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Is pedophilia violent?

Paper prepared by Tom O'Carroll for the WCS (World Congress of Sexology)
in Paris in 2001, starting with the <B>Abstract.</B>


<I>TITLE: Is paedophilia violent?</I>

<I>ABSTRACT:</I>

<I>A section called "Violence and Sex (violence, pedophilia, rape)" was included
in a leaflet promoting this congress as part of a list of topics listed for
symposia and round table discussions. This paper challenges the appropriateness
of viewing pedophilia (UK spelling: paedophilia) in terms of violence. The
literature on personality and behavioural aspects of paedophilia is reviewed
with particular reference to "preferential" as opposed to "situational"
paedophilia. Evidence on harm to children commonly attributed to adult-child
sexual contacts is considered, as is the validity and value of the "consent"
construct in the light of recent research. The unscientific attribution of
violence to paedophilia as a supposedly inherent characteristic is discussed,
particularly with regard to lines of feminist analysis founded on issues
of power imbalance in personal relationships.</I>


THE DRAFT PAPER:

When I first saw the draft programme of this conference a year ago at the
International Academy of Sex Research annual meeting in Paris, I saw that
paedophilia was to be discussed in a workshop on Violence and Sexuality along
with rape, as though paedophilic behaviour is inevitably a form of violence.

In a tabloid newspaper article, I might have supposed this to be an unconscious
assumption, but coming from the organisers of a conference of sexologists
it struck me as more likely to be an entirely conscious ideological assertion,
probably owing its origins more to very general feminist insights into violence,
particularly male violence, than to detailed knowledge of paedophilia itself.
That feminism should be suspected of having great influence on a scientifically
oriented body such as the WCS is a tribute I am happy to pay to a movement
which in the last three decades has contributed immeasurably to the debate
on society and sexuality in every serious forum of relevance. The WCS may
wish to disown any such direct connection but I nonetheless feel it is important
to explore this theme of "violence" and to take a hard look at the limitations
of its validity.

The adjective "violent" is defined in Chambers 20th Century dictionary as
<I>"intensively forcible: impetuous and unrestrained in action: overmasteringly
vehement"</I>; the noun "violence" refers additionally to <I>"unjustifiable
force: outrage: profanation: injury: rape"</I>. The current edition of
Merriam-Websters Collegiate dictionary, and doubtless many other dictionaries
of ordinary usage, has a similar emphasis on force, referring additionally
to "fury", "emotional agitation" and "loss of self-control". The Concise
Oxford mentions "intimidation".

Force, fury, outrage, injury, intimidation. How well do such strong words
relate to the facts of paedophilia? As most people here will surely know,
the word "paedophilia", or "paedophilia sexualis" originated as a medical
description by  {{w|Richard_von_Krafft-Ebing |Krafft-Ebing}}, and in the medical literature has generally been
considered to describe a sexual orientation of adults towards children. Just
like the terms "heterosexual" and "homosexual", the word has in its emerging
scientific usage not been freighted to describe only violent attacks.

When scientists, as opposed to lesbian separatist feminists, refer to
"heterosexual" intercourse, they do not invariably categorise it as a form
of rape. Likewise some scientists may continue to believe, along with
Kraft-Ebing, that "homosexuality" is a perversion, but when used scientifically
the term refers to all forms of same-sex sexual attraction: violent, rapacious
buggery of one man by another is recognised as just one end of a spectrum
of homosexual activity which more typically includes affectionate and loving
elements.

To dump the whole of "paedophilia" into a box labelled "violence", by contrast,
flies in the face of scientific tradition, inviting the suspicion that debate
and research on what really characterises paedophilic attraction and behaviour
are regarded as not [[politically correct]]. It is as though the WCS is setting
the terms of the agenda by saying "Everybody knows paedophilia is violent.
Therefore let's discuss only how to eliminate it and how to treat its victims."

