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?
I have no idea about autistic people as predators but I would expect there to be proportionately more autistic people who are victims - more vulnerable due to social difficulties
I have a feeling that researchers like to evade that subject for fear aggravating-encouraging stereotyping of a minority..
With regards to autistic people being more likely to be victims of sexual abuse there has definitely been research on it. There’s also some research on propensity of paraphilias among autistic people which is slightly less controversial than paedophilia specifically.
it’s just incredibly hard to do any real research on paedophilia because it’s associated with criminal activity and so most of the research involves conduct of offenders who are compelled to be part of some sort of rehabilitation program.
in short almost all of the research is on people who
my understanding is there is some evidence to suggest a lot of paedophiles never act on their urges. To make it even harder for psychologists most of the material created by or consumed by paedophiles in relation to their paraphilia is illegal for researchers to possess for the purpose of study since that’s not an exemption under the law.
in short the way society handles paedophiles who haven’t harmed children makes it incredibly difficult for researchers to learn anything in a systematic and scientific way about paedophilia. Because the reality is if a paedophile who hasn’t harmed a child would volunteer for some sort of study and anyone were to find out about that the paedophile will have a lynch mob outside their house the next day and probably get raided by the police on the off chance that they’ve got something they shouldn’t have or they can find evidence for something.
as I said there are lots of confounding factors when it comes to autistic people and criminal matters in general. arguably autistic people are easier to trick into self-incrimination we certainly stand out more which means we are more likely to be targeted for investigation even when there is no rational basis for it.
Peter said:propensity of paraphilias among autistic people which is slightly less controversial than paedophilia
Welcome to the weeds..
I had a tangent of specialty in matters like these, from the criminology-aspect of my academia, specifically on the policing and legal aspects. What I understood was that this subject will likely never be worked on, policing has a hard-enough time dealing with autism from a practical stand-point, a self-incriminating suspect is an ideal-suspect in the police-officer’s handbook even if they did understand. The best-thing for an active-citizen to do, is to know their rights, and to learn to be assertive where it counts. I believe also that it is professional-suicide to earnestly-defend someone who had admitted to that kind of deviance, I think that for the doubtless-multitudes of impaired with that orientation out there, it is best to bolster them against what will only ever be a most-malicious enemy. If anything they should look for mental-health services that are adjacent to the issues that they have so that they can seek non-declarative/indirect psychological-development.. Penal-institutions are full of people who have showcased their lack of development to an indifferent world..