I’m curious about whether he would let his children hang around with one of his patients. “I wouldn’t leave my children with someone I don’t know,” he replied. “We have quite a good success rate when it comes to establishing behavioural self-control, but we don’t succeed all the time, so there’s always a risk. In general, if I have a good relationship with a patient and he’s opening up and telling me about his sexuality… I’d probably be more cautious.”
He tells me that the clinic has discovered that around 4% of the general population have an attraction towards minors. And, like most researchers in his field, Von Heyden, he states that research and clinical experience point towards it being stable throughout life. However, a small minority, including those behind the UK’s Stop It Now! programme, maintain that it is a curable illness. The difference in opinion is stark, and shows just how far we are from a thorough understanding of paedophilia.
Donald Findlater, director of Stop It Now! told me: “Von Heyden is trying to take over the world with [Don’t Offend]. They’ve spent years touring the globe and convincing politicians in Germany their version of the world is correct. They’re very clear that it’s a sexuality.”
“I’m saying it’s not. It’s part of a learned behaviour that’s come often from adverse childhood things that happened to them. It therefore has the capacity to change, unlike homosexuality and heterosexuality that tend to have a strong biological component.” Findlater also points out that Don’t Offend doesn’t record the names of their patients, so has no way of knowing how successful it is at curbing child abuse; other sexologists in Germany have also attacked the way the clinic labels patients so rigidly with the condition.
But, for the most part, it has escaped criticism in Germany, where its adverts adorn the insides of metro carriages: “Don’t be an offender. Get help.” It appears the lack of mandatory reporting and empirical evidence is a loss that many Germans are prepared to take in the battle to curb child abuse.
The clinic separates paedophiles into four types. There are those who would never offend, and don’t need help. There are others who are psychopaths; realistically; little can be done about them. There is also a subsection of OCD sufferers who falsely believe they’re attracted to children, to the point of inventing false memories of having been abused. The clinic will send them to OCD specialists.
But where it clams to make the biggest impact is with the fourth type: those paedophiles who let biases sway them. Von Heyden said: “Working on cognitive biases is a big part of what we do. They think: ‘Oh the kids want it, they love it, they tease me.’ But they have to realise normal behaviour from children isn’t sexual and even if does seem like the child is teasing you, it doesn’t mean you’re allowed, as an adult, to follow that impulse.”
Does it work? For Ruby and Sirius, it appears that talking to one another about their urges has helped them to keep them under control. But until they collect sufficient data, it is impossible to know if the clinic’s claims are true.
And so we’re left with a debate that is unlikely to be resolved any time soon. On one side of the argument are those who point to the fact that Don’t Offend has enquiries from prospective patients from all over the world, with many moving to Germany for the therapy. On the other, there are those who’d rather point to the message recently scrawled outside von Heyden’s office: “Hang the Paedos.”
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SubscribeThis is an impressive article on a hard subject to cover, let alone cover fairly.
I get concerned when leaders say things like “paedophilia is a fixed sexual preference”. My concern is not that they’re correct, but that such terminology intentionally obscures reality. It’s a little like saying that “cannibalism is a fixed culinary preference” — whether it’s scientifically valid is the least important part of the statement.
Something that is truly a “fixed sexual preference” would absolutely rise to the level of an “identity” in the new vernacular. And sexual identities are now enshrined in law as protected. It may placate postmodernist university professors to say that pedophiles aren’t “freaks who want to molest kids” but instead have a “child attracted identity”… but it doesn’t makes kids any safer.
Unfortunately I’d say being a paedophile is indeed something you’re born with, in much the same way homosexuality is. Obviously this isn’t to compare the two, two consenting adults is morally a million miles away from noncing, but if these therapies do stop people offending then they’re worth a try. I’d much rather somebody who thinks they fancy kids to be able to try and seek help before they do anything than have them abusing children.
Obviously any that do offend against children need to be severely punished with lengthy jail terms to keep them off the streets.
It isn’t at all clear that homosexuality is inborn; I know the culture tells you this at every turn, but the truth is, we just don’t know.
