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PAEDOPHILIA– WHAT IT MEANS TO THE CHILD by Dr. Frits Bernard Probably the most crucial question most people have about paedophilia concerns the influence of the paedophile relationship, or a simple sexual contact, upon the child. How does the boy or girl experience that relationship or that contact? What are the after-effects? How does he or she see the experience later, as an adult? When we speak of a paedophile relationship we mean here a shorter or longer sexual bond between a man or a woman and a boy or girl under sixteen. Sixteen is, of course, an arbitrary age, for it is not based on biology or psychology, but in The Netherlands it is a convenient boundary since it coincides with the legal 'age of consent'. To answer our question properly we should have at our disposal good data. Surprisingly, however, in view of the extraordinary interest the public is currently showing in these matters, we do not get very far studying the scientific literature or case histories. Hardly any sound research information is available and the literature seldom contains much more than speculation, although here in Holland Tolsma has done original work in this field. The scarcity of information is partly understandable in view of the deep cultural taboo under which these acts still lie and the consequent difficulty the researcher has persuading people to talk about such things: only under very unusual circumstances do these relationships and taboo acts come to light. The 'dark number', thus, is enormous – the number which remains unknown and cannot be included in the statistics. Too often science is welcome only so long as it leads to conclusions that fall in line with the ideology of the community in which it is practised. Researchers all too often find themselves in difficulties when they initiate objective enquiries into paedophilia because society fears that they will undermine current ideas about sexuality. Conclusions are sometimes based, therefore, not on objective criteria but on emotional grounds or, at worst, social or political expediency. But where science has been allowed to pursue its own enquiries according to its own laws, it and public opinion often diverge greatly. 'Common knowledge' has it that sexual contact between adults and children can only have harmful consequences, while responsible researchers are now suggesting that the effects are often quite beneficial. Harmful consequences can, after all, also occur in mutual adult contacts. Paedophilia is not an unimportant problem affecting a tiny minority. Since the well-known investigations in America by Kinsey, Pomeroy and Martin, we know something more of the frequency of these sorts of contacts and relationships. Ten to fifteen percent of American girls have had at least one experience with adults before they reach puberty. In his famous Psychosexueller Infantilismus (1922), Wilhelm Stekel wrote about paedophilia, 'As far as I am able to trace, it must be regarded as a normal component of the sexual drive.' He goes on to say, 'The sexual stimulus that proceeds from children is all the more remarkable because, for many centuries, we have done our best to desexualize the child and to regard it as something holy'. Force and violence, according to a number of researchers, are very rare, and in the more serious forms of criminality it appears that somewhat older girls are involved. It is impossible to find accurate figures on the occurrence of real coercion and violence in sexual crimes, but between 1960 and 1964 there were only three convictions for such acts under the article of the Dutch penal code dealing with sexual contact with children in which violence was a factor. As for the connection between paedophilia and child murder in The Netherlands, the statistics speak for themselves: in the years 1960 through 1965, in a population of about two million children between 5 and 15, 0.8 boys and 0.3 girls per year are presumed to have met their deaths in connection with sexual offences. There is much misunderstanding about how paedophile contacts really come about, thanks largely to the mass media. Over fifty years ago Stekel wrote, 'Adults are not always the seducers. Children do sometimes take the initiative. They ask for the time and look at men challengingly. Sometimes they address men in a begging way in order to make contact.' More recently Geisler observed that, in court procedures involving 'acts of indecency', 25% of the witnesses between 10 and 14 years of age had clearly shown their intentions and inclinations. Giese studied 393 homosexual cases and concluded that in 58% the initiative for sexual contact was shared equally by child and adult and in 21% of the cases the boy took the initiative; in only about one case in five, then, did the initiative extend from the man alone. Most of the children had waited for and wanted the sexual contact. Half had had homosexual relationships before they reached 16 or 17 years of age. But all of these studies are principally statistical in nature and do not satisfactorily deal with our original question. How, then, would one go about gathering data to try to answer it? How would we locate the people who, as children, have had sexual contacts with one or more adults and who are now adult themselves? And how would we then determine the impact of these events upon their characters? Locating our subjects was perhaps the most difficult problem. We considered this point for