Summary. Pedophilia is always considered by mainstream society as one form of sexual abuse of children. However, analysis of the personal accounts provided by pedophiles suggests that these experiences could be understood differently. This paper attempts to document some aspects of the pedophiles' construction of their sexuality, to provide illustrations of how these individuals understand themselves.
Pedophilia is legally a crime in most western countries, and it is considered a mental disorder by orthodox psychiatry. In official and research statistics, pedophiles are included within the category of child molesters. To many professionals concerned with the protection of children, pedophilia is synonymous with child sexual abuse, and is reckoned as a very serious social problem. Pedophiles are to be arrested and imprioned, or, within a rehabilitation framework, to be given therapy or other behavior-chianging treatments. Very rarely does one hear an academic or a professional speaking out in defense of pedophiles.
Are all pedophiles violent child molesters? Or are they, as one pedophile argued in this book, gentle and loving people? There is a great need for giving voice to the viewpoints of pedophiles, not least because they are rarely heard. We must let them speak for themselves. It is through listening empathetically to their accounts that we hope to achieve a dialogue with them and consequently a better understanding of their experiences.
Because the subject of the sudy was a very sensitive issue, it was difficult to get in touch with a large number of suitable informants. Therefore I placed no restriction on the type of people I interviewed, except the basic requirement that they must have had some sexual experience with children. I took great care to ensure that all informants took part in my study out of their own free choice.
It was not always possible to ascertain what each participant's reason for participating was. Nevertheless, some of them did mention that it was the first time they had the chance to talk about their experiences in detail with somebody who was willing to listen, and this gave them the feeling of being understood. Perhaps this desire to communicate with another person motivated these men to respond to my request. Needless to say, I assured all my informants that strict confidentiality would be kept of any information they might provide, and also that this project was an academic pursuit which had no connection with any government agency. The aim of the study was to document how they construe their sexual experiences with children.
The phrase 'how they construe their experiences' is of paramount importance here. To construe experience is to interpret events, to give form to occurences, to make sense of what is happening, and to carry on one's life in the direction that these interpretaions and constructions entail. Human existence is 'subjective,' in the sense that it is the 'subject' who exists - it is the 'I' who carries on the 'existence.' I want to understand how my pedophile informants have understood their sexual life as an experiencing subject. This point is of fundamental importance, because there is no pedophilia as an entity of its own right, there are only individual persons who experience sexual feelings for children. The search for a categorical etiology or pathology for pedophilia as an objective entity will mask the rich complexity of the unique life of the individual concerned, and will reify the subjectiver human experiences involved.
This study consisted of in-depth interviews with individual pedophiles. The aim of each interview was to let the informant talk freely about his experiences with children. I was not looking for any particular type of accounts, nor was I testing any specific hypothesis. My role was as an unprejudiced researcher seeking an understanding of an area of human experience that only my informants could clarify. I communicated this clearly to them. I used open-ended questions as far as possible to avoid leading the informant to a particular way of describing his experiences. During each interview, I maintained, as much as possible, a non-imposing and receptive style of interaction with the informant, so as to encourage him to speak frankly and freely about what he believed.
Granted all this, however, it is possible to argue that what the informant believes might not be the 'objective' or 'real' situation he is in. To this challenge one could argue that what is real is not something out there independent of the human observer. To an individual person, reality is what he contrues to be real. Still, it could be argued that at best each informant's account is a rationalization of his own behaviour. This, however, is not necessarily a problem. If we take 'rationalization' not in the pejorative sense as something 'false' or 'unreliable,' but in its etymological sense of being 'related to reason,' then we could accept, indeed we have to say, that the informant's account consitutes his effort of giving reason or meaning to his experience. This is precisely what my study wants to document.
The situation was not one in which the informant ran the risk of incriminating himself by what he said; it was not a police interrogation in which he has to defend himself. Therefore, I expected that his 'rationalization' was more likely what he believed, and hence what I wanted to understand. Even if what he has told me represents more his fantasy than actual occurences, the material still reflects his understanding of his desire.
From what is said above, it is clear that the focus of this study is on the pedophiles construction of their experiences. This, however, is only one side of the coin - there are also the children's experiences to be reckoned with. An important question in this regard is whether the children involved construe their experiences differently. Hence it is desirable to carry out a study which compares pedophiles' construction of their experiences with that of the children involved. However, practical limitation in terms of time, resources and access to children has made it impossible to do so in this present project. Nevertheless, the collecting and analyzing of pedophiles' accounts is in itself an important task towards attaining an understanding of this particular type of human experiences.