Its a question most homosexual people should hope is never definitively answered. If its socialied, then research will begin into what triggers it, if genetic then that’s even worse. Regimes the world over will just test for the genetic markers of homosexuality and those people with the genes will find themselves treated to a brief rooftop view of Riyadh followed by an express visit to its pavement.
Identical twin studies, where one of a pair grows up to be gay and the other not, suggest that the origin of homosexuality may be epigenetic. It may occur in the last stage of a pregnancy. In other words, there is no gay gene.
Thanks Vijay, thats interesting and werid if true , i wonder what could happen in the womb to make that happen.
My point is more that i think its a question best left unanswered, if an answer is discovered the Chinese Government / the whole Islamic world would only use that knowledge to maximise the efficiency of their persecution of homosexuals.
https://www.nature.com/articles/nature.2015.18530
“i wonder what could happen in the womb to make that happen”
Epigenetics describes changes in gene expression caused by environmental factors. Genes can be switched on and off accordingly. It’s
not about what happens in the womb.
It doesn’t matter if it’s inborn or not: it doesn’t harm anyone. Chosen or not chosen, homosexuals have a right to live freely.
no one has said otherwise Penny. be careful when tilting at windmill, those sails are notoriously tricky to hit
It’s a bit more complex than that though. What if parents, whether through bigotry, religion, to make life easier for their children or simply to increase their chances of having grandchildren – opted for genetic screening?
At an individual level there seems nothing wrong with this – prior to the screening, no person exists. But if we allow it as a society it’s still suggesting that a certain type of person is unwanted.
No one is questioning that homosexuals have the right to live freely. That’s a given. What should be under question is it normal letting children predators roam free? I believe, in this case, that the freedom of a disturbed individual is incomparable to the potential harm to innocent victims, and because of this I find disturbing that a clinic or therapists after hearing the confessions of pedophiles let them go free out in the world. There is something really warped and broken in our society if we have arrived at this point.
Paedophilic feelings do appear to be far more prevelant in the population than we would want to admit. There also appears to be a large number of paedophiles who can manage their behavior and realize the enormity of the damage they can cause if they were to act on their fantasies. If you get people to come and seek therapy to control their urges, in return for not registering, shaming and ostracizing them, this is surely better than driving them underground untreated.
Many paedophiles become parents. They don’t need to go anywhere but home.
Yes, but he’s not going to hear those confessions unless he lets them go free.
They’re under no compulsion to confess.
You can be a doctor or a policeman, but not both.
Everyone has every right to live in exactly the way they see fit; no let, no hindrance, no matter. Who are we to say otherwise? In the same way that homosexuality is no longer illegal, niche lovers of minor or animal attraction etc are on the ascendancy, quietly awaiting the culture to advance enough to accommodate their own expressions of love.
Make way.
The paedophile’s target is a pre-pubic child. How do you square the paedo’s rights (In your sexual utopia) with the safe-keeping and rights of the child?
i took Marcia as being satirical
TARGET? TARGET??
As they did two thousand years ago in the magnificent ‘ Pax Romana’.
Unfortunately the arrival Jesus & Co put a stop to all that.
You clearly don’t know much about the Roman Empire.
Really? Enlighten me please.
It was tolerated, but barely. It was just about acceptable if you were giving it — and only then if there were no women available — but if you were taking it, you were about as low as it got, the $h!te on a legionary’s sandals. I know it’s tremendously chic to think we were all living in some kind of sexual Eden before those wicked Christians, but that’s just an affectation of pseudo-intellectuals. There’s such a thing as natural law that predates revealed religion. People know what’s right and wrong and it comes out in their attitudes.
Caesar survived “taking it” as you so prosaically put it, without much trouble. Just a bit of ribaldry from his Legionaries at his Triumph.
Again you must do more research if you don’t wish to appear stupid.
Read your Suetonius. It was not approved of.
Surely you don’t base your opinion on a single source?
Try ‘Greek Hom*sexuality’ by Kenneth Dover. You may learn something.
You’re the one who brought up the “magnificent” Pax Romanus.
