CANDICE:

Hi everybody, I’m so excited for today’s podcast. We have an individual who’s on today who is a wonderful human being and has been part of the map community for 3 years. He tweets and blogs about the topic of autopedophilia. We all know — those that listen to our podcast and are in the map community and who are map advocates — understand the risk of coming onto this podcast and using one’s own voice so we have the kind generous Elliott who’s another map who’s going to be reading Bly’s answers for us today so I want to welcome you and thank you for reading Bly’s answers.

ELLIOTT:

Yeah, I’m glad to be here. I have known Bly for almost a year and he really helped me out at the beginning when I joined the community, so I’m more than happy to read his answers for him.

CANDICE:

Wonderful, and that is so important for people to hear as MAPs coming out into the community. It can be kind of scary and so to have MAPs who are willing to be a support is wonderful. So, with that, let’s go ahead and get started because this topic of autopedophilia… I know a lot of people probably don’t know what it is. So I would like to start by talking about autopedophilia and get a real clear understanding of what auto pedophilia is so tell me.

BLY (read by Elliott):

OK, so I have to start with a couple of disclaimers here. This is a subject that is still being learned about and I’m not an expert because there really aren’t any experts. Even the academics who study this are not experts yet. They’re just trying to describe what they’ve observed.

I would describe myself as an autopedophile, but the way I and many others experience that doesn’t necessarily line up with the current dictionary definitions.

So, the definition used by scientists like Kevin Hsu and J. Michael Bailey, goes like this: an autopedophile is someone who is, quote, “sexually aroused by dressing in children’s clothing or fantasizing about having a child’s body”, unquote.

So an immediate thing to say about that is that it’s not the same as pedophilia, because pedophilia is finding children sexually attractive, whereas this is finding the idea of being a child arousing.

But what I also want to say is that that scientific definition really only covers just a couple of aspects of a much bigger phenomenon, and in a way for some of us, that definition I just quoted is a bit like saying the definition of gay is a man who gets excited by the thought of a man kissing him. Like, yes, that captures an important part of it, but it doesn’t capture the whole thing, nor necessarily is that true for everyone who is gay.

So, what actually are we talking about if we need a wider definition? I would say the group I consider myself part of, is “people who are emotionally or sexually drawn to the idea of identifying with or identifying as if a minor”.

And the various related terms we could use are… let’s start with the term ageplay — which is for people who roleplay as children because they have autopedophilia.

A subset of those is ABDL or AB folk, which stands for Adult Baby / Diaper Lover, also known as infantilists — that’s people who roleplay specifically as infants or toddlers — or as adults who get treated that way. Other ageplayers might be middles — roleplaying as kids older than toddlers but younger than adults.

Those groups can (and do) include people for whom ageplay is a sexual kink. But they also include some for whom it’s a nonsexual or semi-sexual thing. Or you could even call it a proto-sexual thing — not what we think of as adult sexual activity, but a pre-adolescent form of bodily exploration and experimentation.

We could also talk about people with emotional congruence with children, who as adults see children as their peers or equals.

There’s age dysphoria, where people view it as a a negative, distressing thing that they can’t remain or be a child. This doesn’t necessarily have the roleplaying element.

There’s the word regression, too, where adults get really deeply into a kind of childlike headspace, some of whom consider it involuntary, while for others it’s just a very compulsive or rewarding thing to do voluntarily. They really don’t feel like they’re roleplaying.

And there are some rare folk who think that their true identity, in some sense, is as a child. In other words, they imagine they would feel happier if they literally were a child and not an adult at all.

So it’s a real forest of labels and terminology, and at the moment we don’t understand any of it scientifically.

CANDICE:

Well I just absolutely love that you were able to go into each of these descriptions in nice detail, if you will, and it would be good for people to continue to get educated. Those who are listening today may say ‘I am not a pedophile but I do really have some interest in what Bly is saying about autopedophilia, ageplay, regression, age dysphoria and so on and so forth. So thank you for going into some detail about each, because, again, some of these were new to me and I think if they’re new to me they’ve got to be new to some other people and anyone listening who possibly said ‘that’s me; I fit with that — that term that he used — but I never really knew what it was’.

So let’s go onto the second question. Can you try to describe the subjective experience of autopedophilia, ageplay and some of these other things and give some examples.

BLY:

OK, so to try and make sense of all those terms above, I’m going to invent a few different people, based off people I’ve met or read about to show how this works.

So, let’s pick a random ageplayer. Let’s call her Joanne.

Joanne is a woman of 30 or so. Normal life; likes donuts, sitcoms, gaming.

And since she was a teen Joanne has discovered she gets really sexually excited by the thought of being treated like a young girl, acting out and getting spanked by a father figure.

And Joanne isn’t sexually interested in kids at all; she’s into adult men.

But her whole fantasy is that she has the social status of a bratty little girl who is naughty, gets told off, punished and then forgiven. When she has this fantasy, she’s significantly focused on the older man, but also on the experiences and physical sensations of being little and, in this situation, powerless.

So, some people might have issues with the politics of that scenario, but it’s important to say that this fantasy came to Joanne pretty much unbidden. In real life she doesn’t put up with nonsense from men, or think that she’s in any way deserving of physical abuse. She doesn’t even believe in spanking kids.

But this fantasy has been there for her since her adolescence. And we would call that fetishistic ageplay. She gets a strong emotional and sexual kick out of it, not just from the spanking or being addressed as ‘missy’, but from the clothes she wears to do this scene. It also relieves a lot of stress for her.

So that’s an example of a specific kind of ageplay. Joanne doesn’t really believe she’s really a kid. She knows she’s an adult and is pretty much happy with it but likes to delve into this fantasy sometimes.

Now let’s take another ageplayer, and this one is an Adult Baby. So that’s Josh. He’s gay and twenty-three. He’s a gamer and a stoner, but also at college studying… biology, say. He’s generally a credit to his snowboarding club.

And he has this secret desire, which he’s had since he was a bedwetting kid of eleven or twelve. What he dreams about is being dressed and treated as a toddler aged two.

And at home in a box he has toys and a pacifier and a teddy bear, and he also has diapers and he loves putting them on just by himself and pretending he’s really that age. And he takes it pretty far, meaning he fully uses that diaper when he’s in the zone.

But for Josh, unlike Joanne, it’s not quite so much a sexual thing. Like, he actually doesn’t much want regular sex with another guy. He’s attracted to adult men of around his own age, but it’s at least as much an emotional attraction and if he got together with another AB it would definitely involve them both dressing up, and probably cuddles, and maybe even some kisses, even an orgasm in the diaper, but he’d be uncomfortable if it became just sex. Mostly he likes to hang with other littles and sometimes with a daddy and get pretty deep into the headspace of being a toddler. So I guess he’s a regressor too.

So that’s an example of a mostly nonsexual ageplayer and specifically an AB.

Now let’s take… Lewis. Lewis is thirty something, married to a woman, who he loves and finds attractive, and does a lot of running. He doesn’t have any kid clothes or anything like that, no diapers, but he’s getting to the point where he’s getting kind of hairy on his body, more than in his twenties. Up to now he shaved his chest and even sometimes his legs and armpits, just because he liked the way that looked.

He tries to keep fairly skinny too, not too built and not too chubby. He has a floppy sort of haircut, and he’s more than vaguely aware that basically he has tried to preserve a little bit a style and appearance that is younger than he is, and he’s also become aware that he finds himself attracted to quite boyish looking women too. He also a couple of years ago got braces as an adult, which he only somewhat needed.

And he basically feels pretty rotten each time he looks in the mirror and his age is staring back — not just wrinkles and stuff, which depresses most of us from time to time, but specifically his development. He basically liked his look better when he was a skinny wiry teenager, when he remembers having a lot of intense feelings and was kind of on top of the world, doing well in school and sport and before life got complicated.

He sometimes thinks about that when he has sex with his wife, almost imagining them as teenaged boyfriend and girlfriend sometimes, but he wouldn’t say that out loud or share it with her.

The idea of seriously roleplaying as a teenager doesn’t really grab him and he’d feel stupid and cringey acting stuff out like that, but he wishes he really could have that look back again, and daydreams a lot about it.

So Lewis would be an example of age dysphoria around appearance, with maybe a little bit of autoephebophilia thrown in — i.e. attraction to the idea of himself as a teenager.

One more example, though, could be Zac. And Zac, who is autistic, has a more pronounced age dysphoria and emotional congruence with children. He’s eighteen and basically wishes he was eight, not just in terms of how his body and face looks, but also in terms of how he’d like to live. He never got interested in girls or even too much in boys, he doesn’t like alcohol, he’s frightened to learn to drive and really doesn’t quite understand or want to understand money.

He gets a little aroused when imagining being back at elementary school, and while he doesn’t fantasise sexually about children, they’re there as a backdrop to those daydreams, but he doesn’t have sexual fantasies per se.

He sometimes does a bit of ageplay by himself, but doesn’t have the social skills really to go on the ageplay or kink scene and actually the thought terrifies him anyway because it would mean having to have adult discussions around consent and to roleplay like he was an adult, which, in his heart of hearts, he just doesn’t see himself as capable or confident doing. He just wants someone to look after him without him having to spell out what he wants.

He does dress up a little bit and enjoys the sensation of being a little boy, but… it’s far more than roleplay for him. At those moments he closes his eyes, avoids mirrors and almost believes that he’s eight. In public he sometimes comes across as excitable and uncool and not like you’d expect from an eighteen year old.

And if you were a magical genie and could offer him the chance to physically transform into an eight year old and go back to school and that would be his life, he’d say yes without having to think about it. That would be a dream come true. He’s not interested in his life as an adult, and sometimes — this is the darker side — he actually thinks about killing himself to escape it.

Finally, let’s go with Ginny, who is a regressor, and who is at High School, and Ginny — at times of stress, like today — she basically drops back to the reactions, thoughts and behaviour of a young kid, almost like it’s too much effort not to do that. She has the stuff in her room at home that allows her to do that, but like Zac, she doesn’t really think of this as playacting. She’s mentally a kid for the time she stays regressed. Maybe not even a kid of a specific age. She’s not really interested in having a caregiver or involving anyone else at all and it has zero to do with sex. It’s just a thing she does.

So there is a lot of diversity here, but one common factor. Everybody with this has the idea of another self that is developmentally younger than them, sometimes by a lot.

And this imagined kid that is with them, this might in their mind be literally the kid that they were when they were that age, or it  might be some idealised alternative kid that they weren’t. There’s nothing to say that if you want to act out being a kid that kid has to be the same gender as you were, or have the same personality or talents. Just like in any roleplay or imaginative act, you can try being something different or you can try to recapitulate the familiar.

Those with age dysphoria and Zac in particular who sort of sees himself as a child — he might not think this in a totally literal way — he knows he’s eighteen, he can’t forget it — but in some sense he feels like although he might have an adult body and insurance and a job and whatever, his real authentic personality is that of a child.

So if Zac ever did do an ageplay scene, which maybe he might try when he’s older, that for him is not just about hitting the marks, and including fetish elements a, b and c, but more about just freely exploring the arena of a child’s life experience, because that’s how — if the outside world didn’t make him act like a grownup — that’s how he is inside and how he wants to identify.

We could argue all night whether those folks are indulging in an unrealistic fantasy or whether there’s something physically different about their brains that makes them have a subjective feeling of being a kid, but what I do know is that they exist, and that the term autopedophilia doesn’t really capture what this is for them.

So as I said there’s a wide variety of words for this stuff, but not a single phrase.

In an online community I’m in, because there isn’t a single word for these different kinds of feelings, we’ve started using the term Minor Identifying Person (with “identifying” meaning “identifying with” as much as it means “identifying as”). To me that’s a placeholder term. It doesn’t capture all the variations perfectly.

I kind of like the term “childlike” because that does capture it in broad strokes, but it’s also true there are adults who think of themselves or behave childlike, but wouldn’t self-identify as belonging to a specific group or category because of that. So maybe that’s too general a term.

At any rate, it’s diverse and we can’t just reduce it to a sexual kink, because even for those for whom it’s a sexual kink it could be very much more. Certainly true of me.

CANDICE:

That was very detailed, and I love the different examples. I think the global community will really appreciate hearing about these fictitious but with reality or some real element, if you will, such as Lewis, where we talked about age dysphoria or Zach, similar, or Ginny, about the age regression; Joanne the fetishistic age play… and Josh who likes the adult baby fantasy.

And one of the things that you said (and I have had the privilege of looking at your answers [earlier] because Elliott is reading for you today) — one thing that stood out is when you said that this imagined kid that is with them might in their mind be literally the kid that they were when they were that age or it might be some idealized alternative kid that they weren’t. There’s nothing to say that if you want to act out being a kid that that kid has to be the same gender as you were or have the same personality or talents.”

And so I agree that ‘autopedophilia’ I don’t think captures what we’re talking about at all. It may purely be because people take the word pedophile and pedophilia and go all sorts of ways with it in a downward direction, but I do think this was really beautifully laid out to give specific examples. And so with that: are you specifically interested in ageplay or what we are calling autopedophilia?

BLY:

Yes. I’ve always been into ageplay, even before I had sexual feelings. Even when I was a four year old kid I had a sense of wanting to be treated infantile in quite literal ways, with nappies and dummies etc.

And these feelings stuck around as I grew, so as an adolescent and an adult I’ve experienced a lot of the different types of minor identification or childlikeness that I just listed before. I was probably quite a bit like Josh, with maybe a slightly greater interest in sexual acts (in those days, anyhow).

I had a lot of AB and autopedophile fantasies when I was an adolescent and very young adult, and because I had no way of reaching other people into that, all my activities, like dressing up or fantasising I was a kid, peeing my pants etc. were all done alone by myself, never with any partner.

My body was slow to change but by the age of seventeen or so I remember getting the first painful waves of age dysphoria, really hating my body and the way it was growing hair and my skin was getting rougher. That feeling worsened through my twenties.

Then later in my twenties I joined ABDL communities and ageplay communities and at first I took those fantasies online and just shared those fantasies with others, then gradually met up in real life with other adults who felt this way. And being able to share those experiences was a huge relief to the age dysphoria. It didn’t solve the problem that most of the time I had to be an adult, but it made that reality more palatable knowing I had this escape from it available.

I remember the hardest times were when I’d come to the end of a weekend with other ageplayers and we’d gotten totally immersed in this fantasy of being kids.

I hit some big depressions sometimes when I had to come back to reality from that, but still, the release was good while it lasted. And during those weekends, sometimes, in the middle of it all, I could just close my eyes and almost believe that the feeling of the toys in my hands, and the smells of food and the texture of the clothes I was wearing and so on — so long as I didn’t look closely in the mirror — I was feeling and acting just as I did when I was a kid, and I was inhabiting again a tiny slice of that moment of my life.

And as I got older I got to meet more people in real life who had different takes on minor identification or childlikeness.  And I could see fairly up close how people give expression to this side of their personality. Because I’m gay most of that experience was of gay or bi men and not so much of women. Nor did I meet any trans folk, knowingly, although I have become more aware of them in the community in recent years.

CANDICE:

Again, I think that example of going through depression and being able to close your eyes and really believe that you are feeling the toys in your hands, the sounds and the textures, really gives this element of having a sense of joy and peace and the innocence of the time. And so again I think people might listen to this podcast and want to pathologise or judge or criticise what we’re talking about here… but there really is an element of being able to go back in your mind to a time and place when you were younger and find that, especially when you’re depressed, so it makes a lot of sense to me.

Let’s look at the question of autopedophilia and legality because I think a lot of people… there’s so much ignorance out there when you hear of someone who has an attraction to children for instance and the automatic assumption is that they are a child molester which is a bunch of bunk, but is auto pedophilia illegal, for those that are wondering?

BLY:

Really short and simple answer: no. It’s not illegal to have these feelings, nor is it wrong.

Most of what we call autopedophilia is totally legal because it’s a feeling, and you can’t make feelings illegal. People with autopedophilia who do ageplay in private with other consenting adults are doing nothing illegal at all, and I think in most people’s eyes they feel like, even if you’re doing stuff like using diapers or things that wider society considers a bit weird, so long as that doesn’t impact anyone else and everyone consents, well, that’s totally fine.

The only things which are beginning to be criminalised are certain kinds of materials associated with ageplay. So for instance in the UK, adults who are dressed up to appear as if they’re kids is counted as CSEM or child pornography as it’s described in the law. I think the intent of this law was to try and stop people being able to defend actual CSEM by claiming the model is of age, but just looks younger because of the clothes, but this also seems to catch some genuine ageplay material which is purely by and about adults doing roleplay.

If you have ageplay material that depicts or describes actual minors and is very obviously fetishistic or describes sexual arousal, you can be on the edge of the law in certain countries, depending how the law is interpreted and how you read the test cases. I won’t go through all the different countries’ laws as it’s a mixed picture, and the laws are applied in far from a consistent way, but I know that one should be more careful in, for example, Canada than in the US. That said, recently there was a case in the US involving just written fiction — not images — which has made me less sure of that.

Mostly, though, those are edge cases. The vast majority of fiction and fantasy that people share is not prosecuted.

Now of course I have a specific angle on this area, because after spending a lot of my adulthood exploring my minor identification, most recently I’ve joined the MAP community which of course is an entirely different category because autopedophilia is not pedophilia and most of these minor identifying folks are not MAPs.

Actually, I think we need to say that again because it really bears repeating. Having age dysphoria or being AB or an ageplayer doesn’t mean you’re a pedophile. As best I can see the vast majority of folks in those communities aren’t pedophiles and in fact MAPs and pedophiles when known about aren’t made to feel welcome in those communities because of this stigma.

There’s a sequel to this, but we’ll come on to that at the end.

CANDICE:

That definitely was such an important section. You repeat it, but I think it’s important to say that one more time: having age dysphoria or being AB or being an ageplayer does not mean you’re a pedophile, so that’s really important. Some other things to think about is that fantasies and feelings are not illegal but in Canada and in places in the US they might be more… there’s a lot of discussion and a lot of controversy about images, if it’s cartoon images or certain materials that’s not considered child exploitation material might be considered as csem. So just to be very aware of that. But you do want to make sure that if you’re engaging in age play, it is with a consenting adult and to be really mindful of what methods you have for getting things online. So if someone’s listening today and has autopedophillia, age dysphoria, age regression… what support is out there that’s actually safe for them?

BLY:

So this is an interesting question because I think a lot of people assume that if you have autopedophilia, it’s not, like, seen as a mental health condition that even merits support or help. Most people think it’s a kink or a fetish. And some people think that if it’s a kink, saying a person might need help is kink-shaming as if their kink was a problem in itself.

But I don’t really see it that way. There’s so much stigma and shame around kinks. Sometimes they’re about stigma and shame. We can’t expect people not to need a little help around making sense of if if they find they have a stigmatised sexual or lifestyle interest.

For some people a kink is all it is and good for them. The support those people mostly need is to understand that though they have this very very minority interest, that doesn’t make them bad people, that they didn’t choose it (it doesn’t matter if they were born with it or not — probably not, but they still didn’t choose it).

There are some people who are ABs or ageplayers and fetishists and they go through binge and purge cycles with this.

So they collect clothes and paraphernalia, and maybe go online in secret to roleplay, and as well as being a great source of satisfaction in their lives it also becomes a bit of an addiction, like porn or gambling can be for some people.

They love everything about it when they’re in the zone and turned on — it’s like an addiction, almost. They’ll put aside things in their life to try and experience it. It’s like they have a huge loyalty to this child alter ego, and that child inside has needs that really must be taken care of.

But once they hit that orgasm they sort of step back and wonder why they do this so much. And at that point they experience terrible shame that they’re into something so weird and humiliating that they never want anyone to find out about.

Maybe after a while they decide ‘I’m not doing this any more’ and they throw out all their ageplay stuff and delete all their secret logins to ageplay sites and decide to just be normal.

Then after x months, they come back again because you can’t just shut off this part of you. Getting out of those cycles and getting to a place of self-acceptance is something where I think counselling and talking therapy really can help, because if you’re constantly embracing then rejecting an important — even a fundamental — part of yourself. So its almost like not treating yourself well. It can be quite dangerous for your wellbeing.

The other thing to say about using ageplay is that not everyone wants the same things from it or takes it as seriously as others do. Ageplayers seeking partners or playmates might not realise what the other people involved needs from it.

And if you have a circumstance where one person is there with a fixed fantasy they just want to get off to and go, like a hookup, and the other person has an emotionally-centred need for taking it slow and making it feel meaningful with lots of aftercare, for instance, then you have the risk of something that feels unpleasant and uncomfortable for one or both of those folk if those motivations are not understood, it could even be a bit abusive.

You’ll notice that’s also true of regular dating and sex, of course, but I think with ageplay and kink — because we all grow up in a culture that doesn’t talk about those things — we don’t get to absorb the rules about how it can be done safely and sanely and with clear consent.

Dating is not easy for straight, vanilla women, but at least a woman going on her first few dates might have read the problem page in a magazine for years and talked to her mom about bad experiences, or she’s seen movies and so on. She has at least a little bit of forewarning about the types of guys she’s going to meet on the journey.

But with ageplay we just don’t have that background information floating in the culture around us. We tend to learn about the pitfalls by experiencing them, and that can be very damaging if we get unlucky. So to make ageplay a supportive instead of destructive and traumatic thing, it’s really necessary to get help or information from those with experience, and I think ageplay communities have gotten better over time at facilitating that, although there’s still some way to go.

And this is really important to a particular group: some people might have a particularly strong need to respond to autopedophilia through ageplay or similar activities because it’s therapeutic or healing for them. People who are survivors of abuse or of trauma are well-represented among autopedophiles and among ageplayers, and some of them really don’t just see it as a mere trigger for orgasms.

They see it as fulfilling a very very deep emotional need that they’ve had most of their life — maybe a profound need for care or unconditional love, or for protection from the things they fear, or for having someone that can take adult responsibilities from their shoulders and make decisions for them.

