Why are there so many pedophiles?

[TragicMonkey]

Most men (at least in my experience) DO NOT find babies especially cute, unless they think it's their baby. I find them annoying when they cry and of no interest at all otherwise. (I'm apt to go gogoo over puppies though. Could be a wiring fault).
Can't speak for women, but I've watched men and women on trains when someone comes on with a baby. The women- even pre-pubescent girls- tend to smile at the baby. Most men don't.

Dunno how typical this is. Anyone?

I smile at babies.

Because I'm thinking how grateful I am that I will never have to deal with one of those things.

 

[Monketi Ghost]

Most men (at least in my experience) DO NOT find babies especially cute, unless they think it's their baby. I find them annoying when they cry and of no interest at all otherwise. (I'm apt to go gogoo over puppies though. Could be a wiring fault).
Can't speak for women, but I've watched men and women on trains when someone comes on with a baby. The women- even pre-pubescent girls- tend to smile at the baby. Most men don't.

Dunno how typical this is. Anyone?

I used to detest children until I had one. Now I smile at a baby being strolled around, it makes me think of my leetle beetle. She's this many! *holds up five fingers*

 

[YeahDude]

I used to detest children until I had one. Now I smile at a baby being strolled around, it makes me think of my leetle beetle. She's this many! *holds up five fingers*

I never detested children, always enjoyed them. But I never paid much attention to them whenever I was out somewhere. Since I had my daughter I also smile at every baby going by, it is amazing what a child can do to your brain.

Edit:
seems kind of odd for these posts in a pedophile discussion....

 

[Soapy Sam]

Yeah, I sidetracked it a bit. Apologies.

 

[Cainkane1]

First - the consequences are LAUGHABLE! DO you know what the average time a fist offender spends in jail ZERO

Jail isn't the only consequence. Ostracism from the community and limited places to live and job loss would tend to make a persons life miserable and suicide among these offenders is not uncommon.

 

[ponderingturtle]

I've got no history in this, nor have I any particular inclinations of sympathy toward the perpetrators of either sex; I've just always wondered why it's so badly underreported... It seems like moms sexually abusing their kids would be so much more outrageous and "news worthy" than dads, but you just don't see it.

It fails to fit stereotypes, so it makes it a much harder news story to get into the public. It might be more novel but it is not what people are primed to hear.

 

[JihadJane]

Most sexual abuse of children is perpetrated by parents, carers, close relatives and authority figures. There has been a very strong, internalized societal taboo against admitting this. Children were severely punished for even suggesting it. The same taboo enables governments (parental substitutes) to murder their own citizens and get away with it because it appears to be inconceivable that they could do such an evil thing.

Fortunately these taboos are breaking down as men, women and children have courageously spoken out against sexual violence.

Rebel, ex-psychoanalyst Alice Miller wrote eloquently about this in her book 'Thou Shalt Not Be Aware: Society's Betrayal of the Child'

 

[Cainkane1]

Most men (at least in my experience) DO NOT find babies especially cute, unless they think it's their baby. I find them annoying when they cry and of no interest at all otherwise. (I'm apt to go gogoo over puppies though. Could be a wiring fault).
Can't speak for women, but I've watched men and women on trains when someone comes on with a baby. The women- even pre-pubescent girls- tend to smile at the baby. Most men don't.

Dunno how typical this is. Anyone?

I don't find babies particularly cute either but I do enjoy the company of a child around four or older because they can communicate. Pushing them on swings and riding them piggyback and when they get around ten or eleven scaring them with ghost stories and tall tales is one of my favorite memories.

 

[Sir Robin Goodfellow]

I don't look at or otherwise acknowledge the presence of children because parents don't want men looking at their kids.

 

[bigred]

You read about it every week.

? Maybe you do; I don't (and yes I read the news).

Someone somewhere has improperly touched a child or worse.

Perhaps it'd be more accurate to say someone is ALLEGED to have improprely etc etc? While it's great that this terrible kind of thing gets more attention, the downside is that there is also an idiotic hypersensitivity such that the most innocent of things is sometimes accused of being "abusive."

It would seem to me like the consequences are so severe that doing something this cruel and selfish would be a RARITY.

It is. As others have said, you can thank the growing National Enquirer mentality of our news sources, who know people are interested in the sick stuff and bored by the moral, normal stuff...so naturally the sick sh** is what you hear.

I live in Conyers Ga and we have 60,000 people living here. Not eight weeks go by without someone somewhere molesting a child.

Conyers doesn't = the world FYI. Which frankly is sounding like a good thing, given what you're saying.

 

[bigred]

In the highlighted yellow, I find this statement hilarious. Most times I hear the religious right blame the LIBERALS for wanting to reduce penalties for child molesters. Yet I have never seen a legislator even propose such a thing.

Where have you been? Now days it's ALWAYS the other side's fault. I call it the "El Nino Syndrome." The other side is responsible for all that ails the world, from child abuse to bad weather to bad breath. Meanwhile, "your" (pls note I use that word broadly) side is valiantly trying to right all those wrongs.

PS important note: it doesn't matter which side we're talking about. "Your" side is right and righteous and etc. The other side is stupid and evil. Always. Get it right and remember it well or you will be excommunicated from society in our Great Era of Extremist Simpletons.

:mgheadbang

 

[fuelair]

I don't look at or otherwise acknowledge the presence of children because parents don't want men looking at their kids.

I always smile at/wave to babies and other kids. They seem to enjoy it and I have never seen a family look nervous. scared or angry about it. I have, on occasion, been thanked for it - and I have recieved two first waves, several she/he doesn't ever smile at (men, strangers)s, and, from a person familiar with what I sold at conventions and my late night film presentations at them
a "But you sell that stuff, you can'tlike children!" as I played happily with her son (slightly under a year old) ata con committee meeting. She apologized for the assumption!!

