[Z]

I see the reactionary police are out in force in this thread. Fair enough that most of them are parents themselves, it's hard to imagine a parent reacting in any other way, but I still think the point remains that we will never know how many people are out there with paedophilic tendencies until we as a society learn to be more accepting of the fact that it exists, it has always existed and will always exist.

Extreme points of view like to draw comparisons between homosexuality and paedophilia or lump them together because they're "perverse" and "not the norm" - perhaps controversially I'd argue that they're probably in the same sphere of understanding of the human psyche (why do some people feel attractions towards things that aren't going to help them reproduce?) - but the difference of course is that two homosexual people can consent to sexual intercourse; a child doesn't know any better. Even though kids are being sexualised from a shockingly early age, that doesn't mean they are sexual beings. I didn't disagree with the statement that paedophilia isn't normal - it should never be allowed to become normal - because normal is what we accept as normality. It is a natural phenomenon though, it's in some peoples' natures to be attracted to children. Perhaps it's shaped by an early experience or perhaps it's just how they were born; perhaps we'll never know or perhaps it'll be explained by science in the way that homosexuality is being researched.

The simple fact of the matter is that the way things are, we only know who's a paedophile if they 1) offend and 2) get caught. The bad minority does not represent the good majority; as is always the case in life - so that's why I believe that there are far more people with paedophilic tendencies out there than we'd like to believe.