The Plague

Just some random thoughts from Australia's foremost forensic psychiatrist in the area of sex offenders, Bill Glaser, in referring to child sex abuse:

If we had some sort of plague or epidemic which affected one in four girls, one in eight boys, there would be a national outcry about it and we would be setting up national coordinated efforts to deal with the problem as we have with modern day epidemics such as HIV.

He goes on to define pedophilia as: a persistent deviant sexual interest in children manifested by thoughts, fantasies, behaviours of sexual contact with kids that’s lasted for an extended period of time.

Despite the implications of its Greek etymology, paedophilia is not a love of children but a lust for them. The sole aim of the paedophile is to sexually abuse children. Any display of care, affection or friendship towards the victim is always secondary to this.

There are some who say that we are becoming unnecessarily panicky about child sexual abuse. The evidence is that we have not panicked enough.

Probably the lies that we tell best are the ones that we tell ourselves so we know that paedophiles are very good at practising cognitive distortions which is a very fancy Yankee term for telling lies, that you want to believe and you end up believing. So many paedophiles do convince themselves that their activities with the victims are educational, are helpful to them, are necessary for their development.

It has often been said that paedophiles tend to be “good with children”. That is precisely what makes them so dangerous; this “goodness”is difficult to differentiate from (say)“good” parenting. One has to talk with many victims at length to realise how insidious and how overwhelming has been the influence of an offender on all aspects of their lives.

An incest offender is simply a paedophile who sometimes abuses his own children or young relatives.

The measure of successful treatment is not that of a happy perpetrator but rather of a safe victim.

And most of all,we have to understand the how and the why of paedophilia: the subtle, bizarre and cruel ways in which seemingly blameless and upright men insidiously cripple the most vulnerable members of our society. We have possessed that understanding for a long time; we have ignored it for too long.

Ref: Here
Ref: Here