How Can I Help you (with pedophilia) Have Access to Care?

Hello all,

A few days ago I created a post that asserted that pedophiles have confidentiality rights in therapy. I apologize for my idealism and niavete, and for not accepting your view as valid. I now believe that your right to have access to mental health care is being denied and that the current laws (or understanding of them) prevent therapists from being able to ethically provide you with care without undue risk of being sued or prosecuted. As a former victim of a pedophile and future clinician who hopes to work with your group, I am outraged at the current laws and policies that are making it personally dangerous to for your group to access help for this and other mental health problems. I am not alone in my outrage and desire to help you be able to get the care you deserve; in only 24 hours I have several people indicate shared interest or support in advocating for you.

I want to ask for you to help me make sure I have a clear understanding of the reality of your situation and ask your opinion about how I might help this injustice be remedied. I also want to ask if there is a willingness among this board to help me begin to quantify some information about your group-- with absolute anonymity-- these will be mostly questions about your experience of this condition throughout your life. I will probably have other things to ask later

I know you may feel like society has put you under a microscope and this is just one more attempt to examine you, but I don't know if it is possible to advocate for a group that is so under-studied and difficult to reach. This is important because from what I can tell of the existing research that has been published, the only groups of pedophiles who have been available for research have been those who had already offended and been caught. Understandably, those who are unknown are very unlikely to volunteer themselves for study. I hope that the anonymity of this forum will allow you to feel safe in helping me understand your experiences as a group (well, of people in this forum) and develop the beginning of another way to understand pedophilia. There is one German study that is quite interesting and is the only one I have seen that even mentions adult pedophiles who have not offended (Encouraging self-identified pedophiles and hebephiles to seek professional help: First results of the Prevention Project Dunkelfeld (PPD). Published in the journal Child Abuse and Neglect in 2009) in case you are interested.

So, my understanding of the general situation is that there is a shared understanding among pedophiles that come to this forum that it is unsafe to seek mental health care due to fear of being reported, even if you do not disclose ever having abused a child or any intent to abuse a child in the future. I further understand that this fear of being reported keeps you from being able to get mental health care for any conditions you might have in addition to your paraphilia, like depression, suicidal ideation, or any other serious mental illnesses. I understand that you perceive being reported to a child protection agency, particularly when you have not committed a crime and do not intend to, as being punishment for having your condition and being a major risk to your personal and professional life. I also understand that you believe (or know) that exposure, even through a CPS report, would seriously damage your marriage, relationships with your family members/friends, your professional life, and/or potentially put your actual life in danger. Last of all, I understand that some portion of your group would like to seek treatment for this paraphilia and/or other conditions if you felt that you could safely do so.

Is this correct? Do you feel I'm off the mark anywhere or missing anything in the above description?

I have to make sure you all understand that I am not, and will not be, taking a stance that in any way says that it is healthy or acceptable for any adult to engage in any kind of sexual contact with any child. From what I could find through a Google search, the only public advocates for the rights of people with pedophilia are people who support legislation to decriminalize the abuse of children-- I want there to be no mistake: I am not in support of such a view-- I actually I violently oppose that view as a former victim of child sexual abuse. I am also deeply opposed to the violation of any people's rights, especially their access to mental health care. I believe that it is short-sighted and dangerous to deny prevention and treatment efforts to people with the paraphilia of pedophilia, that it endangers potentially thousands of children, and that this situation is a violation of your civil and human rights.

On a more personal level, I feel deeply saddened that our society should ever so dehumanize any group of people that it becomes dangerous to ask that they receive even the most basic of rights. I do not believe that anyone with pedophilia wanted to develop this condition or is somehow an inherently evil person. I also do not believe that pedophilia is all that any person is or can be. I am committed to the notion that mental illness or disorder does not have to define a person or ruin their life. finally, I am committed to the idea that NO ONE should be criminalized if they have not committed any crime.

