The sexual interest of adults in children has been of recent years a subject vociferously discussed, and one which arouses very strong feelings. The image of the ‘dirty old men’ lingering around children's playgrounds and trying to lure little girls with sweeties, as the stigmatized image of the paedophile, is no longer the only or even the major picture conjured up. Sexual abuse of children within the family, once a subject concealed in a conspiracy of silence, has become widely publicized. Such sexual abuse is perhaps not quite the same as paedophilia, however, relating to issues of power and gender within families rather than being a question of sexual orientation as such.
On an entirely different level, claims are made for the existence of well-organized rings of paedophiles operating internationally. There is some evidence for this in recent cases involv-ing well-to-do persons of considerable social influence who have extensive collections of child pornography. Concerns have been voiced over the role of the Internet in disseminating child pornography and facilitating international contacts between paedophiles. Also, the global development of sex tourism relates to the low age of consent — or lack of age of consent legislation — in certain countries, facilitating sexual relations with children. While there is undoubted cause for concern there seems also to be an element of moral panic, in which the paedophile has become a demonized figure embodying complex anxieties of modern Western culture about changing sexual mores, the status of children, the altered role of women, and so forth. The furore caused by the supposed existence of Satanic covens of ritual abusers evokes long-standing images of dangerous and subversive cults, as described in Norman Cohn's Europe's Inner Demons. However, a problem does undoubtedly exist: in the UK cases have recently come to light where men with criminal records for child sexual abuse had managed to obtain positions with unsupervised access to children, and some child care institutions have been riddled with a culture of sexual abuse.
The concept of paedophilia, and its designation as one of the most antisocial of perversions, is a product of changing attitudes towards childhood and the status of children. Sexual relations with children may not ever have been precisely an accepted or approved practice. However, when children lacked many of the protections now assumed to be desirable, cultures in which there was general brutality towards children and in which they were often exploited as part of the labour force might well have included casual sexual abuse. Cases are recorded, late into the nineteenth century in Britain, of intercourse with children due to a folk belief that this would cure venereal disease. Even when an age of consent existed, in many countries this was set very low, and did not necessarily bear any relationship to nubility, given that menarche in girls often did not occur until relatively late in what would now be considered adolescence.
Early sexologists such as Krafft-Ebing (1840-1902) saw paedophilia as predominantly the last resort of the jaded debauchee in search of new sensations, and also a practice of young men frightened of the adult female and weakened by masturbation, or else a manifestation of mental deficiency. Krafft-Ebing differentiated ‘violation’ from rape as such, applying it to various forms of sexual assault without penetration. He considered that some cases manifested a particular psychopathology, sometimes due to drunkenness or epilepsy, but that in a few instances it was an actual perversion brought about by a morbid disposition.
René Guyon (1876-1963), a French legal scholar and philosopher of sexual relations, made a case in his works on sexual ethics that children not only were not injured by sexual activity but that it was actually beneficial, arguing that the repression of children's sexuality had deleterious effects in later life. Like later apologists for paedophilia, he elided the desirability of children not being traumatically punished for their own sexual explorations, and the need for them to have some form of sex education, with the rather different issue of adult sexual access to children. The relationship between children and adults is not an equal one, given that adults are physically larger and stronger and have power and authority over them. It is questionable whether behaviour perceived by adults as sexual and seductive has such a meaning for the child.
The actual prevalence of sexual abuse of children is hard to estimate. More cases are known to the police than ever result in conviction, and probably the majority of cases are not reported. The incidence of reported cases of incest and unlawful sexual intercourse with girls under 13 in England and Wales remained relatively constant between 1946 and 1985 at a few hundred a year, although the incidence involving girls between 13 and 16 increased considerably. Approximately twice as many incidents involve girls rather than boys. Various surveys have investigated the frequency of the problem, but the figures are not consistent. Commonly cited statistics, such as one in three women having been subjected to sexual abuse in childhood, conflate single incidents, not necessarily involving contact (such as ‘flashing’), with persistent and brutal abuse within the home.
The vast majority of known adult sexual abusers of children are men (over 90%), and in many cases are known to their victims rather than random strangers. While penetrational intercourse does occur, the majority of sexual activities involved are either touching and fondling, or exhibitionism. The characteristics of offenders are varied, and include the mentally handicapped, the mentally disturbed (for example elderly men in the early stages of dementia), the indiscriminately opportunistic seeker of sexual gratification, as well as those whose primary sexual orientation is towards children. It is argued that paedophilia may be caused by an inability to form sexual relationships with adults (although this may be the result rather than the cause), or by a quasi-fetishistic fixation on an early type of sexual experience or partner. Its aetiology is obscure, and, as with other sexual classifications, may be an umbrella term covering several distinct phenomena.
— Lesley A. Hall
See also sexual orientation.
