Great post.

agreed,

Will make sure I listen tomorrow.

It's a really interesting topic that I feel people become too emotionally involved to discuss.

There may be help out there for those in question, but it's the stigma that's attached to it that would make it ultimately almost impossible to seek out. You'd potentially be labelled as a sick monster for the rest of your living life, regardless of if the therapy helped or not.

I don't believe it's a sexual orientation, but neither is it a choice.

...wow, a difficult topic Jack and I will admit to not having listened to the interview and just read the OP..I don't understand the comparison to any sexuality in that it doesn't involve 'compliance' and there is a perpetrator and a victim/a 'power' and a vulnerability, which doesn't define a sexuality, does it...I guess to me a better comparison would be rape or sexual abuse..?..which has nothing to do with sex at all, it's an act of violence and a 'hate' act...

..anyway, as a mother and also someone who has personal experience of attending the 'interviews with the victims/children' and social workers etc, my first instinct would be to think of paedophiles as despicable human beings, but I also can't help but think in these interviews I've been present at...here is a victim and potentially a perpetrator as well in that I think we're all aware that the damage and confusion caused to the child and their associations with what has been done to them can then cause them to do the same themselves and the 'cycle' continues...of course this isn't always the case, not all paedophiles were themselves abused and not all abused children become paedophiles but it is something that happens so to have empathy, you really have to look at every single abuse individually and that's just something that isn't practical because you would drive yourself crazy thinking about it...

... I think paedophilia is a mental illness, in this particular case of the 19yr old and reading that his mum is trying to seek help for him, therefore he's discussed it with her..?..and before he has acted is good in that she can seek help for him in the same way she would for a child who had any other mental illness/I don't know if he's ever been abused himself obviously...in an ideal world, mental illness when identified as such would then get support and help that they needed and especially with something like this when that person may have once been the victim themselves and before it is acted on and destroys another child's life/family's life...there are also paedophiles who are probably just really evil nasty people as well though..?..anyway this is not an ideal world and I think generally, people with 'identified' mental health illnesses are just basically 'outcast/forgotten' and for that same old chestnut of 'funding' 'cutbacks'..which is so sad because maybe there is a chance that in an 'ideal' world, some potential paedophiles may be prevented from becoming actual ones, who knows...anyway, an interesting discussion topic and whatever the reasoning for what paedophiles do as in their own experiences etc and maybe them also being victims themselves..the fact and the outcome is that they 'destroy' children and potentially create images of themselves and not just destroy their childhood but sadly so often destroy their whole lives...

I don't see why so many people are getting caught up in semantics (who cares if it's an innate orientation or a perversion? Neither are voluntary).

I do think a lot of taboo sexual attractions are uh... bizarre, but not the monstrosities they're painted out to be. Incest, in particular - obviously the idea of getting jiggy with a relative grosses me out but given the huge variety of family upbringings and weird things that happen to relationships, I don't quite get why it's illegal for, essentially, two consenting adults (yes, emphasis on the consenting) to be together. I understand the genetic repercussions if there's procreation involved, but if it were, in effect, a childless relationship?

I do wonder how society attitudes will change in years to come now that a major alternative sexuality (the homos <3) has been given so much acceptance and equal legislation. I don't compare homosexuality with paedophilia in any other way than they're both involuntary sexual impulses, but I do think the hysteria with which everyone reacts to this subject is ridiculous and counter-productive. If anything, thrusting the words sick, criminal, psychopath at these people from the moment they're aware of their attractions just turns them onto the line of thought that goes "right, if I want to get my rocks off, I'm gonna have to break the law". Accepting you're already a criminal so you might as well, if you will. Therapy is clearly the way forward.

..I agree with you but I also think that it's a natural reaction as well ..and I also agree about therapy but I also think that therapy has now become an 'ideal' in that however much it's needed, it just isn't there for a huge majority of people...

I don't think it's a semantic difference, I think it's a crucial one. If it is innate then it's essentially impossible to change and the only thing you can do is try and control it, whereas if it is a learned perversion then it has the potential to be 'unlearned', regardless of the fact you did not choose it in the first place

Rehab for offenders must have for years tried that, aversion therapy and whatever. If it was effective surely it would be offered as a preventative measure too?