Romantic and Sexual Relationships with Adult Partners Among Pedohebephilic Men

Public Stigmatizing Reactions Toward Nonoffending Pedophilic Individuals Seeking to Relieve Sexual Arousal

People with pedophilia (PWP) can deal with their sexual desires by relieving sexual arousal without sexually exploiting children. Study 1 investigated whether public reactions toward nonoffending pedophilic men are affected by their strategies to relieve sexual arousal (nonsexual pictures vs. child sex dolls) or to reduce their sex drive via testosterone lowering medication in legally nonproblematic ways. A sample of German-speaking participants (N = 143) read three vignettes describing PWP using either of these strategies. Participants' (59.4% females) mean age was 39.7 (SD = 15.6). Although no significant difference was detected between the nonsexual pictures and sex dolls conditions on cognitive (except for dangerousness), affective, and behavioral levels, both consistently elicited more stigmatizing reactions than the testosterone-lowering medication condition. To investigate if this effect was driven by disapproving any relief of sexual arousal or the use of actual child stimuli in particular, Study 2 (N = 151) added two conditions with PWP using adult child-like stimuli to relieve sexual arousal: adult-as-schoolgirl porn and adult partner with childlike appearance. Here, Participants' (57.6% females) mean age was 28.0 (SD = 13.3). Results indicate that stigmatization was driven by disapproving the use of child stimuli rather than the relief of sexual arousal in general. Individuals with a sexual interest in children face strong stigmatizing reactions, which are only alleviated when they are described as undergoing treatment lowering sex drive or - to a lesser extent - being able to mate with an adult partner or using porn with adult actors posing as schoolgirls.

Online forum use in child attracted persons

Social support for child-attracted persons (CAPs) may be important for increasing well-being, thereby reducing the risk of committing child sexual abuse. Unfortunately, in-person social support may be difficult to obtain because of stigma. CAPs may instead turn to online forums for people who are sexually attracted to children. The present study looks at the emotional, informational, and tangible support CAPs offered and received through online forums. We recruited 353 CAPs from Twitter and multiple online forums. The survey covered basic demographics, frequency of forum use, reasons for forum use, social support received or offered, helpfulness of forums, and their quality of offline support. Most CAPs said that they initially sought out forums to avoid feeling alone in their attraction; the quality of offline support was rated as moderate. Emotional support and informational support were the most frequently endorsed forms of social support. CAPs who visited more forums reported forums to be less helpful, which could reflect “forum shopping.” A Poisson regression predicting online support from quality of offline support and various demographic and forum use variables did not reveal any significant results. This is the first quantitative study to look at the benefits of forums for CAPs regarding specific types of social support. The authors consider if certain forums, in addition to professional help, could be part of a repertoire of resources for CAPs who may be struggling.