In the analysis, I tried to reconstruct from hwat each informant had told me his understanding of his sexual desire for children. The I examined the explanatory accounts given by all the informants, and drew out the elements common for their construction. While these elements are not necessarily present in the account of every informant, they do provide us with some insight into the self-understanding of these individuals. In the following sections, I will discuss thematically these various elements of the pedophiles' construction of their sexual experiences. Needless to say, these case studies are not to be taken as representative of all those people who had sexual encounters with children. Each person has a unique life history. This work can only claim to be a documentation of some relevant cases. But it is my conviction that our understanding will slowly deepen as this process of documentation progresses further.
[p.133] This is a prominent feature in the accounts of about one-third of my informants. These individuals feel that their sexual desire for children is a natural part of their constitution. This desire is variously described as 'inbreed,' 'innate,' 'a fact of nature,' 'inherent in them,' etc. The leitmotif of their accounts is 'this is me' or 'just the way I am.' The following is an example of this type of construction.
Tom is a 25-year-old businessman from a fairly rich family. From adolescence onwards, Tom gradually realized that he had strong sexual desire for boys. He felt he could only attribute this to an innate disposition as there was nothing in his life that he could identify as responsible for this development. This is his description:
I can offer no explanation for my feelings, it is inherent in me, it is just something that comes naturally to me. To be honest, you know, I think it'd always been in me. I don't think it's sort of one stage that happened that converts me over to that. (...) It's not something that happened in my life that changed me totally, it's always been there.
Over half of the informants have mentioned specific characteristics in children which they find particularly attractive. Thus to them, relationships and sexual activities with children are experienced as much more satisfying than those with adults. These relationships are their first choise, rather than a substitute when adult sex is lacking.
In these informants' accounts, children are portrayed as gentle, warm generous, innocent, truthful, broadminded, affectionate and perceptive, whereas adults are described as selfish, narrow-minded, materialistic and without depth of feeling. Interaction with children, as my informants have experienced it, is much more enjoyable than that with adults because the informants do not have to put up a social facade, they can simply be themselves.
In this context, pedophilic activities are often construed by the informants in terms of childhood play. The account of Nick provides an example that highlights some of these points. All through his adult life, Nick, who is 33, has had many relationships with boys, some of which have been sexual, some not. The relationship that he most treasured most, with an Arab boy of 9, did not involve sex. Nick felt he was accepted as part of the boy's family, and he thoroughly enjoyed the three years thay spent together. When the boy eventually left Britain, Nick experienced a tremendous loss. This is how he expressed his feelings:
Nothing is the same after he left, you know, just like (pause), just like the worrld has lost its color (sighs), every, everything was different.Besides this Arab boy, Nick was also very fond of his two nephews. Again, sex was not invoved. To him, the relationship between himself and his nephews was one of affection and love. It was the boisterous play he had with his nephews and their friends that give him pleasure and a sense of fulfilment. They played rough and tumble games, they played football, they went camping and searching for adventures and mischiefs, they visited amusement arcades, they looked for fun. Nick described his pedophilic desire in the following way:
I like kids because I didn't have any other, real, great experiences with adults when I was a kid. You can't learn to be pedophiliac, it's something that happens, it's a form of growth, growth that makes you a pedophiliac. It's the way you're brought up, experiences you had, experiences of being unloved, experiences of having difficult relationships. (...) For me, without the spirit of cildren around, I'm alone (Weeps) I have to look - this is difficult - I have to look for things worth living for. (...) Youth comes into it, the spirit comes into it. 'Cos it's not just sex. I enjoyed their company. Lots of things come into it. Sex, to me, sex is a very small part, you know, in a relationship with a boy. Sex is, you know, the smallest part. 'Cos I've had hundreds of relationships with boys without sex coming into it. (...) Spirit is the charisma of childhood, that is, hmm, that is, childness. Just the fun, the innocence. Sex isn't tha main thing, the main thing is being wanted I suppose.To many pedophiles, the childhood world represents the best of life, while the adult world the worst. Pedophilia is not primarily a matter of sex, but of love, of being wanted, of childhood enjoyment, of things that the adult world cannot provide. The following extracts from some other informants' accounts illustrate this contrast between the adult and the childhood world:
Children get involved in sex with each other, because they don't feel it's wrong, you see. Now you can meet a child and you can say to the child, should we play doctors and nurses or whatever, and they know what you're talking about, and they do it to each other, sometimes they are willing to do it with an adult. (...) I suppose, you can say that I'm slightly immature, haven't lost my childhood. Childhood is a very, very short sort of time in your life, goes too quickly, and it's very sweet, you know, it's all innocent. You know, you do things which you don't do as adults, I mean, if you're a child, you can take your clothes off and lunge into a river, to swim, you're quite free, you have no inhibitions. But if you strip off, as an adult, you get arrested! (Keith)
Children are immeasurable perceptive, but by the time they have grown up, society has dealt them a deadly blow, and their perception has fled for all times (George)
Children are warm and generous and it is only when they get older and they learn the ways of the world and ask what's in it for me or what is it worth. When that happens they lose all their charm and enchantment. (Jack)The attraction of the childhood is so great that Paul, another informant, expressed the wish to never grow up:
I am very much a Peter Pan, the boy who never grew up. That is why boys are attracted to me. I don't look down upon them as kids, I regard them, and they me, as 'all boys together.' My deep love for boys for so many years is so much a part of me psychologically that growing up would be impossible.