a long time. Ultimately there seemed only one way to do it – by simply asking around. We asked everyone we could if they knew people who, as children, had had sexual contact with adults. Our pilot study consisted of 30 subjects. They come from all strata of the population, from different social levels and professions and from different provinces of Holland. Their ages range between 22 and 70. The research was begun in 1971 and is still in full swing. As of now, our sample has been enlarged to over 100 testees. Once the subjects were located it remained to assess the impact of paedophile relations upon their characters, how the people in question experienced the events and how they assimilated it all later. Some sort of objective standard had to be set, as, for example, in the form of widely used psychological tests. We settled on a two-phase format for the investigation. First was what we might call the selective biographical phase. We left each subject free to write his or her life story in so far as it dealt with the contacts, how he felt about them at the time and what his attitude was about them now that he was an adult. These biographies are, of course, highly subjective as far as the subject (but not the investigator) is concerned, yet they do lend themselves to psychological analysis. The second phase was objective psychological testing. For this we chose to administer to each of the subjects the ABV test, which consists of four parts with a total of 107 questions and is designed to measure levels of neurotic instability or mental imbalance. The ABV test has been widely administered in The Netherlands, and by comparing the test results of our subjects with those of the Dutch population as a whole we could determine how 'victims' and 'non-victims' scored on personality variables such as neuroses, extroversion and introversion. The following are extracts from a few characteristic biographies: Case 1. (Age under 30; heterosexual adult) 'My first contact was when I was fourteen. This was a positive experience for me. My partner was about 39. Now I am engaged to be married. The reason I now have a negative attitude toward it is because, in my eyes, it was not a normal situation but my age and education at the time did not permit me to make a proper judgement. Moreover, the person in question gave me so much pleasure that I just could not refuse... I think at the time I was afraid to lose him.' Case 2 (Age 24; heterosexual adult) 'I had my first sexual contact with an older man in Rotterdam when I was fourteen... It was nothing more than each of us quickly masturbating each other, looking shyly around us. Once this corner was turned a lot of other experiences followed. I can't say much about them, just sex and nothing more. One of the reasons nothing lasted was because the men were dead scared of being trapped. The initiative always came from me. I used to wear my shortest and cutest shorts and stroll across the market squares and through the busiest streets of Rotterdam until I saw someone I thought was 'like that' and then I allowed myself to be 'seduced'. That went on until I was 17, when, for the first time, I fell in love with an older man and had a relationship with him for about eight months. That was the end of my fleeting contacts. I desired something more than just sex. 'I have no regrets about this period. I am only sorry that I never had what I was really looking for: an older friend with whom I could enjoy not only sex but all kinds of things, someone who would teach me about everything.' Case 3 (Age 23; heterosexual adult) 'I was about 13 when I had my first paedophile experience. I had never heard the word, or even anything about homosexuality, because my sexual education was badly neglected by my parents. The man who brought me in touch with homosexuality and whom I even loved physically was, and still is, one of my dearest friends. I remember what a wonderful feeling it was when he satisfied me for the first time. I was not troubled in the least by worries over having done 'perverted things', probably because I had no idea of what such things were. A few months later the man tried to explain, but it was still a good year before I grasped it all properly. 'The only trouble I have had over this was when I first told my fiancée about it. She and I have fantastic sexual relations, and there is no question of problems on my side. 'My general opinion is as follows. Homosexuality must be exempt from the law. To me it remains a loving relationship between two people who need something else beyond sex. Otherwise one is in for a moral hang over (even in straight relationships). 'Paedophilia I find a more difficult question. I allow everyone love and happiness in all respects, but I cannot approve of this. I experienced no trouble myself, but not all boys become acquainted with it in such an understanding manner.' Case 4 (Age 37; heterosexual adult) 'I must have been 14 of 15 at the time of my first sexual encounter with a man of about 30. I enjoyed these experiences. Now, as an adult, I see that earlier period just as a part of my life, a part that belongs to me. 'I am now married and have four children. People with this inclination should fit into our society and our society should accept this as natural. But it will be a very long time before this happens. 