And people in that circumstance, really, they are sort of taking on responsibility for their healing from their traumas and abuses, it’s almost like their ageplay is therapeutic in itself, if it leads them to a place where they feel better, ultimately.

Sometimes ageplay is like a fixation — an obsessive rehearsing and replaying of some traumatic experience like peeing your pants, or being bullied, or being abused by an adult, and playing out that scene is a way of bringing something frightening under conscious control, because you can stop or pause the scene, or switch roles or explore it. But at other times the compulsive need to return and return to the trauma can become a bit of a trap too. An addiction, not a cure.

So I think ageplay can be healing in itself, but for me I found it really started to illuminate my life when I was in therapy, figuring out what it meant to me. And the goal of therapy wasn’t to stop ageplaying or stop experiencing autopedophilia, which I suspect is impossible anyway, but just to help give it its proper place in the whole picture of my life.

Going back to age dysphoria, for some there’s this strong sense of distress that goes with it. They are tortured that they can never fully live out this deeply felt desire to be a kid.  The reality they would prefer just isn’t achievable in the same way that, for some trans people for example, it might be possible to resolve through a physical transition.

And a really bad age dysphoria is a very dark place to be in, because (a) nobody’s heard of it, (b) there is no operation or cure and (c) ageplay here is only ever a consolation prize. Some people really get to very depressed, suicidal states about this impossible gap between who they are externally and who they feel they are internally.

For me, because I have had times when I was in that dark place, I’ve learned that looking for an answer — in the sense of finding a fix that makes everything feel OK -— that’s too much to ask for. But a combination of introspection and writing and time and therapy, perhaps especially time — has allowed me to sit with the discomfort of knowing I can’t be, say, eleven years old again — and to understand that that’s not the end of all possible positive experiences I could have as a human.

And at the same time I know that wanting to be a kid is something my brain is always gonna do to some extent, and I will always devote a lot of thought to it. I don’t think I could train my brain to just forget it and focus on other more practical achievements in life.

CANDICE:

Well you do such a beautiful job of giving so many examples, so thank you so much for your thorough answers to my questions and really to allow folks that are listening who are having these experiences to know that there can be so many different reasons why you might be interested in ageplay or age regression and so on and so forth. I just really appreciate your thoughtfulness and taking the time to answer these questions. We are wrapping it up with our final question, and it has to do with ABDL… and so you mentioned earlier in our discussions prior to coming on our podcast that there are a lot of confused ABDLs so what I’d like you to do is to define that for us, but also now that there is confusion around other ageplay things, because people won’t admit to having minor attraction — so if you could tell us more about that, that would be great.

BLY:

OK, so let’s just say it one last time, just so nobody can accuse the podcast of mixing the terms up: ageplay and ABDL and autopedophilia are not pedophilia.

Like I said earlier, AB and ageplay communities are keen to establish that important fact, because a lot of regular folk — especially those who only get their information about kink from The National Enquirer or wherever —  just see it in a lurid way. They see that it can involve childlike things and they see that it can be a sexual thing and they put those together and say, oh, hey, so it’s like pedophilia.

And this is worrying for community leaders in ageplay because they don’t want safe spaces for ageplay getting called out and policed and stigmatised more than they already are. Nor do they want those spaces shut down. Imagine how reluctant some venues must already be to host AB munches and social nights, and imagine how much worse that would get if they couldn’t explain it’s not pedophilia.

So these communities really come down hard on any sign of pedophilia. You see it among babyfurs and ABs and ageplayers. People are ridden out on a rail if they’re suspected, and artists get cancelled and denounced and lots of moral panic goes on.

Sometimes that’s very legitimate because those communities do contain some very vulnerable people — not kids, but people like Zac who I described earlier who are in the headspace of kids and who really need a safe space where those boundaries are really respected.

However, because I am in both the ageplay and MAP categories I also need to tell my truth about this too, as awkward as it is. The reality is that although they won’t admit to it at all, there are MAPs in ageplay communities who are doing no harm and who have nowhere else to go.

So, it’s been known for a while — thanks in particular to Ray Blanchard — that among MAPs there are quite a lot who as well as being MAP are also autopedophilic or age dysphoric or ageplayers or emotionally congruent with kids in some way.

Almost nobody has measured this yet, but there was a recent self-selecting survey aimed at MAPs in which around half of them described some kind of autopedophilia or child-identification, so although I’d want that to be measured again to get a more reliable figure, it seems like a lot of MAPs aren’t just attracted to kids but have some ideas about being or acting as them, or being treated that way.

And so naturally there is an overlap in the Venn diagram,  meaning a subset of minor identifying people are also minor attracted people and vice versa.

Now that population is not really studied, and I haven’t studied it scientifically, but I’ve spoken informally to, I’d say several dozen over the years, and here’s a thing I learned. The relationship between their minor attraction and their minor identification isn’t always obvious.

Earlier we talked about Josh who is attracted to adults but turned on by roleplaying as a 2 year old, and we established that Josh isn’t turned on by 2 year olds, just by quote — being — unquote two years old. You could say that his “age of identification” is 2 years old. But his age of attraction, which is a term MAPs use to describe the ages of people they find attractive — is, let’s say, 17 plus.

So he’s not minor attracted, but he is minor identifying. I don’t think for most people their age of identification is usually as precise as an age of attraction can be, but this mismatch between the two can even apply when a person is a MAP and also minor identifying.

So you might have someone who is attracted just to boys 11-14, but who roleplays as a toddler, Age of attraction: 11-14; age of identification 1-4, say.

You might have someone who was born male who is only attracted to young boys but whose autopedophilia sees them roleplaying as a pubescent girl. So, age of attraction: 5-13, age of identification 12-16, gender of attraction: male, gender of identification: female.

So my point is that ages of attraction and ages of identification don’t marry up in an obvious way. They sort of are independent.

And that is really significant in terms of how MAPs exist in ageplay communities.

A MAP and a non-MAP could share a pattern of autopedophilia that is identical to one another — the same age of identification — but still have completely different ages of attraction.

And that means the non-MAP might enjoy sharing an autopedophilic fantasy with the MAP, but nothing would indicate to them, necessarily, that the MAP is a MAP.

So we have quite a difficult situation here, which is analogous to the situation in society at large, where non-offending MAPs and those who are doing no harm exist in this kind of “don’t ask don’t tell” space where nobody needs or wants to tell anyone else that they’re minor attracted.

If you ask the admins of the ageplay spaces, MAPs shouldn’t be there, but there is nowhere else. And if someone started an explcitly MAP ageplay space, I don’t know if that would be allowed to last, either.

If we’re in those communities we can only express the autopedophile side of ourselves and frame our fantasies in every which way that can’t cause someone else to say “This is pedophilia!” We can make friends, do scenes and go to munches so long as nobody ever talks about whether they’re minor attracted or not. I think the same is true in the wider category of kink too, actually, but I think that it has a lot of very difficult implications in this community especially.

I feel uneasy about it, but I also see it from both sides because I know from personal experience that being gay, being AB, being age dysphoric and being minor attracted are all morally neutral things because none of them are chosen, and we should judge people on their actions, not their attractions or their fantasies, however rare those might be and however much stigma attaches to them in society at large.

In theory age dysphoric folk and strongly minor identifying folk and MAPs do have something in common because the nature of their fantasies are such that there aren’t ways of playing them out in the real world. In the case of MAPs that’s for moral reasons rather than purely logistical ones, but still.

It’s also true to say that the early AB culture in the 90s was more accommodating of stories with minor characters and so on. There was an infamous website called deeker.com which had a lot of AB stories featuring minors, and the most popular story that used to be sold by DPF (the Diaper Pail Friends) featured two adolescent minors. It’s always been there, but in an implicit way.

Nowadays the current generation of ABs and ageplayers really reject those early manifestations of age-based fantasy, but even while they say that, we see it recur somewhere else — like in fiction spaces such as ao3, for instance, or in somewhere like the age regression archive.

So I don’t know what the answer is, but as with society at large I hope we can eventually get to a place where there are safe spaces for everyone according to their different needs, and I also hope that as the science progresses we get closer to the common neurological roots of all the paraphilias and attractions and identities, so that our efforts are informed by facts instead of prejudices.

In the meantime, I can only be what I am, and if that means I break the categories, then I’m afraid there’s nothing I can do other than go on being the way I am and saying what is true from my perspective, and talking to other MAPs and other autopedophiles until we all feel a little more comfortable with who we are. That’s the hope, anyway. It’s a really interesting time in history, and for me, there is reason for hope.

CANDICE:

Well Elliot thank you for reading this for the last hour! That is challenging. It’s challenging to read someone’s answers, really, truly and so thank you so much for reading Bly’s answers. And, Bly, thank you so much. I know you’re listening out there. Thank you so much for giving us such thoughtful answers today.

I do want to say in the last points that you made that you said that it’s been known for a while, thanks to Ray Blanchard, for MAPs there are quite a lot who as well as being minor attracted persons are also autopedophilic, age dysphoric, ageplayers or emotionally congruent with kids in some way. That I think is a really pointful statement and something that needs to be discussed further, again, not to create more stigma or judgement or pathologise, but really to open up another conversation.

I think there’s a lot of researchers in the field of pedophilia and minor attracted persons who would actually find that quite fascinating, so thank you so much for pointing that out, and I just really loved what you said at the end that — and I would agree — I really hope eventually we can get to a place as a global community where there are safe places for everyone according to their different needs. Because we’re not talking about harming anyone; we’re not talking about harm. We’re talking about things that go on in people’s minds that from what you’ve described and a lot of the examples that you gave: other people work through challenging times in their lives but also bring them positive experience. So, thank you so much, Elliott, for taking the time to read for Bly and Bly, thank you for For having the courage to be on our podcast

ELLIOTT:

I just want to say like thank you for having me back on and Bly, I apologise for stumbling over some of your words; I hope the message still got out there OK.

CANDICE:

Well, I will say that I think the message got out there. I know I was captivated by your reading, and so I really believe the message is going to get out there just fine. So thank you again to both of you and until next time… we’ll see you soon.

(end)

The post Prevention Podcast Transcript: Bly Rede talks about autopedophilia, ABDL, ageplay and more! appeared first on Pedophiles About Pedophilia.

Welcome to the Prevention Podcast. I’m your host, Candice Christiansen. Today we have a wonderful individual who identifies as a non-offending – meaning he’s never offended – minor attracted person who is also anti-contact. He goes by the pseudonym of Bly Rede and his answers will be read by an advocate of NOMAPs whose name is Rusty, so Rusty, I want to welcome you and just tell you how much I appreciate you for reading Bly’s answers today. How are you?

RUSTY: I’m awesome. And I thank you for letting me be here.

CANDICE:

Well, I just think it’s so important and I already told you, Rusty, that, you know, I’m going to want to interview you separately as an advocate, so we definitely will schedule that podcast interview because it’s so important that we do have advocates for this population out in our community, not just therapists who are compassionate or researchers who are compassionate but also advocates who are citizens so thank you again

I do want to say before we get started that because Rusty will be reading the answers for Bly, I will be chiming in to give feedback, share my thoughts about Bly’s answers. However, Rusty’s going to continue reading just based off of what Bly had answered before, so it may sound choppy to those of you that are listening. Please just know that it’s not a reciprocal conversation because we have an advocate who’s reading for Bly.

Shall we get started? All right, so the first question that we asked Bly: ‘Are you an anti-contact pedophile? What does that term mean to you? And what do you think is the difference between pro-contact and anti-contact pedophiles?’ so it’s kind of a long double question.

BLY (read by Rusty):

I am an anti-contact pedophile (and hebephile and ephebophile). What that means to me is that I have, since a young age, experienced an attraction for boys younger than me and that it’s not something I’ve acted on, either in seeking out child sexual exploitation materials, or in trying to act on that attraction.

In terms of the difference between a pro-contact and anti-contact pedophile, this is something I view through the lens of having been both, even though I never offended.

For a while in my late teens and very early twenties I was pro-contact for two reasons. Firstly, it was because I hadn’t really considered all the factors I needed to to understand how harmful sex is between minors and adults. I think I just assumed that, because I was well-intentioned and felt this very strong emotional affection toward young boys, that no harm could possibly come of it.

As far as I was concerned, a child abuser was some ill-intentioned person who had no tender feelings, and who literally got off on the misery they inflicted, and that seemed so at odds with my self image as someone who was gentle and not coercive or bullying. I had been the victim of bullying so I just couldn’t imagine doing something that would make a kid cry, even.

CANDICE:

So I’ll just stop you right there really quickly because I want to say I think a lot of individuals who we talk to — we hear so often how many NOMAPs or MAPs in general know they have an attraction by the time they’re teenagers. They know they have an attraction to children and I think there is a lot of confusion during that time about their intentions and, you know, what’s harmful and what’s not.

For those of you that are listening who are MAPs who are questioning — who are in your coming out process — that can be a normal part of the process and it’s also why we have folks like Bly who come on to educate about ‘this was my coming out process which was filled with confusion’. I really appreciate that. Thanks for sharing that.

BLY:

It took me a while to understand how much more subtle this is compared to what you read in the news. I came to understand that while there are abusers who are extremely cruel in that sense, there are also abusers who are more manipulative, and then there are those who just don’t see outside of themselves enough to anticipate the harm they could do, ones who are deeply misguided that the relationship they have with a kid is a supportive or equal one when really it’s very one-sided. Maybe it’s easy to assume a kid is your equal when you still feel disempowered like a kid yourself.

CANDICE:

Well, exactly and I think again that is a really key point too. You know, a lot of folks who have minor attractions are closeted and afraid for their life because of the stigma and hate, especially when we talk about pedophilia.

Hebephilia and ephebophilia are newer  terms for the global community but everybody knows the term pedophile and so, yeah, I think a lot of times what can happen is there can be definite missguidedness in regards to ‘oh, I can have this equal relationship with a child’ when in reality (and I can speak as a survivor but also a trauma expert who treats a lot of adults who had childhood sexual abuse) children do not have the capacity to consent on all levels, emotionally, mentally, physically or sexually. Their nervous system cannot tolerate it; they mentally are not able to consent and so again I appreciate your views on this.

BLY:

Because I was gay, and not ashamed of it, I was used to the idea that society had been proven profoundly wrong about gay relationships. I assumed for a while that pedophilia was on the same track.

It took me a while to see why the social change that happened around gay relationships just wasn’t going to happen for pedophilia, and for very good reasons – and it took the help of a very smart, very open-minded non-pedophile friend for me to hear and understand and believe that. As soon as I figured that out, though, I became anti-contact in all circumstances, not just most. I had never been in favour of what in those days we called child porn, so thankfully I never had that issue to deal with as so many do now.

Having made that transition into someone who was attracted but would never act, I then found myself profoundly alone. It was such a strong isolation. It wasn’t until Virpeds started, I think – which was years and years later – that I was even certain there were other people out there like me.

CANDICE:

Well, and I think that’s such a huge support for so many people out there.

Virped, which has come under fire recently by trolls who are just absolutely uneducated and ignorant — so many folks who are MAPs, including NOMAPs are isolated, feel alone; that’s one of the reasons why we do a podcast; that’s one of the reasons why we have a global programme; that’s one of the reasons we collaborate with other programs to offer support to pedophiles all across the globe.

It’s so important that there is support. I think there’s this misnomer if you will or this belief that if a pedophile reaches out into a community of other pedophiles for support then they’re all going to be at even higher risk to offend and that’s making the ridiculous assumption that attraction automatically equals action and so Virped – it is absolutely a positive support to folks who have minor attractions

BLY:

I figured that other anti-contact pedophiles must exist, but it was just too dangerous for one person to acknowledge it to another unless you were sure. And I was never sure. Even if I had a strong hunch that some other adult I knew was MAP (and sometimes I did), I had no way of finding out if they were anti-contact, and I didn’t want pro-contact people in my life, so why even risk starting that terrifying conversation?

You asked what is the difference between anti-contact and pro-contact. To me the difference is that a pro-contact hasn’t woken up from their daydreams of the world they wish was possible. They haven’t yet fully compared it to the world that we all actually live in.

And they’re not so different in that from anyone who follows an ideology too closely, but of course there are huge dangers to others if they act on those beliefs.

Now they would say, of course, no it’s everyone else who’s asleep and we all just need to read the Rind studies to understand this that and the other and that in such and such a circumstance under xyz conditions and when Jupiter is in Virgo (or whatever) contact is OK.

And I just say, no, not in the real world. In the real world, we avoid doing things we know have potential to cause profound harm, even if we believe that in our special case things would be different. We have to be suspicious of our own cognitive bias as pedophiles. Everyone does, but especially us.

CANDICE:

Well, now I really just want to say I appreciate that because we are absolutely 100% anti contact and so we have many individuals all across the globe who come to us, call into our global support group, who say ‘I’m anti contact :I don’t ever want to offend against a child.’

Some come to us because they’re suicidal, they’re depressed; they need help understanding the stigma; they want to have a healthy relationship with an adult.

Others are coming to us because they have viewed child sexual abuse images and are scared and all of them say ‘we don’t want to harm a child’ and I agree that there are those individuals who are pro-contact who do live in a daydream world believing that is us who are asleep, that we just need to wake up and we’ll get on board that it’s OK to have contact with children and we will always hold to our stance that it’s not OK. It’s never OK.

We’re also not supportive of contact-neutral meaning that ‘in some instances it’s OK to have sexual contact with children.’ We do not believe that, clinically or otherwise, so I really appreciate you sharing this, Bly, because this is so necessary.

I think there is a lot of confusion in the global community about anti-contact and pro-contact pedophilia. A lot of people just say that all pedophiles, all minor attracted persons are all the same and they’re not, they’re absolutely not, so I appreciate you making the distinction.

The next questions are: how long have you known you were attracted to children and how has your attraction to children impacted your life?

BLY:

Profoundly impacted my life. Profoundly. I think I have made all kinds of decisions because of it. The biggest one was opting to avoid a life situation where I had to care for kids or where I might pass on pedophile DNA, if there is such a thing, which there may not be. I think I figured early on that I would not be a parent or a sperm donor. It surprised me when I learned that some MAPs are parents and it doesn’t lead to bad places. But that was never a comfortable place for me to be.

It kind of helps here to explain my history in more detail, because I think it’s probably a bit unusual, even among pedophiles. When I first became aware of these attractions, around age fourteen or fifteen, they were almost a sort of a background thing because there were so many other things going on with my sexual identity at the time.

Even before I really had sexual thoughts, when I was aged 4 through 10, I had a lot of fantasies and daydreams about being cared for like an infant or a little kid – diapers and cribs and the whole caboodle, you know? I don’t know what caused this obsession, but it was there early and it was strong and while it’s changed somewhat over the years, it has never gone away. Most people know this as ABDL or sometimes autopedophilia and sometimes ageplay; there are different aspects that those words refer to and there isn’t time to fully explain it today. Most ABDL people are NOT pedophiles. That needs to be clear.

CANDICE:

Well, and I think that first thing you describe can be a  fetish behavior as well. You know, people will grow up and have fetishes that are pedophiles  and so I appreciate you saying that. And most ABDL people are not  pedophiles but for you this is something that you identify with.

BLY:

So from a very early age I was trying to keep from the people closest to me what felt like both a very dangerous and also potentially very humiliating secret – not always successfully. But then it got worse: my feelings about wanting to be babyish or childlike started overlapping with my sexuality as it kicked in and developed around the age of 11, and which happened to be gay instead of straight.

So at that point, a somewhat physically and emotionally immature 11 year old boy, I realised I was no longer just an eccentric, I knew I was a pervert. This was in the 1980s, by the way, when that was pretty much the only word most people knew for this kind of thing. It made me very self-conscious, but also very conscious of society’s hypocrisy about sex, where we make so many assumptions about what’s normal but are too embarrassed to check in case it’s not.

So, after a few years, partly out of annoyance about this hypocrisy (but not willing to go the full way) I owned up to the least unacceptable aspect of my sexuality and I came out at school as gay, and that leads to a lot of bullying, on top of the bullying I’d already had for just being a slightly odd kid. And in the midst of that I was becoming aware I was a pedophile too, so a lot of despair set in very early on for me. Some anger too, which I turned inward.

I didn’t even know anybody gay at this stage, still less anyone into all the other stuff, so the prospect of sexual experience at this stage seemed fairly unrealistic. Everything was just fantasy, whether it was fantasy about boys my age, older men or younger boys, so again it didn’t seem to matter which impossible, unfulfilled fantasy I focused on.

I tried to find out more from the library, which I discovered had two kinds of book on pedophilia. One I borrowed was a series of essays on child sexual abuse edited by Finkhelor and the other was the book I mentioned earlier called Paedophilia: The Radical Case by Tom O’Carroll, who had been a member of the Pedophile Information Exchange in the UK in the late 70s and early 80s.

And this book was a pro-contact book. Pretty much the only pro-contact book I ever read. It made the various arguments – which I now recognise as false, but naively accepted then – for why sex with boys wasn’t so bad. I already explained how it took a long time for me to see through all that.

CANDICE:

So this is another reason why we have a podcast; why we do a lot of educating; why we provide consulting to other clinicians across the world; why other programs are now coming forward; why research is out there…

Because  if people are misinformed or given information that’s limited, a lot of people end up reading books like you for instance: a book about pro contact pedophilia. Now those of you that are listening that are pro-contact probably hate me – that is OK!

I do want to say we want to be educating the world that there are a lot of people like you, Bly, that are anti-contact in that have never offended and so, sure, here you are in the 80s:  there is not a lot of information out there and so you are getting information that’s very confusing, especially for someone who decides ‘I don’t want to do this; I don’t want to be pro-contact; I don’t want to harm a child.’