It’s Pax Romana. Didn’t the ‘Christian Brothers*’ teach you anything?
( An Irish teaching order sometimes jocularly referred to as the Christian B*ggers, for all too obvious reasons.)
But you were talking about the Roman Empire.
To understand Rome it is best to start with Greece.
Then why didn’t you?
I did, 24 hours ago, can’t you read?
Suetonius did not speak for the Roman Empire.
His was a personal opinion and rather unusual one at that.
I doubt that his friend Pliny (the younger) shared his distaste, although both probably were united in their disgust of early Christians.*
(* Pliny certainly was & tells us so in some detail.)
This isn’t really about homosexuals, is it?
Off course not. What a boring subject, however you seem to be obsessed with it.
Quite correct it’s called the “Ughh” factor
I’m interested too – my understanding is that the pre Christian empire was far more morally permissive than the post Christian empire.
Correct, it was, and even more so, if that is possible, in the Greece of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle.
MacGabhann should try reading a few books on the subject, if he wishes to save himself from needless embarrassment.
Pesky free speech, eh? Maybe try Twitter?
And you’re still wrong. It was widely accepted in their society for the dominant role, much less so for the submissive role.
Hence the criticism Caesar had to endure after he appears to have been on the ‘receiving
end’ of Nicomedes IV of
Bithynia.
Some even mocked him as “The Queen of Bithynia!”
We don’t know for certain and possibly never will unless they discover a gay gene, but if I was a betting man I’d put my house on it being something that occurs naturally rather than learned behaviour
What really concerns me, is not how homosexuals behave, but the massive over representation of homosexuals and lesbians in government and the media. There seems to be a concerted attack taking place on “The family” and on human reproduction.
The rights issue is being applied to nature and the alphabet people are becoming aware that in nature there is no such thing as equality.
Pretty much how I feel. I think a lot of people feel the same but it’s hard to gauge. I suspect many feel too intimidated to say these things.
At last something we can agree on!
The intimidation practiced by small, vociferous minorities is truly dreadful, and in many cases is backed up by various ‘Hate’ Laws to ‘our’ eternal shame.
The days when could jocularly refer to someone as say a ‘sodomite’ or ‘f*dge p*cker’*
are, sadly, long gone.
We now live in a period of unparalleled intolerance, not seen since the great days of the Spanish Inquisition.
(* A ‘technical’ but now obsolete term that has its origin in the North of England.)
“Nothing is more unequal than equality itself.”
(Pliny the Younger,
Letters of Pliny, Book IX, Letter 5.)
It’s not at all clear that homosexuality (or bisexuality, for that matter), has a single “cause”.
The definition of paedophilia is confusing, the abusers in most studies are men, and in the US priest scandal studied by the John Jay foundation, the largest percentage of those abused were post pubescent boys and young men. True paedophilia, the abuse of infants, is extremely rare and almost always the result of psychological illness.
The former, the abuse of boys and young men, seems to me to explain itself. Both are extremely offensive to me as a parent of four boys, the evidence which was freely available during the Studies in US and UK, was never acted upon.
You’ve hit the nail on the head Brian, whether scientifically valid or not the political intent is to add P (paedophiles) to the expanding list of alphabet identities, B (bestiality) and I (incest) will follow shortly.
LGBTQIPBI++
If only men who have sex with cars could politicise then at least we could get another vowel in there for ( Automophilia)
You missed N (for necrophilia) as practised by the late Sir Jimmy Savile, OBE, KCSG, during his tireless charity work in hospital morgues.
My apologies William you have correctly exposed my Necrophobia, i hereby acknowledge the pain, suffering and chafed raw genitals of all practicing Necro’s.
This is stupid of me to ask but what’s the actual limit for this stuff, once the N’s are added, what possible perversions are left? i hope i don’t live long enough to find out.
