A review by kingofspain93
Pedophilia and Sexual Offending Against Children: Theory, Assessment, and Intervention by Michael C. Seto

5.0

One of the most important books I’ve ever read. Seto immediately makes clear the distinction between people who sexually offend against children and people with pedophilia, and demonstrates that these groups of people are two distinct circles in a Venn diagram. The extreme bias against people with pedophilia has resulted in difficult circumstances for research, which as Seto points out means that most research on people with pedophilia can only be done if they have first come into contact with the law in some way. As a good example of the limitations this presents, Seto points out that no control group exists in the population of people with pedophilia for researchers to evaluate interventions against. Everyone who can be researched, generally speaking, has been categorized as an offender by the state and is required to receive treatment. This, despite the fact that many interventions do not work or actually increase the likelihood of reoffending. Seto’s way around this is to suggest that the offenders who receive relapse prevention, a widely popular treatment which has proven ineffective, can be used as a natural control group to compare novel interventions against. The methodological hurdles to research the population of people with pedophilia are mind-boggling. Every chapter contains a dozen unanswered questions and areas for further research.

Seto’s work is not a manifesto by any means; it’s a heavily researched work by one of the leading experts in the field. That said, here are some things we know about pedophilia that function as important takeaways for non-academic readers like me:

  1. Pedophilia doesn’t go away and it can’t be “cured.” LGBTQ+ campaigns have disavowed the possibility of pedophilia being an immutable sexual orientation but this appears to be the case; denying it isn’t doing anything but perpetuating a human rights crisis.
  2. Pedophilia most often develops in adolescence, and people tend to realize they have it at around thirteen or fourteen when their attraction to people does not “age up” like their friends’ does.
  3. Sex offenders against girls are more likely to be men without pedophilia, who are opportunistic and have lower empathy than men with pedophilia.
  4. Child pornography offenders are more like to have pedophilia than not.
  5. Pedophilia is significantly underresearched in women, but generally rates appear to be much lower than in men.
  6. Pedophilia, which is an attraction to prepubescent children, is measurably different from other chronophilias. That said, the age range to which someone is attracted is a spectrum and like with all sexual orientation it is a spectrum we are all on.
  7. An unknown but distinct portion of the population of people with pedophilia do not offend.

This review is written not only to hype up this excellent book with a clear focus on asking logical questions about an extremely stigmatizing subject; in the last few years I was on Facebook before quitting I saw an increase in posts that were pro-murdering people with pedophilia, often from the same people who were posting anti-cop stuff. Wading through this shit online you find that the typical american reaction to the existence of people with pedophilia is to wish them dead, often violently, often through sexual torture. We could go the rest of human existence without the average person being aware that having pedophilia and sexually offending against children are two different things. If we ever want to abolish prisons, get rid of cops, and dismantle capitalism we will have to educate ourselves about pedophilia. There is no getting around this question, and like with other marginalized groups “kill them all” or “lock them all up” is not a viable answer.