The assumption may be politically correct, but is it scientifically correct?
This depends vitally on definition. Pleading for connections to be made between
child sexual assault and the social construction of "normal" masculinity
and male sexuality, the feminist writer Liz Kelly confronts us in a new book,
published this year, with a startling departure from the scientific use of
the word "paedophilia". She remarks upon reports that "as protective policies
get stronger, 'paedophiles' are shifting from seeking work in children's
homes and children's organisations and are moving into services for the elderly."
Kelly asks "Just what does the term 'paedophile' mean in this context? What
this example demonstrates vividly", Kelly suggests, "is that the issue here
is power and control and the desire not to get caught." 
[http://www.palgrave.com/page/detail/Child-Sexual-Assault/?K=9780333771532| (Cox, Kershaw &amp; Trotter).]

The concerns expressed by Kelly and her co-authors about issues of power
and control are indeed vitally important. Paedophilia should ultimately be
considered against the wider background of socialisation and sexuality, both
male and female. A narrow problematisation of sexual attraction to children
will ultimately serve only to divert attention from broader issues of power
and control, not solve them.

However, I trust it will be agreed in this forum that it is not helpful to
leap from child molesting to granny bashing as expressions of paedophilia.
Nor, I suggest, should we include sexual assaults against children committed
opportunistically, often when drunk or under the influence of drugs, by people
whose usual sexual preference is not for children. Such offences can often
uncontentiously be described as violent or abusive.

Paedophilia as a strong and persistent orientation, however, as described
in DSM-4, is another matter. There is reason to suppose that many of those
who prefer children want to relate well to them, in a way that does not apply
to those for whom they are mere substitutes. Those who prefer children not
surprisingly like to spend a lot of time in their company; they like to know
them and be friendly. Just as adult-orientated grown-ups often go to considerable
pains to make a good impression on their sexual partners, so do many paedophiles.

Finding that their sexual preference is for children, they also come to like
and love them. The eminent criminologist Professor D J West noted this many
years ago, before it became fashionable cynically to characterise paedophile
courtship as so-called "grooming". Noticing the kindness of many paedophiles
he observed that: "Their sincere fondness for their objects of sexual desire
sometimes leads them to quite striking acts of charity in efforts to further
the child's happiness or future prospects." (PTRC p59).

This benevolent outlook found confirmation in a study by K. Howells of
non-aggressive offenders against girls. He said, "I feel that children are
likeable to paedophiles in ways that are not purely physical; this would
be consistent with the idea that the paedophilic offender may actually feel
affection for his victim. Lest you feel it is self-evident that someone
committing a sexual assault likes his victim, I would point out that in a
previous study I found results which suggested that some rapists, for example,
commit offences in states of heightened anger arousal and appear to be concerned
to hurt rather than to achieve sexual gratification."

Howells is writing here within a research tradition bedevilled by terminology
with a conservative bias, such that children who participate in adult-child
sex are almost invariably characterised as "victims" and sexual encounters
as "assaults" without regard to the nature of the encounter or the feelings
of the supposed "victim". Even so, despite this colouring of the facts, Howells
finds no difficulty in distinguishing gentle, affectionate paedophilia from
malicious rape.

Many others in the field have reached similar conclusions. Swanson distinguished
what he called "the classic paedophile" as a person who "requires the cooperation
of a child partner in order to achieve sexual gratification". What is meant
here is that the paedophile is aroused and gratified by situations in which
the child is erotically active. This was realised as long ago as 1913 when
the pioneer sexologist Albert Moll wrote "handling the child's genitals plays
the chief part, frequently because the offender can himself obtain sexual
gratification only through inducing sexual excitement in the child and watching
this excitement."

The significance of this point is, I hope, obvious. Children are far more
likely to reach sexual excitement if they are relaxed and happy in the
paedophile's company than if they are being intimidated. The paedophile is
virtually bound to seek their confidence in order to win their cooperation.
This being the case, in addition to the strong possibility that he actually
likes children, he has another powerful reason for wanting to relate well
to them. All in all, he will want to be liked by children and will thus tend
to regard them as what sociologists have called "significant others" people
whose feelings and opinions count.

The sociologist McCaghy proposed that sex offenders who see children as
"significant others" would not commit offences likely to alienate or harm
the child. He tested a hypothesis that they would have in fact more social
involvement with children than other offenders against them, and indeed this
is what he found. None of the high social interaction offenders used any
form of coercion, whereas over one third of the minimal interaction subjects
did.

