Our inductive analysis of men’s narratives around committing contact sexual offenses against children resulted in several major themes: (a) having their sexuality overregulated by their families and communities, (b) experiencing abuse, (c) demoralizing and remoralizing the self, (d) desiring connections with children, and (e) facilitating connections with children. We have organized the results by the chronology of events within participants’ narratives to show how their ethical subjectivities developed over time through formative social interactions regarding morality and sexuality. We discuss each of these themes in turn.
Having Sexuality Overregulated
Nearly one third of the sample (n = 8) described being raised in an environment in which they felt forced to repress their healthy sexual desires, usually in response to familial, religious, or cultural norms. In other words, they grew up being socialized into relatively rigid or overregulated moral ontologies of sex and sexuality. Such disciplinary environments may have initially deterred them from engaging in sexual behaviors, both normalized and taboo; in adulthood, however, they transgressed these moral boundaries in a radical way. This subtheme was primarily expressed by men who identified as homosexual (n = 6) but had felt unable to engage in sexual activities with males of similar age due to an intensely moralized disapproval of their sexual desires. Eventually, these participants sought sexual and emotional connections with same-sex children, who they perceived as being more easily accessible, less judgmental, and less likely to “out” them than adult men:
I would not approach people my own age, and if someone did approach me, I wouldn’t reciprocate because of my upbringing – you know, this thing about homosexuality being totally wrong. (James)
Homosexuality, back then in the 80s, was absolutely taboo…but being with a kid, a kid would never judge. (Roger)
Two participants who self-identified as heterosexual (both of whom reported no pre-existing interest in children) also described pursuing sexual relations with children as a result of having their sexual desires overregulated during childhood/adolescence. Jeffrey, who had sexually abused his sister for multiple years, explained that “My parents were very against relationships…they were strict around when I dated or who I dated…I think that kind of places too much of a restriction on who I was attracted to.” Tim described a different pathway from sexual overregulation to CSA, in which he had engaged in sexual experimentation with male peers during his childhood because sex before marriage was strongly discouraged within his community: “I grew up in a small town…ultra-orthodox Catholic…so we never had a chance to really discover sexual things with girls.” As an adult, he found it sexually exciting when a teen boy asked him questions about sex because it reminded him of his own childhood sexual experimentation; these conversations eventually led to sexual abuse.
Participants’ comments suggest that for these individuals, the adult world appeared as a moral fortress, overregulated and rigid, which discouraged or denied access to the forms of sexual expression and intimacy they desired. The world of children, by contrast, seemed much less regulated and more accessible. Participants’ narratives constructed these two worlds as employing very different moral ontologies, with the latter offering a wider range of sexual subjectivities without judgment. The moral overregulation of participants’ sexuality seemed to push them into more extreme forms of sexual expression, suggesting that such rigidity may be counterproductive to the intent of constituting ethical sexual subjects.
Another form of sexual overregulation that many participants experienced during childhood/adolescence involved barriers to the pursuit of sexual knowledge. Participants spoke of the dissatisfaction they felt regarding the strict regulation of access to (reliable) sexual information by both the family and society (e.g., lack of comprehensive sex education in school) during these formative years:
In my family, growing up, sex wasn’t talked about. And because it wasn’t talked about, it was up to me to discover, and I think I took that the wrong way…the knowledge and support from my parents wasn’t there to guide me the right way. (Jeffrey)
I grew up in a society where sex is something you never talked about, especially not at home, so we were learning it in the street, and I had a lot of misconceived ideas. (Tim)
Indeed, hospital files indicated that only three participants reported learning about sex through formal sex education, and only one participant had received this information from his parents. The remaining participants reported learning about sex and sexuality from their friends (36%; n = 9), their own sexual abuse (20%; n = 5), or television, books, and magazines, including pornography (20%; n = 5). Three participants associated their lack of access to sexual information with their decision to engage in CSA; Michael noted:
When it came to teaching your children about sex, they [parents] weren’t that involved. And I do believe that, in a way, that could have also contributed to me offending… without the knowledge ahead of time that, ‘No, you don’t do that kind of thing’.
