Inside the Mind of Pedophile

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I found this to be very interesting because I am still up in the air about what I think about how pedophiles should be treated.  I obviously think it is a crime and they should be locked up, but while reading the article they interviewed a man who had committed his crime while a teen, and it still follows him around as an adult.  Which, to me if you've served your time and you were a teen it should be eliminated from your record but you should have to do mandatory check in with a probation officer, mandatory counseling, and still not be able to live with in a certain radius of children. 
This article gave me a bit more incite of how it is to be in the position of someone who has served their time and their life will not and can not ever go back to how it was.

http://www.mysuncoast.com/Global/story.asp?S=12002719

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According to the DSM, pedophilia is specified as a form of paraphilia in which a person either has intense sexual urges towards children, and experiences recurrent sexual urges towards and fantasies about children that they have either acted on, or cause distress or interpersonal difficulty. Some child sex offenders actually do not meet this criteria which surprised me.

The cause of pedophilia is also unknown, research continues to be done in the area. Most pedophiles are men, though there are some women, research done by the US and UK suggest that it women constitute 5-20% of child sex offenders.

There are also two types of pedophiles, exclusive and non-exclusive. Exclusive pedophiles are attracted to children, and children only. They show little erotic interest in adults their own age and in some cases, can only become aroused while fantasizing or being in the presence of prepubescent children. Nonexclusive pedophiles are attracted to both children and adults, and can be sexually aroused by both

Treatment of pedophilia often requires collaboration between law enforcement and health care professionals, but while many theories of treatment have been suggested, the success rate has been quite low.
The interventions suggested include cognitive-behavioral therapy, behavioral interventions, and pharmacological interventions.

Although these treatments are related to the prevention of re-offending in contact child sex offenders, there is no empirical data that suggests that such therapy is a cure for pedophilia. Dr. Fred Berlin, from the John Hopkins Sexual Disorders Clinic believes that pedophilia could be successfully treated if the medical community would take a better look at it.

With all this information presented, it makes the sob story in the above article less moving, people do change and should be given a second chance, but with such a low chance of any treatment alleviating the disorder, it is no wonder they are marked for life. Which was the consensus of multiple doctors in the article as well.

Perhaps the rules should be more lenient as far as minors go, but Adult's should be responsible for their own actions.

The stigma that follows them is a constant reminder of a act they comminted that they were not supposed to... and im glad that there is a website that they have to be registered to because its those types of people that try to beat the system and then regret it later when they get caugtht. In the article two of the psychologist try to say that pedophelia is biological and that is just complete B.S!!! We live in this age of genetics where every behavior is tried to be linked to a biological disorder when it is a learned behavior! I find it very frustrating that a lot of psychologists are desperately trying to make psycho more accepted as a science by making bogus claims of biological origns for learned behaviors.

I agree with the above comment. It seems like today since we can use DNA to solve crimes and a number of other things it is also used to be blames for peoples actions. I think for the most part people are responsible for their actions. In the case of pedophiles I dont DNA has anything to do with it.

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