The work of Howells, Swanson and McCaghy dates from the 1960s and 70s, when
it was possible for researchers to make discoveries about paedophilia with
liberal policy implications and not be castigated for their efforts. That
climate changed radically in the 80s and 90s under the influence of the largely
feminist-driven extension of child abuse work into the sexual arena. But
even in the new, highly illiberal, punitive atmosphere, scientific research,
as opposed to [[child abuse industry]] rhetoric, has confirmed and strengthened
the findings already cited, not undermined them.

This is not to say the new climate has found no anti-paedophile champions
in the academically respectable research community. David Finkelhor, foremost
among them, confidently hypothesised in 1988 with co-author I A Lewis that
"many if not most" of what he called "child molesters" lack empathy for children
and interest in them. (Howitt). But researchers who have taken the trouble
to assess paedophiles beyond the unrepresentative confines of a clinical
or penal context have discovered a very different picture. [http://www.mhamic.org/sources//wilson&cox.htm| Wilson and Cox] studied 77 members of a paedophile organisation by questionnaire and interview.
Standard personality assessment failed, as it had failed in earlier research,
to find links with aggressive or psychotic symptoms. The majority of paedophiles,
they concluded, "seem to be gentle and rational", and they suggested "it
is possible that parental feelings are often involved".

A pioneering work by Sandfort, unique in the literature, investigated ongoing
paedophilic relations between men and boys in the Netherlands. Taking advantage
of an all too short window of opportunity, a liberal period in recent Dutch
history when it was possible for some such relations to flourish without
heavy-handed police or social work intervention if the child appeared to
be willingly involved, Sandfort undertook an in-depth study of the quality
of such relationships and their impact on the boys' lives both sexually and
socially. He discovered not merely that such relationships do not necessarily
cause harm but that they can be characterised by affection and a positive
influence on the child's development. Issues of adult power and dominance
in the relationships were extensively examined but not assessed as problematic.
Difficult though it may be in the conditions of hostility widely prevailing
today, we need more research of this kind, looking at what actually takes
place in paedophilic relations, rather than prejudicially dismissing them
on the basis of dogma.

In a highly politically incorrect and therefore sadly neglected study, C
K Li, working under the auspices of the respected Cambridge University Institute
of Criminology, investigated paedophiles recruited from a range of sources,
including magazine advertisements. From his interviews he concluded that
many paedophiles are truly interested in the child's world and that affection
and a loving relationship represent their ultimate ideal, not just sexual
gratification.

He argued against dismissing such views as mere lies, cognitive distortions
and self-serving excuses, saying "the viewpoint of mainstream society cannot
simply be taken as correct and that of the paedophiles taken as suspect.
Instead, each should be analysed in terms of its historical and ideological
roots. Only after such an exercise can we begin to address the more practical
question of ethics, the law and social policies" (in Howitt p 75).

Since this assessment appeared a decade ago we have seen, with a few notable
exceptions (Plummer, Kincaid, Hunter, Geraci, Sandfort MII) little such analysis.
Instead we have seen moral disapproval advancing under the camouflage of
science. A number of commentators have exposed this masquerade (Li, Howitt,
Randall, Oellerich) and Finkelhor himself has been honest enough to admit
that his position is ultimately morally based rather than scientifically
(Sandfort MIG p314).

We have also seen the most outrageous vilification of paedophiles in the
media. The grossest of libels are often with impunity perpetrated against
harmless, loving individuals, because their behaviour in law is characterised
in such unflattering and inaccurate legal terminology as "indecent assault"
or "statutory rape" -- now often abbreviated to plain rape, so that anyone
seeing or hearing a news report will assume that violence or coercion was
used.

