I'm a convicted pedophile, ask me anything.

Or maybe they are just getting better at discovering pedophiles.

There's an interesting film about pedophilia called Spotlight - released in 2015. It's based on a true story. In it they discover that Catholic priests are 6% more likely to be pedophiles.

My theory is that pedophilia is partly a result of extreme sexual frustration in an environment where sexual gratification is seen as impossible or heavily frowned upon. Humans are sexual animals. It can't be avoided. So, no matter how much these priests try to deny their urges some fail to do so and it manifests as pedophilia. It also manifests in other ways. Sexual rituals etc.

So, although the ways pedophiles are being detected might be getting better (which I suspect they are) I still think the instances of pedophilia is rising and will continue to rise until society understands why it is happening in the first place.

Unfortunately most efforts to understand pedophilia are prevented because people are afraid of being associated with it, and therefore the phenomena is allowed to grow due to lack of effective resistance.

I haven't explored this topic very much in my lifetime (I'm 75) but I seem to recall reading that the pedophiles in general like the youngsters and don't consider that they are doing them harm.

Yes, I think that must be true by definition. It's not just what you do but what you like. I'm also sexually attracted to adults. I was sexually attracted to adults from the age of 5 and children from the age of 7. I thought maybe I am pan-sexual, but pan-sexuals are attracted to all genders whereas I am heterosexual. So, as of yet, I do not fit into any of the sexual orientation categories that have been created, which isn't surprising. Humans are more varied than any category system.

Since I myself wanted to have sexual encounters when I was 5 years (and up) I didn't perceive my victim was being harmed as long as they consented. Note, past tense. I've moved on a bit in my thinking and now doubt whether a child can fully consent to sexual encounters since they don't know what they're consenting to. However, as a 5 year old I would have claimed to be completely responsible for my actions and desires. I've always been very confident in what I want for as long as I've been self aware.

now doubt whether a child can fully consent to sexual encounters since they don't know what they're consenting to.

That would be my take on it.

Unusual that a 5 year old would feel such sexual stimulation.

Were you abused or victim of physical or emotional incest?

Most 5 year olds are busy riding bikes or running around. What situations were you in at age 5 where you felt sexually stimulated?

I tend to agree with your theory Mr Jones... I have often thought based on the fact that it commonly priests and such that are involved in paedophilia that it is in some way related to a lack of fulfilment in the early years and later of sexual relations. To this extent I also believe that people with an interest or arousal from bestiality stem from the same lack of fulfilment.

When we are young obviously at the age of puberty our young minds are dominated by thoughts of sexual desire. The problem is although the obtaining of such desires with another person are obtainable rather easily, there are those of us who through complete lack of knowledge of how to attain this be it either through no examples of this type of romantic interactions from the adults in our lives, through shyness or feelings of inadequacy, religious beleifs (which is probably the most damaging of all) or even through just a complete lack of understanding if the opposite sex just do not reach these goals until an older age than most.

I believe that most who do have these blocks in their pursuit of sexual relations may even feel unfulfilled in their young adult relations in their 20s and 30s even as they are not as confident in expressing the full extent of their sexual desires or fantasies and so many go unfulfilled.

I hypothesis that the feeling of sexual inadequacy or unfilulfilment in their life leads them to feel like they missed out on some key concepts of sexual relations as a youth. It is more than likely that they them feel like they are very young in terms of sexual congress like that of a you in pubescemant teenager and as such they seek that in a partner to learn of experience that which they missed out on previously. Do me kind of education if you will between two bodies that both have the same sexual immaturity and need to learn at the same rate through experimentation.

Would you say this was the case for yourself?

I was never abused as a child (to my knowledge). I perhaps had an early sexual awakening at the age of 3 because a girl (also aged 3) tried to engage me in a game of strip tease. Afterwards I was not able to recollect my clothes so when I went home had to lie about how I'd lost them. I didn't want to get punished.