Simon is a 74-year-old retired salesman, a respected person in his local community. Troughout his long life, he has had numerous sexual encounters with boys. He has a special knack of relating to boys, and can easily establish relationships of trust with them. He believes that his sexual attraction toward boys is inborn, and that the pursuit of mutual pleasure with a willing boy is normal and legitimate. This is how he put it:
As a boy-lover, I feel that it's up to me to take advantage of a willing boy. I don't see anything wrong in that, because I do not - let me get this quite clear, i don't go out seeking boys for my pleasure, I don't go out encouraging boys for my pleasure. I only encourage boys who come to me and want me to have a bit of sex play with them, and that has always been my angle. I have never ever forced a boy.The following quotations, from two other informants, illustrate how the argument of relativism and liberation is articulated to justify the 'normality' of pleasure-seeking through sexual activities with children.
There is the historical aspect. In the Middle Ages children were not children in the sense we speak of these days. Probably pedophilia went on regularly within and outside families. I assmue that hundreds of years ago sex with younger females was just not noticed. Before 'alcoholism' was recognized, people who got themselves into a state were called lazy, good-for-nothing scoundrels etc.etc., get the point? (Kevin)
My contention is that an adult can have a relationship with a child in a way that does not harm, and indeed, helps, the child. I consider myself to be an adult capable of such a relationship. Other adults might be more selfish in an adult-child encounter and end up harming the child. By banning and stigmatizing adult-child encounters, our society has ensured that such instances as do still occur are almost always of bad kind, so giving the active opponents of child-adult encounters an argument for even heavier clampdown. If adult-child sex was commonplace, the majority of it would surely be good for both participants and, therefore, not something to be discouraged. Indeed, because the adult would be able to teach the child from an informed standpoint, many of the childhood misunderstandings about sex that come from child-child encounters would be avoided. (Bruce)Implicit in the sexual liberation viewpoint, as illustrated by this quotation from Bruce, is the argument that adult-child sexual activities have positive educational value to the children involved. Jack also made this clear in his account:
If everybody could have an experience at an early age, some kind of experience with an adult, people would not have nearly as many problems as waht they do have, and I think that's why, sex with children, I think it's an extension of that, hmm, teaching them what I've learned. But it got to be done in a nice, pleasant way, you can't force anybody.
Ben is a 36-year-old businessman, From early childhood onwards he felt that he was only attracted to males. Then as he grew older, he gradually realized that this attraction was to boys rather than to men. He also realized that what he wanted was a stable relationship of love with a young teenage boy. the following extracts from his account show how Ben construed his pedophilic relationships in terms of romantic love.