An even more damaging abuse of language in recent years has been directed
against so-called paedophile "rings", or "gangs" who have exchanged among
themselves pornographic images downloaded from the Internet. In the recent
Wonderland case in Britain a&nbsp;group of such friends were castigated as
though they were guilty of "rape" and even "torture" words which were bandied
around a great deal in media coverage when none of them had been prosecuted
for so much as touching a child in a legally questionable way or taking a
single photo themselves. <I>(Footnote. Observer 11 Feb; O'Carroll - Paris
2000).</I>

One further primary theoretical concern with paedophile so-called violence
should be disposed of before moving on to the wider question of whether
child-adult sexual contacts are in any sense harmful. In the era some decades
ago before child sex abuse moved to centre stage as a social concern, the
physical abuse of children came to been seen as a cyclical problem endemic
to dysfunctional families: abused children, it was noted, would grow up to
become abusive parents. This cycle of abuse theory has since been energetically
advanced in the sexual domain but has repeatedly failed to find empirical
support (Finkelhor 1984; Hansen &amp; Slater 1988). Recent general reviews
of the literature (Howitt 1995 pp56-7; Fergusson &amp; Mullen 1999 p96) are
generally sceptical.

Even within what I have broadly called the child abuse industry, where the
abused-abuser hypothesis has become widely but baselessly accepted as established
fact, some people are having problems with the idea. In a recent book of
feminist perspectives authored by industry professionals, mainly academics
with a background in social work, it is (Cox et al, xvi) pointed out that
more girls than boys experience child-adult sexual contacts, yet men are
more often the older party in such contacts than women. If the abused-abuser
hypothesis were correct one would thus expect abused girls to grow up as
abusing women and to outnumber male abusers. As this is not the case, the
hypothesis would appear to be in deep trouble on purely logical grounds.
To summarise the foregoing, then, far from being characterised by violence,
paedophilic feelings and sexual expression have been noted in the literature
as very often gentle, kind, loving and concerned with the mutuality of the
relationship, both sexually and socially. And it is a mistake to suppose
that child sex so-called abusers owe the origin of their inclinations to
abuse in their own childhood. Indeed there is no reason to suppose that the
aetiology of paedophilia can in any way be associated with factors that might
be expected to lead to detrimental personality development.

If paedophiles are not generally violent, the question arises as to whether
their sexual expression is nevertheless inevitably a violation of the children
involved. No matter how kind, gentle and loving paedophiles may be, it is
often argued, children are harmed by sexual contact with them. They may come
to believe they have been degraded, and begin attributing all their problems
to early sexual contact with an adult, ranging right down to the most fleeting
incident, sometimes even a merely verbal proposition, or expression of interest.
In the last two decades, it hardly needs stressing, there has been no shortage
of testimony by adults who feel they have been victimised in this way.

Additionally, there are moralising conservatives who take the view that those
who do not feel victimised by their experiences must be regarded as corrupted
by them or else "in denial". Such commentators are entitled to their views
but are guilty of bad, misleading science when as all too often is the case
they infiltrate their moral bias into their research, particularly in the
loaded terms (Rind 1993; Nelson) and definitions they use (Li &amp; Randall
on Finkelhor).

We should be alert to the fact that opponents of child-adult sexual relations
use such means to cover every possible outcome, guaranteeing in advance of
any study that any results favourable to such relations are defined out of
existence. Finkelhor, for instance (Randall p192 in Jackbook) defines as
victims even those children who grew up saying they looked back with pleasure
on their early sexual experience as something positive in their lives. Far
from respecting the views of the child, as the child abuse industry constantly
urges when the result is sex-negative, Finkelhor's determination that the
results match his moral expectations in effect says the child's view counts
for nothing when it conflicts with adult conventional wisdom.

Many of you in medical practice, however, have doubtless encountered cases
in which patients feel they have been victimised and I have no wish to deny
that such clinical experience is in many cases a true reflection of a painful
reality. But what we have been hearing most loudly, is only one side of a
complex story. The testimony of many adult victims, or "survivors", is itself
not a simple story of the terrible impact of sexual abuse. In the case of
false memory syndrome, for instance, it has become abundantly clear that
in many cases clearly disturbed and damaged adults have mistakenly loaded
the cause of all their problems in life onto some entirely fanciful incident
in childhood in some cases, it has to be said, incidents dreamt up with the
connivance of dubious therapy methods, which are now reaping their just reward
in malpractice lawsuits. (Crews, Jackson book refs).