BLY:

Just to add a problem, I couldn’t recognise myself in the academic books about sexual abuse because they were described – rightly – from the point of view of victims, and in very dry language that didn’t really try to get inside the head of the pedophile or the abuser, because that (again rightly) wasn’t the focus of the research in those days. However, the Finkelhor book was very helpful in that it made me aware of abuse, what it was and what sort of thing happened. It was important to me that serious academics were taking it seriously and measuring it objectively. I think it confirmed to me that sexual abuse was a real, widespread phenomenon that I couldn’t factor out or set aside in trying to figure out this question, not if I was going to be an honest person about this.

CANDICE:

Well, I will say that I’m really thankful that you did have the Finkelhor book and there were other books out there as well. I know Bessel van der Kolk has been around forever talking about survivors of sexual abuse and how much they endure on so many levels. And so that is a plus that you did read that, that you could see the reality for children who are sexual abuse survivors and so I’m grateful for that.

BLY:

Later on, I discovered there were consenting adults communities around ageplay and ABDL and that community provided me with a space where I could have ethical sexual satisfaction. I am very lucky that I am what they call non-exclusive, and am attracted to adult men as well as boys. There’s a lot of ways within ageplay that you can experience some of the same emotions and ideas that are tied up with minor attraction. That was a very important outlet for me.

CANDICE:

Well, and I will say with that, too, there a lot of folks out there who do all kinds of things sexually that are not pedophiles and so I know that there are going to be some people listening that are going to be judging your choice to engage in ABDL behavior with other consenting adults but I want the world to know we have a lot of people in our global community who engage in BDSM (who aren’t pedophiles), who are into kink and so on and so forth.

Sexuality is really on a spectrum and so are sexual practices and there are a lot of people out there that are that are not pedophiles who indulge in ABDL.

So for those of you that are judging Bly on this I want you just to be aware of that. [Next question:] What do you want the world to know about pedophilia and/or minor attraction?

BLY:

I want the world to know everything about it, eventually, but we won’t get that until there are more studies and more science about it, and that won’t happen until people decide it’s more important to destigmatise highly unconventional desires so that non-offenders come forward to be part of these studies. I probably wouldn’t right now, without a huge load of assurance about confidentiality.

Scientific studies will provide the kinds of information we need to really assess the risk – or otherwise – of people like me. It looks like there’s evidence already that not everyone who abuses kids sexually is a pedophile and I know just from myself that not every pedophile abuses. I’d really like it to be possible that we could get a true overall picture of that.

CANDICE:

What I will say is that there is research out there. I just think the global community needs to get on board with the research that’s actually out there we know in the research that 70% of all offenders who have child victims are non-MAP, so they’re not pedophiles.

There’s this assumption, though, that there’s a high number, or that everybody who sexually offends is a pedophile. or if you’re a pedophile you’re automatically going to sexually offend. That’s just not true; that’s why we say attraction does not equal action, you know, otherwise it would be, like, OK, a man who has a sexual attraction to women — adult women — is automatically going to be a rapist and it’s just not true.

So there is actually research out there. Does there need to be more? Absolutely, and we really need the global community in the media especially to get on board with the reality of this population

BLY:

What I’d like people to understand now, that I know, is this. I have never abused a child nor have I ever tried to create the opportunity to do so. While I don’t expect a medal or even a pat on the head for that, I am conscious that at times in my life, I might have gone that way, and so it is really important that people who are in my situation today are reached and orientated and given whatever help and guidance they need to really make sure they never offend or get inappropriate with a kid.

This is easier than it might seem at first, because the second thing I’d like people to understand is that it’s an attraction, which is not the same as obsession or compulsion or some terrible urge that cannot be contained. It’s attraction – like when you see a cute person on the street but you’re in a relationship, so you just put it from your mind. If you know you can’t have something it is usually that easy to deal with. It’s not some huge daily crisis.

CANDICE:

Well, that’s the biggest thing, and the difference – right? – is knowing that in our Society that’s the reality which for so many individuals who are MAPs, including pedophiles, it can be really lonely. And so in therapy we work through that: the depression and loneliness surrounding ‘I have this attraction that will never be acted upon. What do I do and can I have fulfilling relationships with adults that meet my needs knowing that I have this attraction it will never be fulfilled?’

BLY:

Again, that needs taboos to be lifted. I see no reason why the possibility of minor attraction should not be referred to in sex ed classes, so that some kid like me gets the message that it is not too dangerous for them to tell someone, in fact it’s more dangerous if they don’t.

It’s not enough to just shame and condemn people for something they never chose. Most of us find out we’re pedophiles aged 14. We don’t have a switch or a method that just turns that off, even though it’s such a shameful thing to discover about yourself. A lot of us spend years wishing there was a magic switch, and not actually dealing with the issue.

CANDICE:

My hope is that for teenagers that are listening who know you have an attraction to children, even parents who are listening and you notice that your teenager does — that you know there are people and resources. You can reach out.

I think something in the global community of researchers and clinicians that we are trying to figure out is ‘how can we offer an and outreach teenagers?’ because we know that is when the attraction is realised.

And I think a lot of times [for] parents… the stigma around it and the fear can create a block; create a wall where teenagers don’t want to reach out.

So yeah, I really hope that our global community can change in the way that we’re viewing the attraction and when it starts, so that teenagers can get help, because we are seeing too many teenagers that are dying by suicide as the result of having this attraction and the fear of coming forward to get the support they need.

BLY:

I would like people to learn, above all, that the attraction by itself, if not acted on, is not a blameworthy thing. None of us chose it. And when I say that I’m not trying to make a parallel with LGB people. Pedophilia is different. But that still doesn’t make it a choice.

Unless we resort to totalitarian solutions like selective exterminations or precautionary castration, which are inhumane and medieval, we have to accept that people like me are going to live in the world alongside all the other human beings and it’s better if we have support.

CANDICE:

I agree, and I will say for the global community, there are so many more people that are MAPs that are surrounding each and everyone of you, then you realize we need a wake up; that this is a real thing and we actually need to open our minds to understanding it better.

BLY:

I think most reasonable people agree with this when they think about this issue, but people are scared to voice it because it sounds like condoning abuse. Well, it isn’t condoning abuse if you’re suggesting a solution that could avoid it.

CANDICE:

What a strong statement, Bly. I appreciate you saying that because it’s it’s absolutely not condoning abuse we’re talking about attraction were not talking about action.

We believe that people being able to come forward to get the support they need will be a long-term preventive measure. It’s not going to help anybody to stay underground.

I think there’s a lot of controversy with pedophilia being a sexual orientation: I definitely know those discussions among researchers and professionals who treat this population that it indeed is a sexual orientation. I know that the community at large might want to argue that. I think the reality is, it’s something that we need to look at and consider.

With that being said, I also know and our clinical team here know that folks will come into our program, MAPs specifically, and a lot of them have trauma: traumatic experiences that have caused a sort of arrested development, if you will, [so they] really find that they’re attracted to children the same age as their abuse occurred and so I want to find out from you; know what your experience has been, related to that, if any.

BLY:

My age of attraction as it’s known has varied during my life. When I was in my teens and twenties it would go as low as about 5, but nowadays it’s seldom any lower than 7 or 8. In addition, I’m non-exclusive, which means that I have been attracted to people my own age, or even somewhat older, since I had attractions. And the attraction is to every age in between too, so, you know, I could see a man of 36 or 25 or 19 or a boy of 13 or 10 etc. down to about 7 – and potentially experience attraction. So there isn’t one particular age I am particularly focused on.

That said, there are certain ages where I had certain experiences, such as getting badly bullied or my parents divorcing or my first suicide attempt that seem to line up with slightly stronger attraction to boys of a particular age, so yes, there might be some connection there.

One of the ages that seems quite powerful for me in fantasy is fourteen, and I think that it was around that age, maybe just into fifteen, that I first discovered I was a pedophile, so perhaps that’s a factor. Another age is eleven, which is the age I first started experiencing sexual thoughts.

But when I start thinking about it there are other ages too that have strong attractions and emotions around them, so I don’t think that theory is a complete explanation, really.

It may just be that pedophiles are born with the pattern of attraction already defined and that maybe it’s the act of returning to traumatic events in memory through repetitive acts of fantasy that wears a path in the brain that really strengthens the idea of a particular age being especially attractive. Maybe.

CANDICE:

Well, I definitely appreciate you saying that, and that’s one of two things that we’ve seen: that individuals who are MAPs will, say, some believe it’s sexual orientation; some believe it’s sexual orientation and they’ve had traumatic experiences — and it sounds like Bly has had that happen, when he was bullied, and he’s saying that he feels like it could be for him sexual orientation. [Next question:] What are your thoughts on sites that have recently been trying to ban NOMAPs from posting or joining and thoughts  on the trolls and the ignorance that’s out there? Because I know we’ve experienced a ton of that.

BLY:

This is now the topic of the moment. My first point about this is that I would never have known there was a community of anti-contact pedophiles out there until there was Virpeds. And even then that wasn’t enough to get me to connect. I was terrified of any discussion online or of reaching out for help.

At that time, I also absolutely did not trust the idea of telling a therapist. This was partly because I didn’t understand the mandatory reporting laws as well as I do now, but also because I just had no idea how to find someone suitable. Therapists are only human and some will have certain prejudices that are going to make it hard to help someone like me. I know that’s not supposed to be true about prejudices, but pedophilia is an exceptional thing at the moment, and there’s very few people who will have read the studies, some of which are very controversial in their findings. And aside from all of that, there’s the question of money and affordability of talking therapy

So I felt stuck but also very depressed throughout my adulthood. I didn’t feel able to go to Virpeds because I was paranoid that my browsing history or some technical thing was going to get me outed, and I didn’t want to see a therapist, even though I was getting really very seriously suicidal and acquiring the methods I would need to die. It was when I had finally reached the idea that I was going to die soon that I decided I hadn’t got much left to lose and that coincided, very luckily, with the period when Ender had his twitter account and was deliberately making some serious noise on behalf of anti-contact pedophiles.

So I set up my own twitter, as a locked account, and just went on to talk about my plans to die and how unhappy I felt. And that was when I got messaged by other anti-contact MAPs, including Ender, and the help they were offering was practical, and most importantly, unlike therapy, it was possible to do online without having to feel like I was crossing some Rubicon that was going to change my life irrevocably.

It wasn’t long after that that The Sun ran its front page attacking twitter for having these pedophile accounts and Ender started going through this series of bans on his account. I was incensed by that, how unfair it was. And it galvanised me.

I’ve always hated The Sun for its homophobia and deliberate ignorance. So while Ender was absent I made my account public and started talking, because we need sane voices on twitter representing us. I really try hard to be a sane voice and to make sure people are reached, and moved toward help.

We’re attacked from all sides, of course, and in all kinds of ways from dumb to sophisticated (or sophistic), but the argument that I hear used all the time is that having anti-contact NOMAPs on twitter is “normalising” sex abuse, which I totally disagree with. It is just a sophisticated-sounding way of saying ‘please be quiet and stop being here, proving this subject is more complicated than I thought it was.’

They want us to just go back to skulking in the shadows where they can believe whatever they like about what they think we get up to, as opposed to what we actually do and believe and say.

That’s why it’s important we’re on twitter, not so we can all take a party line or say ‘pedophilia is great’, because it’s not great. It’s not something I’m proud of at all. We need to be there on twitter so we can say the unexpected, so that people can – as far as possible – hear how things seem to us unmediated by the medical professionals.

And I want exactly the same thing for victims of sexual abuse, and I think it’s totally incumbent on MAPs that they don’t do anything to silence or intimidate those voices either. We should stay focused on reaching other MAPs.

CANDICE:

I really appreciate everything that Bly has said here, and first I want to say that it saddens me that, Bly, you felt like you wanted to kill yourself.

I think that’s what trolls will say: ‘well just die or go kill yourself the fact that you’re attracted to children you should be in all of the horrible things that come after that.’

The reality is, just as Bly said, this isn’t a choice; this is[n’t] something that pedophiles are proud of. They do not feel like it’s something that they’re excited about: ‘ooh I’m so excited to grow up and be attracted to kids’. And so the reality is, just like anyone coming into our office — saying ‘I need help; I’m depressed; I’m suicidal’ — my argument is: why would I not help someone who has an attraction to a minor? They’re coming to me for help.

I also want to say that I’m on Twitter as well, as the Global Prevention Project, and know by talking about minor attracted persons and outreach and advocacy we are absolutely not promoting sexual abuse. In fact we’re doing the complete opposite.

So when trolls do their threatening and their badgering and their trolling and their harassment that actually does more harm to prevention efforts than what we’re doing, which is trying to educate the global community that attraction is not action.

I also want to say that I love how Bly said it is important that pedophiles, hebephiles, ephebephiles, MAPs are on Twitter; that the voices of men and women who are attracted are the ones that are educating and communicating to the global community.

We cannot just have medical professionals and clinicians doing the communicating, because we don’t understand it at the [deepest] level.

And so that’s our whole reason for doing this podcast so I’m just really, really appreciative that Bly answered that question for us. Thank you. So lastly, in your opinion, what are some things that therapists can do better to support no maps and pedophiles in general?

BLY:

I think that it needs to be made possible for therapists to intervene earlier. The ironic thing for me is that just around the time I was discovering my attractions, in my teenaged years, I had access to a therapist, but this thing of pedophilia and also of autopedophilia, they were both so taboo and seemed so terrible to me that I just never brought them up and the sessions ended without these fundamental things ever being mentioned.

I think that therapists and supervisors need publications and guidance about the facts of this, so they have something to refer to. Unlike a lot of people, I do see the logic of mandatory reporting in some cases, but I am really interested to hear when there are reports of how Project Dunkelfeld in Germany has gone.

I also think that there is a forgotten group here and that is the parents of children who realise they’re MAP. So if you’re the parent of a fourteen year old who turns round and one day says, ‘I love little kids in the wrong way and I’m not coping any more,’ that there is a book you can get out of the library or on Kindle that gives you some sort of clue what you can do to help. It must be a terribly frightening thing to hear, just as frightening as it is to say.

I would like to see there be a better network of therapists who will advertise clearly that they deal with this condition, not just euphemisms about ‘unwanted sexual thoughts’. I have gone through the websites of therapists that describe themselves as kink-aware, who maybe have a background in alternative sexualities. But my experience is that kink communities themselves really loathe pedophiles and make a lot of effort to cast us out and dissociate themselves from us, because of very important taboos about consent (and misunderstandings about our attitude to consent).

Some people in those communities are very enlightened on this, but for other people their marginalisation and the suspicion and misunderstanding that society has for kinksters makes them hate us all the more because they just can’t afford the toxic association with pedophiles. I wonder how much that rubs off on therapists who specialise in that area. I don’t know, and it’s probably not possible to generalise.

One of the difficulties with all this is that we’re in an era where paradigms about sexuality and gender identity are shifting very very rapidly, much faster than science can come up with relevant information for professionals. If you started practising therapy in 1990 when we were in the early stages of awareness of child sexual abuse and only halfway through a change in attitude to homosexuality, you would be forgiven for feeling all at sea now. It’s even the same for me. When I started learning about this, the all important newly discovered distinction was between gays, transvestites and transsexuals. That sounds totally quaint now.

I think that things move on when there is a public conversation. This is going to messy and ugly and it’s going to take a very long time and will probably always be controversial. I guess definitions in the DSM are going to be the main battleground, but public opinion and media representation will affect the debate too. Maybe there’ll be a non-offending MAP drama character sometime soon, or more likely an appearance in a novel or theatre piece. There is less censorship in those areas.

As for therapists, I think there will always be a need for them. I hope we get more of them who are trained in these issues. I hope they’re availabile with that training in schools and via referral. I hope that help for this becomes routine. And obviously I hope that they are helped in providing that help by a society that starts to realise that if you didn’t choose a mental condition, you don’t need to be shamed and blamed for it.

I really think that will help MAPs and help ensure there are fewer victims of child sexual abuse, and fewer consumers of child exploitation material. It’s what I hope for.  We’re in kind of a dark time right now for the world, but on this topic there’s never been a time in my life when there was more hope.

CANDICE:

I appreciate what you said about what therapists can do, Bly, because there’s a large population of therapists all over the world that listen to these podcasts and the beautiful thing about it is they’re listening to hear directly from MAPs to understand how best to support them in treatment.

I do want to say that mandatory reporting… is it is necessary when there is an identifiable victim and there’s imminent harm, and here’s the difference: when someone says ‘I have an attraction’ it does not automatically mean action. It does not automatically mean abuse. It does not automatically mean sex offender.

And so that’s what I want the global community to hear. I know when I first started our project and first was doing my advocacy for non-offending pedophiles I got a lot of blowback from other clinicians who said, you know, ‘How can you do this without reporting? What about reporting laws?’

And so the question I have to ask and I want all of you clinicians listening and even community members… What exactly am I reporting when someone says I have an attraction to a 12-year-old? What do you think the police are going to do if I call them? What about child protective services? I’ve no identifying information and there’s no imminent danger of a victim that’s being harmed. It’s literally an attraction.

I hope those that are listening to this podcast can really hear that we are talking about providing accurate treatment to individuals who are minor attracted, who have no desire to sexually harm a child. They need support in therapy in order to deal with their depressive symptoms; their isolation; feeling disconnected from the world… and they have a desire to stay safe in the community, and just like anyone else I will continue to help that population.

I’m also really excited to hear that there are more researchers out there that continue to do research on the MAP community and there [are] also other programs all across the world who are starting MAP programs [and] MAP groups because there is such a need.

People that are listening to us: let me say this last thing. Someone you know is a MAP. Go ahead and challenge me on that. Someone you know is a MAP. There are more minor attracted persons around us than we realize.

I think this is a beautiful time. I’m happy that there is hope out there, Bly, for you and other MAPs listening.

I want to thank Rusty for reading this; taking the time out of your day and every day. I see you on Twitter being such an incredible advocate for MAPs and NOMAPs especially, and so I really want to acknowledge you for that and I would love to bring you on and interview you sometime about what has gotten you into your advocacy.

So with that I want to say thank you so much, Rusty. Thank you, Bly for having the courage to share who you are with the global community and thank you to all of you that have listened to our podcast…. Until next time…

The post Prevention Podcast Transcript: Bly Rede – Attraction is not Action appeared first on Pedophiles About Pedophilia.

Original audio.

Candice:

Welcome to the prevention podcast, I’m your host, Candice Christiansen. Our goal, at the prevention podcast, is to talk about dicey, controversial issues related to preventing sexual abuse. Why? Because it needs to be said. Topics include the biology of pedophilia, risk, need and responsivity principles related to non-contact and contact sex offenders, researchers in the field of sex offender treatment, and more.

Join us bi-weekly, and let’s talk about it.

Candice: Welcome to the prevention podcast, I’m your host, Candice Christiansen. As many of you know that listen to our podcast, we have been interviewing all kinds of people. I think we’re globally known at the moment for our discussion of MAPs (minor attracted people) and it’s quite controversial, although we have also interviewed researchers, we’ve interviewed other prevention projects and other organizations who advocate for primary prevention of child sexual abuse.

Today, I am absolutely honored and excited, we have Janavi who is a therapist for the primary prevention program in India. So, I want to welcome you, Janavi, to our podcast.

Janavi:

Thank you, Candice, so much for having me here today.

Candice:

We absolutely love this because there is this global effort of primary prevention of child sexual abuse, so I am so happy that we can interview you, Janavi, and my thought is, we really want the world to know about your program, especially individuals in India. Let’s go ahead and get started. Tell us about your program, your primary prevention program.

Janavi: Thank you so much, Candice. Before I go into our work, though, I would like to spend some time to shed light on the culture and context in India. I think it plays a huge role, even for people in India to reach out to us for help.

So, as you might be aware, child sexual abuse within India is a really grim reality. From official statistics, we have one in two children and they’re going through some form of abuse before they turn 18. That means that India probably has the world’s largest number of sexually abused children just on sheer quantity.

In spite of that, a public conversation about CSE (child sexual exploitation) only started 15 years ago. It’s not something that’s discussed openly in any forum. It started 15 years ago through a TV program. An important factor of this is that sexuality overall is viewed as a big taboo in this society. Any conversation about sex and sexuality cannot happen in open spaces, to the effect that within many states within the country, providing sex education in school to children is banned.

So, within this context, even for people who experience something different, it’s so difficult to come out and talk about it. The few organizations that do work on child sexual abuse of course focus completely on prevention, through awareness amongst children, but only focusing on personal safety education, or rehabilitation after victimization.

So that’s where there’s this big gap within the prevention approach where the other end of the spectrum, actually working with people who might be at risk to commit offenses, that does not happen at all. That’s where the genesis of the Don’t Offend network, as we call ourselves, is born. We thought there was a need to look at primary prevention from the angle of people who might be at-risk to act out against children. We don’t want to wait for victimization to occur at all. We want to put the onus of responsibility on adults, to prevent their behavior from happening.

Candice:

If I could just say something, Janavi, I’m so happy that you’re out there as well. That’s something that we have been advocating for here in the United States, and while we have support by other therapists, sex offender therapists, researchers, it’s so fascinating to us here in the US how many people don’t understand that it makes more sense to provide preventative treatment to  those individuals who are at-risk before they cause harm to a child than wait until after, so I love that you guys are out there, I just love it.

Janavi:

Thank you so much, and it’s great to know. I think we are the only program in India, really, who have taken this approach and of course, I’m sure you do as well, have a lot of trolling happening, tell us that this does not work, Indian culture does not allow this, and you’re promoting and protecting people with pedophilia. That’s not really the case. People with pedophilia are not all offenders, it’s a sexual preference. We don’t want to push them into the dark, we don’t want to push them inside a tunnel so that their stress levels are so high that they cannot then reach out for help or end up offending as a result of that.

Candice:

Yes, we are absolutely on the same page, absolutely on the same page with you on that.

Janavi:

So, let me tell you a little about the program itself. The Don’t Offend India network was started in 2016, and they are a group of experts from India and Germany who come together to provide psychotherapeutic treatment to individuals with pedophilia and hebephilia in India.