Notably, three participants described being more likely to engage in CSA with children who lacked sexual knowledge, as these children were considered less likely to disclose the sexual abuse – either because they would not realize it was inappropriate or would feel too uncomfortable to discuss sexual matters with any of the adults in their life. Two of these participants also situated their offenses in the context of being asked by the victim to provide them with sexual knowledge. Robert gave the following example:
He started asking me questions about sexual things. That was the trigger. Nothing would ever have happened, and I never would have approached him or done anything to him…when he started asking me questions, I felt it was okay to respond.
Participants’ encounters with others’ moral ontologies, including those of adults while they were children and those of children while they were adults, was an ongoing source of tension in their construction of themselves as ethical subjects. For some, this tension seemed to be exacerbated by the informal (and often incorrect) sexual “education” they received growing up, which helped to shape their beliefs and attitudes toward sex and sexuality. Multiple participants wished they had received a formalized sexual education, which could have helped them construct a moral world that was not confused with “misconceived” notions of sexual ethics.
Experiencing Abuse
Beyond a common narrative of having their sexual desires heavily regulated, many participants also shared experiences of abuse during childhood or adolescence that seemed to help shape their sexual ethics. According to hospital files, 68% (n = 17) of the sample reported experiencing at least one type of abuse, mostly commonly sexual abuse (48%; n = 12), followed by emotional (36%; n = 9) and physical abuse (32%; n = 8). While these numbers indicate that a similar proportion of the sample had experienced emotional and physical abuse, participants’ narratives did not situate physical abuse as relevant to their involvement in CSA. In contrast, narratives suggested that experiences of emotional or sexual abuse contributed to participants’ decision to offend by shaping the development of moral beliefs, attitudes, and sexual interests that served to normalize such sexual practices. More specifically, experiences of emotional abuse or neglect during childhood – typically perpetrated by parents, caregivers, and/or peers at school – were described as facilitating the development and assimilation of perceived inadequacies and/or contributing to a perceived lack of opportunities to satisfy desired connections with age-appropriate partners. James explained, “I didn’t associate with many people my own age because of my being an introvert, because of my being bullied and picked on all the time…so I tended to gravitate toward younger people. I felt more comfortable there”.
Participants who had been sexually abused during childhood described those experiences as having greatly influenced their understanding of appropriate sexual boundaries between children and adults. As Jacob said, “You’re showed it’s okay to have sex with kids, because that’s what someone was doing with you”. Similarly, Thomas explained how the man who had abused him helped to shape his ethical and sexual subjectivities:
It [sexual abuse] was happening pretty ‘bout every day. But one of the things that he taught me was that it was good. It was good for me. It was okay. And it would just make me a man, and I would know how to have sex, and know big secrets.
Some participants interpreted their own sexual abuse as unharmful or even pleasurable, due to the physical sensations it produced and/or the attention (and possibly gifts, praise, special treatment, etc.) they received from their abusers. Pat described how this interpretation of his own abuse biased his perceptions of CSA as an adult: “I enjoyed it when it was happening to me. I didn’t think it was wrong...That’s what helped me, once I got older, to think that it wasn’t wrong for me to do it to someone else”. Participants who had otherwise experienced a lack of positive adult attention throughout childhood (e.g., parental neglect) seemed to perceive their experience of sexual abuse as a form of love and affection; as Rob stated, “I had no male affection other than the fellow who sexually assaulted me”.
Expressions of CSA as sexually or emotionally pleasurable facilitated the construction of these participants’ moral ontologies and their sexual subjectivities within them. Compared to other formative experiences, which they described as limiting their sexual subjectivities (e.g., alienation, fear of adult judgment, rigidity in their family’s moral ontologies, etc.), they described their own experiences of CSA as pleasurable and expansive in terms of developing moral scripts and their own sexual expression.
