My theory is, pedophiles are also psychopaths; unable to feel remorse, guilt or empathize with their victims and understand the pain they cause. Otherwise, would they do it in the first place? Which is why the scene in the park between Robin and Walter doesn't ring true.
Absolutely not all pedophiles are also psychopaths.
First you have pedophiles who never touched children.
Then you have the pedophiles who did abuse children.
Here you have two categories. The ones who rolled into it, realizing what they did and felt bad afterwards, but did it anyway because the urge was too strong and they believed that they didn't hurt anyone. There's your answer to why they abused a child in the first place.
The other kind are the psychopaths who like you said, have no ability to feel remorse, guilt or empathy.
Those are the ones you can't ever set free. Can't work with those people. They are and always will be a danger to themselves and society.
Many of these are also showing sadistic personalities which starts showing early by torturing small animals.
Among the child abusers, there's also still the ones who aren't even attracted to children, thus are no pedophiles, but committed their crimes under the influence of drugs or suffer with a personality disorder.
You probably wonder now how come I know all of this.
I myself am a pedophile who did 5 months in jail and I am now in therapy, both individually as in group sessions with other pedophiles.
Statistics show that exhibitionists repeat their crimes after being busted more often than so called "family-pedophiles" (pedophiles who abused a child they knew and were close to, mostly family related as oposed to the image people still have in their head of a dirty old man with a long trench coat hiding in the bushes with candy and van parked around the block).
You cannot "cure" pedophiles. You can only teach them to live with their attractions and obey the law and never to hurt a child. If it must in combination with the help of meds. There are several options ranging from small impact meds such as certain drugs that are used mainly for depressions (or even cancer i heard), but have a side effect that they lower the libido, all the way up to drastic measures such as chemical castration
That last option on itself has two options you can choose from should you realize that your urges are getting too strong and you are about to lose control.
One are pills that require some time to adjust perfectly to the person before they have the desired effect; loss of sex drive.
This effect is reversible simply by stop taking the drugs.
The other option is an injection with fluids that have an effect lasting 3 months. There is however a risk that the function of the penis to become erect is forever absent. This is always the last option and only for the absolute most dangerous patients.
Anyway, just saying that there ARE options and that pedophiles shouldn't be dumped out of society. They can live a productive relative normal life.
Hearing the stories of no less than 3 forensic psychologists I talked with about other pedophiles who completed their therapy and are stable and with both feet in society, some even seeing their kids again and able to behave as they should, there sure is hope still for everyone. Apart from the psychopaths of course.
By the way, I myself was checked by a neurologic forensic psychiatrist and found not a psychotic, nor did he find any problems related to my brain, memory or functionality of the thinking and being able to recognize what is socially acceptable and non acceptable behavior.
He did conclude one thing that had me thinking and would explain a lot of things.
He wrote that I am psycho-affective and psycho-sexually very immature.
In short it means I apparently stopped developing on certain parts where other parts did develop into adolescence. This means I am at the age of 34 a person with both adult aspects as child aspects in my brain.
This does explain a lot for me. Why I had problems finding a partner (and still do). Why I was more afraid of my first job and work day compared to other people. Why I still enjoy stuffed animals and how come I like to plaster my bedroom walls with Disney posters. Perhaps it also explains partly why I am so drawn to all that is girlie and cute. Important to mention is that in all my feelings for children, the sexual aspect is not the biggest thing.
Cuteness and a desire to be a child again myself among the children is far more present than the sexual drifts. That again leads back to the stunted development.
Now that I know this, I can understand certain aspects much better. I doubt it'll ever change though.
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