To start with, our work is based on the expertise of the Prevention Project Dunkelfield in Germany, which is the Don’t Offend program, the original Don’t Offend program that was started in Berlin, but now across 11 centers. It hinges, in India, it hinges on self-identified and self-motivated people with attraction to children, both with pedophilia or hebephilia, and encouraging them to reach out to us for help through two means: We have an online website, which is troubled-desire.com/en/.

They can come in, do a self-assessment there, and if they have never offended, then they are given our contact details for therapists in Mumbai and Pune, which are two cities within India. We also have a toll-free number where people can reach out to us with any questions, or if they want to know more about our program, mental health professionals or individuals with pedophilia, they can call us. We’re operational between the hours of 10AM-4PM five days a week. We accept calls from all over India.

We are actually very, very new. Like I said, we just started in 2016 and the groundwork we are doing is a lot of work around creating awareness within India. We are largely focused in the cities of Pune and Bombay where our team currently is. We do awareness through workshops with mental health professionals, medical professionals, civil society organizations, parents, schools, making spaces to explain to them the difference between pedo/hebephilia and child sexual abuse.

The challenge for us is to be available to have sensible, open discussions within the community to help them see this differently. Because sexuality is such a big problem, child sexual abuse of course is something that is viewed as extremely grim, it is very difficult for people to see that they’re not trying to help monsters as they view them, right, it’s just individuals and people who need help and cannot be shunned just because they have a certain sexual preference.

Candice:

I’m really curious, I want to ask you this, because we have come under a lot of fire recently with some fake news about our project, and again, with trolls so on and so forth, claiming that we’re making up the term hebephile and even ephebophile, and so will you educate, because I know what the term is, but for those listeners, I want people to know that Janavi and I are not making that term up, so for those listeners, Janavi, would you mind educating our global community on the difference between a pedophile and a hebephile?

Janavi:

So, sexual preference for children is viewed in terms of body type. When somebody is attracted to or has a preference for a child who has a prepubescent body, then we say that that person has pedophilia. Similarly, somebody who is attracted to just pubescent, just after puberty when they’re not completely an adult, that person is called someone who has hebephilia. Just for the listeners, please know that we do not stress on ages of children as much as body size, simply because people at different ages can be at different body types. A 12-year-old can still sometimes have the body scheme of an 8-year-old, for instance, which is then a pre-pubescent body scheme.

Candice:

Will you say that one more time Janavi, because I think that’s a really big distinction that I have not heard of, so I really want people to hear that again.

Janavi:

When we look at sexual preference for children, we talk about body types and not about the ages of children, because sometimes a 12-year-old can still sometimes have the body type of an 8-year-old. If someone is attracted to a body type of someone before puberty, without no growth of pubic hair for instance, or hair in the chest region, flat women, those people will have a sexual attraction for people with prepubescent bodies, which is pedophilia, or sometimes people can have a sexual attraction or preference for children whose bodies have just hit puberty. So, slight breast growth in women, some pubic hair, and that would be hebephilia. Please note that the focus is on the body type, and not the ages of children.

Candice:

Thank you for explaining that again, I think that’s really important for our global community to hear. By us talking about that, for those of you who are wondering, we’re not promoting attraction to children by any means, we’re giving these descriptions and examples so our global community can understand the difference between pedophilia and hebephilia for treatment purposes, so thank you.

Janavi:

No problem at all. Coming back to a little bit about what we are doing, awareness of course is one, and it’s really important even for the listeners that pedo/hebephilia is only one of the risk factors for CSE. It is not the only thing, it is not that everyone with pedo/hebephilia are actually going to commit offenses against children. What we are doing is providing a safe space in which people can actually come out and talk about it and the distress that comes from having a sexual preference like that can be resolved in a more safer environment.

Candice:

What do you say to those individuals, and we call them trolls, who would say that, “Pedophiles are sick, they are destined to offend,” these are things we get all the time, “They should be murdered, there’s no way they can change, it’s good that they’re in distress…” what would you say to a person who says that?

Janavi:

I think in a space like that is where your empathy and expertise and knowledge all comes in, to say that just because someone has a preference does not make them a monster. People are not guilty of their desires, but they are responsible for their behavior. That’s what we are trying to teach people, to be more responsible for their behavior so they do not commit offenses based on their impulses.

Candice:

Well, that’s excellent and I love how you just said that, that people are not guilty for their desires. I get, again, that we’ll have people listening to this who will argue and say, yes they are, I think the educated global community of treatment providers who know how to treat this population and researchers, as researchers we can all say that what we’re doing is a really good thing.

I bet in India like you said, it’s very controversial because sexuality and sex is taboo, so here you are, the only organization, you’ve got Troubled Desire, which is a fantastic website, I want people to hear, it’s troubled-desire.com/en/, if you have an attraction you can go on and take an online anonymous survey, there’s lots of support on there, please check it out. That’s one of the websites.

So, lots and lots of help out there. How many people, and I don’t know if you’ve tracked this quite yet, since 2016, how many people have you served so far?

Janavi:

So we actually, the troubled desire website was officially launched only last year (2017) in October, before that we were only doing some groundwork to understand where India is, and how ready it is to let us work in this space. Also, considering the legal system because we do have some trouble in terms of the sexual offense law not agreeing with some of the work we do. So, since we launched, online on Troubled Desire we have 143 people who have reached out for help.

Candice:

That’s great.

Janavi:

Although, only 27 of them have completed the assessment tool, so until you complete the whole assessment tool on the website, we don’t give them further information to reach out to us, since we are only focused on non-offending pedophiles.

Candice:

That’s great to know too, since The Prevention Project that we have here in the U.S, we’re with you on that. We do not support the pro-contact pedophiles who believe that it’s okay to have sex with a child at all. We do an assessment to make sure that this person is non-offending, that they don’t want to harm a child, but are in distress and want to make sure they’re safe. So I appreciate that too. Because I think, again, that some folks in the global community have this misunderstanding that when we say non-offending pedophile, that doesn’t even exist. But it does exist, there are people who don’t want to harm anybody, that do want space to talk about it, versus the pro-contact pedophiles who are saying that it’s the laws that are screwed up, and that they should be able to have sex with kids, and kids want that. Which we disagree with.

Janavi:

Yeah, absolutely. We do not support offending behavior in any way, and in fact, based on the law in India, we also mandatorily report anyone who comes to us and says that they have offended against a child.

Candice:

That’s good to know as well, we’re a clinical team here as well, and we in the U.S. have the same mandatory reporting laws. Now, for those of you who are non-offending pedophiles listening to Janavi in India, or even in the surrounding areas, or if you’re in the U.S., I want you to hear my say this: an attraction does not automatically equal molesting a child, and so please know if you need help, you can still reach out to us. If there is an identifiable victim and you admit to having contacted a child and sexually abused that child, of course we do need to report that, we’re mandatory reporters. However, if you reach out in distress because you have an attraction to a child, we are going to help you. Anything you want to add to that Janavi?

Janavi:

No, absolutely. We are not guilty of desires, you are responsible for behaviors. So, please do reach out if you have attractions that you’re not sure of sometimes, as well.

Candice:

Yes. So with these individuals, 143 people who have reached out to you, the 27 who have done the assessments, do you know if they are all in India, or surrounding areas? Do you have that demographic?

Janavi:

So, actually, those 27 are in India. Because Troubled Desire is a global tool, we are tracking it only based on the countries they are coming from. Otherwise, it’s completely anonymous and confidential, we do not get any other identifying information, except for the parts of the world they are arriving from. These 143 people who have sought help online are from India.

Candice:

Wonderful. I just want to stress that again, we have so many individuals who listen to us from all over the world, all 7 continents, numerous countries, you can go to https://troubled-desire.com/en/ and take an anonymous assessment if you feel like you need support. And my guess, Janavi, is that if they’re not in India so they can’t come to you for help, you can refer them to the places, to the “Stop It Now” organizations which are in several countries, the Prevention Project Dunkelfeld if they’re in Germany, our program in the United States, B4U-ACT has resources in Maryland. Is that correct that you can refer?

Janavi:

Absolutely.

Candice:

Okay, I want people to hear that, because I think sometimes what happens is people think, “what’s the point in going on Troubled Desire and taking this assessment if I’m not in India?” Right?

Janavi:

Right. Also, to add, the website besides the self-assessment tool also has self-management tools for those who might not have available resources in the areas they live in. So we also have some programs which you do offline with people, also available online.

Candice:

That’s wonderful. And I’m looking at it right now, so for those of you listening, it’s below the home page, and it has a session overview, and there’s several sections for online self-management. I cannot stress that enough, and I’ll post this on twitter where we have a big following of individuals who pass our information along. I’m going to share this because I think you’re right, the cost sometimes gets in the way for a lot of people with pedophilia, hebephilia, even ephebophilia who want support. I think because we have limited projects globally, that can get in the way. So, what a wonderful resource you have here online.

Janavi:

Thank you so much.

Candice:

What else would you like to share in terms of your prevention programs, your education on sexuality and sexual abuse prevention… what else would you like our global community to know?

Janavi:

So, just a couple more things with what you said also. You’re right, cost can sometimes be a limiting factor, and the service that we provide in India is completely free of cost. So, people can just reach out to us and we will provide them services at no cost as all.

Also, one of the other limitations and challenges in India is the number of languages that people speak. Unless you are an English speaking, urban, literate population, it might be limiting for people to reach out to us. That’s something I’d like to stress, and tell people that we do have services in Hindi and Marathi, which are two of the local languages in the state here, and the website, https://troubled-desire.com/en/ is going to soon be released in a Marathi version so more people can access it.

Candice:

Wonderful, I am so excited to hear that because like you said, there are so many barriers, not just the fear of coming forward and acknowledging an attraction to a child, and that is a huge fear, but then also the cost, like you said, and the language barrier. For those listening, please know that this is not just for English speaking individuals who live in India. There’s definitely support out there for the different languages. Please, if you need help, come forward and get that support.

And I want to add, Janavi, because I am a survivor of child sexual abuse, I make that very known in our community, especially when the trolls come at me and claim that I’m supporting child rape, which is completely absurd. But I can only imagine an individual who has an attraction to a child, who is terrified because they don’t want to hurt anybody, and therefore they need someone to talk to about that. Getting those tools in India, because there is so much taboo around the topic of sex and sexuality, what are you doing in India to say, hey, we are are here and we are available to offer you support?

Janavi:

So, right now, our focus has largely been through an awareness campaign, also because we were worried as well about the trolling that might happen if we put the word out there without an explanation of what hebephilia and pedophilia actually mean. We’ve been spreading awareness through our circles, among mental health professionals, medical professionals, sexologists, psychologists, all of those groups, to tell them about their existence within India, especially within the cities we are in. Now, we have also created a video advertisement, which we are going to put out there for promoting through marketing campaigns that will reach out and tell them that the attraction is all right, but if you have this, please do reach out, seek help, and help is available. It’s not released yet, but it’s going to be out in the next month or so.

Candice:

Wonderful, and I can’t stress enough how important the prevention efforts that all of us are doing are, because I want our global community to hear this. We believe, and I know this is the case for you, and the other prevention projects out there, that you can absolutely prevent a child from being harmed if you intervene beforehand…

Janavi:

Absolutely.

Candice:

…instead of waiting until there’s a victim, and waiting until a crime has been committed and a child has been hurt. This is such a wonderful resource, not just in India, but for the global community. I am so excited that we were able to connect. I hope that those listening in India, and the entire world, know especially about https://troubled-desire.com/en/. Please go to that website, there’s so many great resources for you, and there’s also support if you need therapy and you’re in India, with people that speak different languages. So, please don’t let these things be a barrier, and if you’re unsure, please reach out and get some support.

Janavi:

And you can call us on our toll-free number in India; it’s [Note from TNF: It is best to visit their website. There were some inconsistencies in the original audio, and I do not want to give wrong information.]

Canidce:

Thank you. I just love that you guys are a resource. So, Janavi, is there anything else that you feel like the global community deserves to know about  your prevention program, and your Don’t Offend India online network of resources?

Janavi:

Just everything that I’ve said, and that we are looking to expand and collaborate within India as well, so if more of you Indians who are listening to this, mental health professionals maybe, do reach out to us, on our website, our email, or our social media pages. We’d love to connect with you. We are trying to build a community within India who can provide these services.

Candice:

Well, thank you so much, Janavi, for taking the time to be on our podcast today. We will definitely promote the work you are doing, I know there are people out there, we have a following in India, so I know that there are people out there listening today that need you as a resource, both in India, and in our global community. So I just want to thank you again, it’s been an honor to interview you for our podcast.

Janavi:

Thank you so much, Candice, for having us, and letting us talk about our work, and our program, and we do hope that together we can make a difference in at least a few people’s lives.

Candice:

Absolutely.

All right listeners, thank you so much. Today was such a wonderful conversation with Janavi from Don’t Offend, the Indian network. We are slowly coming to the end of our Season One, so stay tuned, we’ve got some really great interviews coming up along with this one that you’ll be listening to, and let’s continue to have this global conversation. Until next time, listeners, thank you.

Thank you for listening to this week’s podcast. Please visit http://theglobalpreventionproject.org/  to learn more about our project and programs. Please remember to subscribe to our podcast at https://thepreventionpodcast.com or iTunes. See you next time!

The post TGPP Transcript: Janavi, Don’t Offend: India appeared first on Pedophiles About Pedophilia.

Candice:

Welcome to the prevention podcast, I’m your host, Candice Christiansen. Our goal, at the prevention podcast, is to talk about dicey, controversial issues related to preventing sexual abuse. Why? Because it needs to be said. Topics include the biology of pedophilia, risk, need and responsivity principles related to non-contact and contact sex offenders, researchers in the field of sex offender treatment, and more.

Join us bi-weekly, and let’s talk about it.

Meg: Welcome to The Prevention Podcast, this is Meg Martinez Detamonte, your host and I am here with Evert, who is a non-offending minor-attracted person, using the term NOMAP. Hi, Evert.

Evert: Hello.

Meg: So good to have you on our show today.

Evert: Yeah, thank you for giving me the opportunity to be here.

Meg: Of course. So, I just introduced you as a nomap and that’s kind of where I wanted to start because recently we’ve been getting a lot of people asking us why we use the term map, minor-attracted person and even the term nomap which stands for non-offending minor-attracted person. And Evert, you are pretty adamant about using this term in the place of pedophilia, or even anti-contact pedophiles so I was wondering if you’ll share that. What is the term nomap mean to you?

Evert: In fact, it’s more a rational word, a statement I make that I am attracted to minors, little girls, but that I am not offending in any way and I always have done that. It is more a term used by science than in normal life. Most people use the term pedophile but we see that the term pedophile is hijacked by criminals and society to talk about abusers. And I am not an abuser, I am a person attracted to children, girls.

So the term map does give me a platform to speak about it and also to speak to people who are also attracted to minors but maybe not prepubescent children, like I am. So it is a more general word used in the community to talk about people with our feelings without the pain or the difficulty of the conflation which society has.

Meg- That was very beautifully said. We here at The Prevention Project agree and that’s why we also use this term. First and foremost we find this term in the literature, the research literature as

well as people are studying a variety of individuals who are attracted to minors and as you very eloquently put it’s not all about prepubescent children which is what pedophilia represents.

I also love that you shared that the term pedophile is hijacked to be described or to use towards people who have actually offended or abused children when in fact, as we’ve said many, many times on this podcast somebody that’s attracted to children does not always go on offending or has to go on offending and can very much be committed to non-offending and to sharing that mission and vision.

Which again is beautifully said by you in that the term nomap is actually a statement and a platform for you. It’s a statement of you saying I am attracted to children but I’m committed to non-offending.

Evert: So between us I still call myself pedophile, because it states my form of attraction.

Meg: Right, yeah.

Evert: I don’t use “girl-lover” because it is mostly used to sell child porn. It’s a pity that the pedophile is used to shame on other people who are not liked. Like sometimes in politics you hear these words or in society that opponents are called pedophile without actually being pedophiles. So that’s why I call it highjacked.

Meg: And I think that’s a really great point because we do get a lot of people who are either trolling, but sometimes people who are just generally curious and say “Hey, why are we using this term, map, and not just calling them what they are, pedophiles.” And so I actually think it’s great to hear you say “Well hey, I do identify with the word pedophile because I’m a person who is attracted to prepubescent children, that would be a pedophile.

But I don’t agree with the fact that this word is hijacked and so I’m gonna also call myself a map so that I can, and more specifically nomap, so that I can very much state to the world that I’m a non-offending minor-attracted person. And so I do see and I want other people to see that map is definitely this umbrella term and somebody could still identify as a pedophile and a map.

Evert: One of the things we often hear is about the normalization of pedophilia. Our agenda is absolutely not “normalization of pedophilia”, that’s far away. We just want a little air to breathe.

Society is going to regulate things just to prevent children, of course it’s important and it is good to take actions against abuse. But if it also means that some people in society are taken away any point of living, any space of living, any place to be and feel safe then I think these rules are missing a very important point.

Meg: I would say that sometimes we are doing more harm than good when we highjack labels like pedophile and lump people all into the same category instead of getting to know people in individual basis and helping the people who need help and who don’t want to offend.

Our founder Candace Christianson said this several times, that why not help people and treat people who are seeking help regardless of who or what they’re attracted to. Why would we not help them? And so I love how you said using the term map can at least give us some room so that we can breathe a little and let people know “I’m minor-attracted but I’m not an offender. I have no desire to offend, I’m very aware of society’s laws, I actually am an advocate for child sexual abuse prevention and that’s me, I can be all of those things.”

Evert: Yes, and I hope that some child-abuse prevention organizations start realizing that it is not the pedophile who’s the opponent. It might even be the pedophile who can also be part of the community to keep children safe. They might be a risk but if we can control that risk and we can make the risk in a way less harmful then I think we have some good things gained.

And we are not opponents, we are in a way just like you, we love children, we want to protect them, we want them to be happy. And it’s unfortunate that in a situation where children might be I might get aroused but that doesn’t mean that I will act on it. If I’m on the playground maybe some men might be aroused by the mothers who stand there, I don’t know, but you don’t act on it.

Meg: I agree, I couldn’t agree more. We often hear people who for some reason fuse impulsivity with minor-attraction, thinking that all people who have a minor-attracted orientation are these ticking time-bombs that are going to offend and the reality is from what we’ve seen, all of the minor-attracted people that we’ve worked with have this capacity to control themselves just like any other person who’s attracted to an adult.

And so I’m really glad that you bring that up. And it leads me to go back to something that you said earlier about how you actually are acknowledging that there’s some risk and so I think that that’s something that people don’t hear a lot. They think “Well they’re using the term map or nomap and they’re saying that there’s no risk.” And so you’re acknowledging that people that have minor-attractions can be of risk.

Evert: We are just as much risk as any other one, if we look at persons who abuse children they’re not only pedophiles. If it was I would be happy but it isn’t. People who abuse children have several forms of sexual attraction. They have several backgrounds, they can be male or female, they can be Christian or another religion. It is the person which is the problem and I am a person and I have a certain risk and it is mostly that in a point where the self-control is lacking that a risk

can become a danger. So keep people on the safe side by making them strong in awareness, strong in their own self-esteem and strong in self-control. That is the point I’m trying to make. That is how we could take part in the prevention.

Meg: Absolutely, so you’re saying that it doesn’t really matter the person’s orientation or the person’s attraction or not, what matters more is what’s going on individually when it comes to self-control, self-esteem, shame and other symptoms that may participate in a person deciding to act out and offend against a child.

Evert: Yes, and unfortunately we notice that many peers are in that middle state. They don’t have that self-esteem, they are ashamed, they hide away on several forms like marriage or live alone in a house outside society. I think that every psychiatrist or psychologist would mean that these people might have mental health risks.

Meg: When you say peers are you talking about other people who have come out as minor-attracted that you’re aware of?

Evert: Yes.

Meg: So talking about that community of people who come out as minor-attracted, Evert, share with me what you think the difference between a pro-contact map and an anti-contact or a nomap is.

Evert: Well, pedophilia is simply the attraction, the sexual or romantic attraction towards prepubescent children. And if they are older they’re called hebephiles or something. The feelings are always the same, the age might vary and the appearance of the child might vary but the feelings are always a certain attraction and maybe a form of arousal or fantasy. That is all the same. The difference between pro-contact is that they actually want to act on these feelings, they want to act on their fantasies.

They want to act on their urges. And they decide to let their interest prevail above the other. While a nomap or anti-contact pedophile is actually choosing to let the interest of children stand above their own wish simply because they see that a small amount of joy doesn’t weigh up to the damage that would be done. It’s very simple. It doesn’t have to do anything with law or fear for police or whatever. It is the simple fact that you love a child and the child is more important than yourself. If you love another you want them to be happy and safe. And so I choose to be not-acting on it.

Meg: Thank you so much for sharing that, I love how you put it. and I think it’s good for our listeners to hear it stated in that way in that it’s not always just about fear of legal action, it’s truly for a lot of nomaps about putting the interest of a child above their own, which in many circles is prevention. You know, it’s prevention of how do we keep these children safe and happy and healthy and prevent any harm or abuse.

So I appreciate you sharing that. Just connecting this to what you said earlier, you also shared that there are people that are kind of in between you were saying, that are isolated and not necessarily on this pro-contact bandwagon where they’re acting out but they’re not necessarily involved in a community that is very much believing in non-offending or anti-contact principles like you are.

Evert: We actually don’t know how many people with minor-attraction there are on this world, because most are hiding. And pro-contacts speak out and hurt and you see them on television, so everyone gets aroused or gets hating about what they’re seeing and if we want to speak out we are blocked, we are denied any access of platforms.

It’s very difficult to get these people in this middle who are hiding and looking outward to show that there are other alternatives. That there are ways to live happy and still feel happy and a little bit honorable about who you are. That these feelings are not a horror but actually are part of yourself. And that you can act strongly in society with these feelings. Many pedophiles who aren’t shown might work already with children in jobs or they help children in a wonderful way, they never act out in a sexual way. But you don’t see them.