In addition to opening moral boundaries around sexual relations, a few participants believed that their interest in children had stemmed from their own early sexual experiences, and we found that 50% (n = 5) of those with a persistent (as opposed to a situational/opportunistic) interest in children reported a history of personal childhood sexual abuse. Some participants also reported offending against children of a similar age to when they themselves had been sexually abused. Roger, for example, stated, “I think that being abused, being forced, at 8, 9, 10 years old…I think I got stuck at that age, I got stuck there, and that's the age group of my victims”. These early experiences of abuse seemed to “trap” participants in a confined sexual subjectivity, in which they related more and felt more attraction to people of similar age to when their own abuse occurred. This narrative of sexual “trapping” is much like the experiences participants described of growing up with rigid moral ontologies that severely limited who they could be sexually.
Histories of abuse showed a complicated influence on participants’ internalization of moral ontologies. Emotional abuse was seen to fuel a sense of personal inadequacy and moral failure, simultaneously increasing participants’ desire for, and limiting their access to, connections with other adults. In contrast, sexual abuse was seen to influence perceptions of appropriate sexual boundaries and/or provide new and pleasurable forms of sexual subjectivity. We might describe these two forms of abuse as producing two different modes of activation for ethical subjectification—the former limiting and the latter expanding participants’ self-perceptions. We explore these two modes further in the next two sections.
Demoralizing and Remoralizing the Self
Through late childhood, adolescence, and into adulthood, most participants’ narratives described their subjectivities as being persistently devalued, dismissed, and demoralized. Thirty-six percent (n = 9) of participants described themselves as feeling generally inadequate compared to their peers, which hindered their self worth and their ability to establish relationships with other adults. In response to these negative self-perceptions and lack of positive peer relations, participants described spending increasing amounts of time with children, who they considered to be less intimidating, less judgmental, and more affectionate:
At the time I was also having a lot of social phobias with adults, and I’d always feel less than or inferior to or not adequate enough…a child, they don’t present that to you and then you feel more comfortable. (Kris)
I wanted to be with somebody, and not trusting adults my own age…I was seeking it in a safe place, which I thought was with children. (Charles)
For some participants, negative self-perceptions appeared to be influenced by the internalized stigma associated with having a persistent sexual interest in children. In contrast, 20% (n = 5) of participants placed their interest in children chronologically after their feelings of inadequacy, explaining that their attraction developed after (and in response to) spending increasing amounts of time with children:
Younger boys would look up to me…and at the time of puberty, with hormones kicking in…I wanted to spend time with them, because they wanted to spend time with me, and something – wires got crossed. (Kevin)
Adults judge. Kids don't judge…it's just a comfort zone, I think, and that was the attraction, that was the attraction I developed. (Roger)
Concerns about sexual performance also contributed to some participants feelings of inadequacy with adults. While only a few participants specifically discussed these concerns in relation to their sexual offenses, hospital records indicated that 68% (n = 17) of our sample suffered from one or more sexual dysfunctions (primarily erectile dysfunction and premature ejaculation). John perceived this as a barrier to having sex with his adult partner: “My wife would talk about sex, but I wasn't able to perform or anything - I wasn't able to get a proper erection”. James explained how these concerns led him to seek out sexual relationships with children rather than adults: “Since my late thirties, I was having a lot of problems with impotency and younger people had less judgment and all that.”
Participants’ experiences of being judged, isolated, and mistreated formed an attitude of fear and distrust toward adults. Describing relations with children as “more comfortable” and “safe” signaled an ongoing anticipation of being devalued by peers and expressed the dangerous world implicit theory commonly reported among PCSO-C. This perceived dangerous world demoralized participants in the presence of their peers. In contrast, they seemed to feel remoralized—that is, reconstituted as valued and worthy selves—in the presence of children. Kevin’s description of this experience was echoed by multiple participants:
When you have a child in your life in a sexual situation, they’re really looking up to you and you are a main focus in their life, and so that’s an ego boost, and feeds the kind of low self-esteem that I’ve had in my life…it just goes away, because they make you feel like you’re the most amazing person in the world.