'My earlier contacts of this kind were so upsetting to my parents that, at the time, I always had the feeling that I was doing something wrong. Now I see it as part of a personal experience which I would not like to see removed from my life.' Case 5 (Age 68; homosexual adult) 'When I was seven I had contact with a man who was especially nice to me. He used to take me to his attic, sit me on his lap and play with me sexually. I thought it was very nice and enjoyed it. I always looked forward to Wednesday afternoons, the days when we saw each other. This went on for a long time. 'Later I had many contacts with other men, but never with boys my own age. One day I went with a waiter to his house. I was very interested and excited. We had unusually satisfying sex together. I must have been about 14. Back home I was restless and went to see him the very next day on my own initiative. We had intercourse about twenty times in the following period. 'I have never missed not having girls, like many others. Now, after a good life, I can see these early contacts as very positive to my development. I would not like to have missed them and I do not envy the people who never had these opportunities. 'I regard my life as proof that homosexuals are born, not made by circumstances.' Case 6 (Age 25; heterosexual adult) 'When I was about eight years old I got to know a man in the street who thought I played very nicely. He invited me out for a bicycle ride, and later to visit his home. Although my parents had warned me not to do this I just could not see the problem they were talking about. I could not imagine that this gentleman would harm me... Gradually we got to know each other... and I came to realise that he was homosexual. This did not shock me; I just wanted to know more about it. He told me about sex, bisexuality and heterosexuality, subjects which were quite beyond my parents. From him I received love, which actually I had never known (not, I mean, in the way I know it at present from my wife). But our friendship was, and still is, one that I could imagine with no one else. Later, when I was ten or eleven, we had sex with each other, something I always enjoyed. That lasted until I was eighteen, when I started going steady with a girl. When I became engaged I was able to tell my future wife with an easy mind about my youthful experiences. She could appreciate the whole thing very well. We were very sure of each other and were married in 1968 and have, at the moment, an especially good marriage, an especially fine sexual relationship and an especially dear little daughter of 10 months.' So much for the stories as told by the subjects themselves. From this very small selection one very important point emerges: there are a number of children who find these contacts more advantageous than harmful to their mental health. In addition, these stories demonstrate that the forming of a human relationship between a man and a boy is indeed possible, and sometimes this bond continues in the form of a firm friendship that endures for life. This happens even where the first contact took place at six or seven years of age, so apparently there is no natural lower-age boundary for the beginning of these activities. The question of seduction to homosexuality has been dealt with extensively in recent literature. Tolsma investigated 133 Dutch 'victims' who had been sexually initiated by homosexuals and discovered that only a small percentage later became homosexual themselves, and this percentage was roughly the same as the percentage of homosexuals in Dutch society in general. Evidently the early experience had no statistically measurable influence upon adult sexual orientation. Our sample is still too small to draw any similar conclusions from present research, but our results are not so far in conflict with Tolsma's. The second phase of our study, the results from the ABV test, was equally interesting. With an initial sample of 30, and even an enlarged sample of 100, it is impossible to draw more than tentative conclusions about such specific psychological variables as introversion, extroversion, etc., but the results are clear in one repect: our test persons were not more neurotic than the average Dutchman. In fact they are a measurable (but statistically insignificant) degree less neurotic. The widely held view that paedophile contact is harmful to the child, damages his personality and blights his later life, simply cannot be supported from the results of the ABV testing. As a result of this research I have been led to several tentative but important conclusions: 1. Children can experience sexual contacts and relationships with adults as positive. 2. Children are looking for love, affection and security in addition to sexual gratification. 3. We cannot talk about these relationships and contacts being traumatic for the child. 4. The initiation has no influence on later sexual orientation. 5. In some cases the first contacts begin many years before puberty. 6. The sexual activity is mostly of a masturbatory kind. 7. Sometimes the friendship continues after the sex-influenced period had come to an end, in some cases for the rest of life. 8. The attitude of society toward paedophilia has a negative influence upon the child experiencing such a contact or relationship. So, do any of YOUR lived experiences seem at all similar to those described above? Does what Dr. Frits Bernard describe seem realistic to you? Or does it all sound like some "pedophile apologists" fantasy? The good doctor was one of us, after all... M. SOURCE: PAN - A Magazine About Boy-Love, Number 3 [Vol.1 No.3], November 1979 |