Rolf is so arrogant.

So is a paedophile the same as someone who rapes? Just different victims? So they are someone who has no self control? Do they really believe that they are not doing harm?

I'm always appreciative of When's considered and professional views on these matters - they are very informative.

Ta, Riverwalk

There's a lot of crossover because paedophiles rape children, too. That's why they're all known generically as sex offenders but they get sub-divided by media, police and public according to their pattern of offending e.g. abusers who predominantly sexually offend against children get called paedophiles, but not in court, prison and probation offices, where it's a sex offender who has raped a child and/or adult, sex offender who has indecently exposed themself to children and/or adults, sex offender who has downloaded and shared abusive images of chidren and so on.

Most convince themselves they aren't doing harm - date rapists assume they have consent, abusers groom children until they're sure they won't tell. However, some know very well they are doing harm - blame everyone but themselves, a few sadistic offenders want to inflict considerable harm. It's the job of the authorities to work out where that offender fits and how dangerous they continue to be.

Thanks when Not that I ever felt anything but disgust for these people now I feel even more disgusted towards them particularly when you stated that they are not ill. I did wonder if they were mentally ill there may be a reason for them behaving like they do but not now.

Surely it must be a mental aberration, though? I think it's splitting hairs to say it's not a mental illness - not that I have any sympathy for those who have it.

Yes ana but apparently not. Which makes it worse.

If I was being kind I might say they're a sort of sociopath as they know they have a moral compass that is different to the norm but see the norm as being wrong and themselves as being right.

But I rarely feel kind to these creatures who take innocence to fulfill their own desires and blame the victim for being too sexy, enticing, asking for it etc.

It's learned behaviour - many sex offenders become mentally ill, as do the people they harm - is it any wonder? Odd bits of research have claimed genetic causes in some, but there hasn't been significant replication of studies and some research has found the supposed gene in non-offenders.

Who do they learn the behaviour from?

Why do they become mentally ill? We become ill because we can't escape from what they did to us. They don't think they did anything wrong so why would they become ill?

vq they will usually blame everything else but themselves and the opportunity for some sex offenders to exploit the label of sociopath/psychopath enables them to absolve themselves of responsibility, so unless they have a dangerous and severe personality disorder (DSPD as described in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual which can enable sectioning under the Mental Health Act to protect the public) their claims about being mentally ill are not accepted as causing their behaviour, but being correlated.

Usually their mental illnesses are depression about the way their lives have developed and the hostility from those adults who they can't relate to. Learned behaviour can stem from observation of others, in childhood and adolescence practising unhealthy sexual acts without a caregiver giving guidance about what is and isn't ok, being corrupted by sexual abusers, being exposed to a surfeit of internet films and images and becoming addicted to the effect they have, and so on.

I didn't become a paedophile.

If you know how it feels physically and mentally then there is no way you would want to inflict that on someone else.

I know I'm bitter and cynical but I truly believe that when they are caught they should be chemically castrated if they wish to be free or spend the rest of their lives in prison.

Many paedophiles were themselves abused as children. For many I think it is nurture, or the lack of it, rather than nature. It is noticeable when you read court cases involving very young paedophiles, 16 - 25, how often the perpetrator is described as having difficulties developing adult relationships because of problems in their own childhood. However I am sure for some, probably the most persistent, it is in their nature and they are born with those inclinations.

I think that the availability of pornography of the worst kind on the internet has hugely exacerbated the problem. Men who start with 'ordinary' pornography and, perhaps, for many, then get drawn into looking at more extreme varieties; paedophilia, extreme violence to women etc. may move on to physical abuse when, without the ready access to extreme pornography, this will not have happened.

I do not think that looking at the images on a screen necessarily means that they might be tempted to physically abuse a child themselves (although children have been abused to make the images), anymore than most people would actually want to act out their sexual fantasies, but looking at images does increase the likelihood of offending and those doing it should be prosecuted.

I don't think you learn paedophilia from looking at child pornography - everyone would do everything they could to avoid looking at those images if they could because they are so upsetting so if someone looks at them and studies them enough to become a paedophile then they are one anyway - if you know what I mean

If Harris is a paedeophile and if they cannot be helped, how come there were no charges against him for over twenty years, doesn't add up

Yes, most people woukd be repulsed by coming across abusive images of children, but for a rare few it sparks an interest which gets out of control. Most people who experience child abuse don't go on to abuse themselves - some are able to eventually recover, some feel they will never recover from the harm done to them, some become strong advocates for child protection - few go on to repeat what was done to them.