And my fear is if a person in this situation, in this hiding is getting into mental problems by whatever, it could be people who become depressed by society, by problems on work or other things. If they get into low self-esteem and low mental state they become a risk without knowing it. They might act on it without knowing it.

They might hurt a child and see it happen while they’re doing it and then, actually I write it many times, if we can in any way prevent a pedophile or a map or a person who is attracted to children, even heterosexuals or homosexuals who feel attracted to children, if we can prevent them to act out we save two lives. It’s not only the life of the child. What would happen with a person who has done this? How can he live with himself? What would society do? So that’s important to me.

Meg: Right, and it’s important to us too here at The Prevention Project and as a program created by an abuse survivor, we believe just as well that we are creating hope for two lives. We’re creating prevention for children who may be at risk to be harmed, and then we are also creating hope for people who are at risk to harm children.

And I know that we’ve spent a lot of time on this podcast talking about our program that treats maps or people who are minor-attracted who don’t want to offend against children, but we also treat a variety of other people who are at risk for creating victims. Adult victims or child victims because we do believe that that life matters as well, the life of the person who is struggling.

So I love that you’re bringing this up Evert and sharing your goal, and it sounds like your goal and your mission is to reach these people who are in hiding and to give them a sense of community to where they feel accepted enough to open up about what’s going on with them and seek the help that they need. How are you doing that?

Evert: Well, the first thing is you have be visible, you have to be known, and that is difficult so I want to emphasize that what you are doing is actually so important, it’s not important for me to speak out like I’m rallying for an important position, it is most important that these words reach people and make them think about “maybe I should reach peers and I don’t seek peers on porn sites, I will find criminals who want to make money out of me.”

No, I want to find platforms where they can speak safely with pedophiles or other maps about their feelings so that they can understand what they are and can maybe ask questions or whatever. What you are doing is so important, you’re spreading the word. And that is prevention indeed.

Meg: Well thank you so much for saying that.

Evert: Thank you very much for doing this.

Meg: Well that kind of leads to another question that I wanted to ask you, because as we’re wrapping up our season we’re wrapping up our interviews and our podcast producer was like “You need to interview Evert” so here we are doing that and I wanted to ask you why this podcast was so important to you and why you were so interested in being a part of it with us.

Well in a way I already said it, why I find it important, these words need to be spread. It’s not important that my words but people who are feeling attraction to children and maybe they’re in doubt if they are or not. They have to be able to find a way to speak about it and to find out. And that’s why your platform is so important and I myself have been in this mental state which was very disturbing.

I really lived in a double life, in one way I felt fully confused about myself and on the other hand I had to support a family. And I had difficulties and I had to fight myself out and I had help from peers on the good side. So now I am almost fully accepted myself as a pedophile.

(Laughs) Almost.

There are sometimes that I had a little bit of self-censorship. Would I take pictures or not, whether can I look at children or not, but in a way I feel glad that I reached this point and I want to share this possibility for everyone. And that makes me give so much energy.

That is my mission in a way.

Meg: Yeah and we love having you here to share your experiences, I think a lot of our listeners that are maps and nomaps share that thought that you had about “It feels like I was living a double life and it feels like I’m in hiding”, I think a lot of people can relate to that and I mean I guess what I would also say is, what would you say to some of those maps that are in hiding, that don’t agree with the pro-contact voices out there but maybe feel too afraid to go under the label of map or nomap and speak out on public forums or on social media or even to their intimate, close family circles. What would you say to some of those maps that are in hiding and aren’t sure of what to do?

Evert: The first thing you have to do is don’t fight yourself, you will lose. You have to take and accept what you are. There is no one who changed these feelings, who can cope with them, you can use them even positively but we can’t deny them, you can’t hide like I did.

I tried to live as heterosexual, I looked at adult porn and had sex with my wife. Looking back it was all nothing more than a theater. It didn’t satisfy and they must understand that situation. So to get out and get happy like I am now means to accept what you are and try to find ways to speak to us. Come with questions you have, you’re not a monster, you’re just a person like any other, one who has a sexual feeling and the only difficulty is some people don’t like that.

Meg: And I think that this process of accepting who you are is how we’ve come up with so many different words and names and labels for it as we discussed earlier because I think it helps people to realize “Ok, this is what an actual pedophile is”. You know, scientifically if you will, and this is what a minor-atracted person is, and this is what an exclusive minor-attracted person is, and non-exclusive minor-attracted is, I think it’s in our nature to create these labels so that people can go through that process of acceptance.

Evert: Of course. But one thing that’s also very difficult is when I speak to a heterosexual they will listen with their heterosexual background, they will see everything from the side of a heterosexual. And if I talk about my feelings to a peer I don’t need much words. He immediately understands. And that’s why they must seek out peers. You can’t explain it to a normal heterosexual. Certainly not a few haven’t reached the situation of putting your feelings in words.

Meg: What I do think is that people that have this sense of support, more often are able to accept what’s going on inside them and talk about it and be more aware, as you’ve mentioned. Be more aware of what’s going on inside them and how they can control their thoughts and their behaviors and their emotions to a degree.

Evert: Actually, you have build up a motivation not to harm children. And when you’re confused you don’t have that motivation, it’s broken into pieces. So you have to repair it, and you have to have a clear view in life about how you want to live your life as pedophile or as a minor-attracted person.

Meg: This podcast, I do appreciate you sharing so much about your story and your vision and mission and purpose going forward as an advocate for nomaps and as a peer, really, to anybody that’s experiencing these feelings so that they can feel like they’re not alone and I think that drives and definitely contributes to our purpose which was to truly bring light to those in the dark, and so in closing I just wonder if there is anything else that you want to share, not only to maps out there but to the world, about this topic. As we seek to bring light to those in the dark.

Evert: Well, I want to state one thing also, because it also is important about the situation. We as map activists, I don’t really think I’m an activist but I’m speaking out, we are always told that we want to be part of the LGBT community.

And in a way you see immediately reactions from this community revolving or almost disgusting and the fact that we want to be part of that, I think we are not at that moment yet, we still have to find a way to simply be here instead of be openly and with right in society and I hope that many, many LGBT persons don’t feel endangered by us, we don’t have such thoughts or agenda.

And they themselves must understand that they sometimes have the same routes, same way to go to accept themselves or find a way to live with their feelings. We have so much in common and I think “I don’t want your help, the only thing I ask is don’t be an obstacle, give us the space to make our own way out”. And I think that it’s also important to know, for people who have been or are part of the LGBT community, another thing I think is I want to speak out to people who are responsible for making laws or decisions on these things, that with fear and disgust you don’t make good decisions.

If we look at all the policies there are, we hardly see any effect. And I hope really as many people like you and others say, let’s take another way. The way of prevention. And I hope the people start changing their minds and we get on this way of prevention and we certainly will support that.

Meg: And you know, we couldn’t agree more with your last  statement, the way of prevention and that’s exactly why we choose to do the work that we do and choose to have this podcast and guests like you on it who truly believe that prevention is the  intervention and prevention is actually the answer, and so again, Evert, we really appreciate you coming and being on this podcast and dedicating your time, I know you said that you’re not an activist but I would also call you one, you’re out here speaking out and sharing your mission and doing so to help others and again to move forward with this mission and vision of prevention and we so appreciate you being on our show today.

Evert: Well, thank you too for letting me speak out and giving me the opportunity to help others. Because that’s also part of my big wish in life is to help others and not harm them.

Candice: Thank you for listening to this week’s podcast. Please visit thepreventionproject.org to learn more about our project and programs. Please remember to subscribe to our podcast at

www.thepreventionpodcast.com or iTunes. See you next time!

The post TGPP Transcript: Evert appeared first on Pedophiles About Pedophilia.

Original audio.

Candice:

Welcome to the prevention podcast, I’m your host, Candice Christiansen. Our goal, at the prevention podcast, is to talk about dicey, controversial issues related to preventing sexual abuse. Why? Because it needs to be said. Topics include the biology of pedophilia, risk, need and responsivity principles related to non-contact and contact sex offenders, researchers in the field of sex offender treatment, and more.

Join us bi-weekly, and let’s talk about it.

Candice:

Hello everybody, I’m Candice, and I am the host of the Prevention Podcast. We are doing a series of interviews talking with different anti-contact pedophiles across the globe, and I’m really excited today to be talking to Dillon, who has agreed to be on our podcast, so welcome, Dillon.Dillon:

Thank you very much. Happy to be here.

Candice:

Yeah, I’m so happy you’re here. I just want to ask you some questions that I think are hot-ticket items, if you will, that I think our global community is always curious about. I know I am, and especially the research world. I think a lot of times we guess on what we think about people that have pedophilia, and so it’s really an honor to have you actually sitting here with me, especially since you’re an anti-contact pedophile. So I just want to acknowledge that.

Dillon:

Yeah, I think it’s important to acknowledge.

Candice:

What does the term “anti-contact pedophile” mean to you?

Dillon:

I think it’s pretty cut and dry, between pro- and anti-contact. I think anti-contact is just simply you acknowledge that you have these attractions to children, but you’re not willing to act on them, because you see the problems it can cause, and morally you know it’s wrong. And obviously, you know there’s legal repercussions as well. But I think, with an anti-contact pedophile, the morals are more what play into it.

Candice:

Okay. How long have you known you were attracted to children?

Dillon:

That’s an interesting question, because looking back on it, I think when I was like 11 or 12 I started to notice some kind of difference, where like I would be at school, and I would see different kids who I thought were attractive. But I didn’t recognize it as being an “attraction,” or anything sexual at the time. It was just my desire to reach out to them and be friends with them. But I think the first realization I really had of it when I was about 17 years old. I had been reading stories online, like erotic stories, that made it kind of obvious to me that I was attracted to children indeed. But I was in denial. So then, when I was 17, I remember seeing a kid and thinking “oh man, that kid’s really attractive.” And that’s when it really hit me really hard, and I was like, “oh no.”

Candice:

Wow, okay. So when you say, “oh, no,” what was the impact to you? Like, “oh, no,” because…

Dillon:

Well the thing I thought was, “I’m one of those people.” Who likes kids, like I have this urge and can I control that? I don’t know if I can. Being at that young age, I didn’t have complete faith in myself.

Candice:

And, how would you say your attraction to children has impacted your life?

Dillon:

So, I would say it’s definitely impacted my life. I’ve kind of tried to confront it, and I went into a pretty dark depression for a while. And that was something I hadn’t really experienced before. That’s one way it affected my life. It’s also caused me to second guess a lot of things. Like, if I’m ever going to do some volunteer work with kids, or something like that, sometimes it makes me question myself, which I think is a good thing. But it also makes me anxious about what other people might think, who I’ve told. So I really have to be honest with myself, and ask myself those hard questions. Like, am I going to volunteer with kids because I want to, or because there’s something else in my mind?

Candice:

And then how do you, when you’re asking yourself those questions, how do you keep yourself accountable? What kinds of support do you have in place so that you do stay safe?

Dillon:

Right, so, I have a lot of friends who I talk to pretty frequently, and a lot of friends who I really trust, and who I’m out to about this. And they’ll ask me how the volunteer work I do is going. I’m also going to a therapy group, with a bunch of people who are also attracted to minors, and they help keep me accountable as well, where basically every time I go there, it’s maybe not quite expected that I’ll talk about it, but you know it kind of is in some ways.

Candice:

So, being accountable, checking in, making sure that you’re being safe, so that if you are volunteering, that you are keeping yourself in check, and you’ve got the support and the therapy to do that.

Dillon:

Exactly.

Candice:

Because, the goal at the end of the day is to make sure children is safe, right? Safe from harm.

Dillon:

Absolutely.

Candice:

Yeah, okay, great. What do you want the world to know about pedophilia and/or minor attraction?

Dillon:

So, like you said at the beginning that people kind of assume or guess a lot of times about pedophilia, a lot of times I think they’ll assume that any pedophile is a bad pedophile, you know? That any pedophile is someone who molests children, or is constantly downloading child pornography or whatever, and has all this malicious intent. And I guess I just want the world to know that that’s not the case. There’s a lot of people out there who are attracted to children, but they realize that it’s morally wrong, you know, and that they don’t want to hurt a child like that. And I think there’s a lot of, for me it’s not all physical, the attraction. A lot of it is emotional. And I don’t think people know that either. I think that the desire to connect with a child doesn’t have to be sexual, you know? It can be very much emotional.

Candice:

So for you, what you find yourself drawn to sometimes is the emotional connection with a child, more so than even than the sexual.

Dillon:

Absolutely.

Candice:

Yeah, and I think that’s a great point to get out into the world. Because there is that assumption that pedophile equals child molester. And what we’re finding, at least in the research, is now that there are biological underpinnings that say, wow, it might actually be sexual orientation, over this sort of “oh, you know, I wake up and I choose to be attracted to children,” right?

Dillon:

Right.

Candice:

Okay. So we believe that aspects of pedophilia, and we’ve talked about this, can be a sexual orientation like we talked about. But we’ve also had many, many individuals say that they had something, a traumatic experience happen in their life where they had that arrested development. So for instance, something happened at 6, or something happened at 10, and so that also has impacted them, and they’ve found that in their attraction, and I’m just curious what your experience has been, if anything related to that.

Dillon:

Right, so I agree. It can be a sexual orientation. But I also think that it can be childhood trauma. And maybe it could even be both of them combined. But, in my experience, I don’t think it’s a sexual orientation at this point. I’ve thought that before, but going to therapy has sort of helped me to realize, because my mom died when I was 10 years old, and really looking back on that, I’ve seen that I repressed a lot of emotion at that age. And you know, in some ways, I grew up too fast because of it. And I feel like that has definitely affected who I am now, and the attractions I have. And I feel like part of it is because I went through that emotional trauma, that traumatic event in my life has led me to have that desire to connect with kids.

Candice:

So I think it’s really important that you said, you know, you felt like it was sexual orientation, and now what you’re realizing, and maybe it’s both, and I think we see that as well, so often that people have sexual orientation towards a child and they’ll also report having a traumatic incident occur in their life, where they did get stunted. Like you said, mom dies at 10, and then what I’m hearing is, “wow, I find myself attracted to that age.” And now that I’m going through that trauma, I’m going, “wait a minute, it’s changing.”

Dillon:

Right.

Candice:

Okay. And I thank that’s really important for people to know, especially listeners who are anti-contact pedophiles as well, or even pro-contact pedophiles, who might say, “huh, I’ve never thought about that. I also have had this experience happen, or something traumatic in my childhood to think about.”

Dillon:

Yeah. And it’s funny, because like, before, I was very much like, “nah, I think it’s an orientation, I don’t think it’s anything else.” And the reason I thought that way was because I was worried that if I said it wasn’t an orientation, that there would be some therapist who was like, “okay, then we can fix it then.” You know, I didn’t want to go that route, because I really don’t believe in that route.

Candice:

Yeah, okay. Like the reparative therapy, right?

Dillon:

Yeah. I didn’t want someone to treat me like I was broken.

Candice:

Okay, sure. Well, and my guess is, we live in a society that believes pedophilia, and pedophiles are the lowest of the low, right? And so it makes sense that you wouldn’t want to be judged by a therapist.

Dillon:

Right.

Candice:

And I think even therapists, I’m a therapist and the reason why I created the prevention project, for instance, and this podcast, is that even therapists can be judging. And so we get a lot of referrals who say, “We don’t want to treat this individual who has an attraction to a child.” And I say, we will, we’ll provide them with support. And my passion and my emphasis is not to change people who have pedophilia in the sense of “reparative therapy.” I do have a number one goal of keeping our society safe, keeping children safe, and I know that you, for instance, as an anti-contact pedophile, have the same goal.

Dillon: Definitely

Candice:

That you don’t want to harm anyone, especially children.

Dillon:

Yeah. And I’ve even had an experience with a therapist who was totally judgmental. I just had one therapist who basically, he had me in his office, and this was my first therapeutic experience. And he just kind of gave me a questionnaire, and just asked me all these different questions, and his result was that I was at a “moderate risk factor” to molest a child. And it really annoyed me, and I really felt judged. Like, is that all you see me as? As a risk factor? So I definitely had my own experience of a judgmental therapist.

Candice:

Well, I appreciate you saying that, because, I see you, I’m looking at you as we’re talking, and you’re a person, sitting in front of me. You’re someone’s son, you may even have a partner. You may even have siblings, you have a mom and a dad, right? You’re a human being, I’m looking at you, you’re not a monster. So I think often times, and this is another reason that we’re doing this podcast, therapists and researchers and scientists and so on, want to assume or judge or lump everyone in categories. People are labels, and they’re numbers, and they’re statistics. And that’s where I’m really passionate about looking at you as a person, and saying, I’m going to ask you the questions. I want to hear from you and I want the world to hear from you.

Dillon:

Absolutely. I really appreciate that.

Candice:

What else would you like to share on our podcast? Anything else that you feel like you want the world to know about anti-contact pedophilia?

Dillon:

I think maybe that like we said, people really see pedophile and child-molester as interchangeable words. And I feel like a lot of people, and I’ve read some comments online, where people just kind of assume, they’re just like, “oh, you’re a pedophile, you must be after children, you must be preying on children. You must have all these malicious intents.” And, I just want the world that you know that we’re on the same boat that they are. We’re trying to prevent it as well. And for that reason, we wouldn’t want to hurt a child. That’s why we’re anti-contact. But, honestly, everybody has their things about them that are just different, and they have to deal with.

Candice:

Sure. And that’s where, I would say,I think the sexual orientation comes in, where it’s like, “Okay, I’m born with this attraction,” right? Because I’m guessing, Dillon, that if you had a choice, that you would prefer to not have this attraction. Like, “I wish I could wake up and say, oh, it’s gone.” And here you have it, and so I think for folks who have been interviewing who have pedophilia, some will say that it feels like a prison sentence.

Dillon:

Right. Well, I mean, having it, I wouldn’t necessarily say that anymore. I mean, sure I’d like to wake up and not be sexually attracted to children, but that’s not going to happen. So I’ve come to this new thought process, new belief about it, where it’s like, this is what it is, and I’m going to do the best I possibly can with it. I’m going to find a way to make it helpful in society, you know? I’m going to make sure I lock down the sexual side of it, and get that out of my head as much as possible.

Candice:

And get the support that you need, and the therapeutic guidance, and like you said the peer support, and make sure you’ve got your accountability group to ensure that you are safe.

Dillon:

Exactly. And I’d say that again, I would like to wake up in the morning and not have the sexual side of it, but I would still want the emotional side of it.

Candice:

Yeah. Well, as human beings, we all are emotional, you know?

Dillon:

That’s true.

Candice: And I think we all can have that emotional connection with a child, and have it be a healthy one. So it’s good that you have the support and awareness around that, and the understanding around that, so you can stay safe and healthy.

Dillon:

Absolutely.

Candice: Well, thank you so much for your time today, Dillon, I really appreciate you coming on The Prevention Podcast.

Dillon:

No problem. I appreciate you guys doing it, and inviting me.

Candice:

You’re so welcome.

Candice:

Thank you for listening to this week’s podcast. Please visit http://theglobalpreventionproject.org/  to learn more about our project and programs. Please remember to subscribe to our podcast at https://thepreventionpodcast.com or iTunes. See you next time!

The post TGPP Transcript: Dillon appeared first on Pedophiles About Pedophilia.

Note: This transcript was written by Robert West.

Candice:

Welcome to the prevention podcast, I’m your host, Candice Christiansen. Our goal, at the prevention podcast, is to talk about dicey, controversial issues related to preventing sexual abuse. Why? Because it needs to be said. Topics include: the biology of pedophilia; risk, need and responsivity principles related to non-contact and contact sex offenders; researchers in the field of sex offender treatment; and more.

Join us bi-weekly, and let’s talk about it.

Welcome to the prevention podcast, I’m your host, Candice Christiansen. Today, Meg Martinez, my co-host, and I, we get to talk about who we’re not, and call out those who have shared a lot of misinformation globally about who we’re not. So let’s start with that. I am not a minor-attracted person. And for those of you that have actually taken the time to listen to our podcast, you know that. Meg is not a minor-attracted person either. Nor is anyone on our clinical team. We actually have a clinical team, a team of clinicians that treat all kinds of individuals, not just MAPs, here at The Prevention Project.

We’re not some group of rapists or child rapists or promoters of child rape. We are not that. We are educated. We have done our research. We have backgrounds in treatment with sex offenders. And we have a lot of contact with the global sex offender research and treatment community. We know what we’re talking about. And those individuals who are also sex offender providers and researchers, they too know what we’re talking about.

We are not pulling out terms such as “ephebophile” out of the air. We are not pulling terms such as “hebephile” out of the air. We’re not making those terms up. Those are actual terms used in the sex offender treatment and research community. Why do you think a prevention project would say that everyone deserves support? Because folks are coming forward, saying, “hey, I have this attraction, I want help in order to ensure that I don’t do anything with that attraction, that I remain safe in our communities.” Why would I not treat that person, as a survivor of horrific child sexual abuse?

And I will actually share some of the impact of my own trauma, and why I do this, in a little bit. But it makes no sense to me to say to someone, coming to me for help, to say no, you identify as a pedophile, kill yourself. How is that going to help keep our community safe? How is that going to help keep that person safe? That is not going to help anyone. So we need to get on board with prevention, because is the intervention. If we want to protect kids, this is how we do it.

Meg:

If you truly wanted to make a difference in the world, instead of creating hateful YouTube videos, writing misinformed articles, or posting heinous things on your social media accounts, you would get together with the people who do share the same values as you, which you might be surprised that we do, to actually create a plan for change. Our plan for change, and our plan for intervention, is prevention. And that is never going away.

Candice:

When we talk about people coming to us, sharing their fantasies, they don’t say, a description, or give a description, of a fantasy. So for those of you who think that we’re praising people for having fantasies of children, that is so grossly misinformed. Someone will use the word “fantasy,” “I am having fantasies about children that scare me.” No, they don’t go into detail. So, don’t try and twist our words. When someone comes to us and says, “help me, I want to stay safe, I don’t like having these fantasies,” key term here: “I don’t like having these fantasies.” We are going to help them be safe. So that’s the reality. That is the reality.

