You Never Thought About Paedophilia Like This

This is an article about a subject very little known to both scientists and the public: paedophilia. More specifically, it deals with those paedophiles who don’t act on their urges. Adam is the main character of this reportage, and we follow him from when he first realised he felt attracted to children to the present moment (the article was published in 2014), when he is the leader of a support group for paedophiles.

What I find flat-out impressive about this article is how the author managed to sail very treacherous waters – discussing paedophilia and portraying a paedophile without falling into two of the most common traps: making a hero out of the central character of the story, Adam, on the one side, or vilifying him on the other.

At the same time, they show the guy’s struggle with his disorder through brutal honesty, such as in this paragraph: “He scoured the internet looking for a way to help him break his porn 'addiction' and deal with his attraction to children, and ended up at a general mental health forum. This site stated that new visitors must offer an introductory message. 'I know that paedophiles don’t choose to be paedophiles,' he wrote. 'I didn’t want my attraction. I don’t want my attraction. But the attraction is there, and all I can do is try to curb it.' Instead of posting it right away, he went to bed and masturbated to child porn.”

The author succeeds in the very difficult mission of making the reader empathise with Adam, and I’d say that for this reason alone the story is worth reading. But the whole article is full of mind-boggling episodes, like the one where a female sexual-abuse survivor, who suffered massive trauma, gets close to Adam and starts caring for him, so much so that she stays up with him on many nights and distracts him to prevent him from watching child pornography. And most noteworthily, the article deals with the completely underdeveloped issue of prevention and treatment of paedophilia.