At least the acronym is improving. QILABBTPING++, i’ve moved gays to the rear, but i doubt they’d object to that. We’ve almost got a legible word going here.
ok so if we add BIPOC
then we can get to BIOPTICALBINO++QBPG which is at least fun to say
damn i think i double counted the O, so im adding Ornithophilla for men who have sex with ostriches
or we have
ITALICBINGO++QBBPP
‘I’ve moved gays to the rear, but i doubt they’d object to that’
Bit naughty that (made me chuckle)
O, do put it on Catchphrase!
As far as N is concerned the wokists would no doubt bleat ‘well who’s it hurting?’
That’s the concern, obviously. But you are at risk of committing the slippery slope fallacy. And the same logic could have been invoked earlier – in relation to homosexuals, for example.
i take your point David, and I’m joking about the inclusion of Necrophilia and Bestiality ( although I’m sure in 50 years time someone will be looking at this thread, dead baby lamb in their lap and hailing me as a pioneer of the still-born sheep sh@gger movement).
Paedophilia is more complicated, its been part of the LGB movement in the past, through NAMBLA and PIE in the UK, they were excluded because fighting the prejudice that gay men are a threat to young boys was obviously undermined by being aligned with a movement of men who wanted to have sex with boys. I imagine that 99% of Gay men within the main movements were repulsed by NAMBLA and they were excluded from from mainstream G politics pretty quickly, but NAMBLA still exists, search at your own risk but their is a website still up, last updated Dec 2021. I’d say it’s not so much a slippery slope as a merry-go-round, if its suppressed now it’ll be back around in another generations time.
Excellent comment.
One could leave it at saying that paedophilia (and homosexuality) is something that is set early, goes deep, and is in many cases damn near impossible to change. That would sidestep the discussion whether it is ‘natural’ and so deserving of support.
This sentence:”It appears the lack of mandatory reporting and empirical evidence is a loss that many Germans are prepared to take in the battle to curb child abuse.”
It also appears that increased child rape is a loss that many Germans are prepared to take in the battle to “curb child abuse”. The article states that pedophiles are actually moving to Germany because of this policy. What could go wrong?
The German Left has an extremely patriarchal view of sexual violence. Women and children seem to be disposable in the service of men’s needs.
For example, sex buying is legal in Germany, which has made Germany into the trafficking hub of Europe.
It appears that enslaving and raping thousands of women, girls, and boys is a loss that many Germans are prepared to take in the service of men’s sexual “needs”.
There is nothing compassionate or progressive about using children as guinea pigs to experiment on predatory adults.
It was very noticeable that the German authorities were happy to cover up the mass abuse of women once large numbers of “refugees” arrived late in 2015 – as happened in central Cologne and other cities on 31st December that year. Women are expendable to keep Merkel and Islam happy.
Careful, Penny – it’s just that kind of statement that has had our own brave JB extensively hounded and mocked as superfluous to requirements.
I’ve just read the linked to the New Yorker article and I’m pretty shocked. It’s probably one of the most disturbing articles I’ve ever read.
Why has this not been reported more widely? It appears to be because German culture accommodates paedophilia more readily. And we get worked up about using the wrong gender or ethnic label.
These kids were sent to live with paedophiles as foster parents, with the paedophilic activities acknowledged as a benefit(!) of the relationship, and cut off from their families – under the governance of German academia and the Berlin senate. For a childhood of abuse and no family in this case he got 50k euros and this was perceived in Germany as generous.
Thanks for this Unherd – and I though Labour and PIE in the seventies was bad. Little did I know.
The comments below seem to be missing the point here. Paedophilia exists and a great many children are victims of it. Locking up the perpetrators can only happen after the event and relies on traumatised children, or adults years afterwards, giving evidence. Often appearing in a court case can add so much to their trauma that they regret it or even take their own lives. The guilt of giving evidence against a loved abuser is something that very few people who have not been victims will ever understand.
At least Germany is trying to do something to stop abuse happening in the first place. I seem to remember a similar initiative in a British prison – possibly Grendon – a number of years ago. Refusing to study, understand and treat paedophilia will not help children, and they must be the priority.
The Kentler Experiment is one of the most sordid tales i have ever heard. Why were the left so brazenly pro-paedophila in the 70s?
