Interviewing the Wives and Girlfriends

Abstract

This chapter describes the interview approach, structure, and format utilized in the research reported in this book. This research was unique in that it was based on the intimate partner’s perspective of the child molesters’ familial interaction, attitudes, and deviant activities. Adding to the project’s uniqueness was the fact that these intimate adult partners were also the mothers of the molested children. The research looked at many aspects of the child molester’s history, and the roadmap for this journey was a detailed and penetrating set of lifestyle questions. Each facet of a child molester’s normal, and criminal, lifestyle was on the table for examination. It was the purpose of the interviews to explore the disturbing and destructive phenomena generally called “child molesting” from an insider’s perspective.

A similarly beneficial effort was based upon the interviews of wives and girlfriends of sexually sadistic offenders (Hazelwood, et al., Australian Family Physician 22:4, 1993; Warren and Hazelwood, Journal of Family Violence 17(1):75–89, 2002). That research made it clear, and this research confirmed, the true nature and self-image of the most henious and vile behaviors of the offender is to remain hidden at all cost and he will willingly invest enormous effort to keep them in the dark. He literally constructs a parallel life for his “normal” or overt existence, while his true self is displayed only in his secret or “covert” life—a life which is filled with fantasies and paraphiliac urges and desires and one which effectively destroys the lives of the victims (parent and child) for the molester’s deviant sexual pleasure. As with the sexual sadist, the repetitive child molester creates elaborate facades to hide his dark side. His vulnerability lies with those few intimates to whom he allows close and unprotected access. To the authors’ knowledge, inquiries of this nature have heretofore never been undertaken.

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