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Child Sexual Abuse - Chapter 4: Perpetrators

David Finkelhor

The Free Press, New York, pp.33-52, 1984

There is nothing is the field of child sexual abuse more perplexing than the question, "Why would someone molest a child?". Although people are no longer apt to see offenders as crazed sex fiends, they still lack some alternative framework that makes sense for offender behavior. This chapter tries to present an organized framework for looking at and understanding the behavior of sex abusers.

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Is Sexual Abuse Sexually Motivated?

One of the first controversies encounteres in the literature on sexual abusers is the question of whether sexual abuse is sexually motivated. In recent years, wirters have choosen to emphasize the nonsexual motives involved in child sexual abuse. For example, Groth (1979, p.146) writes that "distorted expression of identification and affilation needs, power and control issues, and hostile and aggressive impulses, rather than sexuality, were the underlying issue in pedophilia." Sgroi (1982, pp.1-2) states, "Individuals who are sexual offenders against children do not seem to be motivated primarily by sexual desires ... it is far more appropriate to regard child sexual abuse as a power problem.

This emphasis on sexual abuse as, in Groth's terminology, "pseudo-sexual" behavior has been an important antidote to the exclusive focus on sexual abuse as a "sexual deviation." We cannot recognize the social or psychological significance of adults relating sexually with children unless we analyze the broad emotional and developmental meaning that such behavior has for its perpetrators.

However, to go to the other extreme and deny the sexual component to sexual abuse, as some interpreters of Groth have done, is also a mistake (Frude, 1982). [...]

[...] In much pedophilic-type behavior, in contrast to rape, the evidence suggests that there is often a quite strong erotic component (Groth, 1979), with offenders caressing, touching, and being strongly aroused by the object of their fantasies. Many offenders have clearly documented deviant patterns of sexual arousal and fantasy (Freund 1967a, 1967b, 1972).

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In my view the debate about the sexual motivation of sexual abuse is something of an unfortunate red herring. Sexual abuse does have a sexual component; sometimes it is strong, sometimes weak, sometimes primary, sometimes secondary. Along with nonsexual motivations, it does need to be taken into account. The goal should be to explain how the sexual conponent fits in.

Sexual Abuse and Psychopathology

Another feature of past theories about sexual abusers becomes clear as one reads through the literature. These theories tend to emphasize psychopathology. The dominant model is that sexual interest is a specific deviant psychological state that afflicts a small group of men who have had traumatizing developmental experiences (Gebhard et al., 1965). A current incarnation of this model is the popular view that the behovior of most sex offenders can be explained by the fact that they tehmselves were victims of sexual abuse as children.

There may be some insight in these types of accounts. However, no doubt they overemphasize psychopathology because they are based on studies of a very unrepresentative population: caught and convicted sex offenders. Caught and convicted sex offenders are those who are the most compulsive, repetitive, blatant, and extreme in their offending, and thus also those whose behavior stems from the most deviant developmental experiences.

We now know much better than before how widespread sexual abuse is and how small a fraction of offenders are ever apprehended, let alone convicted. [...]

Need for a Multifactor Analysis

Another problem in the literature on sexual abusers is that few theories have tried to address the full complexity of the behavior. [...]

[...] Our reading of the literature on sexual abusers suggests that this organizing framework consists of four separate underlying factors that theories are attempting to explain. These appear to be four components that contribute, in different degree and forms, to the making of a child molester. Formulated as questions, these factors are:

  1. Why does a person find relating sexually to a child emotionally gratifying and congruent.
  2. Why is a person capable of being sexually aroused by a child?
  3. Why is a person blocked in efforts to obtain sexual end emotional gratification from more normatively approved sources?
  4. Why is a person not deterred by conventional social inhibitions from having sexual relaionshhips with a child?
We call these factors "emotional congruence," "sexual arousal," "blockage," and "disinhibition," respectively. The first three factors explain how a person develops a sexual interest in a child or children in general. The last factor explains how this interest is translated into actual behavior.

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Factor 1: Emotional Congruence

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Factor 2: Sexual Arousal to Children

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Factor 3: Blockage

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Factor 4: Disinhibition

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Value of the Four Factors

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Do Abuse Victims Become Abuse Perpetrators?

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Explaining Different Types of Child Molesters

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Sexual Preference

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Exclusivity and Strength

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Incest Offenders and Pedophiles

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Conclusion

This chapter has introduced a typology for thinking about the sources of child molesting with two particular goal in mind. One is to create some order to the diverse array of ideas that have been forwarded about molesters. Another is to illustrate how more complex models need to be used to account for molesting behavior.

Unfortunately, no new information about child molesters is uncoverred here. These are just old ideas packaged in a different way. [...]