Pedophilia is known as a psyciatric disorder in which people have a sexual attraction to pubescent children, this disorder affects around 3%-5% of the population. This disorder mainly affects males but is not uncommon in females. Pedophilia is seen from the public eye as a criminal offense, often media portrays that these ‘predators’ choose to feel this way or have a sexual fetish.
Mental health professionals consider pedophilia a mental illness. The people who are considered to suffer from pedophilia do not understand or want to act on their sexual desires.
These pedophilic tendencies are often acted out by exposing themselves to children, watching naked children, masturbating in front of children, or touching children’s genitals. Penetration is not as common to be acted out by a person suffering from pedophilia (Hardvard, 2010). If they do act out, most offenders are someone that the child knows, often a relative or a family friend.
People with this disorder do not always act on their desires, many often live in silence because of the stigma of the disorder or even fear that they will get in trouble with the law, in reality an offender will only be arrested if they participate in illegal acts such as child pornagraphy, child molestation, or exposing themselves to children. If an adult starts to feel this way towards children they should seek psychiatric help immediately so they never act on those desires.
While people with pedophilia never stop the feeling of attraction, the urges can be dimished with treatment. The treatment is designed to block out these sexual desires and protect children by preventing the dangers pedophiles present.
Causes
There is many theories about why pedophilia exists in some and not others. Some psychologists suggest that a reason is neurodevelopment differences such as brain structure. Neurological differences such as intelligence level, family history of mental illness and injuries to the head at a young age.
