preview

The Psychology of Pedophiles Essay

Best Essays
In the news today we frequently hear about pedophiles and child molesters. We have heard the horror stories of priest and bishops molesting boys, public school teachers having sex with students, and family members molesting children. While it is still taboo, the public view of a child molester has changed in the past years. It used to be that when we thought of a pedophile, we thought of a scary man lurking behind the bushes. This is not the case today, most of the cases of child molestation are by a person known to the child, whether it be a family member or a family friend.(Herkov, 2012) A pedophile is a person who is significantly older and has conscious sexual interests in prepubescent children. There are two kinds of pedophiles,…show more content…
The majority of pedophiles are males that have no gender preference for their victims. There can be hetero-pedophiles that chose victims that are of the opposite sex, while homo-pedophiles choose children that are of the same sex and finally there are bisexual offenders that will choose either sex. Most pedophiles will have sexual relationships with people other then children and they often justify their conduct by stating that the child initiated the advance and that they received as much pleasure from it as the offender did. They don't consider themselves to be deviants and there urges are usually compulsive, uncontrollable, and overwhelming. The public views the norm to be relations between people in the same generation and when people go beyond these boundaries this is a deviation from the normal standard. In different cultures and societies, sex with children is viewed differently. In ancient Egypt, intercourse with a prepubescent child was a religious ritual. In the 15th century there was a nobleman, Gilles de Rey, who sodomized and beheaded five hundred children. Some cultures feel that having sex with a child would cure venereal diseases and they would regain potency. Every culture has its own perception of what is right and what is wrong when it comes to child sex. In England, Bill Malcolm raped a 3 year old girl and was put in prison. Malcolm was let out three years later, only
Get Access