Do you know how offensive it is to have a YouTube channel claim that me, who is a survivor of being raped as an infant, molested multiple times by multiple people as a child, to the point where I can’t have kids, do you know how offensive it is to have you haters, Mainwaring from Lifesite, Jessica Jenkins from Daily Caller, and Josh Bernstein’s out there, claiming that I’m raping kids? Do you know how offensive that is? I am actually helping our communities stay safe. When we have individuals who say, “I have an attraction to a child” or “I have an attraction to a teen, and I don’t want to hurt anybody, I’m really depressed, my thoughts are stressing me out, living in a world where I’m experiencing so much hate is causing me so much inner turmoil, I need help,” why would I not help that person? As a survivor, it only makes sense. I am on a mission for prevention.

And by the way, our minor-attracted-person program is a fourth of what we do, maybe an eighth of what we do. We have just attained global attention for what we do. But we actually have a sex-offender program here, we have individuals coming from the community, who are not legally involved but have engaged in risky sexual behavior that we treat, that are not minor-attracted persons. We have a legally-involved group of individuals who have been convicted and convicted sex offenders who we treat. But no one’s talking about our other programs, right? We specialize in treating folks on the autism spectrum, who end up legally involved. Why? Because they do not understand the social cues of what’s going on around them, and believe what’s online is reality. They take it literally.

So we are advocates for prevention with individuals who are on the autism spectrum, and advocates for prevention for individuals who have traumatic brain injuries, Parkinson’s disease, and other brain injuries who end up in the legal system. We do so much more than treat MAPs. Now, we are not using the term “MAP” to rebrand pedophilia. We are not using the term “MAP” to soften the term “pedophilia.”

Take some time. Go to https://thepreventionproject.org. Look at what we actually do. Call us. Email me, for God sakes. Get the facts. If you get to know us, if you listen, we are advocates for prevention. And I will say this: There is such a thing as a non-offending, anti-contact pedophile. That is a man or a woman who has an attraction to children, who has committed their entire life to never harming a child. And they reach out to us for help, and support, and treatment, to ensure they stay safe, and to ensure our community says safe. And you know what? I am going to help those individuals, because they are advocates for prevention.

Meg:

Above all, our goal is: No more victims.

Candice:

We’re not trying to normalize pedophilia. In fact, if you talk to a lot of individuals who have attractions to children or minors, they’ll say the same thing. People know that this is not a normal thing. This is not normal. People who have pedophilia are not waking up excited to be pedophiles. This is not something that people are eager to have. That is their experience. But what we know is, and the sex offender research community knows this, we gotta do something. You know, this is a population who finally we’re able to do some research on. This is a population who finally we’re able to do some treatment with, because they are coming forward to say, “help!” In the past, because so many haters and trolls were out there saying, “kill yourself,” and there was such a threat, there was such a big stigma and fear, that pedophiles wouldn’t come forward to get help.

And so, to me what I thought was, why would I turn people away that are asking me for help? Like that makes no sense to me. If I help people, that say, “help me,” you know, “I’m having these concerning fantasies, I I need support, I’m depressed, I’m struggling,” it makes sense in our global community, as part of a prevention effort, it makes sense to help that population. If you want to find out, read the research. Educate yourselves. Some of the most educated people, when they have seen these slanderous articles about our program, it’ll take a minute and they’ll read our website, and then they have no question. There’s no question at all. They have respect for us providing preventive interventions.

You know what our tagline is? “Prevention is the intervention.” It’s prevention. Prevention is the intervention. You know, I got really sick and tired over the last 20 years of working with trauma survivors, in all kinds of settings, all kinds of settings, for sex offenders who were in treatment after there was a conviction. Af- the trauma survivors were coming after, after they had experienced trauma. You know how different my life would be, had I, the people who wanted to offend against me and who, how many other kids when I was growing up, do you know how different my life would be had they had a preventative treatment program to attend? To get help? To figure out what was going on and actually intervene before they harmed me?

My life would be different. Perhaps I would have my own kids. So it’s 2018. We get to focus on prevention. I will tell you uh, in the next, not even decade, five years. I give you five years. The global community. And I challenge everyone that is listening to my podcast, in the next five years, we will absolutely be a global community of prevention. Every single state, in the United States, every country, will have prevention projects. We are huge advocates of Stop It Now! They are all over. B4U-ACT, in Maryland. Don’t Offend India. We’re so grateful that they’re out there in the world. And, you know, Meg and I literally just finished an entire chapter, all about the prevention projects globally. That is the new norm. We are no longer going to sit back and wait till children are harmed. And you know what, folks? Take this or leave it. Anti-contact, yep, anti-contact, non-offending, that means never have offended, never in their life have offended, pedophiles. They actually are advocates for prevention too.

And now I want to spend the rest of the time thanking those of you who have taken the time, in over 62 countries, to listen to our podcast, to listen to the brave and courageous individuals, whether you are an anti-contact pedophile that came on, whether you are an individual who committed a sex offense, got treatment, and educated the global community on what you learned so that you could never do it again and to hopefully prevent any more abuse, whether you are a researcher, or an advocate for prevention or program for prevention, we want to thank you. Not just those who were interviewed, for having the courage, but those of you that took the time to listen.

This is a resource. We are here for you. We are not going anywhere. Please, if you need help, go to https://thepreventionproject.org, contact us today. Look at our different programs. We have four different programs. We do a lot for prevention. Private community members, those that are legally involved, those on the autism spectrum, those who have different brain diseases, those that have mental illness, who have ended up in the criminal justice system, we work with individuals that are considered “johns,” um, and I did not create that quote, like a johns program, that’s what I’m referring to, please, if you need help, we are here.

I also want to take time and thank those of you who are anti-contact non-offending pedophiles, who have been such a support on our Twitter page, who have reached out, who have defended us, you have been advocates for prevention, there are truly too many of you to name, and I don’t want to leave anyone out. You are being an advocate for prevention, and we thank you. You are being an advocate for helping us disseminate our accurate information to the world, so that we can dispel some of the trolls. We thank you. I want to say to those researchers out there who are experiencing trolls and haters: Keep doing the research.

By doing research, we can come up with accurate treatment interventions, for not just minor-attracted persons, but all kinds of individuals who are in and out of the criminal justice system who need help, who have risky sexual behaviors. So don’t give up your fight to get accurate information. And then lastly I want to say thank you to individuals who email us, who share that we are giving you hope, those men and women who say without our podcast, without our program, you would’ve been literally dead on the side of the road, thank you. So I’m going to read an email. I don’t know if the individual will be okay with me saying their name, so out of respect for that person, I’m not going to say their name. But I want to thank you for sending this to us. It says:

Dear The Prevention Project: Although I have never felt attraction to any minor, I’m writing to say a huge thank you for the work you’re doing. With such a huge stigma around the issue, it takes a lot of courage to stand up and offer support. I’ve thought for years that the witch hunt and persecution mentality towards pedophiles is completely non-productive and inspires even more shame and alienation. I see that the solution to this being the same solution as for everything else: Love, compassion, kindness, and support. And the fact that you exist reaffirms my faith in humanity.

And you know what? to that individual who emailed us, it is these emails and those supporters of us, on our social media sites, and the individuals that we’re able to help, every single day, to keep our community safe, that keep us going. So with that, we thank you for listening. Take care.

Thank you for listening to this week’s podcast. Please visit http://thepreventionproject.org to learn more about our project and programs. Please remember to subscribe to our podcast at https://thepreventionpodcast.com or iTunes. See you next time!

The post TGPP Transcript: Calling Out The Haters appeared first on Pedophiles About Pedophilia.

Season 1

1: Emma

Original audio.
Transcript.

2: Ender

Original audio.
Transcript.

3: Bruce

Original audio.
Transcript.

4: Dr. Allyson Walker

Original audio.
Transcript.

5: Dillon

Original audio.
Transcript.

6: Bertus

Original audio.
Transcript.

7: Todd Nickerson

Original audio.
Transcript.

8: Ayden

Original audio.
Transcript.

9: Beth

Original audio.
Transcript.

10: Jakob

Original audio.
Transcript.

11: Joseph: Bringing A Voice To The Voiceless

Original audio.
Transcript.

12: Jeremy Malcolm of Prostasia Foundation: Child Protection That Is “Outside The Box”

Original audio.
Transcript.

13: Married to a MAP: Bruce and Gina

Original audio.
Transcript.

14: Stop It Now! Jenny Coleman and Micah Waxman

Original audio.

Transcript.

15: Asexual MAP Robert

Original audio.

Transcript.

16: Jay, Ex-Sex Offender

Original audio.

17: Janavi Doshi From Don’t Offend India

Original audio.

Transcript.

18: Calling Out The Haters

Original audio.
Transcript.

19: Evert

Original audio.

Transcript.

20: Murray, Representing MAPness

Original audio.

Transcript.

Season 2

21: Journalist Luke Malone

Original audio.

Transcript.

22: Bly, Attractions are not Actions

Original audio.

Transcript.

23: NOMAP “Evert” on Suicide Prevention

Original audio.

24: Still a Mother’s Son: MAP “Elliot” and his mother “Claire”

Original audio.

Transcript.

25: Author Sheila van den Heuvel-Collins

Original audio.

Transcript.

26: Dr. Gillian Tenbergen

Original audio.

Transcript.

27: MAP Advocate Rusty

Original audio.

Transcript.

28: Elliott on Age Dysphoria

Original audio.

Transcript.

29: Shane Mongomery on Past Sexual Offending & Recovery

Original audio.

Transcript.

30: MAP Parner “Sara”

Original audio.

Transcript.

31: Argentenian MAP Advocate Gonzalo

Original audio.

Transcript.

Season 3

32: Season Kickoff: “Kira”

Original audio.

Transcript.

33: “Bly” on Autopedophilia, ABDL, Ageplay, and more

Original audio.

Transcript.

The post The Global Prevention Podcasts And Transcripts appeared first on Pedophiles About Pedophilia.

Original audio.

Welcome to The Prevention Podcast. I’m your host, Candice Christiansen. Our goal at The Prevention Podcast is to talk about dicey, controversial issues related to preventing sexual abuse. Why? Because it needs to be said. Topics include: the biology of pedophilia; risk, need, and responsivity principles related to non-contact and contact sex offenders; researchers in the field of sex-offender treatment; and more. Join us bi-weekly, and let’s talk about it.

Meg: Well hi everyone, welcome to The Prevention Podcast. This is Meg Martinez-Dettamanti, your host. In line with our theme of exploring non-offending, anti-contact, minor-attracted people, I am so excited for today’s podcast, because we have our first mixed-orientation couple, that we will be interviewing. If any of you have heard our first, very very first podcast with Bruce, we actually have Bruce back with us, with his wife Gina. Hey, guys!

Gina: Hi!

Meg: And welcome back, Bruce!

Bruce: Thank you.

Meg: Wonderful. We’re so excited to have you here. Your podcast got a lot of attention. And so I’m excited for listeners to hear this side of your story with your partner.

Bruce: Thank you.

Meg: So, I’m sure people are dying to know. I’m just gonna dive right in. I’m sure people are dying to know, how did you tell Gina about minor attraction? How did you you explain that to her?

Bruce: I told Gina about my attraction pretty early on in the relationship. There were quite a few years prior to me seeking help, uh, and even before I realized my attractions, struggling in relationships and struggling to fall in love, and struggling to have anything more than a platonic friendship with the people I was trying to date. As I mentioned in my other podcast, I’d become very depressed, very alone, and very, um, isolated, before realizing what was going on and seeking help.

So I had been seeking help through therapy and through other friends who are also minor attracted, coming out to a few of my close friends, uh, in the three months prior to meeting Gina, and when we’d started dating, and I started to realize that this was a unique relationship, that I was feeling things for her that I had never felt for other people I’d previously dated, and because I had gained a lot of support and courage from coming out to friends, I knew that it was important to come out to her as well. The hours preceding telling her, she could tell that something serious was on my mind, and that I was hesitating opening up to her about it. But eventually I cracked, and I basically told her that, uh, I was trying to figure out my sexuality, that I was trying to figure out what I felt, and what I didn’t feel, and that she was getting into a very complicated situation, and that I was attracted to young boys, at the age of 12–14.

And immediately after telling her that, I immediately, like, shut down, weathering further reaction, you know, whether she reject me completely, whether she would accept me, and, uh, she accepted me. She loved me. And I felt safe. And it was a great bonding experience. Um, for that night. The next morning, uh, it apparently had started to sink in for Gina. And she was starting to, to brainstorm all of the things about what this meant about our relationship, what it meant about her, what it meant about me, and everything we didn’t know about where things could go. And it was causing her a lot of anxiety, and a lot of stress, and she was reaching out to me to, to talk about, uh, those things. But her, her anxiety and her stress about the situation increasing, immediately started to make me run away, and withdraw.

Cause at first my attitude was, I can handle it: Reaching out to her, letting her know, now she can handle it. We’re all good. But as soon as she couldn’t handle it, I was like, no, I’m done. Uh, this won’t work, nice try, I’m gonna, I’m gonna pull out, and I left, and drove to my parents’ house, and was crying in the basement. And Gina, she was like, answer your phone, talk to me, we have to talk about this, you can’t run away like this. And I was like, this is too hard, like you were saying, there’s too many unknowns, you know, who knows if it’ll work or not, so I’m just gonna bail. And she, she said something that’s been powerful for me, my whole relationship, and that was: I’m not gonna let you make my decision for me, that to be in a relationship with each other was a two-person decision, and I couldn’t make that decision for her. And so I surrendered that decision to her, and went back to her place, and we talked about it, and we decided together that we were gonna try to make it work and see where things went together, and I couldn’t run away and kill the relationship for her. That had to be a mutual decision.

Meg: That is such a powerful story. And I’m dying to know your perspective on it, Gina. I think Bruce did a wonderful job like sharing kind of that timeline, but I know the listeners will want to hear, where was your head at?

Gina: Um, I was shocked. Nobody thinks that that is what their boyfriend is gonna tell them. And up until that point, Bruce had been like the near-perfect boyfriend. He did the dishes, he opened doors, he gave me rides, he texted me, how are you doing, like, he was like the golden boyfriend, it was too good to be true. And so when he told me, I was just like, like, of course, this is too good to be true. Of course he’s gonna have something wrong with him. Though when he first told me, he wasn’t, I could tell that he was really sad, and ashamed, and just really depressed, and felt terrible about himself. And so, the way that he told me, it wasn’t like he was this cocky jackass, it was like, yeah, I have this attraction, you have to deal with it. He was actually really really sad and depressed, and the only thing that I saw at that point was that this was someone that I cared about, and he was in pain.

And I just wanted to make sure that he felt loved and supported through this pain. And so that’s why, when he initially told me about it, um, I reacted the way I did. But then I went home and really thought about it, and I realized all these social implications, and legal implications of the situation, like, you know, even if, you know, let’s say he did offend, and then, like obviously, I would break up with him before, like, you know, there were warning signs, like that. If he was going down that path, I just wouldn’t stay with him at all. If I didn’t see improvement, I was, and I was very clear with him, when we talked about it later, like if I do not see improvement, if I don’t see that you’re doing better, I will leave you, and that will be my final decision. Like, I was very firm about that.

Um, so, after he told me, I went home and thought about it, and I thought about all these social and legal implications, and I realized that he’s in danger of victimizing other people, but he’s also in danger of becoming a victim of other people’s bigotry. Um, and that part made me really upset, because I’ve known Bruce for more than when we had just started dating. He’s been in my friend group for a long time. And I’d seen him interacting with people, interacting with kids, interacting with adults, like, for a year prior to us dating. And so I knew that he was a good person and that he was not a threat. But I didn’t, but other people didn’t know that he was a good person. And so it just made me, like, immediately worried about his safety. Cause I knew that he wasn’t going to do anything wrong. But I didn’t know if other people, if they found out about his secret, if they would just like go and do something insane like shoot him or murder him. I was really worried about his safety.

Meg: I love that you realized, it’s so beautiful, that you realized the difference between a MAP and an offender. Even in that situation that’s so close to home, right? So I have this idyllic relationship, and we’re in the early stages of that dating, right? When this bomb is dropped. And I mean, seriously, it’s a bomb that’s being dropped, right? This secret or this information, but I, I’m really impressed that your first instinct was, yes this is scary, but this is, this is a person, and not on offender. And yeah, it can have these, these worries over here, but the stronger worry is that my partner is treated like a human. And he needs that love, and he needs that acceptance, and he needs that guidance.

Gina: I think something that people need to know is that, like, you know, there are pedophiles that want to make contact legal. But there’s a lot of MAPs, I would say the vast majority of the ones I’ve met that are anti-contact, they want nothing to do with contact. They just don’t want, they they really want to protect people from their own inner struggles, and it’s just really sad to me, to see these like really good people that are struggling with a complex physiologic and behaviorial and moral thing, you know? It’s like, it’s like they’re trying to do something with their lives and be good people, but they have this problem that, you know, puts them at a threat to themselves and others. And it’s just sad to see a lot of people that need help not be able to access it.

Meg: As you were invited into this part of Bruce’s world, you, you met other MAPs. You guys began to communicate with this community that Bruce, you may or may not have been a part of. Share that with us as you sort-of started to assimilate into the world of, of MAPs, as a partner.

Bruce: One problem that we encountered is that, within the community of minor-attracted people, there’s not that many who do have heterosexual relationships, whether committed as a relationship or married. And so, we didn’t have very much to go off of what it would be like, and what it should be like. And so, we kind of had to figure it out for ourselves.

Gina: I’d agree with that. I’m suspicious. I suspect there are more people like us than, that people let on. Even if, you know, let’s say it’s not a mixed-orientation marriage, which I actually hate that terminology for this situation, cause his orientation isn’t set. It’s a flexible orientation. Um, but, there just aren’t a lot people that will even admit that their partner has problems, right? And not necessarily one of this magnitude. I know lots of people whose husbands have cheated on them, but like, that’s not something they’re going to air out in public and want to like talk about either.

And so, just finding people that were open and like aware of the problem was difficult. We did find one other couple that, where the husband was a MAP and the female, the wife, was straight. And so we started, we tried to message them, but it was like within minutes of messaging the wife, that I realized that she was not gonna be helpful. Like, I messaged her, and I said hey, you know, I’m just wondering how you feel about, you know, some of the trials that you guys have had regarding your husband’s MAP issues, and she said, oh, he’s such a sweet person, it’s, everything’s perfect, it’s gonna be fine. I read that text and I thought, if she thinks for a second that her relationship doesn’t have any problems, she’s in complete denial. Cause like, this is a huge issue, and it’s like not easy for me to deal with, and I think I’m a very open-minded person. Um, so, I think that, I feel like we’ve had to forge a path on our own.

Meg: I think that you’re absolutely right, in the fact that there’s probably more couples that have this going on within their relationship, whether the, the female or the male partner or both males, both females are minor attracted in any way, because there’s so much shame around disclosing it, right? Even to somebody that’s as close to you as a partner. So I think you’re really right as far as that’s concerned, and we’ve, you know, experienced people who have decided to come out decades into their marriage and share with their partner, and it’s hard. A lot of partners don’t know where to turn for support. In forging your own path, what did you do?

Gina: Well, I think the hardest part about the situation, aside from, you know, fearing for Bruce’s safety, was learning that it really wasn’t about me. When he first told me, another, like, the egotistical part of me was insulted, because, I was like, am I not feminine enough to attract, like, a normal straight guy? Like, this like sweet golden boyfriend who has this terrible situation. Like, it was just, I just, as a female, I felt like a failure, because I like couldn’t attract like a normal, quote unquote normal, straight guy?

And so, I had to get over that really quickly. Um, and I think like, the longer I’ve been in our relationship, the more I’ve come to realize that all of Bruce’s MAP issues have zero to do with me and my sexuality or my femininity. They are 100% related to his feelings of self worth. And it also just, um, his desire to be good. And it’s really hard to be mad at someone that tries so hard to be good that they mess themselves up.

Bruce: Um, I’ve also learned from, from our relationship, the longer we’ve dated and, uh, since getting married, that the MAP side of our relationship has become less and less of an issue, and normal couple squibbles and differences have become major, uh, things. It’s, it’s fascinating, like, where I when we first starting dating, I thought this was the worst bomb in the world, that it would destroy my life and I’d never get married because of it. And in our marriage, it’s almost a footnote, like, we’re a regular married couple with regular married couple issues.

Gina: We argue over dishes, we argue about who’s gonna vacuum. It’s like, the stupidest things are the biggest problems. (laughs) Not really the biggest problems, like, they’re just like normal people problems.

Meg: And do you guys think that has something to do with the fact that you came out early on in your relationship, and this was something that was known by Gina throughout, and isn’t something new that’s come up after like a decade of marriage and a few children?

Bruce: Yeah, I don’t think I ever could’ve lived a life keeping something like this a secret. Uh, personally I am just not a good liar. It’s very obvious what I’m thinking and feeling, and I couldn’t have kept it a secret even if I’d tried. And, and I do feel like the longer you keep something this, like, this caliber a secret, the harder it is to, to talk about it, to tell a spouse about it. But I feel like there’s millions and millions of couples out there with secrets that they keep from each other. So, someone who’s attracted to minors, coming out to their spouse, shouldn’t think that it’s any more unique than someone who’s cheated on their spouse, you know, coming out to their spouse that they’ve beein doing that. Like, it’s gonna hurt no matter what the issue is. Um, so, if, if you’re committed to the relationship and you’re committed to honesty, and you, you feel like they need to know, then I hope people have the courage to, to tell, to talk about it.

Gina: I would say that with a caveat, though, like, I, I meant it when I told Bruce that I would break up with him and leave him if he was not improving. I think if a MAP is serious about coming out, they also have to be serious about the road to recovery. If he had not, like, improved as much as he did over the year and a half that we dated, um, I would’ve just left him.