Even in cases where there has definitely been sexual abuse in the most obvious
sense where there has plainly been violence, coercion or exploitation, the
story is not a simple one. Child abuse industry lobbyists, the media and
politicians have all tended to latch onto the allegedly damaging effects
of adult-child sexual contacts in the most grossly simplistic fashion, often
totally ignoring the fact that many people who identify as sex abuse victims
also have a family background with multiple problems including a history
of psychological abuse, neglect and physical violence.

Fortunately, the misleading impact of this confusion and confounding of issues
has recently been addressed in the landmark paper by Rind, Tromovitch and
Bauserman, which has created such a stir. The paper makes no mention of
paedophilia, but its findings could hardly be more significant to the view
society takes of paedophiles. This meta-analysis based on 59 studies of college
students showing the effects on those who had been involved as children in
sexual encounters with adults provides an important corrective to the view
that such encounters are always gravely traumatic. A careful statistical
analysis showed that many problems which the original researchers had
uncritically assumed to be caused by sexual abuse could more plausibly be
attributed to generally inadequate family environments, with which they were
much more strongly correlated.

This paper proved to be dynamite, provoking an unprecedented political reaction
in the United States. There has also been a lively academic reaction (Haaken
&amp; Lamb; Tavris; Spiegel; Ericksen; Oellerich; Berry &amp; Berry; Rauch;
Zuriff) which has left Rind and his colleagues with an enhanced, rather than
diminished reputation. Bruce Rind, himself has recently been accepted into
the prestigious and exclusive International Academy of Sex Research, and
the findings of the Rind team have since been cited in the literature without
controversy as to their accuracy (Meston et al, 1999). Those findings had
in any case been extensively foreshadowed in the literature (Rind: SSSS;
Oellerich) and have been vindicated since (Coxell). What prompted an outraged
response was not the quality of the science but the authors' highly professional
and all too rare refusal to wrap their data in a moralistic package at odds
with the actual findings.

As we have seen, that refusal contrasts strongly with the work of such champions
of conservatism as Finkelhor, who justifies his description of even enthusiastic

child participants in adult-child sex as victims by saying they don't know
what they are doing and therefore cannot validly consent (Randall p192 in
Jackbook). It is beyond my scope today to discuss the complex issue of informed
consent, except that one might briefly note that even quite young children
are now increasingly considered to be able to give or withhold their consent
to matters of very great importance, such as surgery, when things are explained
to them. <I>(Footnote on iatrogenic effects).</I>

Because their work was a meta-analysis, a study of studies, Rind and his
colleagues found themselves unable to single out consent, whether informed
or uninformed, as an independent variable: it unfortunately did not cleanly
figure as such in the primary data they had available. Crucially, though,
as they pointed out in a paper last year, a new study by Coxell and colleagues
published in the British Medical Journal fills this gap, at least with regard
to consenting boys.

The Coxell team examined a non-clinical sample of nearly 2,500 men in Great
Britain, recruited from general medical practices. They inquired about sexual
activity prior to age 16 with someone at least 5 years older that they had
wanted to do, finding that 7.7% had had what the researchers termed consensual
sex prior to age 16 with persons significantly older; 5.3% of the men reported
having had non-consensual sex. Rind and his colleagues examined the Coxell
findings on whether the men had reported a psychological problem of at least
two weeks duration sometime in their life. The consenting group reported
no more problems than the control group, but the non-consenting group had
significantly more problems than either of these groups. The results, obtained
by abuse researchers using a huge non-clinical sample provide, in the words
of the Rind team "very strong support for the utility of the simple consent
construct". <I>(Footnote on gender differences)</I>.

In plain language, if children cannot give valid consent, how come only the
ones who say they didn't want the sex ended up having psychological problems?
Why does consent discriminate so well between good and bad outcomes if it
is not valid? That is a challenge I put to you today. That's one challenge.
Here's another. If gentle, loving paedophiles in affectionate sexual contacts
with willing children do not do them any harm, in what way are they supposed
to be violent?