So, this is where I stand and my somewhat public offer to begin the process of advocating for the protection of your mental health care rights. I am nearly sure that I feel strongly enough about this that I will stand for you publicly when and if the time for that arrives. I do believe that the only solution to this problem will be to modify our current laws about child abuse reporting for therapists, I believe that the current laws not only prevent your access to care but also prevent therapists from being able to treat you adequately without bearing undue professional and personal risk. Finally, I believe that this is the right thing to do and is something that MUST be done.

Once again I leave you with a too-long post

How do you feel about the person that molested you? Are they seeking help with there pedophilia? Were they a pedophile and di they molest other children? I am sorry if this hurts you to talk about it, yet I am just wondering why you are not disgusted with people like us. I am just curious is all.

Dear Blben, To answer your questions about how I feel about those who molested me, I think the honest answer is that I most often pity them although there are times when I still have a lot of anger about what they did. I do not believe that any of them (3) have ever sought help, I know that each did molest other children around the same time as me but I only know that one is/was a pedophile. Of the three, I am certain that two have not abused any children since the time period when they abused me, the one who is a pedophile and I know to have abused others... I do not believe he has the opportunity to be alone with any children any more. He is known to be unsafe around children and lives in a small town where everyone knows everyone's business.

Why am I not disgusted with people like you? I long ago decided that people are far too complicated to judge them by one part of who they are or to hate them because they may have behavior I do not like. If you have abused any child then I am disgusted by your behavior and hope that you and that child receive justice for what you did, but I do not think that your behavior erases every other good or bad thing you have done in your life. It is a part of who you are but it is not all of who you are. I like to believe that every human, as long as they are alive, has some good inside of them and some hope for redemption. You may suffer from a condition that makes you more dangerous to children (even my child) than most other people in this world, but whether or not you have acted on that condition before this moment you still have the opportunity to choose differently in the rest of the moments of your life.

Perhaps the realest reason that I choose not to be disgusted with "you people" is selfish; I do not want to be the kind of person who decides that any group of persons is beneath my compassion and concern. I want to be the kind of person who can feel empathy for people who have done the worst things; I don't want the weight of anger or disgust to burden my soul; I want to chose to be the best kind of person I can be-- in spite of what happened to me as a child. And in order for me to honestly believe I have the power to chose who I will be today, tomorrow, and all of the moments in front of me... I have to believe the same thing about you.

I don't know how or why you developed this terrible condition but I am quite sure you did not ask to have that burden. How can I judge you for a condition that is not your fault? And truly it is not my place to judge you-- even if it was I would not want to have that job. I'm very sorry that the experiences of your life have conditioned you to find it curious that I am not disgusted by your existence.

I'm not sure if that is the best way to answer your question-- it's complicated. But hopefully that explains.

I applaud your intentions and I'm amazed to see someone so sympathetic. I'm so sorry for what happened to you. I'll hopefully be able to give you some more input soon, and I hope not to dissuade you, but I thought you should know first that if you're looking to press reforms through official channels you are risking making a large and potentially public target of yourself. There's some history here you should know. Tensions run very high on this issue, and there's a small group of nutjobs who make it their mission to publicly slander anyone who steps anywhere near it. Mostly they stick to outing online pedophile screen names that they link to real life people. But if you end up on their radar you could end up getting harassed by these guys. It might not be as much of an issue for you, but it's a major consideration for pedophiles who wish to speak through the internet, and you might not want to be too closely associated with that community.

Scanning through: I see you found kein täter werden (Project Dunkelfeld)! I've looked at it before, I have the good luck of knowing German and this is indeed the only program of its kind in the world so far as I'm aware. It doesn't seem perfect but it is a progressive respectful model for interaction between doctor and patient as far as I can tell. I almost considered going to school in Berlin because of it, among other reasons. There's an American organization called B4U-ACT which hasn't released any such studies but rather is a loose coalition of mental health care providers and people who are attracted to children, they're a group to look up as well.