Meg: What is it, tell me and our listeners, what is it that you mean by improving?

Gina: So in terms of, well, it’s kind of hard to delve into this without delving into like the roots of Bruce’s MAP disorder. I don’t even know what to call it at this point, attractions? So his attractions stemmed from, like, feelings of self worth, like low self worth, self loathing, wanted to be obedient and good, um, and then directing, almost like anorexically depriving himself with any, like, sexual feelings, except for those that he experienced when he was an adolescent. And so, if I didn’t see any like personal growth or personal development, like gain some confidence, better methods of self soothing, like when I noticed that like Bruce would tend to, they call it edging, I noticed that he would edge and whenever he felt like really bad about himself, and like to me that’s just a very immature way of dealing with your feelings, right?

Like if I feel bad about myself, I’ll go on a walk, or I’ll call my friend, I won’t do like anything stupid on the Internet, right? And so if I didn’t see improvement in that sense of like him being able to better regulate his emotions and also deal with his feelings in a healthy way, I would’ve left him. And I think that’s true of any person, like you could substitute MAP for, you know, overplaying video games, or gambling, or drinking, you know? It’s, behavior that results from a deep-seated personal need to soothe, and it’s just, the behavior needs to be directed in a positive manner instead of a negative one.

Meg: So for our listeners, Gina is talking about that psychological component of our sexual orientation or our attraction, where at times we’ve seen individuals who have some sort of an arrested development, due to a trauma or an experience at a young age. And so, because of what Bruce was able to share with you about his belief around the origins of his attractions, you are really aware of the behaviors that were stemming from that minor attraction that were actually unhealthy, such as inappropriate things on the Internet. And so if you didn’t see improvement in how he chose to cope, then you were essentially seeing him succumb to behaviors that he, you knew were going to be inappropriate or unhealthy for him.

Gina: Yeah. And also inappropriate and unhealthy for me as well. What he does impacts our relationship, and that’s why I told him, like, I will leave you if you are doing anything that threatens my future.

Meg: I, I actually think that that’s really boundried of you, to be able to say that I’m willing to work with you and accept you and love you through this, but I do wanna be clear that I’m aware that your attraction could lead to behaviors that actually could impact my future. And I, just like you said earlier, I’m not going to let you take those decisions from me. And so I’m making this decision to stay with you and to be with you and to love you and to cultivate this relationships, and I’m committed to that, and I’m also committed to non-offending, just like you say you are, an anti-contact just like you say that you are, which is beautiful.

So with that being said, outside of the boundaries that were really firmly created around how Bruce was going to regulate his emotions and the awareness of his attractions and the potential behaviors that could result from them, what were some of the boundaries and ways that you guys explored healthy and positive sexuality within your relationship?

Bruce: So this is where, uh, our religious upbringing and perspectives play a major part. We’re both raised very religious, where we don’t believe in sexual relationships before marriage. So anything that we discovered together, uh, was kind of limited in that regard, and, um, because we were so open and honest with each other about the minor-attracted issues, we were able to talk about sex and talk about what we wanted it to be like, in terms of frequencies, and um, what it meant and what turned us on, what turned us off, and we, I felt like we gained a lot of education around sexuality from taking courses and listening to speakers talk about it, to that, to the point that, I felt like we were very prepared, uh, to be married, uh, just from the education that we took, and we were able to, to do very intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually before we ever tried to implement anything physically.

Um, regarding our physical intimacy, I had a lot of barriers that I had to get over. There was times in the first few months of our dating relationships, that I did not want to kiss her, because I didn’t know, um, what it meant, and what the feelings that it created meant, um, and we had to talk about it. We had to learn about it to the point that we became comfortable kissing, and it was kind of a roller coaster. At times we would kiss, at times we wouldn’t. And figuring out what everything meant, and it got to the point that by the time we were married, I wasn’t scared of being intimate, um, we were able to have a very healthy sexual relationship since then, um, very committed to each other, very turned on by each other, um, but it felt like we had to do our homework to get to that point, and I’m glad that we did get to do that homework.

Gina: Um, I was just gonna say, I think our relationship is like, it’s like kind of what every, um, person that would like to promote, like, a consent-based culture should really endordorse. Like, for me, like, sex is really important. Like, I’m not a prude person, even though I was a virgin when we got married, but like, I’m just not afraid, I wasn’t afraid to talk about it. And so I think Bruce lucked out in a sense that he got a partner that was like really open about talking about sex and sexuality and like what everything means, and I feel like every couple, even if it’s a heterosexual couple or a homosexual couple, should have these really in-depth conversations about what all of that stuff means to them.

And I’ve just seen, you know, a lot of, most of my friends are in straight marriages, so the only examples I can think of are from their marriages, but, um, once you add sex into the mix, it’s just, even if you’re dating or married, or even if it’s just a hookup, it just makes everything complicated. And so, being able to talk about it openly, I think set the foundation for us to have a really healthy sexual relationship once we were married.

Meg: I actually think it’s amazing that you guys basically did the same thing that we would encourage any couple to do, right? Is talk to each other about how you’re feeling, talk to each other about what your sexuality means to you and what your boundaries are or what your desires are, and nothing really sounds like it was done specifically or separately because of the minor attraction. So is there anything that you think a non-exclusive MAP would need to know, or any advice that you would give to a non-exclusive MAP that is seeking a romantic relationship with a same-age peer, anything that you would say that may be different from what you just said, that actually is great advice for any couple?

Bruce: I would definitely say that you have to believe and trust that sexuality is fluid. There wouldn’t be so many sexual diversions in the world unless those diversions were created by people trying to solve some trauma that they experienced, trying to fill a void that they didn’t get from their mom and their daddy issues, there’s like so many different ways that sexuality can become weird and corrupted. And I feel like my minor attractions, who knows how much of that is biological? But I know that a lot of it was, just me being a kid, trying to figure out my emotions. And so, if my attractions could be deviated to the point of where they ended up, I had to believe that they could change and improve just as much as they, uh, degraded, and I can say that I truly am sexually attracted to my wife, Gina, and I’m very happy with how my sexual attractions have evolved.

It’s not completely cured, and I’m not sexually attracted to adult women in general, but then I’m happy only being attracted to one adult woman. (laughs) And, and I look forward to my minor attractions becoming less and less of a distraction, and less and less of an issue, to the point that it’s, it’s not an issue any more. So just to recap for people like me, who are wondering whether they should explore heterosexual relationships or adult relationships, um, if you believe that your sexuality can change, and if you’ve invested work and effort to that recovery, you’ll see yourself change, and you’ll, you’ll gain that hope that it can work.

Gina: I would just say, just go get help. Go to the people that have expertise in the field. Cause like, your average therapist probably is not going to be able to help you. That’s just the bottom line. Like, most, most people are aware of this, but they will just label, unfortunately, they’ll just label MAPs as monsters, and that’s not the truth. I think, I think that’s just unfortunate. But I would really encourage them to get help. I think I have better advice for the partners of MAPs, um, I think the best advice I could give, and this is only speaking from my experience, but it’s just to realize that it’s really not about you.

It’s not you. Like it’s definitely not you, (laughs) you have not done anything to your partner expect be there for them. And the best thing you can do is just, try to understand the situation, um, for what it is, and also be engaged in, the, your partner’s recovery, um, because I’ve learned that as Bruce improved, that our relationship is actually a really important part of him feeling supported and loved and, um, I was happy to give that support, and love, and so it just ended up working itself out.

Meg: Absolutely. I, I do just want to say for our listeners, that the way that Bruce and Gina are speaking is in no way encouraging any sort of, like, conversion therapy or conversion of, of an attraction or an orientation. It’s purely just a minor-attracted individual who wanted to be in a relationship with a peer. And I think many minor-attracted individuals can, can say, I wish I could be in a relationship with someone my age, I wish I could have that romantic relationship with, with an, with another adult, and this is an example where you guys have made that happen in a way that’s been really open and really healthy. I know you’re not looking for a cure, Bruce, but I know that in this process of exploring your sexuality and your relationship with Gina, you have noticed that the psychological burdens and the symptoms, for lack of a better word, that come from being minor attracted have decreased.

And with that being said I want to just very clearly say to our listeners that if this is something you’re interested in, this is the podcast for you. This isn’t about not accepting a MAP for who they are or not accepting an exclusive MAP that has that attraction, we do just find often that people are interested in what would it be like to have that healthy relationship with another adult. And because of that, we are actually at The Prevention Project starting a support group for partners of MAPs, whether it’s boyfriends, girlfriends, wives, husbands, who do need that support in continuing to support their MAP partner. And so I love that you’ve been on today, Gina, to really address the partners and to share your perspective and your experience. And then as always, Bruce, we’re so excited to have you back and continue to catch up and follow up with your story as well. I so appreciate you both being on our show today.

Bruce: Thank you.

Gina: Thank you.

Meg: Until next time, thank you for listening to The Prevention Podcast.

Thank you for listening to this week’s podcast. Please visit http://thepreventionproject.org to learn more about our project and programs. Please remember to subscribe to our podcast at https://thepreventionpodcast.com or iTunes. See you next time!

The post TGPP Transcript: Married To A MAP: Bruce And Gina appeared first on Pedophiles About Pedophilia.

Original audio.

Welcome to The Prevention Podcast. I’m your host, Candice Christiansen. Our goal at The Prevention Podcast is to talk about dicey, controversial issues related to preventing sexual abuse. Why? Because it needs to be said. Topics include: the biology of pedophilia; risk, need, and responsivity principles relating to non-contact and contact sex offenders; researchers in the field of sex-offender treatment; and more. Join us bi-weekly, and let’s talk about it.

Meg: Welcome everyone to The Prevention Podcast. This is Meg Martinez-Dettamanti, and I am here with one of our fellow listeners, Robert. Hi Robert!

Robert: Hello!

Meg: Hi. Robert actually reached out to us after listening to several of our podcast interviews and wanted to share his story about what it’s like to be an asexual pedophile. Now, we’ve talked in the past about anti-contact pedophiles and non-offending pedophiles, and I think a lot of people don’t feel like those words exist together. This podcast’s main goal is to work on the stigmatization that people that are minor-attracted face every day. And so, I think that talking to somebody who identifies as an asexual pedophile, you know, fits right in and is something that I think a lot of our viewers and listeners will be interested in, as many people don’t realize that this exists. So Robert, why don’t you share your story about what it’s like to be an asexual pedophile, and how you knew that this was your sexuality.

Robert: Okay, so when I was in my mid teens, I started to realize that my attractions weren’t growing up with me, and I was in denial about it for a little while. But then I came to accept that my primary, almost exclusive, attraction is to young girls, uh, ten and under. It took me quite some time to realize that my attractions, at least to real people, weren’t actually all that sexual. I went with a family in another country to an outdoor bath, along with their seven-year-old daughter, and I was already attracted to this girl. But when we went out into the outdoor bath naked, I realized that I didn’t have any sort of reaction at all to her, uh, in that situation. And looking back at a few relationships I’ve had with adults that didn’t actually get sexual, I realized that I don’t have sexual attraction to anyone.

Meg: So that’s interesting. So first you described feeling like a pedophile, feeling like “I have a minor attraction.” So a lot of our previous guests and people that we work with at The Prevention Project will say, I just knew at a really young age that I was attracted to other kids, and as I grew up, I continued to stay attracted to the same kids I was always attracted to. And so, that’s something I think a lot of people can relate to. Robert, describe what asexual means to you, and then talk to us a little bit more about how you started to realize “whoa, well, I have this attraction, but it’s not sexual in nature at all.”

Robert: So, asexuality is the lack of sexual attraction to other people. And, uh, it took me a while to realize that my attraction was strongly aesthetic and potentially romantic, but not actually sexual. I feel sexual attraction to fictional characters, mostly, but not to actual people.

Meg: What is that like for you? Tell us more about how that plays out in your sexuality or in your world, whatever you’re comfortable with.

Robert: Okay. Well, I still experience strong attractions; they’re just not actually sexual. And it helped me a lot to learn about different kinds of attraction, like romantic and aesthetic attraction, and emotional attraction.

Meg: So, so what I’m hearing, is you’re saying “I find, you know, young girls attractive physically, and I perhaps have fantasized more romanticly about them, not necessarily sexually.” Where the sexual attraction comes is mostly with fictional characters, and that remains in fantasy for you?

Robert: That’s correct.

Meg: A lot of minor-attracted persons that we work with and that we are exposed to discuss a lot about how fantasy is a huge part of their sexuality. And so, I think that this makes a lot of sense. And for a lot of people out there, fantasy plays a huge role, um, in a way that actually helps them to have a sex life, especially people who feel exclusively attracted to children. Or, in your case, not attracted to people at all. When you are attracted to children in the real world, or attracted to real people that are children, how does that manifest, Robert? Is it more of an appreciation, do you have relationships with children that are non-sexual, such as volunteering with them, are you a parent?

Robert: So, I’ve had friends and relatives who were children. Um, I’ve done some volunteer work looking after children, and um, I seem to kind of naturally get along with most children pretty easily.

Meg: And again, I think that this is a common thing among minor-attracted individuals. When we talk about minor attraction, we talk about it on a bio-psycho-social plane, where there’s obvious biological underpinnings for some people, there’s psychological issues, or arrested development, traumas, things like that, that can play into an attraction or somebody’s expressed sexuality. But there’s also this social component, and I have worked with a lot of individuals who say that. They say they feel more comfortable, more safe with children, they connect more to children. So they prefer to be around children. Um, I wonder if that’s what you were trying to say is, is there’s just more of a connection there, and it’s actually not sexual at all, even though you would call yourself a pedophile.

Robert: Yeah, that’s correct, I would agree with that. There are certain adults I get along with really well, but on the average, sometimes I have trouble, at least at first, socializing with adults, and it’s a lot easier with children.

Meg: Would you say that most of your relationships are with kids? Or do you have some ongoing adult relationships as well?

Robert: Um, I have, uh, actually I have more adult friends than, um, child friends at the moment. Though several of my friends who are adults I’ve known since they were children.

Meg: Have you ever had a romantic relationship with an adult?

Robert: Um, yes. I had two somewhat long-term relationships with adult women. You know, got as far as kissing. But uh, that’s about it.

Meg: Tell me about how those felt for you, and when you realized that, you know, “maybe I want to keep this as more of a friendship and not pursue it romantically.” As you were discovering your asexuality.

Robert: So, asexuals can have romantic relationships. But uh, one of them kind of seemed to be going pretty well to me, when she broke it off, and the other one was long distance, and uh, she wasn’t sexually active at all. That one just kind of fizzled out after a few years.

Meg: Thank you for that clarification, Robert, because I think that a lot of people might assume that folks that are asexual, and let me remind everyone that this is not necessarily by choice, can also still have those really close, connected, intimate and romantic relationships. I think that it’s a great reminder. Although if you are in a relationship with somebody who wants to be sexual, I feel like there’s obvious reasons why that may not work out. And so, I really appreciate that clarification. Is a romantic relationship something you’re looking for?

Robert: Not really any more. I thought it was something that I wanted in my life, but I’m realizing I’m fine without it, and maybe it’s not even actually something I want. But I’m still thinking that over. But I also wanted to say, among asexuals, there are those who identify as romantic asexuals, and aromantic asexuals. There’s that too.

Meg: Wow, that’s really interesting. I think that’s a population that a lot of people don’t much about. And when you couple it with the minor attraction too, definitely a voiceless population, I’m sure. So as you’re navigating that, I mean, it seems like it’s a lot, because first you’re determining, “do I want to have a romantic relationship at all? And if I do, then it’s going to be with an adult.” Do you believe you can have a romantic relationship with a child?

Robert: I think it might be possible to have a “romantic” relationship with a child, but I don’t think it would be a positive thing for the child in the long run, so it’s not the kind of thing I would want to pursue.

Meg: Good clarification, cause I would agree. I think that we do get hung up on, is there sexual interaction going on, when you do have to realize the emotional damage or harm that could be done if a child engages in a romantic relationship with an adult. I know many people might not agree with me, but I do think you’re putting that child in a role that they’re not necessarily ready or equipped for. And so I agree with you in that.

Robert: Exactly.

Meg: Robert, do you want to talk about your age at all? And about when did you realize the asexual part?

Robert: I can give you a range. I’m 45–50 years old. So I’ve known for over 30 years that I’m a pedophile. That was only about ten years ago that I started to realize that.

Meg: So you, you told me initially when we were chatting before the show, that you have an adopted son. Can you tell us about how you came to decide to be a parent, and your relationship with your child?

Robert: So I met him when he was eleven, and uh, I was definitely attracted to him. Uh, I knew his sister, his older sister, who was closer to my age, and uh, basically started hanging out initially and because nobody else was really raising him, he was shuffling between two alcoholic parents who were neglecting him at best. And before I knew it, he was coming to me for emotional suppport, and sometimes food and shelter and whatnot. So I didn’t set out to raise him, but looking back on it, we realized that I was the person he would most call a parent, or someone who had raised him. So later, when he was an adult, in his mid 20s, I legally adopted him.

Meg: That’s beautiful that you were able to be there for him. I wonder if, through your awareness of being attracted to him, you know, emotionally, and maybe aesthetically, you didn’t mention that, but being attracted to him, if you also felt like a parent to him.

Robert: Um, I didn’t think about it that much at the time. I was just, you know, I want to be around this person, and I want to be, want to be there for him in whatever capacity he needs. But looking back on it later, it does seem like I was thinking of things in a parental kind of way.

Meg: So just to clarify further, it didn’t feel like you were trying to be romantically involved or date this person. You were just showing up for him, the way you would show up for any other child, and it turned out that you were a father figure for him. It turned out that you were able to show up in that way that he needed, and develop this relationship over time.

Robert: I think when, the first few times we hung out, I may have been thinking at the time, oh, this would be cool to, you know, date a person like this. But of course, that wasn’t uh, that wasn’t to be.

Meg: Do you mind sharing how old you were when you met him? You said he was eleven.

Robert: I was in my mid 20s.

Meg: And you knew his, was his sister your age?

Robert: Uh, close to my age, a little younger.

Meg: So an adult?

Robert: Yeah.

Meg: So you were friends with his adult sister, and he just kind of hung around, and there was that connection there?

Robert: I didn’t really hang around with the adult sister at the same time very much.

Meg: You guys were introduced through her though?

Robert: Yes.

Meg: And then he ended up, I’m just clarifying, he ended up just coming to you for that support.

Robert: Yes.

Meg: I know that some of our listeners might say, that sounds really interesting. Like it starts out where you’re kind of feeling that you’re in a relationship with this person, but because of your belief that children can’t be in romantic relationships, it sounds like you decided to step in as a father figure, as a, you know, care giver role, instead of continue to pursue something that may look more romantic. And it ended up being so that, as an adult, that boy, wanted you to be his father, wanted you to legally adopt him.

Robert: Yeah, I would agree with that.

Meg: What’s your relationship like with him now?

Robert: He’s married, and we live in the same city, and we see each other pretty often. We just had dinner for Father’s Day last night.

Meg: That’s awesome. I was gonna ask how your Father’s Day was.

Robert: It was quite good. My son and daugher in law both cooked for me. They often do something for Mother’s Day too.

Meg: That’s really beautiful. You were, you were his all-around caregiver. Do they know about aspects of your asexuality, and your minor attraction?

Robert: Yes, they do. I think he kind of always knew on some level, and in the last few years we’ve actually spoken about it openly. I think he may have said something that kind of hinted at something, but his wife figured out on her own that uh, that I’m a pedophile also.

Meg: Did they come to you then and ask about it, or is it something you felt ready to share with them, when they became adults, or at least when he became an adult?

Robert: Um, I felt ready to share with them, in the last few years. Uh, some time after he became an adult. And they’re uh, and they’re both supportive.

Meg: Yeah, you said that he knew on some level. Um, did he ever talk about how that felt as a kid to perhaps wonder if the person that was caring for him was attracted to him?

Robert: No, we haven’t really talked about that.

Meg: And is he aware of your asexuality?

Robert: Yes.

Meg: How was that conversation?

Robert: I came out pretty publicly as asexual, haven’t really talked about it that much with him, but uh, he was understanding.

Meg: So are you, are you publicly out as an asexual person, not necessarily as an asexual pedophile though?

Robert: That’s correct.

Meg: So what was it like to come out as asexual, and what what do you define as public? Is it online? Is it just to your community?

Robert: It’s to people in person, and online. Most people have been very supportive. Uh, some people had questions, or confused asexuality with celebacy, which is a related thing but uh, celebacy is a choice, and asexuality is an orientation.

Meg: I can see how people would have a lot of questions about that. I can see how our listeners might wonder about it as well, as we’re just discovering all the nuances. And I think that adding this possibility to the mix is going to be quite interesting to folks. And so, you’re saying that “I have no choice to be a pedophile, and I also have no choice to be asexual, and kind of how I manifest it is through, just, focusing on my relationships, and there is some fantasy,” is that right?

Robert: That’s correct.

Meg: Right? But mostly there’s a focus on your relationships with people, and an awareness. It sounds like a really in-depth awareness of your relationships and what they mean and how you’re showing up in them.

Robert: Right, I have been aware for quite some time, and I’m pretty used to the ideas.

Meg: So, I, from, from where you’re sitting, I think it would be interesting for you to share, not every listener we have that’s minor-attracted may be able to relate with being asexual, but I do know that a lot of our listeners that are minor-attracted may also be interested in being parents as well. What advice do you have for them?

Robert: I would say parenting is, you know, basically about giving and supporting another life. And if you focus on what’s best for your child, then uh, things should work out. If you have, uh, your own biological children, there’s also the Westermarck Effect, which helps because, uh, generally you’re not attracted to your own children, though that’s not always the case.