Most important thing I look for, I suppose, is a loving relationship with a boy. and, although I've had physical relationships with probably, I don't know, maybe a hundred or more boys over the years, I can only point to four or five true relationships over the time. (...) As emotions become more invoved, and the relationship becomes longer established, so does the child's involvement become greater. The bound develops out of a mutual need for love and affection. The bound is nurtured adn develop further out of both of us doing things for the other person even we're not necessarily particularly interested ourselves, yeah? Now, it's not the case with the one at the moment because he enjoys the sex as much as I do if not more, but I know that in the past, there may have been occasions, I mean once the relationship is established, where the boy would - I have to differentiate this from force or whatever - but I mean there may have been occasions where the boy would make love because I wanted to, all right? Hmm, he may have been actually ready to go to sleep. That's the other side of the coin to me watching the go-kart for three hours, OK? Hmm, we all become trained, not Pavlovian, but trained to a degree that we know that somebody wants something recognized, and we recognize it, yeah? Not because it interests us, but because we know that they want it recognized. The thing that's mutual is the love and affection, all right? Out of that affection, we do things for each other.The presence of a relationship of love in a pedophilic encounter is also of paramount importance to Charles, another 74-year-old informant. This is how he put it:
To me the important and salient consideration in the validity of the experience is the presence of love, or slightly less than that, affection. Anything outside this is possible but in no way significant.Thus to these men, pedophilia is construed as a matter of romantic relationships, not as casual sex. The experience of romantic love is sometimes emotionally very intense, comparable to that which obtains in the socially acceptable forms of heterosexual courtship, and the partners can sense subtle cues from each other. An example of such intense feelings ('falling in love') can be found in the description provided by Paul, a 57-year-old golf club greenkeeper, about his encounter with a 13-year-old boy:
He stopped, my blue eyes and his brown eyes just met. Fro seconds, which seemed like hours, neither of us spoke. He then said, excuse me, Sir, could you tell me where the head greenkeeper is? I explained that he only had to go along the path for about 40 yards. He thanked me profusely and slowly mounting his bike and rode away, giving me a smile, the likes of which I had not seen for many years. It was obvious that something between us had clicked. I was transfixed, I started trembling, my legs weakened, I could not concentrate on my mowing. Yet I had six hours of non-stop mowing adead of me. My mowing became automatic, I was oblivious to the playing members and visitors who spoke to me whilst I stopped my machine whilst they tee'd off. I was in love, love deeper than I had ever before experienced. What that beautiful boy applying for a greenkeeping job?
It must be pointed out that this paper is only th place into focus the salient features of pedophilic experiences as seen from the perspective of some pedophiles. What has been discussed above is not meant to be taken as typical of every pedophilic relationship. Perhaps some researchers will find in these personal accounts evidence to 'pathologize' the individuals concerned, but such an attempt at reducing a person;s life to a diagnostic category or an etiology masks the complexity of human existence. Like every one of us, a pedophile is constantly in the process of creating a personal world to anchor his existence. A very vivid example is Keith - his life is situated in a world that he has virtually built up himself. A visit to his room will reveal to the visitor the richness of this world - numerous car models, vehicle paraphernalia, gramophone music records, small pieces of wooden furniture which he himself has made, and pictures of children cut out from magazines, pasted on papers and bound together into many volumes.
As Nick, another informant, has remarked, 'sex isn't the main thing.' To many of my informants, sex does not constitute the whole of a 'pedophile's' life - it is only a part of it, albeit a meaningful part. To call a person a 'pedophile' may in itself be reductionistic - as if that person's desire for children constitutes the whole of his life. This reducing of a person into a narrow category is part of what has been called the 'discourse of sexuality' which permeates western society, and it controls the life of individuals through deploying such labels of sexual identities as 'the homosexual,' 'the lesbian,' 'the impotent male,' 'the pedophile,' etc. These labels imply that the essence of the individuals concerned is thoroughly known and that these people must be placed in certain well-defined positions in society (e.g., as outcast, prisoners, or failures). Within such a scheme of things, individual personhood becomes impossible.
While to a certain extend this discussion seems to be endorsing a relativization of the concept of 'normality,' it is not my intention to defend all types of sexual contact between adults and children. Lust murder of children and coercive sexual contact must be ruled out as unacceptable no matter how these acts are construed by the adult committing them. But when it comes th the question of consensual adult-child activities, there is much more room for alternative constructions, anmd hence it is more difficult to arrive at a blanket judgment. However, total relativism is not the answer, as it would only lead to solipsistic chaos. Personal life, though individually subjective, must nevertheless be lived in the context of a community, because this is the form that human existence has taken throughout our development, both phylogenetically and ontogenetically speaking. Therefore, it is important that the pedophile takes into consideration reality as construed by the community in which he finds himself, not necessarily to submit to society's demands, but in order that he can construe reality more adequately if he wants to continue living in this community.
The discrepancy between pedophiles' views and those of mainstream society has to be examined critically to see if there is any possibility of achieving on optimal balance between individual rights and collective responsibility. In dealing with this problem, it must be borne in mind that the viewpoint of mainstream society cannot simply be taken as correct and that of the pedophiles taken as suspect. Instead, each should be analyzed in terms of its historical and ideological roots. Only after such an exercise can we begin to address the more practical questions of ethics, the law, and social policies with regard to sexual contact between adults and children.