Published on 12, July, 2020
I've been watching a lot of the paedophile hunter sting videos lately and almost all of the people they catch either have autism, ADHD , or in some cases a more severe learning difficulty.
Obviously not all autistic people are paedophiles , and not all paedophiles are autistic but why is there perhaps a disproportionately high number of child sex offenders who are on the autistic spectrum?
The diagnostic criteria for autism (ASD/ASC) includes no mention of 'learning disability'. The majority of autistics have average or above average intelligence.
There is a difference between paedophiles and people who sexually abuse children. Most children are sexually abused by family members and people they know, whose abuse is opportunistic and does not reflect a definite sexual preference for children.
Most child sexual abuse is preceded by grooming. Grooming involves heightened social skills and psychological manipulation on the part of the abuser, these are precisely the skills that autistic people lack. Go look at the diagnostic criteria for autism.
I think you have been watching things that are either fabricated or, at best, are unrepresentative. Of course, some naïve autistics could have been manipulated by the people creating the videos, who would be much better at manipulation than the average autistic person.
I do feel that most of the people caught by these hunters are naiive and probably aren't "dangerous" like they claim
You've probably heard of the "bald nonce" meme. The guy clearly isn't with it, I don't think he has autism or not aspergers , but he definitely has disabilities from what I've seen on his FB Page and was employed by sainsburys as part of a disability scheme.
I think for certain ADHD might increase the risk factor.
I would say asd might also do that because so many of us are lonely and looking for connections
Statistics show that the rate of convictions for adult autists is the same as for the general population and the incidence of violent offences is very low. (Ghaziuddin et al., 1991 and Isager et al., 2005). Problems of autistic people with sexual expression tend towards sexually inappropriate behaviour - i.e. through being naïve - and away from sexually abusive or sexually violent behaviour (Ray, Marks and Bray-Garretson, 2004).
Yeah.. There are some books and studies that have been done, but it’s not really hit on very much in core literature, because a link between autists and that subject is only ever going to misused by those who already know the answer they are looking for, before they’ve done the research. Essentially where developmental issues are concerned, there is always an amount of individuals who don’t develop in that way, and like any other shortcoming it’s a complicated problem. The answer is out there, it’s just better left in the restricted-section, because of the mob. Again it’s not really a fit topic for the masses, it’s for the real-professionals, the science isn’t in and witch-hunts tend to go hand-I’m-hand with ignorance.
In the paper I cited it said that sexual abuse and sexual violence were less likely for autistics to commit. The inference being that sexual abuse included, or was limited to, non-violent sexual abuse - i.e. not rape or other forms of sexual violence.
Exactly
That's true , the definition of paedophile seems to be change..some hunter groups now call themselves "hebophile" groups.
A lot of the "victims" (aka the hunters pretending to be children) are around the age of 12-14, so yes underage but for s girl most are well into puberty by then. Certainly a lot of the younger "peadophiles" seem to be on the spectrum.
Sexual abuse need not be violent.
Anonymous surveys for autistic people, and doing studies on the prison population. I read the other day that around one in four the British prison population. Have ADHD. Maybe that's more likely for violent crimes , as an ADHD and ASD person whilst I am mostly shy I do have an agressive streak , but certainly doing studies on sex offenders.
Like I said, watch the pedophile hunter videos. By the hunters own admissions very few seem to be "fully with it". Most seem to be in low paid, low skilled work and are reliant on parents and other family members and either have asd, ADHD or both.
As you say it's problematic to define it that way. If you ask a psychologist what a pedophile is they'll refer to attraction to prepubescent children only. So it's not a question of some form of aberrant attraction. Neurotypicals find physically matured teenagers under 16 attractive. They'd just never say so because of the huge social taboo. That might also be part of the issue. Because if an autistic person is honest about finding some under age teenagers attractive (even though most neurotypicals do) people may tend to assume they are pedophiles and more likely to commit crimes.
A proportion of autistic and allistic people have paraphilias, there is no hard information that I know of that compares the rates between these two groups, so anything said about this is just guesswork. I would expect that the noted respect shown by autistics for rules and laws, added to the also recognised propensity for autistics to show rather rigidly traditional morals, would mean that they probably have less propensity to act out any paedophilic feelings, if they had them at all.
So having raised this unpleasant question, do you have any idea how we can get a definitive answer?