What lurks in the mind of a child predator?
By MEGAN BURKE
The Recorder and Times
Dr. John Bradford is the acting clinical director of the forensic treatment unit at the Brockville Mental Health Centre. In short, after his many titles and prestigious awards, including being named a Member of the Order of Canada, Bradford is a forensic psychiatrist.
Bradford fell into forensic psychiatry by accident and became interested in people who are mentally ill who break the law. Over the years, he became interested in sexual deviations and has helped treat many people suffering from different types of pedophilia, from very mild to very serious.
The Recorder and Times spoke to Bradford about child predators, due to recent attempted events in the area, to learn what's going on in the minds of a predator, if there is a specific type of child they prefer and if there's any way to identify child predators.
Q. What's running through a child predator's mind?
A. They are people that have pedophilia, meaning they have some sexual interest in children, but they could go their whole lives without ever laying their hands on a child. This includes the people caught up in child Internet pornography, the ones viewing it, they have mild pedophilia. That's one group.
Even when you go further into pedophilia, the majority of people who may have sexually abused a child, it's really fondling and it's not that intrusive. But as you go up the scale and it becomes more intrusive, oral sex or some type of genital sex and certainly if there's any violence to it, it becomes less frequent, much rarer and more significant from a risk point of view for the general public.
If you look at people who molest children, 80 or 90 per cent of them are in sexual contact with children that they know or are acquainted with.
There's a small percentage, maybe 10 to 15 per cent, that go after children that are strangers. The attempted child abduction comes into that group. They are a much higher risk group because they are a much smaller percentage.
When a child is abducted by a stranger, the risk is higher that serious physical harm could come to the child.
Q. Are these tendencies biochemical or attributed to upbringing?
A. They are definitely not attributed to upbringing. Whatever else it is, it's not that or it's not convincingly that.
If you look at the studies of people suffering from pedophilia, what you would see is about a third of them were sexually abused themselves, two thirds weren't. Being sexually abused as a child doesn't make you a pedophile but because a third of them have been abused, it contributes in some way.
I've spoken to hundreds if not thousands of people with pedophilia. What they describe is around about puberty when all of us become sexually aroused, and most people become attracted mostly to people of the opposite sex and roughly the same age, people with pedophilia go through the same process except they are not attracted to not male or female, opposite or same sex, but the age is the difference. They are attracted to prepubertal or peripubertal children and it's an automatic process, it just happens. We're not sure why it happens.
There's studies that show in the endocrine challenges to the brain there may be abnormal responses, there's a genetic study that shows genetic transmission that is not a typical one. Am I convinced that it is something that is genetic or biochemical? Yes I am. Can I say that for sure? No I can't. We need more research before we can be sure of what the cause is.
Q. Is it always a sexual urge?
A. No some people abduct children for other reasons. In the circumstance of a man coming up to a child and trying to get them into a car, that would be almost certainly someone who has pedophiliac urges.
If approaching children who are strangers, my worry would be the sexual urge to do that would be strong. And if the sexual urge is strong I would worry that if they engage in sexual activity with the child it would be much more intrusive.
You then end up with the problem where in some instances they may kill a child to avoid detection, or some of them may be sadistic where physical violence or torture may be part of what turns them on sexually. These are rare events, fortunately, but when you have anything to do with a potential abduction of a child and it's with a stranger, that to me is a very strong red flag.
Q. Is there something that triggers pedophiles to act?
A. No not necessarily. In theory you could have somebody who's pedophiliac and might have violent sexual fantasies about children, and they could go their whole life never harming anybody.
There are some people who abduct, and the difference between the two is not that obvious. There are some things that are more obvious. Some tend to have personality problems. They may not be psychopathic but they may be on that particular pathway.
Studies that we've done on men who kill children show that they are aroused more by violence on children more than sexual attraction. In addition to that, they have high levels of either psychopathy or approaching psychopathy. They are a small and select group, fortunately.
Q. Do child predators have a specific type of child they prefer?
A. They would either be attracted to males or females. Contrary to belief, most children who end up being sexually abused by pedophiles are females rather than males, but the big difference would be what their orientation is, whether they are homosexual or heterosexual.
In terms of the age of the child it's mostly around puberty, generally speaking, so 10 to 14, that kind of age range. They would also be a more vulnerable group. It would be much harder to abduct a teenager.
Q. What will child predators do to lure a child?
A. Just about anything. They'd use something to attract the child to get them into a car or a van. Again it varies but sometimes they'd use an excuse like saying, Would you like to see my puppy. Or sometimes it's forced, it varies. There's no easy way of knowing.
Q. Is there any way to identify child predators before they act?
A. It would be looking for a needle in a haystack. First of all we don't know what the prevalence of pedophilia is in the general population. We can guess more or less, but we don't know for sure because there's never been a study able to define it clearly.
We guess that it could be around four per cent or maybe as high as seven per cent. This would include the people who show sexual interest in children but never lay a hand on one. Out of that group of individuals, there would be the small very high risk dangerous group where they could potentially act out and engage in a child sexual homicide.
Profiling is a very inaccurate way of dealing with things. But when you have behaviour like somebody who is attempting to abduct a child, police and the general public have to be very vigilant because you might be dealing with one of these very rare circumstances.
Q. When one case comes out, do you find more predators or copycats come out?
A. That's in the literature, mostly police literature and certainly copycat stuff does occur. It's probably more common in suicides and murder suicides than anything to do with this type of behaviour, but yes in theory it's possible.
Q. From your experience do you find these urges treatable?
A. I've treated people who have committed sexually motivated homicide and again, small group, obviously. We've treated people who have had sexually sadistic, including homicidal thoughts, for children, not that they've done anything but they had the potential. They are mostly treated with medication and also cognitive treatment to change their thinking, and we followed them for a long period of time and continue treatment.
Q. If left untreated, are predators able to stop themselves?
A. Don't know. In theory, and if you look at criminological literature, there seems to be people who were highly sexually violent against women or children and then suddenly stop. They certainly appear to be in the literature accounts that seem to support the thesis, but do we really know? It's speculation, quite honestly.
It would be more likely that somebody, once they got going along this terrible path, that they'd probably continue. Again we're fortunate it's very rare.
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