What is being violated, I suggest, is not children, but the tyranny of
ill-founded moral resistance of both right and left. It is a tyranny from
which the gay community is only now escaping along with a diverse and culturally
rich range of other long-despised and feared sexual minorities. And it is
now high time for children and paedophiles to join this great escape.

I include children here, as well as paedophiles, because as we move away
from a society based on the reproductive imperative to one in which
overpopulation is a greater worry, society needs to scrutinise very closely
its old imperatives for the regulation of sexuality. The issue of paedophilia
is ultimately not just about one small sexual minority: it is about all children
and how they are brought up. Are they to be kept in sexual ignorance and,
as they grow older, run the risk of unwanted pregnancy among other avoidable
dangers? Are they to be regarded solely as passive, "innocent" sexless
individuals as women were once held to be? Is their sexual expression to
be crushed out of existence, supposedly for their own sake, but actually
as a sacrifice necessary to bolstering up a tottering, outdated moral order?

If one is identifying sources of violence, one need look no further than
both the religious right and the feminist left, who alike have encouraged
an atmosphere of violent, repressive hatred for paedophiles that would bring
talk of genocide if directed towards an ethnic minority. Paedophiles are
driven from their homes and jobs with the approval and encouragement of the
media (Milmo). Mobs are increasingly hunting them down and killing them and
in one arson attack in the UK a child was burnt to death (O'Carroll 2000).
Mass police raids on flimsy grounds are wrecking their victims' lives and
leading to a holocaust of suicides. Sentences for the mildest of offences
lead to huge, decades-long sentences in prisons where violence against them
is an ever-present threat. (O'Carroll 2000).

There is also no shortage of violence against children by parents, which
goes largely unremarked in the media and by society at large. The life-long
psychological damage frequently wrought by divorce has recently been well
documented (Wallerstein et al; also Siblings from divorce families 'are not
as close', report by Cherry Norton in The Independent, 10 June 2000 on research
by psychologist Heidi Riggio at California State University, Fullerton) but
in addition to the subtle problems of parental break-up much cruder concerns
loom large. A study by Britain's National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty
to Children, shows that one in 14 children in the UK have suffered serious
physical abuse at the hands of their parents, the vast majority have been
either kicked, punched, choked, burnt or threatened with a knife at home.
A further 6% were seriously neglected, being frequently deprived of food,
medical care and clean clothes. Child murders too are far more frequently
committed by parents than by strangers. (C. Pritchard, The Observer, 8 August
1999; see also Jonsson).

Numerous cases could be advanced in which an astonishingly casual and sympathetic
attitude is shown towards violence by women against their children. This
sympathy is most commonly expressed in a traditional tolerance towards
infanticide by young single mothers, a form of killing not even ranking as
murder in many jurisdictions, including the UK. Killing a baby is almost
acceptable it seems, if a mother is the culprit. This dubious extension of
a woman's right to choose has apparently now also become a woman's right
to abuse. In New Zealand recently, for instance, a foster mother of a 10-year-old
boy conducted a reign of terror that included threatening to chop his head
off, swinging a baseball at him, and tying him to a tree with a dead chicken
around his neck. Finally she drenched the boy's t-shirt with petrol, flicked
a cigarette lighter and set him ablaze, causing serious burns. Whereas a
man who merely touches a child's genitals should not be surprised if he gets
a prison sentence of four years or more in many countries, this monstrous
woman was sentenced to four months of which she had to serve only two. (Moonen
corresp).

So why should gross domestic and other violence against children go ignored
while affectionate, loving paedophilic sexuality is abominated? Much of this
strange emphasis is undoubtedly owed to the feminism of recent decades. So
constructive in promoting equal rights and opportunities for women, it has
been unscientific, mistaken and destructive in other respects.

