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Waaaaaaaay OT: Pedophilia is not a crime. Who knew??

So she says:

"There are no large scale studies, no large treatment programs, no big research studies on this."

"Might be born that way" "lots of assumptions and very little data".

Why the hell throw this out there then? Attention grabber for sure and now she'll get her 15 minutes of fame for another "we need to get a label for everything so we can treat it" crap.

I hear Utah is bringing back the firing squad for death penalty......how's that for treatment Margo?

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Shes not saying molesting kids isnt a crime.

She never says acting on it isnt a crime, she's saying that the attraction these people have for kids is a disorder in itself and that perhaps the people in her field need to work on a treatment to stop people from acting on it.


If people with this attraction would know there are people trying to treat it, maybe they would come forward and work on being treated before they actually molest some kid.

I dont know about y'all but to me, anything that will help prevent kids from being molested sounds like a good thing to me.

Here's a quote from the article that I dont think OP read:

"Well, but I am not saying that about sex offenders. I say that they remain responsible for their conduct. We need to treat pedophiles before they offend. People see the word "pedophile" and think "sex offender." People choose to sex offend children. They do not choose to be pedophiles."
 
I just view it as she's trying to stir the pot to get money so that she can do research and get published. To prove her hypothesis, she'd need boat loads of research dollars to prove that "pedophiles" have a distinct cognitive difference in how they think. Then she'd need to come up with some biological explanation as to why that's the case.

It's an interesting hypothesis but if I had to fund hardcore brain research I'd probably throw my money at Parkinson's and Alzheimer's and a host of other brain related disabilities before this.
 
Looks like she is comparing being attracted to kids (mental disorder) vs actually having sex with kids (crime). That's correct.

If you've ever wanted to punch some person annoying you in the mouth you've experienced something similar. Wanting to smash somebody in the mouth is a violent tendency, maybe even a sign of mental disorder (albeit one arguably less serious than wanting to get overly handsy with little kids). Actually punching somebody in the mouth is a crime (again, definitely less serious than getting it on with little kids). :)

If somebody fantasizes their whole life about getting it on with children, but never acts on that or harms a kid in any way, that person hasn't committed a crime... and I thank him for not.

She's also saying if we can separate the urge and the crime, maybe we can get these folks who are attracted to children in to get therapy or drugs or whatever so they can continue being successful in not having sex with kids. Surely you understand that is a good thing.



This post was edited on 3/24 5:19 PM by TrogdorNU
 
I'm not a psychologist nor do I claim to be an expert on the subject. But I know a number of people from college who studied different levels of sex offenders through interviews, case studies, and observation. They've all told me there is a POWER aspect to Pedophilia and sex crimes in general.

To me, it goes beyond sexuality and there is a deviant variable there. Its the same mentality as a man who constantly thinks about raping adult women. The targets might be different, but the power and control factor is similar.

I think this woman is confusing attraction with sexual deviancy.
 
Originally posted by Cornicator:
I'm not a psychologist nor do I claim to be an expert on the subject. But I know a number of people from college who studied different levels of sex offenders through interviews, case studies, and observation. They've all told me there is a POWER aspect to Pedophilia and sex crimes in general.

To me, it goes beyond sexuality and there is a deviant variable there. Its the same mentality as a man who constantly thinks about raping adult women. The targets might be different, but the power and control factor is similar.

I think this woman is confusing attraction with sexual deviancy.
I think the issue that people are not understanding is that the word pedophilia is not the act of committing the sexual offense and that is confusing people. A person could be a pedophile and never have touched a child.

The woman is using pedophile as the word for attraction and not the popular use of the word as the name for a child molester.
 
I'd like to see some Harvard research culminating in a bar graph or line chart showing how many kids in America were named "Chester" before Hustler Magazine came out and how many after.
 
Originally posted by jawatkins:

Originally posted by Cornicator:
I'm not a psychologist nor do I claim to be an expert on the subject. But I know a number of people from college who studied different levels of sex offenders through interviews, case studies, and observation. They've all told me there is a POWER aspect to Pedophilia and sex crimes in general.

To me, it goes beyond sexuality and there is a deviant variable there. Its the same mentality as a man who constantly thinks about raping adult women. The targets might be different, but the power and control factor is similar.

I think this woman is confusing attraction with sexual deviancy.
I think the issue that people are not understanding is that the word pedophilia is not the act of committing the sexual offense and that is confusing people. A person could be a pedophile and never have touched a child.

The woman is using pedophile as the word for attraction and not the popular use of the word as the name for a child molester.
I understand her point. I just disagree with the hypothesis. IMO, these men are attracted and turned on by the power aspect. They are attracted to these prepubescent children because they feel powerless and inferior to adults. They want control.
 
I don't see anything wrong in what she said. She said they don't have data or studies on it and because of threads like this they can't even start the conversation with Pedo that may want help.
 
Corn,

I think you're jumping right to the conclusion of any proposed study. We can't be certain that power is the ultimate goal of these persons, but it might be. I would agree with you that power is the underlying motivation in, ah, "traditional sex assault". What about the pedophiles who use child pornography? Those persons, while victimizing the children to be sure, don't actually have physical power over the victims. Those sorts of cases are much more common then actual physical sex assault of a child.

I think your conclusion regarding power and control falls flat in that sort of circumstance. That is why we as a society need to study this issue. It could help protect children before they are victims, rather than simply punish the villain after the crime has been committed.


This post was edited on 3/25 11:02 AM by JDskibum
 
Originally posted by john bames:
I don't see anything wrong in what she said. She said they don't have data or studies on it and because of threads like this they can't even start the conversation with Pedo that may want help.

This is an innocent thread with no consequences merely questioning why someone might call pedophilia not a crime. Sorry, try again.
 
Being a pedo isn't a crime as long as you aren't acting out on urges or watching child porn. Again she isn't talking about sex offenders she is talking about people who have the attraction. Anyways, weird convo, Pedos are disgusting, people who act on those urges are probably he lower form of human being in my mind. But I am sympathetic towards people who might have urges that they are trying not to give into, but it must be hard to not have ability to reach out for help.
 
I don't "buy" the help people aspect of this researcher. I would hazard a guess, that there's already a support group for just about every mental prognosis that anyone can list. There's counselors and clergy to seek help for those inclined.

Our society seems to want to dispel "free will" and to indoctrinate "genetically predisposed". It's the argument that people do bad things because they don't have a choice.
 
If you understand the definition of the word, she's correct, it's not a crime. It's a pattern of attraction.

Pretty much any form of acting on it IS a crime.

Unfortunately, when you delve into the issue a bit, the prognosis for those people is not good. That is what they are attracted to and it is INCREDIBLY difficult for somebody like that not to act on that in any way. The rate of recidivism is pretty high.

The current setup of treating it like something that is like any other crime, say stealing cars, and expecting the person to just up and choose to stop doing it is dangerous and it's not effective.

I won't pretend to know how you solve that. If you just lock them up for life or give them the death penalty or what. But trying to rehabilitate them doesn't go very well.

Honestly I feel massive amounts of pity for people like that. I can't imagine anyone choosing to be that way.
 
It's still such a sensitive taboo issue that the only data anyone has is from anonymous questionnaires and people that have acted on these "urges". So we really don't know much about it.
 
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