I’m strongly with the “Hang the Paedos” lobby. My tolerance for weirdness and freakish behaviour has worn rather thin since the ‘wokists’ took over.
Given that most of us (‘Not me!’I hear you cry! ‘Me neither’, says Romeo; ‘5 times a week for me, double on Sundays’), I revise, many of us can tolerate long term abstinence from sex; and, prior to recent times, most gay people had to tolerate abstinence for most of, if not their whole lives, and still led admirable lives achieving much….
Is this not feasible for paedophiles too? Or is their predilection not resistible? If the latter, does that not put them in the psychopathic area of uncontrollable urges?
It would appear that many of those identifying as trans, queer, whatever also have adult baby or furry fetishes as well. Stick with the LGB and definitely leave the I out of the alphabet soup as people with DSDs never asked to be in it as far as I’m aware, having a medical condition zero to do with sexual orientation. There are many wanting to add P or MAP(minor attracted person) to it…….
The error here is in creating psychological identities around thoughts when the proper focus of sexual identity should be on acts. “Ruby is a paedophile” is apparently a horrifying secret, but then again thoughts are private and immaterial and acts alone determine what the person is to be. I feel sorry for these people, feeling burdened and weighed down by a non-manifested psychological attraction to children. It’s really a moot point. “First do no harm” is the classic mantra of medicine, and it seems to me that as long as people are sensible and well-ordered then attraction to children is a complete non-issue. Or are heterosexual men immediately to be suspected of wanting to assault women, purely on account of a psychological attraction? The “abuse narrative” used for any simple attraction is absurd, puerile and demeaning. And it pathologises something that is rather widespread and ordinary, and generally kept private for the sake of widespread stigma and ignorance.
I recall the treatment program run by the Lucy Faithfull Foundation between 1996 and 2003. It was a very expensive initiative for a small charity. It was labour intensive – and trained labour intensive at that. It was housed in NHS accommodation in Surrey and treated around 20 men at any one time.
The accommodation was unsatisfactory and they were due to move to better facilities in a very expensively refurbished former nurses’ hostel. As you might guess, this project was less popular than bubonic plague and the neighbours waged a determined campaign to stop it happening.
The published results of the therapy looked less than encouraging. Two thirds of patients reported a reduction in the strength of their attraction to children. But, as Mandy Rice-Davies observed, they would say that, wouldn’t they? There was no way of objectively verifying results, as if you were measuring blood sugar levels during a new treatment for diabetes.
Possibly you could look at rates of reoffending in treated and untreated groups. But that would be a very long term exercise and subject to all kinds of uncertainty.
And the population whom they treated were pre-selected. They excluded those with:
1. Doubtful motivation
2. Alcohol and/or drugs problems
3. Other mental illnesses
4. Tendencies towards violent or impulsive behaviour.
OK, they had to get the best chances of success using their very limited resources. But it is exactly the most problematic patients we want to be “cured”.
The most problematic patients are surely beyond help. But some people might find it easier to do the right thing if they got some support, instead of being left with ‘I am damned to hell anway, so what is the point of holding back?’.
That seems to be the logic of both the Lucy Faithfull and the German approaches – target limited therapeutic resources where they might make the most difference. But some kind of objective review of outcomes is essential.
Conversion therapy for gays has long been discredited. It won’t work on paedophiles either. Just as gayness is a stubbornly inflexible sexual orientation, at least for males, so to is paedophilia. There is a difference only in that in the one case the orientation is to the same sex, while in the other it is to a particular age range/developmental stage.
Those who doubt any of this need only consult a now extensive body of psychological research, conducted largely by teams based in Canada and Germany. See Seto, “Is Pedophilia a Sexual Orientation? The doubters, just as in the case of gays, tend to be either conservatives who have a strong ideological interest in smearing these sexualities as sinful lifestyle choices, or else therapists terrified of losing their conversion therapy clientele.
But even if it is an orientation that doesn’t mean paedophile activity should be legalised does it ? Or do you think it should be ?
>But even if it is an orientation that doesn’t mean paedophile activity should be legalised does it ? Or do you think it should be ?
