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Is Contact with Children Related to Legitimizing Beliefs Toward Sex with Children Among Men with Pedophilia?

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Abstract

Among pedophilic men, social contact with children has been discussed as creating a risk situation for sexual abuse. Also, pedophilic men searching for such contact are seen as harboring more beliefs legitimizing sexual contact with children. However, social contact may also decrease false beliefs. We tested these competing views in an anonymous Internet survey with a non-forensic, non-clinical sample of 104 self-classified pedophilic men. Results showed that both increased social and physical contact were significantly linked to fewer legitimizing beliefs toward sex with children, even when controlling for past psychotherapy, educational level, social desirability, and age. Controlling for previous conviction for child sexual offenses reduced the effect for physical contact, but not for social contact. Exploratory analyses showed that either type of contact had no significant effect on total self-perceived risk of offending. However, pedophilic men with physical contact with children perceived a higher risk of more direct (i.e., child abuse) than indirect offenses (i.e., child pornography offenses) compared to pedophilic men without physical contact. Despite limitations of the correlational design and the only small to moderate effects, the results challenge the assumption that complete avoidance of contact with children is necessary for persons with pedophilia to reduce the risk of abusive behavior.

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Notes

  1. In the following, if we use “contact” without specifying social or physical contact, we refer to both forms of contact.

  2. Note that we have used the sample reported here previously (Jahnke et al., 2015). Further details can be found in that article. We repeat some central aspects here for convenience. We forgo paraphrasing for better readability.

  3. Note that performing our analyses with sum scores instead of PCA scores did not change the results qualitatively and, in fact, strengthened them quantitatively.

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Acknowledgements

The publication was realized within the MiKADO project (German acronym for “Sexual abuse of children: Etiology, Dunkelfeld and victims”) funded by the German Federal Ministry of Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women, and Youth. Please take note that the ministry or related organizations were not involved in the conduct of the research or the writing of this article. The authors want to thank Brittany Smelquist, B.Sc., and Tyler Bassett, M.Sc., for corrective language editing.

Funding

The authors declare financial support by the MiKADO project (German acronym for “Sexual abuse of children: Etiology, Dunkelfeld and victims”) funded by the German Federal Ministry of Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women, and Youth.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. NA, c/o Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy, Technische Universität Dresden, Dresden, Germany

    Max Geradt

  2. Department of Research Synthesis, Intervention and Evaluation, Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena, Jena, Germany

    Sara Jahnke

  3. Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy, Technische Universität Dresden, Hohe Str. 53, 01187, Dresden, Germany

    Julia Heinz & Jürgen Hoyer

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  1. Max Geradt
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  2. Sara Jahnke
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  3. Julia Heinz
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  4. Jürgen Hoyer
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Correspondence to Jürgen Hoyer.

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The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Ethical Approval

The study has been approved by the Internal Review Board of the University of Bonn. Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

Additional information

Max Geradt is sexually interested in children and is co-authoring this article under a pseudonym.

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Geradt, M., Jahnke, S., Heinz, J. et al. Is Contact with Children Related to Legitimizing Beliefs Toward Sex with Children Among Men with Pedophilia?. Arch Sex Behav 47, 375–387 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-017-1042-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-017-1042-1

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