 

[YeahDude]

Where have you been? Now days it's ALWAYS the other side's fault. I call it the "El Nino Syndrome." The other side is responsible for all that ails the world, from child abuse to bad weather to bad breath. Meanwhile, "your" (pls note I use that word broadly) side is valiantly trying to right all those wrongs.

PS important note: it doesn't matter which side we're talking about. "Your" side is right and righteous and etc. The other side is stupid and evil. Always. Get it right and remember it well or you will be excommunicated from society in our Great Era of Extremist Simpletons.

:mgheadbang

not to go too far off topic but this is part of the problem with a 2 party system.

And I am still waiting for a link Magyar.

 

[pgwenthold]

I never detested children, always enjoyed them. But I never paid much attention to them whenever I was out somewhere. Since I had my daughter I also smile at every baby going by, it is amazing what a child can do to your brain.

When I have my baby in public, he draws a lot of attention from women. Less from men, but it is still not uncommon. I have found older men (presumably grandparents) to be most likely to give him attention. I've always noticed kids, but now that I have a baby of my own, I see them a lot more (oddly, when my wife was pregnant, I saw all the pregnant women around - I don't notice them as much any more)

 

[Dancing David]

Could you please post some links to back up the statements in the highlighted red. It is unwise to make such accusations without backing it up.

Well it is dependent on a large number of factors and each is a link in the chain:

1. Child reporting act to responsible adult
2. Responsible adult responding appropriately to child
3. Police taking report
4. SA/DA pressing charges
5. No plea bargin occuring

Now the post you responded to was sort of interesting and a little hyperbolic, this is where I have seen the system break down

1. The child unfortunately chooses an adult who does not respond appropriately, they minimize, deny or blame the child.
2. Many adults engage in many strange behaviors for a wide variety of reasons, family members in particular do not respond appropriately (IE do not interview the child, call the police). Many social groups also respond inappropriately. In a town very close to where I live a perpetrator who offened in a grade school was investigated by teh administration who came to the conclusion that no offnse had occured. So they broke very clear state law and did not report. This plays out in so many ways.
3. The police taking the report in not usually an issue, they will take the report in most cases, some exceptions.
4. This is where the system often bungs up, money, power and influence effect what happens. Your SES willd eetrmine if you are charged, what teh charge is and what consequences there are, many times righ and powerful peopel are able to get just court supervision and a clean record.
5. Pleas deals always mess up the record.

 

[Delvo]

Biologically, (whether it is nature or nurture aside) my guess is since we are programed to find babies attractive, something gets confused between that attraction and sexual attraction in the pedophile brain.

Most men (at least in my experience) DO NOT find babies especially cute

I'd expect the causes to be different for men and women. I expect what Skeptigirl said to apply to female pedophiles, but for men, I have an entirely different hypothetical explanation...

Men are, generally, designed to be turned on by women, which means to be turned on by feminine traits. And there's more to the distinctions between men and women than just breasts, hips, and visible reproductive organs. The catch is that the entire rest of the list of feminine traits also happens to be a list of juvenile traits: smaller size, higher voice, bigger eyes, smaller nose & mouth, taller rounder cranium, smaller bony ridges/protrusions in the face, more subcutaneous fat causing features to be more rounded and smooth and soft, lighter coloring (compared to same race), more retention of epicanths (compared to same race), less body & facial hair, less strength and speed and durability and general athleticism, more slender bones & muscles, larger head relative to body size... even something hard to describe about emotional behaviors being more drastic, or more visibly displayed, or more complicated, or less controlled/balanced...

Biologically, it must be quite a balancing act to manage to calibrate men's attraction mechanisms to respond to those traits in one case (when they're observed in women) and not to respond to them in another (when the same things are observed in children). So getting the same response to a slightly different but still similar set of stimuli (children instead of women) might take only a small glitch in the system.

So pedophilia seems most likely to be from two different origins in men and women: pedophile women sexualizing what was supposed to be a non-sexual instinct, and pedophile men getting what was supposed to be a sexual instinct all along aimed at the wrong targets.

 

[Ron_Tomkins]

Sex sells

Pedophilia reports sell even more

 

[Dancing David]

Perhaps it'd be more accurate to say someone is ALLEGED to have improprely etc etc? While it's great that this terrible kind of thing gets more attention, the downside is that there is also an idiotic hypersensitivity such that the most innocent of things is sometimes accused of being "abusive."

I call urban legend, what cases are you referencing here, now I live in a very large area in terms of population, and almost all media reports of sexual abuse involve sexual pentration, sexual exploitation of the child.

So what are you referencing?

Now the behavior of school children is often sexual harrasment, not sexual abuse. (Things like crotch graps (self), breast squeezing/brushing and sexual comments.)


It would qualify as harrasment mainly because in K-5 these behaviors are attention seeking as opposed to sexually gratifying, now in middle schools and high schools the percentage of actual sexual abuse vs. harrasment is much higher.

But what "most innocent of things" can you document as being accused of sexual abuse?

 

[Dancing David]

I would like to point out that the biology of attraction is not as hard wired in humans as it might seems to be, there is ahuge amount of 'learned behavior' that is part and parcel of the cycle. The reconditioning of sexual arousal/gratification is a common 'sexual dysfunction' for CBT treatment.

 

[Beerina]

Sixty years ago, it just wasn't talked about. I doubt it was any less common.

You mean where there were often no phones, much less cell phones and Internet, and people didn't know they could get help, and if they tried, they knew they might be blamed as a liar, and knew it was just he said/she said at best anyway.

Naw, can't imagine it was more prevalent in the past.