When I speak of feminism I am of course speaking of a very broad church indeed.
There are many feminisms. Some feminist analysis, not least as developed
here in France, is not hostile towards men as potentially nurturant, loving
and intimate with children. There are thinking women who recognise that the
attraction of all good mothers to their children has erotic overtones. These
women have pondered the inevitable inequality of size and power between a
mother and her child. They know these inequalities can be exploited and abused,
by women as well as men. But they also acknowledge that for the most part
such inequalities are at the heart of a mother's love: she would not need
to nurture and protect a baby as big and powerful as herself. These women
also acknowledge there is no intrinsic reason why men too cannot, in the
right cultural setting, be kind, gentle and loving. They have been honest
enough to query the dogma that women always use their power well, whereas
men always exploit it wickedly. Some women call themselves post-feminists.
Certainly many have rejected the more strident, anti-heterosexual versions
of feminism that held sway in the heyday of so-called political lesbianism.
(Roiphe, Paglia, bell hooks). Many educated women in the West still support
equality with men in terms of job opportunities and so forth but no longer
see men as the enemy, no longer perceive in the West at least patriarchal
power as an undefeated enemy and the key to all social evils and injustice.
Some post-feminists, indeed, have joined male commentators in arguing that
men now have more problems than women, acknowledging that the undermining
of their traditional roles has left them struggling to adjust to new ones.

But this welcome maturing of Second Wave feminism into post-feminism is far
from complete. There is still a powerful army of unreconstructed Second Wavers
at work within the child abuse industry a crusading army still inspired by
fiery anti-patriarchy tracts from the 1970s of dubious relevance today. It
is an army that has rejected what it calls "male science". It is an army
which, while using the apparatus of scholarship, appears deeply wedded to
anti-rational intuitions and assertive mantras.

Many of you will recognise what I am saying without me spelling it out, although
others have done so very ably. Okami, for instance, was pointing out a decade
ago that influential victim advocates (Rush, Russell) have been busy building
up a picture of supposed "harm" to children and supposed "violence" against
them that flies in the face of the actual findings of the research on which
they themselves were basing their assertions. (Okami 93). Exploring links
between the moral attitude prevalent among such advocates with the Social
Purity movement of the Victorian era, Okami shows how both have tended to
equate moral violation with physical violence. (Okami 95).

For many of these campaigners, he points out, even gentle and loving heterosexual
sex between adults is considered a violation of the woman, reminding us that
the outspoken anti-sexual abuse activist Andrea Dworkin makes this explicit
by stating that "intercourse is punishment". (Okami 96). Likewise sex even
between children of equal age is always suspected of being abuse by one of
them, giving the impression that for many anti-abuse advocates the real enemy,
no matter how pleasurable, is sex itself, not the imposition of one person's
wishes on another. (Okami 97; Birkett).

Okami also examined research methods prevalent among abuse industry advocates,
pointing out specific abuses of research methodology that arise as a consequence
of ideology. Taking as a key example Russell's study of sexual abuse of females
for the US National Institute of Mental Health, he notes how Russell's
interviewers were systematically trained in ways guaranteed to introduce
bias in the data they collected. Russell describes the assertion that children
sometimes take the initiative in sexual liaisons with adults as "a myth".
To avoid propagating this myth, she said, "we did not specifically ask who
took the initiative". As Okami remarks, "Russell's statement -- rather than
reflecting a desire to avoid propagating a myth -- probably reflects a general
disinclination to collect data that might contradict a political or moral
position." (Okami101).

Ten years on from Okami's withering analysis, modern Social Purity feminists
are still playing the same cracked old records. In Childhood Sexual Abuse:
An Evidence Based Perspective, published this year as Volume 40 of the journal
Developmental Clinical Psychology and Psychiatry, Ferguson and Mullen have
produced the most recent account available based on scientific analysis.
They are scathing (97) about what they call "advocacy based accounts" derived
from feminist and psychotherapeutic theories. They also carefully demolish
the weak evidential claims underpinning the recovered memory movement (98-102),
ritual and satanic abuse (102-3), multiple personality disorder (105-6) and
the supposed infallibility of child testimony (103-5).

And anyone who believes that feminist activists against child sex abuse have
all moved on from the wilder shores of psychobabble and Steven King-style
horror fiction in their assessment of the issue should try reading Child
Sexual Assault: Feminist Perspectives, published this year by Cox, Kershaw
and Trotter. The authors are senior figures within the child abuse industry,
all occupying influential British university posts related to social work
and child health.Yet many years after massive police enquiries into satanic
abuse were discredited in a government report prepared by a female professor
(Lafontaine), and years after the massive misdiagnosis of anal abuse by parents
in {{w|Cleveland_child_abuse_scandal Britain's Cleveland disaster}} was exposed in a government report by a female
judge (Butler-Sloss), these women are still dismissing such assaults on the
credibility of their theories as what they call "resistance" based on patriarchal
"backlash".

