“The victimologist’s pedophile barrel needs to be upended on the laboratory bench and its contents carefully identified and sorted by impartial examiners. Those items lacking scientific credibility need to be discarded, and new containers found for some others. A few, such as the first of the above described scenarios, can be correctly placed back in that barrel, which, since we have noted that “pedophilia” has nothing to do with either sex or abuse, requires a new and more truthful label”.

David L. Riegel

One problem inherent to the victimological model of Child Sexual Abuse, is that it fails to discriminate at appropriate points. The only distinction is made once the category is so broad that it conflates highly disparate behaviours, at a massive cost to our understanding of abuse, and those caught up in the system.

Indeed, the confusing of two situations – for example, those referred to in a recent post by another contributor, isn’t only informationally out of order, but threatens to undermine or misinterpret the problems faced by victims of violent attacks and rape, and to negatively reinterpret the experiences of those who previously had no reason to feel shameful about their past.

This short-sighted victimological model plays Russian Roulette with public health, and should be smashed to pieces on that basis alone.