above why I think fantasizing about something you think is immoral in action is an internal conflict or cognitive dissonance. To those who disagree with me, they are unlikely to change their mind because they do not see morality the way I do.

To me, fantasizing about someone other than my husband violates my morals about being committed to my spouse with my whole self. I am by no means always virtuous as I have ways I disrespect my husband (like irritation with how his neurodivergence causes him to miss my emotional cues) that don’t involve cheating or sex. I am a work in progress. A man who thinks rape is wrong violates his morals if he fantasizes about rape. Fantasies cannot be divorced or compartmentalized away from our beliefs, morals, values, emotions, relationships, and thoughts. The impact all of these things and are impacted by all of them. Think about having a very real dream that someone harmed you and waking up pissed. This is what I am referring to. Our fantasies impact us in many ways and do not exist in a vacuum.

As I said, I don’t know a way around a difference in morals. I think the best path forward is to find what society and pedophiles agree on that doesn’t cause harm or risk of harm to anyone and move forward with that.