It's time to leave all that behind and move forward with something constructive.The Eagle (Quauhtli), representing the 15th day in the Aztec calendar, symbolized power and warlike qualities. It's certainly a more mature approach than pretending pedophilia is the sole preserve of goggle-eyed freaks offering sweeties at the school gates. By offering talk therapies and libido-reducing medication, the chances of acting on urges are subdued. Goode, Dr Cantor, and John Brown all believe we should look toward the Prevention Project Dunkelfeld in Germany, a treatment centre aimed at people struggling with their sexual interests in children. And if we also accept the idea that there's little anyone can do about their desires-that people don't actively choose to be pedophiles-we might have to think a bit differently about dealing with the threat.ĭr. Goode's point remains true: this terrible compulsion could be there in people who look just like us. How people look or dress is just no indication of propensity."ĭespite stumbling upon some vaguely relevant actual science, I discovered there really isn't anything in this pedophile-spotting business. "They may have a series of short-term relationships, and that's how they gain access to children. "Well, they may look like the lonely loser at the end of the street, but they may not," said Brown, head of the charity's sexual abuse program. Doesn't that suggest there might just be something to the stereotype of the lonely loser at the end of the street? He mentioned "a history of no long-term consenting adult relationships" in sex offenders. However, there is one scientist who's studied the brains of pedophiles, and his research has led him to believe that they really are hard-wired a little differently from the rest of us.įinally, I asked a child protection specialist, John Brown of the NSPCC, if he thought there were any common factors which could lead us to make useful generalizations. Still, even if we accept that WHR tells us something about a person's inclination to act recklessly on their desires, it doesn't tell us anything about pedophiles specifically. "It's probably only important when confronted by a stranger, because in our evolutionary history you had to make a snap decision whether to fight or to flee… it would have been worth your while to err on the side of caution." "We're prone to stereotype and over-generalize about who might be aggressive, but it still begs the question, 'Where does the stereotype come from?' I try to be skeptical, but I don't think we would have found such consistency in results without some kernel of truth to our snap judgements. "But we found that the snap judgements were so consistent from person to person that there does seem to be a good correlation between the relative width of the face and how people form impressions of them. "We were a little worried about the comparison to the early physiognomists," she admitted. I asked Cheryl McCormick, a Canadian neuroscience professor who has also carried out studies showing WHR as a key biomarker for aggressiveness, about what these kinds of findings mean. Is there anything useful to be learned about the quick, near-instant judgements we make about potentially threatening strangers? Anything that might help us understand real risks to children?Īn image from Professor Cheryl McCormick's study I think some of those sort of fairy tale representations of monstrous pedophiles-and all those Stranger Danger public information films-they were there to make adults feel better."īefore dismissing the stereotype entirely, I wondered about the technique of facial profiling. And it hasn't helped us understand risks or keep children safe. "We make them distant figures-the weird-looking guy at the end of the street. "The problem is, that knowledge makes us so uncomfortable we prefer to pretend it's 'those weird monsters over there.' "I think we half-realize that sexual attraction to kids is potentially there in people who look just like us," said Dr. Sarah Goode, author of Paedophiles in Society, if this could have anything to do with the way we assume child sex abusers look. Best estimates for the number of pedophiles in Britain today place it at a staggering 250,000, with some studies suggesting that 1 percent of all men could experience sexual feelings toward minors. Operation Yewtree's horrendous revelations have begun to indicate the true scale of sexual abuse of children in the UK. Graffiti about the sexual abuse of children in the Catholic church.
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