Meg: Yeah, that, that seems like a whole other topic for a whole other show. But you’re saying that, advice for minor-attracted individuals that may want to become parents, first there’s that biological mechanism, for lack of a better word, that may be in place, where you may be attracted to other children, but not your own. And I’ve certainly seen that before in clients that I have that are both minor-attracted individuals and parents. Adoption, you’re saying, is looking at parenting as a way that you give and support another person, and there’s not this reciprocal relationship taking place like it would be with a romantic relationship, or even a platonic relationship.

Robert: That’s right. I mean, what you get back isn’t like a normal reciprocal relationship. You get satisfaction and a good feeling from giving life and support to someone else, but it’s not like you’re giving it, expecting to get back anything equal in return.

Meg: Right, I think that’s a really good awareness to have. Because there, there can be this perception even if you are a minor-attracted person who is anti-contact or non-offending, that you’re going to get this reciprocal relationship with the kids that you surround yourself with, whether, like you described, “I was hanging out with this kid, and I had this idea of, this would be interesting or fun to date someone like this,” but then there was this immediate, “no, this isn’t possible, this isn’t healthy for him, this isn’t a good thing for this child,” and so, assuming that other role, I think that that’s a very good clarification, and actually good advice for any parent.

Robert: Right, I would, I would agree with that.

Meg: Sometimes individuals have reached out to us and said, are you ever going to interview pro-contact individuals, are you ever going to interview somebody that doesn’t necessarily ascribe to being anti-contact and non-offending, and at this time we’re just not interested in that, because on top of, you know, challenging the stigmatization that occurs with minor-attracted individuals, our, our main goal at The Prevention Project is to prevent harm, is to prevent the abuse of children, emotionally, sexually, physically, and in anyway you can think of. And so, that is why we’ve primarily chosen to interview folks that are anti-contact and choose to be non-offending. Even though they don’t choose to have their minor attraction. And so, tell me what that means to you.

Robert: Well, anti-contact to me, means: I don’t have sexual contact with children, I don’t pursue “romantic” relations with them, I don’t act creepy around them, and I don’t view child abuse materials, or as some people would call it, child pornography. When I’ve said “anti-contact pedophile” on Twitter before, arguing with people who disagree with me on Twitter, they often try to pick that apart and say well, sure, maybe you don’t have sexual contact with children, but they assume that I try to be romantic or creepy with them, or that I view child porn, and no, I don’t do any of those things. I don’t think that’s part of being an anti-contact pedophile.

Meg: Right, and, and I think that that’s a really good clarification. We work with a lot of people who believe that as well. They don’t believe in the consumption of child pornography or even some of the legal forms of pornography that include drawings or cartoons. And so, I do think that’s a bit of a different conversation, and there’s a lot of viewpoints there, but I do agree with you, that anti-contact, non-offending, includes child pornography, includes trying to have romantic relationships. Because as we’ve discussed, that could definitely be harmful for the child. Robert, I so appreciate you reaching out to us and being on our show and sharing with our listeners your perspective and your story and introducing us to the term “asexual pedophile.” I think it’s been a really wonderful show. I think that you’ll have a lot of listeners out there that will identify with you, and that’s a goal of this podcast as well, is to help people relate and to feel connected, and to feel like they’re being heard. So again, I appreciate you being on our show.

Robert: Thanks for talking with me.

Meg: And, to all you listeners out there, thank you for listening. This has been another awesome podcast on The Prevention Podcast, and we will see you in two weeks.

Thank you for listening to this week’s podcast. Please visit http://thepreventionproject.org to learn more about our project and programs. Please remember to subscribe to our podcast at https://thepreventionpodcast.com or iTunes. See you next time!

The post TGPP Transcript: Asexual MAP, Robert appeared first on Pedophiles About Pedophilia.

Original audio.

Welcome to The Prevention Podcast. I’m your host, Candice Christiansen. Our goal at The Prevention Podcast is to talk about dicey, controversial issues related to preventing sexual abuse. Why? Because it needs to be said. Topics include: the biology of pedophilia; risk, need, and responsivity principles relating to non-contact and contact sex-offenders; researchers in the field of sex-offender treatment; and more. Join us bi-weekly, and let’s talk about it.

Meg:

Well hello, everyone, and welcome to The Prevention Podcast! This is Meg Martinez-Dettamanti, co-host with Candice Christiansen, who is not here today, and I am interviewing Joseph. Hi, Joseph!

Joseph:

Hi, how’s it going?

Meg:

Good, how are you today?

Joseph:

Doing very well, thank you.

Meg:

Lovely. Joseph, we’re so excited to have you on. So, we met each other via our Twitter page, because Joseph is a journalist filmmaker turned MAPs ally, who’s creating an amazing documentary that we’re going to talk about today. But first, Joseph, kind of share with our listeners who you are, and your story on how you came to be a MAPs ally.

Joseph:

So I guess I’d start off by saying I’m a UK-based filmmaker, kind of doing my research on what my next story can be. So I came across Todd Nickerson’s Barcroft interview and was fascinated by some of the personal stories that gave. And from that, I did a couple… a bit more research on looking at different types of organizations, like VirPed, coming onto the more charitable organizations that deal with prevention projects, and I felt like this was a different angle, a different perspective, from the mainstream narrative that we hear, that, you know, pedophile equals monster, pedophile equals the worst possible thing in humanity. And what I saw was the opposite. I saw individuals who have been misunderstood. I see individuals that are looking for help. And I also see that if help is available, it’s few and far between. Maybe it’s the Dunkelfeld Project in Germany, maybe it’s the Stop It Now! helpline in the UK, maybe it’s you guys in Utah, but apart from a couple of hot spots, there’s not much out there.

And over the past nine months, still continuing doing the research, getting more in-depth information, coming across the Lucy Faithfull Foundation here in the UK, it’s one of the things where, when talking to people, talking to, you know, people on Twitter, talking to people on the forums, on Discord or whatever, is trying to connect people who are seeking help and people who are able to offer that help. And sometimes it’s not easy for everyone. But the key thing that always comes up is destigmatization, on both ends. So you need people who need to feel comfortable to come forward, to seek help, and then you need people to feel comfortable to give help.

And my goal, ultimately, is to show the human aspect to this issue, to show my audience the common human traits that arise when dealing with this issue. Because the common threads of, kind of, people suffering isolation, suffering fear, suffering depression, but yet showing a great amount of bravery is something that anyone can relate to. And I think, for this community, when we show those aspects, I think that’s when we are at our strongest in promoting what I do envision, as a future where we can talk openly about these issues. Because that’s the best way we can solve them.

Meg:

I absolutely agree, and I really love everything that you said. It is really easy for us to think about a pedophile as a “creepy man next door,” you know, who drives a van with no windows, or whatever other stereotype that you can come up with. And so, I think it’s awesome though, that you’re pointing out what we actually all have in common, rather than the one or two things that we have that we don’t necessarily understand or can relate to. As you were saying, most people don’t relate to finding a child sexually attractive. They don’t get it. They think it’s disgusting. But people can relate to fear of judgement, fear of being themselves, fear of self expression, a desire to fit in, having depressive fealings of fealing isolated. And so I think it’s a beautiful endeavor for you to try to connect with people on that plane of what they can relate to.

Joseph:

Yeah, I mean, absolutely. That’s the goal that the team and I are doing our best to achieve, and we understand that, uh, this is a delicate topic. We come from a perspective where… a very much privileged background, in that we’ve never had to face with the issues that come with, you know, child sexual exploitation. Um, this is very much something that we’ve come across by the by, and I think a lot of people do. I think what kept us looking and talking to people, reading people’s stories, that’s what kept us staying. And I really do feel like capturing this in a film, you really force someone to sit down and kind of listen to a new perspective, really can change hearts and minds.

Meg:

So Joseph, you mentioned that you’ve always been a journalist and a filmmaker out of the UK, and you said briefly, “I was just looking for my next project.” And so, how were you exposed to, let’s say, this issue, this population, this project? And what specifically about it made you decide, hey, this is my next project?

Joseph:

Um, I reckon it just comes down to, you know, you’re always looking for something new, you’re always looking for something different, and I felt like there are bits and bobs of things about non-offending pedophiles and about that community, but nothing to the extent where, you know, you truly connect to the characters. It’s more of a kind of, it’d be like a similar experience to like a freak show. I mean, kind of like you’re pointing at something at the circus, it’s just a bit strange. It doesn’t fit in the narrative. And I don’t think these films kind of explore that human element, that human commonality that we all share. And so that’s why I’m, the team and I especially, we want to get this right. We don’t want to do a batch job and mess it all up. It’s why we’re taking the time to talk to people consciously on a daily basis. It’s why we’re taking time to do our research. It’s why, you know, I was recently in Paris, I’ve recently been in Nottingham, going to different types of prevention conferences to really understand the challenges that, you know, people that are providing support and people who are trying to receive support face. So that we can give an accurate story and really represent these people. Down to me personally, five, if it’s taken me nine months to be able to sympathize and connect with these people, you know, if I’m able to put that in a 90-minute film, I feel like we can really make a difference.

Meg:

I do too. Again, I really love that you’re showing this human side of it. Instead of saying, oh, has anyone heard of a non-offending pedophile, and let’s point our fingers, and this is odd, and this is weird. I think that it’s awesome that you’re showing, again, what other people can relate to. Because I truly do agree with you that those are the things that are going to help people understand more, possibly change some minds about stigmatization, and stereotypes that they have in their own heads. I have a question that came up when you were talking about, not only visiting people that are non-offending pedophiles or MAPs, but also the people that are treating them. And one of the things that comes up sometimes when we’re in conversation is the focus on prevention vs. wellness, and how that can be integrated. And I think where you’re coming from, this more human, empathetic space, have you been focusing more on the wellness of MAPs, or is prevention still a huge part of the film you’re making?

Joseph:

I think both those elements are crucially important. I mean, you can have as much prevention as you want, but if people aren’t being treated with dignity and respect, how good is that prevention really? Like, those two things need to be together in unison. While you were asking me the question, I was kind of having flashbacks of when I attending the Nottingham prevention conference. One of the key talks was about the use of language and how important that can be in creating an open space for people when receiving prevention treatments or prevention support in any way or form that may be, and just as that supported their mission in their prevention strategies, it’s equally important in our journalistic filmmaking perspective. Because, you know, we’ve got the luxury of being an independent production, where we can do whatever we want, to the benefit of our contributors. Uh, you know, this isn’t something that can be a batch job where we’re going to have studio executives down our throat, saying do XYZ, you know, make this person into a monster because that’s simply not why we want to do this. There’s no point, I might as well end now.

Meg:

Right, I love that idea of being considerate of language that you’re bringing up, because I do notice, you know, both MAPs and treatment providers, have kind of um, running dialog about the use of the term “prevention,” and if we’re talking prevention, are we demonizing MAPs? And assuming that they’re going to offend or act out? Or are we looking at it from this holistic prevention of several things that could be detrimental? Sometimes because we have the term “prevention” in our names, we do get MAPs that are offended, thinking we’re assuming that they will offend, assuming that they will create a contact victim, and they really have no desire to do that, and really want to focus on their quality of life. Yet, like I said, we still utilize the term “prevention,” because that, in turn, for us, is part of our quest for well-being for them.

Joseph:

No, uh, it is a difficult conversation to have. I do understand those individuals and their perspective. But at the same time, and particularly in the UK, and in accordance to what we want to achieve in this film, is, you know, we want to change people’s minds. And the… it’s a difficult one, because, especially, like I said, a lot of the UK projects, some of them are charities, and some of them are government-funded. And in doing so, you need to find a balance in saying to the general public, this is helpful, and using language and terms that make the general public feel safe, even though, if they haven’t gotten totally on board of what might be our train of thought, they’re certainly on the way, and yet, finding that balance so you’re open for MAPs and non-offending people to use these services. So it’s definitely a difficult balancing act, to please the two parties. And, you know, there’s no need, especially in accordance to our film, we don’t want to preach to the converted, because as I said before, there’s no point, we want to, we’re aiming for those people who do think, by being a pedophile you are automatically a child molestor just by the bane of your existence. And it’s those perspectives that we want to change, it’s those ideas that we want to challenge. Because that’s going to help in the long term. That’s going to go towards our goal of destigmatization.

Meg:

And so, aside from being a journalist and filmmaker to begin with, why did you choose to have a film or a documentary be the way that you get this message out there?

Joseph:

Um, so I think that brings me to the topic of the effectiveness of different types of media. I mean, two reasons. I think, you know I’m using my skill set of documentary films, along with my team skills. But I personally think that it’s one of the best forms of media in connecting and understanding a different person’s perspective. Your podcast has certainly got, has its benefits on telling people, kind of key bits of information, and you’re able to do that relatively quickly. But of course there are drawbacks of a film, you know, it takes a while to make, costs lots of money, but I think it will be worth it in the end, when are are able to tell human stories that are relateable, that can really change people’s perspectives.

Meg:

I agree with you, and this is truly why we did start this podcast, is because we were heavily involved in social media, and there was so much back-and-forth, and I think that there are people that you can really reach and connect with, but for the most part, it’s really easy for people to continue bullying each other, continue trolling each other, through social media. They don’t have to see another person’s face and get a window into their life. And so, you know, having both the podcast, where you’re hearing another person’s voice, and hearing them tell their story, and listening to a longer-term conversation, as well as a film that visually will show you somebody’s emotional reactions as they’re telling their story and you get that human perspective. I think it truly elevates the message that we’re trying to send.

Joseph: I definitely agree. Because, just simple things, you know, what I found over the last couple of months is jumping from different social medias, so I’ll spend time on the @VirtuousTheFilm Twitter, I’ll spend time on kind of the main VirPed forum, on Discord chat, on Tumblr, and you are always, like, jumping about all the time, and each form of communication has its advantages and disadvantages. I mean, I remember only last night, I got into my first, kind of, Twitter fight. And that’s not done in my personal life, but it was entertaining to some degree.

The, you know, at the end of that I didn’t really get anywhere, and I was quite disappointed at that. Um, I then looked in the people’s profiles, and I don’t think they would be very convincing, I think they had, uh, Make America Great Again hats on. So I don’t know how forthcoming they would have been. So yeah, it definitely, the different… especially with people who are psychologists in this field that are dealing with prevention initiatives is, the general language can be very academic, which fits pefectly in their field, but to your average Joe, is not kind of relatable.

And you know, we watch films and videos almost every day, or TV shows, and that’s, you know, the average person on the street, that’s the audience we would want to go for. We don’t want to go for the Twitter trolls, or the academics who will happily read a hundred-page theory and analysis, it’s for, you know, your average person…

Meg: Right.

Joseph: …who will hopefully change their minds and share their new perspectives.

Meg:

And again, what a great point. Because I think social media can be a beautiful way to connect to people, and actually a way to connect to a lot of people, but your target audience that you’re looking for, as you said earlier, is not to necessarily preach to the converted, but to reach people who may not have even developed an opinion about this, and help them to kind of get this perspective before they get the perspective of the trolls, or they continue to make assumptions that may have been present from earlier experiences or other people’s experiences. So, I actually think it’s really exciting to see a group of young individuals decide to spend their time on something so valuable to society. I mean, as a journalist or filmmaker entrepeneur or somebody who’s starting out in this industry, like you were saying earlier, you could pick a variety of topics to focus on, yet you’re choosing something that’s going to be so beneficial to this population.

Joseph:

Yeah, I mean, like everyone, you want to have a positive impact. And you can make a film about a number of things. But at the same time, you don’t want to do something that’s already been done, you don’t want to do something that’s cliche. And, you know, I… there was a lot of trepidation in deciding to really go ahead with this project. I mean, I was spending time, just being nosey almost, for at least two months, before I said, okay, this is the story I want to tell. These people’s voices need to be heard. And in that two months, there was a lot of, you know, back-and-forth between me and colleagues, being like, you know, you’re going to be known as, you know, Virtuous the Pedo Guy who made that film for the rest of your life.

So, that was always something to consider. But, at the same time, this is something that I feel passionately about. Um, you know, like I said earlier, you know, I’ve got no relation to anyone who’s had any kind of experience like this, but at the same time, I think I’ve got the outsider’s perspective, where I was that person, say a year ago, that, you know, didn’t see a difference between a pedophile and a child molester. At the same time, I know I’m quite an open-minded person, and I, you know, I’m always on the fence on new ideas and new topics, and all it takes is something interesting, something visually stimulating, something fun to watch, to change the minds of people on the fence. Um, you know, and that is the goal. That’s what we want to do.

Meg:

I love it. I love it. And this is where you and I have a lot in common, because I come from the same background. I don’t necessarily have a personal experience as a victim of child sexual abuse, or with a pedophile, or a non-offending pedophile or a MAP in my life. Instead, I found my way to this population clinically, and decided that their voices needed to be heard as well. And I love seeing other allies come together, and, as is the goal with your film, getting the general population and general public and society on board with: Hey, these are people too, their voices deserve to be heard, and they’re going through stuff that we can all relate to.

Joseph:

Yeah, exactly. And you have to remember, these, it’s the general public that vote for politicians, and it’s the politicians who make key decisions on money for potential prevention projects. So it all kind of, it all adds up and has the potential to have a very strong impact if we, you know, can change people’s minds. Obviously there will be those people, and I’ve met a couple on Twitter, where they’re lost causes. But it doesn’t take that much to change one person’s mind, and then for them to tell three friends, and so on. You can have a great domino effect.

Meg:

Yeah, Joseph, I think it’s a beautiful endeavor, and I can’t wait to see the film. So, tell us all, where are you at in the process of it, and when is it going to be released, and when can listeners expect it?

Joseph:

Um, so, the film is still in its kind of development research stage. We really want to do as much research as possible to really get it right. But we are coming to this stage where we are looking for help from the community. This is a film for the community, about the community, and it can only really work in convincing the general public to hear these voices if we get support from the community. So this is my, kind of, direct message to everyone out there. If you are interested in sharing your story, be it small or little, I’m sure you guys can drop a link to our Twitter or our emails. We’re always happy to hear from people’s perspectives. We’re always interested, and we can get some discussions going to see in what form, you know, people can partake in this documentary. Um, you know, we’ve got the full gamut, being completely anonymous to not at all.

Meg:

If our listeners or others out there are interested, tell me a little bit about how you could keep their stories or their identity confidential as you film.

Joseph:

Um, well, like I said before, we’ve got the benefit of being completely independent, so we’ve got total creative control on how we want to deal with this issue, these issues. Uh, there’s like a whole spectrum of things that we do, from just filming people’s hands, to all the way showing people if they’re comfortable showing their faces, exploring their lives. Uh, but in between that, you know, we can film people from the back of the head, we can distort their voices, we can shoot them but have a silhouette figure, um, all kinds of creative ways to hide people’s anonymity if they wish so, and to make sure that our contributors are 100% comfortable with what’s going on. Um, you know, all those options are open to people, just so we’re able to get their story out there and share it with the world.

Meg:

Well, and we run into that a lot here on the podcast, but it’s easy to give someone an alias and distort their voice without having to worry about a camera in their face, and so I think it’s great to let listeners know, if you want to share your story, but there’s that overwhelming fear or worry about being exposed at all in your daily life, then I think it’s great that they know that there are these other options. And I’m assuming you’ll also be able to be in contact with people, to answer any questions they have about what being a contributor would look like.

Joseph:

So it’s a very difficult balance when dealing with this, because it is a catch 22. Really, our goal is to make a film that destigmatizes these issues, and the best way to do that is by showing and trying to relate to these stories. The most effective way that I’ve seen that achieved, and kind of like why I’m in this position today, is kind of the bravery that was shown by Todd’s work, and also Gary Gibson’s work. They fantastically have been able to get their message out there, uh, so great bravery from those guys.

Meg:

Certainly you’re open to people who maybe want to keep their identity anonymous.

Joseph:

Yeah, I mean we’re open to, kind of like, the full spectrum of, you know, so long as people are comfortable, we’re comfortable. So long as they’ve got their stories to tell, you know, we’ll tell those stories. We’re fine with that. But, you know, you can’t downplay that the most successful, you know, pieces to camera have been the works of Todd and Gary. Um, you know, there’s no doubt that by seeing someone’s eyes, you connect with them. And I think it’s important to know that it takes people like Todd and Gary to, you know, if they can lead the message of destigmatization in my mind, then it can take someone else who’s considering it, to do that for someone else. And, sort of, the more of that, the better, in kind of the mission of destigmatization, in helping other individuals come out, seek help, and in helping the providers of prevention projects to be able to do their work more openly with the public. So yeah, at the same time, that doesn’t diminish the bravery that it takes to come out in any form.

Meg:

Yeah.

Joseph:

It’s just that some are more effective than others. And I just want to make sure that that gets across.

Meg:

You know. I do, I do want to reiterate that Gary and Todd have been very brave in what they’re doing, and it’s been really effective. I mean it’s something that’s helped you create the film that you’re creating, by seeing Todd’s interview and then connecting with Gary when you’ve seen his work…

Joseph:

Yeah.

Meg:

…as well. And so, I totally get what you’re saying, that you by no means want to diminish people that might feel more comfortable, you know, having voice distortion or being anonymous. But if there is somebody out there that’s willing to be public, and publicly show who they are, and as you said you, you know, connect with people, let them see their eyes, I think that that could be extremely effective as well.

Joseph:

Yeah, no, you said it beautifully.

Meg:

Okay, so, it’s been so lovely chatting with you, Joseph, and how bout we have you back on when it gets closer to release of “Virtuous the Film”?

Joseph:

Definitely, I’d love to show you guys, and thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it. It’s been a great experience. I’ve never done a podcast before, so it’s very exciting.

Meg:

And it was wonderful. Thank you so much, and have a wonderful day.

Thank you for listening to this week’s podcast. Please visit http://thepreventionproject.org to learn more about our project and programs. Please remember to subscribe to our podcast at https://thepreventionpodcast.com or iTunes. See you next time!

The post TGPP Transcript: Joseph, Bringing a Voice to the Voiceless appeared first on Pedophiles About Pedophilia.