Doctors in Canada say pedophilia is a sexual orientation that is partly wired in the brain and can’t be changed. After a decade of research, Dr. James Cantor and his team at the Center for Addiction and Mental Health say some people are born pedophiles, meaning they are primarily sexually attracted to children. Researchers say one to five percent of all men are pedophiles. Full Article
“Chronic Stress Can Shrink Your Brain”. This is an interesting article in Psychology Today. Cantor’s research seems to suggest a chicken or the egg interpretation. Do sex offenders’ brains start out different or change due to the great stresses put on them by public stigmatization? His sampling only used “convicted” sex offenders. If the latter is even partly true, society is creating dysfunctional people with its laws that put offenders under chronic stress.
Thus my new “disorder”; PASD, Post Arrest Stress Disorder…Disability anyone?
I hope that everyone who reads this article remembers that “pedophilia” is a medical condition and not a crime. Many people who suffer from pedophilia never harm a child. On the other hand, there are individuals who do NOT suffer from pedophilia who have harmed a child. As the article states, “Not all sex offenders who target children are pedophiles, and not all pedophiles are sex offenders.”
As mentioned in the comments, the sampling was done with convicted people, not pedophiles, per se. This is an important distinction. Commiting a crime is a choice, not a predilection. A choice that 98% (2012 CDCR report) of those convicted of sex crimes refuse to make again. This flies in the face of the public’s view of the roving sex offender, who can’t control himself. Where is the real illness, in the former offender, or in the guy in the comments who wants to purify the human race by taking a shotgun to the 1 to 5 percent of men this study says are pedophiles? Maybe they should study the mind of those addicted with the illness of extreme revenge syndrome (something I made up, but maybe should be a diagnosis, seems to be a lot of these around)
I believe that in California most disorders are found in Sacramento. Their laws have harmed thousands of families, including children.
Researchers say 1% to 5% are pedophiles. And so if the registry is mainly to protect children, why are 100% of those convicted of any sex related offense on the registry?