No, you are right, and I see this point has been well made in at least one other comment here.
It is a mistake to suppose orientation has any bearing at all on the ethics of child-adult sexual encounters and relationships, which stand to be judged on their merits. The near-universal assumption, these days, is that they will inevitably be harmful to the child. This is not the case, but the public’s apparently unquenchable appetite for victim narratives, and the powerful taboo against any contrary discourse, make it practically impossible to present the relevant research literature in public.
My own experience is a case in point. A couple of years ago Andrew Gold, the author of today’s article, contacted me as a potential contributor to a BBC documentary on the subject. Sometime before that Stephen Nolan did the same. But such projects tend to be dropped at the last minute, when the corporate top brass get cold feet.
As for whether acts should be legalised in which children are willing participants, that is yet another issue.
The age of consent law in the Netherlands not long ago was rather interesting. An element of flexibility was introduced, with the intention of limiting criminal prosecutions to cases in which they were clearly appropriate, as when the child personally, or the child’s parents, felt there had been abuse. In other cases, especially if the child had no complaint about the relationship, it was thought best to avoid resorting to the blunt instrument of the criminal law, which can be traumatic to the child as well as the adult partner. Other interested parties were able to express disquiet, though, and the civil law could be invoked to prevent the continuance of relationships deemed to be improper or potentially harmful.
This liberalised law was introduced in 1990. The formal age of consent remained 16, but consent was accepted from age 12 upwards as a valid reason not to prosecute. The changing climate of the times led to the reform being abandoned in 2002; this reversion appears to have been based only on a rise of protectionist sentiment across the western world and was unsupported by evidence that young people had been harmed by the reform.
For a formal account of my position, see this open access peer-reviewed paper: Childhood ‘Innocence’ is Not Ideal: Virtue Ethics and Child–Adult Sex. I am also the author of Michael Jackson’s Dangerous Liaisons, about the late pop star’s intimate relationships with boys, a book that was favourably reviewed by a number of distinguished professors, including the late Donald West, Emeritus Professor of Clinical Criminology, University of Cambridge.
Yuck. Two paedos talking about their urges.
I’m sure this will all end well.
Another radically stupid, utterly pointless piece from Unherd, almost boiling over with its own brazen ignorance, registering its Daily Mail level sensationalist aim with the first “horrifying secret” and not letting up until its end. One can only wonder what on earth its ‘author’ thought he was trying to achieve!
Blimey! I think this comment itself demonstrates exactly what it accuses the article of being: sensationalist, hyperbolic, pointless, and boiling over with radically stupid rage!
Oh really? Explain for me then please exactly how kicking off one’s piece right at the start with the wildest assumption that what we’re here to talk about is a “horrifying secret”, is NOT the very soul of sensationalism? And which piece thereafter conceives of and discusses its topic in terms of no more than so many URGES?
Will you care to explain how such talk can possibly achieve anything less than the re-consecration of the notion in readers’ minds that HORROR is all that can possibly be seen here from the moment the magic spell of the p-word is invoked?
Will you please explain how this is differs in essence from a tabloid-grade sensationalism writ large?
The article certainly informed me of a very disturbing cultural issue in Germany. Maybe you’d prefer this to be kept secret?
At least Germany is relatively open about it. Other countries secret is good for now – it’s not yet time to open that particular Pandora’s box.
Trust me,.mister, you were already “very disturbed” and.have in fact been so regarding such matters since anyone can remember. Pieces like this merely serve to confirm the self-rightness of yout own pre-disturbed condition. For is this not true?
The article gave information and a prod to make people think. Your rant did neither.
I readily admit that the wording of my comment errs on the side of impetuous – but how is such viscerally felt *reaction* on my part not understandable when heedlessly visceral reactions of disgust and repulsion have vehemently governed public discourse on paedophilia for god only knows how long now?
How much can a piece like this provide any food for real thought when its very basis for approaching its topic is cast in terms of nothing more than so many “URGES” ?
Will you please tell me that, Mr Pingel?