Perversion on the Net

The New York Times has a riveting and disturbing expose on the use of the internet by pedophiles as a kind of world-wide self-reinforcement support group. Pedophilia groups have blatant e-conversations seeking opportunities to fulfill their fantasies and assure each other to assuage guilt. The article reads like a tale of horror where our worst fears unfold one after the other:

Did anyone, one man asked, know of girls’ camps willing to hire adult males as counselors? Meanwhile, elsewhere in cyberspace, the second group celebrated the news that one of their own had been offered a job leading a boys’ cabin at a sleep-away camp.

The most frequent job mentioned, however, was schoolteacher. A number of self-described teachers shared detailed observations about children in their classes, including events they considered sexual, like a second-grade boy holding his crotch during class.

Some pedophiles revealed that they gained access to children through their own families. Some discussed how they married to be close to the children from their wives’ previous marriages.

Using deception to gain access to children is a recurring theme. For example, on a site for adults attracted to boys, someone calling himself Vespucci asked in June whether a single man could become a foster father. The respondents cautioned Vespucci to disguise his pedophilia.

Pointers on ways to get close to children were frequent topics. One man posted an Internet “help wanted” advertisement from a single mother seeking an overnight baby sitter for her 4-year-old daughter.

Their self-justifications are just as disturbing. The internet groups help not only in identifying opportunities but also in suppressing feelings of guilt and remorse.

Pedophiles see themselves as part of a social movement to gain acceptance of their attractions. The effort has a number of tenets: that pedophiles are beneficial to minors, that children are psychologically capable of consenting and that therapists manipulate the young into believing they are harmed by such encounters.

Pedophilia is obviously a serious dysfunction. While it is incredibly politically incorrect to associate it with homosexuality, both involve the focusing of sexual desire towards biologically barren targets. In neither case does it seem likely that a gene for such behavior is likely to have evolved never mind maintain itself in noticable numbers. (While pedophiles can and sometimes do have children - whom they may then abuse - they obviously are not as prolific as the general population). But perhaps pedophiles are rare enough (<1 in 10,000) that a 'pedophilia' gene might be the cause. That these people seem to not understand how bizarrely abnormal their desires are argues that the problem is organic and not some acquired psychological quirk. If a microbe can relieve a rat of its fear of cats - indeed, even build an attraction - then I don't think screwing up someone's sexual-desire wiring seems too far-fetched.

But whether it's a pedophilia gene or germ (apologies to Greg Cochran), this sure seems like something worth investigating with some serious intent to find a cure or vaccine (if pathogenic or effective genetic screening if not). However rare they may be, pedophiles can do a lot of damage - look at the carnage Joseph Duncan managed to perpetrate just by himself. Harsher and harsher prison terms may or may not deter acts of molestation and probably make us feel better, but they undoubtedly encourage murder by raising the stakes of getting caught so high. (Castration would probably work but I'm thinking we might want something a little less barbaric.) Funding this kind of research seems more important t our society - and a lot more likely to succeed - than, say, establishing Jeffersonian democracy in a fractured, medieval, tribal Islamic populace. Would 1/1000th of annual Iraq expenditures be too much to ask?