Borgesius, First of all thank you for the info about where to look for information about the current state of things. I wish that the b4u act people were also here in California. Thank you also for your concern for my safety. How much of an actual threat public advocacy might pose to me is still something I am not clear about and something I feel I have to start thinking about even though I'm miles away from knowing enough to make that kind of step.

What do you perceive as my risk if I publicly seek to assure your access to mental health care? Will it help that I am a woman and that I am known to be strongly opposed to abuse of children and easily outraged by injustice? Do you think there would be any steps I could take to reduce my risk?

I feel like I could more adequately think about how far I am willing to take this outrage against the violation of your rights if I had a better understanding of the risks I am likely to face. Most of all, would it pose a risk to my child or family? It would be helpful if anyone could help fill me in about what I might expect.

I think that the thing that really upsets me is that since I am a pedophile and if I wanted help I couldn't get it unless I actually acted on my desires and lusts for children. I don't want to do that because I don't want to harm a child like that. I guess I feel like I am different than some pedophiles is that some want to eventually have sexual relations with a child, where I really want to as well but I know the outcome that it would have on the child for the rest of there lives. I also know that I don't want to go to prison and I don't want to be labeled a sex offender/child molester for the rest of my life. I just don't wanna go out like that. Yeah all my fantasies and desires are for children so that is not going away anytime soon.

Hello all,

I don't know exactly how to make sure that I am being completely transparent with you about where I stand and how I personally feel about the problems I am discovering that face your group. I believe you deserve respect as people, and therefore deserve to know my honest feelings and how I would represent myself publicly about the rights of your group, but it is still a little confusing to me to try and sort out exactly how I feel. I'm not even completely sure if it matters to you or not on a personal or group level, especially in terms of how much I can do to help you.

My fear, at the moment, is that I may be misunderstood by some of you. I worry that my sincere empathy for you might be mistaken as sympathy or support for the pedophile rights movements who want to loosen child protection laws and "normalize" pedophilia. I do not want to hurt anyone and I fear that a misunderstanding of my beliefs could further damage a person's faith in humanity or make them feel even more isolated and alienated than they did before I offered my compassion and desire to help.

In order to be honest with you, I have to once again disclose that I am prone to compartmentalization that is very atypical and probably pathological from a psychiatric point of view. What this means about me is that I am unable to at the same time look at this issue from the point of view of therapist and also as a mother or person who has been victimized. This is not "normal" or helpful in "real" life but gives me the potential to be sincerely empathetic, as a therapist, with people I could not necessarily feel the same way about as a mother or survivor of abuse. This does not diminish the depth or honesty of my concern for the denial of your rights-- something that I feel from every point of view I can take-- but does mean that there are large parts of me that are very conflicted about the idea of feeling empathy for your group.

I personally feel you need to know this about me, in advance of any event, because you need to know that my feelings about you may be very different if I am asked to view them from another POV. All of my posts to you have been from my view of the world as a therapist, at least up until now. I don't want to surprise anyone or cause you to feel betrayed... I want you to know up front.

I must admit that before I encountered this forum on paraphilias that it had never occurred to me that there might be pedophiles who have not (and don't want to) acted on their attraction to children. This is still a new concept to me and one that I do not fully understand. I believe that it must be true, now that I have thought about it, for nearly all of you for at least some of your time with this paraphilia. It seems hard to imagine that there would not, at least, be some window of time between developing an inappropriate attraction to children and acting on it. It is this window of time that I think would be wise to focus on if/when I publicly advocate for your group. I believe, especially since this develops in childhood to adolescence, that it could be a focus that most people would believe exists and offers the best chance for therapy to be effective. If people will accept that premise, then it will be much more likely that they will care about your ability to access mental health care.

I do not believe that it would be honest, nor that it would serve you or myself, for me to take any position that suggests or asks society to accept a belief that pedophilia is an "acceptable sexual orientation." While I can imagine therapeutic value in using the label "minor attracted adult" in a therapy session, to help diffuse the emotions both therapist and client would attach to pedophile, I believe I most likely oppose the potentially normalizing use of that label in public discourse about this issue. I do not want to take any stance that encourages anyone to see child sexual abuse as a valid lifestyle or act to commit.