The tone is one of nostalgia for the good-old-days of the 1970s when their
brand of feminism was impacting on the whole of male-female relations not
just penned in as it is now to the specialist area of child abuse. Regret
is specifically expressed that many of the old tracts that inspired them
are now out of print. There is head-shaking over male social work figures
who are less than enthusiastic over their analysis, coupled with a revivalist
spirit, with contributors urging a girding of the loins to fight ever harder
against the "resistances" of an entrenched patriarchal establishment. There
is little suggestion that the evidence suggests new thinking is necessary,
and that their theory may be wrong, or at least of limited validity. On the
contrary, the authors utterly ignore such evidence: the Rind team's findings,
for instance, is just one of many science-based papers that go totally
unmentioned.

The authors write, indeed, as if they themselves are victims, whose accounts
of victimisation are being {{w|marginalization| marginalised}} and ignored by a powerful enemy.
What they do not appear to see is that they themselves are powerful, with
entrenched positions in the academic world. They represent what has become
the orthodox voice of the child abuse industry. Specific items on their agenda,
such as {{w|List_of_satanic_ritual_abuse_allegations| satanic abuse}}, may have been widely discredited, but society at large,
including the media and the politicians, has yet to come to grips with how
far the dogmas of feminism as it relates to the child abuse industry have
gone astray from evidential reality.

It is ironic that powerful feminists are so stuck in the groove, running
intellectually on empty, during a period when a burgeoning men's movement
has been seeking to bring out men's caring, "feminine" side (Farrell). Ironic
also that so-called "male" science is at the forefront of attempts to study
the origins of male rape and violence through evolutionary psychology, opening
up the possibility of consciously developing our culture in ways that may
enable us move forward into a gentler, kinder future. (Wrangham &amp; Peterson; Thornhill, Palmer, &amp; Wilson).

Society at large is stuck with that irony for the moment but I see no reason
why any scientifically based body, such as the {{w|World_Association_for_Sexual_Health| World Congress of Sexology}},
should be bound by the ill-founded and unscientific dogmas of a certain kind
of feminism to which I have referred. To do so can only weaken its credibility
and value to society in addressing such real issues and problems as paedophilia
and child sexuality may involve. Likewise as medical professionals working
in a clinical setting, many of will I am sure have been appalled by the
dangerously unscientific excesses of some therapeutic practitioners from
whom such feminists have derived inspiration and comfort, especially in the
field of recovered memory and multiple personality disorder. If you value
your reputation and that of this body you will wish to distance yourselves
from such disastrous practice.

I trust also that as practitioners you will strive to keep uppermost in your
mind the need not to be unduly influenced in your thinking by the particular
cases you may have dealt with, either of children distressed by abuse or
paedophiles unhappy with their own inclinations. Good science requires you
to remember that as doctors you will always be confronted with the problem
cases, some of them very serious, rather than with a representative sample
of child-adult sexual encounters: that is why we need the controlled,
whole-population studies of figures such as [[Bruce Rind]] and his team.

Finally, I would remind you of the statement of universal sexual human rights
endorsed by the World Congress of Sexology in Hong Kong in 1999, especially
section four, which supports freedom from all forms of discrimination regardless
of either sexual orientation or age. Ladies and gentlemen, should you be
in any doubt, I can assure you that paedophilia is indeed an orientation,
entirely analogous with homosexuality or heterosexuality. It is not an
unfortunate condition, with symptoms. It is a vital part of the identity
of those, like myself, who experience a deep and abiding love of children
throughout their adult lives: deny it and you deny the essential humanity
of the person concerned and thereby commit a grave infringement of human
rights.

SOURCE:http://web.archive.org/web/20050406033529/http://205.205.236.41/english/violent.php#1

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[[Category:Activism]]