I think we have to acknowledge that child abusers live amongst us - they don't look different and many can hide their abusive tendencies, so we should teach children not to keep secrets or feel they have to allow unwanted touching of any kind. Seeing people we felt we should be able to trust get prosecuted and imprisoned has raised awareness in the UK. I was always suspicious about certain celebs and politicians, but Rolf Harris would have been way down the list of possible abusers because he exuded an air of being considerate of children and interested in their wellbeing. Shows how abusers can harm children in plain sight.

vq chemical castration on its own doesn't work. The side effects can be unpleasant and so compliance with taking the drugs or attending for regular injections is unreliable for many. Not being able to 'perform' doesn't stop all the other behaviours - I'm not going to be explicit. Libido-reducing drugs are useful for some, with talking treatment. Some are already impotent, or have very low libidos, so chemical castration would be irrelevant for them. It's not just about sex, but power and control over children.

The law doesn't allow most sex offenders to stay locked up forever, otherwise the prison population would be more like a million. We have to rely on the authorities managing their risk and for us to protect our children, and others we come into contact with, as best we can.

If an adult rapes or assaults another adult we don't define that person as 'heterosexual' or 'homosexual' but as a rapist or sex offender. Why then do we persist in defining child abusers as 'paedophiles'? A person's desire does not inevitably dictate their actions; at some stage everyone has a choice of whether to follow their desires. We don't say rapists of adults are ill, so why should we say those who molest children are ill? I think we give far too much credence to those who impose power and control on vulnerable children in a way we don't allow for other sex offenders.

I also think we do a great disservice to the overwhelming numbers of males and females who are sexually abused in childhood and go on to be loving, caring parents with an abhorrence of the behaviour that was perpetrated against them. Whether sexual attraction to children is innate or learnt, their victims (who are often related to them) often grow up with a terrible fear, and prejudice from others, that they will grow up to be abusers themselves. A double whammy of harm.

when do you know if there is recorded history of child abuse? Does it happen in other cultures? What about traditional cultures - are the taboos strong enough to prevent this. Not sure if your remit covers this - but it is interesting.

The majority of child abuse takes place in the home, carried out by parents, grandparents, uncles, aunts , siblings, we gloss over this and direct our distrust to the stranger

whitewave there isn't a known culture or country in the world that is any different. Child sexual abuse crosses all levels and types of society. Some countries don't have protective laws, so the crimes aren't recorded. Some are coming on board gradually. I know of some women prosecuted as sex offenders in this country for forcing their young teenage daughters to be married in Pakistan - on their return, rape investigations were conducted and these women later left prison subject to sex offender registration.

I don't think it makes a lot of sense or is particularly helpful to compare rapists of adults with paedophiles. In most incidents of adult rape – often including the rape of present or former partners – it is less a sexual crime than a crime of violence. It is very often to do with power and control. While some paedophiles violently rape children, many more spend much time and care grooming their victims, convinced that they are creating a loving, consensual mutual relationship, presumably because they are unable, for whatever reason, to create such a relationship with an adult. Surely it is at least partly because they have convinced themselves that the "relationship" is of this sort that they cannot recognise the awfulness of what they have done. The rapist of adults, on the other hand, tends to justify their actions by denigrating the victim who "deserved" what they got, even when he or she is a stranger.

Some rapists do that as well absent. And some child abusers denigrate their victims in the same manner. I think there are huge grey areas of similarity. They are all abusers IMO. Anyway, I wasn't comparing them, but saying I don't know why we view them in a different light.

I may be wrong but I thought paedophile meant lover of children, as in Anglophile, Francophile etc. I mean, I thought that's what it ought to mean! I appreciate its current implication and would use it in that context.

We used to use the word 'Pederast', not sure why it was dropped.

I suspect the current term was coined by pederasts themselves to make their predilections seem benign and others outside that group used the name the abusers used without knowing what it means.

Paederast also derives from the Greek and means 'lover of boys', which is of course what paedophile means. Perhaps we should forget all these Greek derived words that come from a past where they were used by the cognoscenti to signal sexual preferences and just call the whole lot 'Child abusers'

I would never suggest people 'learn child abuse from watching pictures but I do think that people can be drawn into it by the wide availability of pornography and that small group of, mainly, men, constantly tempted to look for something harder and more titillating, whether violent abuse of women or men. It is emphatically not the majority of men but I believe there are men drawn into looking at images, of which a few will go on to abuse children directly.