I won't say that any part of me, denies your humanity or that you deserve to have your rights respected, but I also don't want you to think that means I could honestly be your friend or that I would consider having you around my daughter. I don't want to hurt your feelings, but I can't deny that my personal experiences (and my place in society) would never let me trust you completely with children. That may seem contradictory to my stance on when your therapist should be reported, but I don't think that it actually is (I can post on that later if you desire an explanation).

Blben, your frustration about being unable to get treatment until/unless you harm a child is exactly the reason I feel willing to publicly stand up for your group. While I do feel empathy, outrage, and frustration for this gross violation of your rights, my primary motivation for wanting to help you is that I absolutely believe that your inability to get care is endangering vast numbers of children who might otherwise be safe.

What I know, or think I know, is that the recidivism rate for pedophiles who have been caught offending against children is 50-80%. There was an interesting study that looked at the behavioral and psychological traits of pedophiles in comparison to non-using opiate addicts and healthy controls. What the study found is that active pedophilia shares a lot of common traits with addiction-- neither of which respond well to after-the-fact treatment. I think it seems logical to believe that preventative treatment could be extremely effective where post-offense treatment is not. Since most studies I've seen place the average number of children abused by active pedophiles at between 30-150, I hope most people would easily see the value and necessity for you to have unfettered access to care. And this is without considering the other problems this paraphilia causes for you personally and for society.

I guess it's good that I keep posting these long entries, as it might help prepare me to start educating others about this problem. Sorry if this seems long or unnecessary, I just don't want it to ever feel like I have been less than honest to anyone on this subject.

Take care

FYI, I just published a blog to post articles and information about fighting to get you access to mental health care.

http://myopicbutterfly.blogspot.com/

I have to warn you that it is meant to appeal to people who hold the usual beliefs about your community, and while I hope to never dehumanize of demonize your community I do believe it will be necessary to reach people where they are at.

I came across this post on a parenting blog/forum site. It shares a Dan Savage Q/A from a non-offending pedophile and then has some very thoughtful and compassionate responses by the parents (at least from the first page of comments that I have read so far). In fact, I have not yet read a comment that did not express at least some degree of compassion for the struggle of a non-offending pedophile to exist. http://forum.baby-gaga.com/about995609.html

Please understand everyone that we cannot discuss what 'most paedophiles' would or wouldn't do in a given scenario as there is no statistical research to back up the claim. We can say what most paedophiles that have been caught 'have done' because that is what is recorded and accessible to us.

The effect of being on the recieving end of a sexual encounter by a paedophile really depends on the paedophile so I don't automatically feel bad for people unless they say it was actually non-willed. There isn't a universal rule that all paedos like to have non-willing sex (This is important here: Although the Law states that children cannot give consent that doesn't mean a 10 year old child cannot say and mean it: "Daddy can we have sex tonight it felt very good last time". Consent and being willing or even encouraging must be separated as one is a legal ability (like the ability to own a driver's license and the other is reality like someone actually being able to drive at 14yrs old) the same as there isn't a universal rule that all consensual sex is enjoyable for both parties.

@ myopicdreams

I applaud your stance on the subject though disagree with the diagnosis of paedophilia being a mental illness.

At some point you must choose will you help a paedophile or help their victim. If John Doe raped a boy out of frustration and wanted to get help he would want to know whether he would face charges by seeking therapy so he can avoid this behaviour. This is not an easy subject as we must acknowledge there are in fact two victims (Mr Doe being the creator of one). If the answer is YES he will not get help, possibly become frustrated and possibly create another victim. If the answer is NO he will be encouraged to come in and accept help (if he isn't satisfied) and you can feel glad you helped lower his risk level and maybe even prevented him making more victims. The government will most likely refuse to provide money to you as a result of pressure as tax payers won't want to prevent criminals getting caught for crimes they are effectively confessing to (perhaps even in detail).