The paedophile is not some demonic figure. Most paedophiles are middle class professionals who live next door or even close friends of the family and in the Indian context very often relatives of the victim. TIMOTHY J. DAILEY, Ph.D. profiles a paedophile.

PAEDOPHILES ATTEMPT to portray adult-child sexual relationships as mutual, tender “coming of age” experiences fondly cherished by the child. Such arguments belie the reality of the well-documented dynamics involved in the seduction of children by beguiling, manipulative paedophiles.

Far from the stereotype of dirty, unkempt men hanging around playgrounds, most paedophiles are middle-class professionals who often live “next door,” and who spend weeks and even months “grooming” their victims. The modus operandi of child abusers is well known to both researchers and police. The Janus Report on Sexual Behaviour notes, “Sergeant Lloyd Martin, formerly head of the Juvenile Vice Bureau of the Los Angeles Police Department, says that, when he sees a man who is much nicer to a child than any father would be, ‘I know I have a child abuser.’

Lieutenant William Spaulding of the Division of Criminal Intelligence in Louisville, Ky., shares his insight into the mind of the child abuser:

It is vitally important for those persons involved in the investigation of cases of exploited children to understand that a strong bond often develops between the child and the adult offender. The preferential child molester (paedophile) is very good at obtaining cooperation and gaining control of the child through well-planned seduction processes that employ adult authority, affection, attention, gifts, or threats — either articulated or implied.

Modus Operandi
MANY PAEDOPHILES have a “sixth sense” for spotting children who might be susceptible to their advances. In her analysis of adult sex offenders, Dawn Fisher describes the elaborate methods that molesters employ both to set up the situation where the abuse occurs and to overcome the child’s resistance:

The grooming of the victim may involve developing a friendship with the child, using bribes of affection and gifts, threats or physical violence. Some offenders may target particular children who are perceived as being vulnerable in some way, possibly through poor parenting or previous sexual abuse.

Given the complex stratagems that paedophiles employ, it is understandable that few victims realize the ultimate goal of their newfound “friend.” A U.S. Department of Justice report on child sexual exploitation states, “Most preferential sex offenders spend their entire lives attempting to convince themselves and others that they are not perverts and that they love and nurture children.”

The tragic fact is that children who are being preyed upon “have been carefully seduced and often do not realize they are victims. They repeatedly and voluntarily return to the offender.” The truth often does not become apparent to them until after they have been abandoned: “Then they see that all the attention, affection and gifts were just part of a master plan to use and exploit them.”

The report catalogues the lengths to which paedophiles can go, even after detection and arrest, to keep their victims loyal to them.

Because of their bond with the offender, victims frequently resent law enforcement intervention and may even warn the offender. Even the occasional victim who comes forward and discloses the abuse may feel guilty and then warn the offender. The offender may also continue to manipulate the victims after the investigation has begun — for example, by appealing to their sympathy or by making a feeble attempt at suicide to make them feel guilty or disloyal.

Even after incarceration for their crimes against children, paedophiles cling to the notion that their relationships with their victims were consensual. Richard Beckett, in his study on sex offenders, found that paedophiles typically display a range of more fundamental distortions, related to the belief that some children will actively seek sexual encounters with adults, can consent to and benefit from such encounters and have the capacity to reciprocate the degree of emotional feeling and attachment the adult abuser may feel for the child.

Self-Deception
SUCH “FUNDAMENTAL distortions” or moral reasoning are aggressively promoted by paedophile advocates such as NAMBLA, which is vocal in its insistence that the sodomizing of young boys constitutes an act of “love.” But do pedophiles really care about children? Beckett’s findings regarding this question are revealing:

Several studies of child abusers have indicated they are impaired in their capacity for empathy, particularly towards their own victim. … When victims are perceived as deserving of abuse, guilty of provoking or enjoying sexual contact with adults, their distress is likely to be ignored.

Thus, the self-deception of paedophiles that children seek after and “enjoy” being sodomized serves as a convenient justification for ignoring the trauma inflicted upon their young victims.

In the end all academic arguments fail in the face of such monstrous crimes committed against little ones, many of whom suffer in silence.

Trauma
WHAT ARE the effects of child abuse on children? They are measured in the tears of a young child sobbing alone in bed at night, hurting, with no one to turn to. Their measure is the burden of painful confusion in a young boy’s heart when the man he so much wanted to be a father figure is doing things to him that he knows are wrong. What hurts the most is that he knows, though he cannot articulate it, that he is being violated by someone who claims to care for him. And he needs so much for someone to really love him.

For too many it is too late to protect them from those who took advantage of their need for love and attention. Only by exposing the lies and deceptions — including those wrapped in scholastic garb — of those who seek legitimacy for sexually preying on children, can we hope to build a wall of protection around the littlest and most helpless among us.

Timothy J. Dailey, Ph.D., is senior writer in Family Research Council’s cultural studies department.

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