After conversing about various topics with my significant other a few months back, discovering that someone we know of is a pedophile, and discussing this matter I gained an interest in pedophiles; I never gave them much thought and knew very little about them. Luckily my significant other had a lot of answers to many of my questions since he had been interested in them before. Years prior he would visit the website 4chan.org and told me about discussions he had seen and read (when the website was much less restricted) of people who identified themselves as pedophiles. In that time years ago where these types of boards were allowed to exist, he was able to research them, in a way, first-handedly and learn a lot. He told me that from what he
…show more content…
Some are solely attracted to young girls, some like both, some like young 11 – 13 year old girls, some like little boys from 5 – 7 years of age, and some are even attracted to infants. Now this confused me because how does one gain an attraction towards infants? Are they born with it? Are there actually people that have sex with infants? Does this fall in the realm of psychopaths? Do they not choose this path, are they somehow genetically wired to be this way? Are they at fault for this? After searching up types of pedophiles, I came across a lack of information and two very briefly defined terms, infantophilia and nepiophilia. In this paper I will discuss research I found that looks into the categorization of pedophilia in terms of the victim’s age – in particular …show more content…
The study results demonstrated that the majority of children that were abused were under the Tanner 1 score (of which through medical examinations they determined) (Lan et al., 1988). Lan et al. notes that the victims in the study appeared much younger than children used as the control (1988). It is addressed that due to the youngness in their appearance is what attracts pedophiles more (Lan et al., 1988). It seems that this classification system is much more valid determinant of pedophile sub-categorical classifications than that of ones age since, as quoted in the study by Lan et al. (1988), “…a normal 11 years old girl could range from Tanner Stage 1…to Stage 4” (Fuller, Barnard, Robbins, & Spears, 1988). One thing to note that it is the young aspect that draws in pedophiles: pedophiles (or infantophiles) who had pre-school aged victims were a bit more likely to victimize children of either gender (Levenson, Becker, & Morin, 2008). This is important to note and single out because Lan et al.’s study had participants that were a majority female and one can more easily rule this out as a something that differs pedophiles and infantophiles. It is also noted in a study by Mongeau and Rouleau to also use Tanner scoresstages to assess the interest of pedophiles (2014). The idea coming together is that there already is a
Some are solely attracted to young girls, some like both, some like young 11 – 13 year old girls, some like little boys from 5 – 7 years of age, and some are even attracted to infants. Now this confused me because how does one gain an attraction towards infants? Are they born with it? Are there actually people that have sex with infants? Does this fall in the realm of psychopaths? Do they not choose this path, are they somehow genetically wired to be this way? Are they at fault for this? After searching up types of pedophiles, I came across a lack of information and two very briefly defined terms, infantophilia and nepiophilia. In this paper I will discuss research I found that looks into the categorization of pedophilia in terms of the victim’s age – in particular …show more content…
The study results demonstrated that the majority of children that were abused were under the Tanner 1 score (of which through medical examinations they determined) (Lan et al., 1988). Lan et al. notes that the victims in the study appeared much younger than children used as the control (1988). It is addressed that due to the youngness in their appearance is what attracts pedophiles more (Lan et al., 1988). It seems that this classification system is much more valid determinant of pedophile sub-categorical classifications than that of ones age since, as quoted in the study by Lan et al. (1988), “…a normal 11 years old girl could range from Tanner Stage 1…to Stage 4” (Fuller, Barnard, Robbins, & Spears, 1988). One thing to note that it is the young aspect that draws in pedophiles: pedophiles (or infantophiles) who had pre-school aged victims were a bit more likely to victimize children of either gender (Levenson, Becker, & Morin, 2008). This is important to note and single out because Lan et al.’s study had participants that were a majority female and one can more easily rule this out as a something that differs pedophiles and infantophiles. It is also noted in a study by Mongeau and Rouleau to also use Tanner scoresstages to assess the interest of pedophiles (2014). The idea coming together is that there already is a