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Redefining Pedophilia
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The Telegraph, a London newspaper blasted headlines on August 28, 2011: “Pedophilias have won unsupervised access to their own children because it would breach their human rights to keep them apart judges have ruled”.

The Daily Caller had its own contribution. They commented on August 15:  “If a small group of psychiatrists and other mental health professionals have their way at a conference this week, pedophilias themselves could play a role in removing pedophilia from the American Psychiatric Association’s bible of mental illness – the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) set to undergo a significant revision by 2013. Critics warn that their success could lead to the decriminalization of pedophilia.” Child activist, Dr. Judith Reismen, a visiting professor at Liberty University’s school of Law, said the conference is part a of a strategy to condition people into accepting pedophiles. Dr. Reismen went on to say, “The data on paroled pedophiles confirms these predators repeat their crimes against children and are known to have escalated them even to murder.”

Both of these chilling reports challenged my anger management skills. Have we come so far in our battle against child sexual abuse as to reverse ourselves? Child sexual abuse, while still on the rise, is not without its warriors. Thousands of websites and blogs by survivors attest to people coming out in the open to fight back, to try to understand, to reach out to other survivors.  We are all in this war together; but we need an army.  If what I’m hearing changes the interpretation we now have of pedophilia, which means it is a crime against humanity punishable by a serious prison sentence, we’re going to need more than an army; we’re going to need a miracle. Pedophilia may one day be defined as nothing more than “a fondness for children.” 

As a survivor of incest I can attest to the total damage and devastation this crime wreaked in my life. After running away from home when I was 18 I spent the next 27 years of my life going from one abuser to another. Hospitalized twice in my early twenties for failed suicide attempts; there would be more. I became a sex addict, promiscuous, co-dependent, neurotic, an insomniac, had low self-esteem, weak boundaries, and suffered from severe depression and manic-depressive behavior. Every one of these behavior problems had their origins in the trauma that happened to me in the middle of the night when I was thirteen. It not only almost destroyed me; it caused my three beloved daughters to suffer the same trauma. As an untreated childhood sexual abuse victim, I had no knowledge of how to set boundaries, how to choose healthy partners and how to like myself. My daughters, as most daughters do, followed my lead. I was a single parent raising her children with no child support and no father to give them other guidance. Who else were they to learn from? Despite the fact that today my three daughter and I live healthy lives with healthy partners, we still carry our trauma somewhere deep inside our souls. It is a continual reminder that child sexual abuse is a multi-generational problem.

I have an idea. Let’s redefine murder as “the action someone takes when severely provoked”?  That way we won’t have to put killers behind bars. We can just let them roam free.

We must not and cannot let pedophilia become redefined.

 

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Margie, this is heart-wrenching

It seems that so much of the behaviour former generations knew instinctively to be wrong - things which demoralize and reduced our humanity - are now overlooked. This isn't a case of the Grace to love the sinner, whilst abhorring the sin. It's a complete distortion of what's good and right-minded. It may well have happened throughout history, but it wasn't regarded as okay and 'that's how it is' by a consensus. From what I understand of it, entertainments like Torchwood play right into the ethos of tolerance. It doesn't mean you'd necessarily copy, but it does mean that you assent to a climate in which damaging and violent conduct are increasingly likely. Why would you be entertained by it if your shock threshold hadn't been subverted?

We live in times where boundaries of every kind are daily ridden roughshod over  and property plundered without real consequences. Paedophilia and the like are the ultimate infringement and are notoriously incurable by professionals.

In instances of incest, the dynamic is subtle and even harder to infiltrate.

Whereas society deplores and is repelled by the evil perpetrated by Rose and Fred West, by Roy Whiting (Sarah Payne's killer) and the Soham killer, Ian Huntley, all hardened paedophiles, there is not quite the same shock with incest because it's a family affair. The wreckage is not openly linked to the true causes of the victim's suffering.

This will offend some readers, I know, but the truth is that however enlightened and tender-hearted our menfolk are, there is a sense in which  they still regard women and children as property (and maybe there's a healthy side to that in the scheme of survival on all levels and the development of rounded human beings). But it means a father who commits incest can easily persuade himself he has a right. He is actually doing nothing wrong.

I don't see what the answer is except in missions like yours which I know are attended by prayer and faith in the healing power of Christ.