That lie created a space within my brain around sexual encounters in which I learnt that it was not safe to share sexual feelings. Other societal messages confirmed this belief. Over the years I think this led me to develop in ways that the community around me were unaware of and couldn't effect in any way.

This is why I think it's important to be open about sexuality, even if you have a sexual perversion, because hiding it allows it to develop. Society also has an important role to play. If society punishes people for just sharing their feelings then those people are forced to develop them alone. That leads them to more unhealthy choices. So society needs to back off a bit and be more supportive if it wants people to make healthier choices. This is probably true of all mental development, not just sexual.

It has taken me years to figure this stuff out and I have been thinking about it and working on it most days of those years. It's not easy to come to proper conclusions that stand up to logic, scrutiny and morality.

I'll need to go through your comment in detail and post a proper reply a bit later. You're not ignored.

I don’t think it’s due to lack of fulfilment in early years – say childhood. I myself had a full childhood though I was bullied relentlessly on racial grounds. I don’t think bullying itself had a direct result but it did isolate me from society in a way I never had a chance of escaping. That did have an effect on my social skills and partly led to what happened later on in life.

You have a point about sexual desires I think. We (as a society) tend to be in direct opposition to ourselves biologically. For millions of years our species and the species we evolved from have had primary objectives of survival and procreation. For some reason we think we can change all that in just a few thousand years of culture. It’s akin to trying to derail a train going at 200 mph with just a pair of tweezers. Sure, it’ll have an effect but you’re not going to stop this thing.

So, humans have an insatiable hunger for sex at some point in their lives, but society doesn’t always allow them to respond to their biological needs. What happens then? Does biology just disappear? No, nature keeps upping the pressure until the person is desperate enough that they’ll do almost anything (and they do). What we need are cultural norms that allow us to satisfy our biological needs in ways that are healthy and do not harm others. Currently, we may think we have that, but statistics and observation prove otherwise.

As to your theory about wanting to catch up on lost opportunity, that is something that has happened to me, but only because of the extensive and prolonged bullying I experienced for decades due to where I was born (which I won’t divulge). There was nothing I could do to change where I was born so it became a social prison of which there was no hope of release and no crime committed to come to terms with it. Racial hatred is a horrible thing and causes long term damage. As I’ve said before, although this contributed to me missing out on developing a lot of social skills, I don’t attribute this to my sexuality.

True experimentation (like you get in a science lab) is only possible if you are free to experiment. Most sexual behaviour is not free so it’s not possible to experiment sexually without taking some quite big risks. I’ve lost count of the number of teachers, politicians, musicians, celebrities and people in TV and film who’s lost their jobs, homes, families and often their lives just because their sexual habits became public knowledge. Just last week another politician committed suicide after an allegation went public. We'll never hear if it was true now. This is the world we live in at the most civilised end.

And now that I think of it again, I realise that a decision I made when I was 3 led to a chain of events that would result in my arrest 30 years later. That decision was a mistake but there's no way I could have known that, especially since at the age of 3 I was innocent of the consequences and my brain wasn't even developed enough to be able to conceive of the consequences even if someone had been there to point them out to me.

Basically, I got unlucky, and what happened to me could happen to anyone. I take responsibility for my actions. What I did was wrong and it was bad, but it doesn't make me a bad person. It was a lesson that took me 30 years to learn.

Anyone here, and across the whole planet, could make a decision today that could lead to a catastrophic event in 30 years (for you or someone else). Since none of us can see 30 years into the future it could happen to anyone, including me. All I know is that if the same mistake, that happened to 3 year old me, happened today I'd be aware what the potential repercussions would be in 30 years (or maybe faster). But the only reason I now know that is because I learned from a mistake I made when I was 3.

God knows how many mistakes I'm making now that I won't even live long enough to discover. God knows how many mistakes any of us are making now that could lead to catastrophe in 30 years. Can anyone here claim to know that far in the future about everything? It's not possible for an adult let alone a 3 year old, unless you have prior knowledge what will happen. And that prior knowledge can only come from experience.