Some participants’ chose to pursue connections with children not because of a pre-existing sexual interest, but because they perceived a safer moral environment (i.e., a shared code of conduct) with children compared to adults, within which they could construct a more positive sense of self-worth and adequacy. According to these participants, children offered a relational experience that was less rigidly moralized, from which stronger and more intimate relationships were believed to develop. This moral safety also provided an escape from internalized moral judgements that weighed heavily on and limited participants’ sense of selves. The decision to form connections with children was thus constructed as an opportunity to become (or at least feel) remoralized.
It is worth noting that many participants also described feeling remoralized after being arrested for their offense(s) and receiving treatment. Being apprehended was commonly described as having a “weight lifted” off one’s shoulders and, for some participants, provided access to treatment they knew they needed, but which they had not known existed or had not known how to find. Mark explained, “I’m very happy that I got caught, because it’s been a long journey, yes, but I’ve learned a lot and I was able to get the help that I needed.” James provided the following example of how receiving treatment can contribute to remoralization (i.e., restoration of one’s morale):
You’ve gotta have some kind of positive feedback. Not positive about what you did, but positive about what you can do. You need that, you need to feel that you’re a human being, that you’re a person, that you can do something with your life.
Desiring Connections with Children
Based on our theoretical framework of desire as a primordial force that drives people to form connections – in this case, connections established through sexual activities with children – we identified two primary desires that participants sought to satisfy through their offenses: (a) emotional intimacy, and (b) sexual gratification. More participants associated their offenses with a desire for sexual gratification alone (56%, n = 14), rather than a desire for both sexual gratification and emotional intimacy (24%, n = 6), or emotional intimacy alone (20%, n = 5). Participants’ narratives constructed emotional intimacy and sexual gratification as meaningful pathways through which they sought to restore themselves from demoralization.
Men who spoke about emotional intimacy explained that, in the context of being demoralized, sexual contact had become one of the few (if not only) ways they were able to feel connected to and cared for by others. As Jeffrey explained, “When you’re having sex with someone, you feel very loved as well…I think that was kind of a void I was trying to fill”. Given that demoralization further alienated participants from their partners and peers, they sought to establish intimate connections outside of these adult relationships. Participants with long-term adult partners often expressed feelings similar to Matthew: “There was no intimacy with my wife, so I was getting frustrated and unfortunately took it out on the wrong outlet”. Three participants (12%) explained that their pursuit of remoralization involved adopting the role of a teacher or mentor with the children whom they had sexually abused. Pat, for example, described a desire for “the emotional bond, and that feeling that I was teaching, nurturing”.
In contrast to those seeking emotional intimacy, some participants described their offenses as being primarily motivated by a desire for physical gratification – “the pleasure of ejaculation” (Michael) – associated with sexual activity. As Thomas explained, “It was just the sexual gratification. It was just an orgasm. It was nothing else.” Given that nearly all of the participants (96%; n = 24) reported having at least some attraction to adults at the time of their offense(s), and 40% (n = 10) reported no attraction to children, their decision to engage in CSA cannot be ascribed solely to a lack of interest in pro-social means of attaining sexual gratification. Indeed, most participants described a preference for satisfying their sexual desires with adults, not only because of the illegality of CSA, but also because, as William described: “After sex with an adult, you don’t have this horrible, guilty, you want to suicide, kind of feeling…after offending, it was devastating.”
Rather than stemming from an interest in children, the decision to form connections with children was commonly described in terms of lacking access to adult partners/sexual opportunities with adults, while simultaneously having access to children and experiencing situations in which they could opportunistically engage in CSA to satisfy their sexual desire. As Richard explained, “You want to please yourself, so you didn’t care who it was…age, it didn’t matter, it was who was around at the time”. Several participants reported stopping or significantly decreasing their offending behavior when able to establish and maintain a sexual relationship with an adult, but echoed Kris’ comment that, “As soon as the relationship ended, I was back to abusing”. For some participants, being involved in an adult relationship may have served as a means of remoralization, offering external validation of their value and worth; the end of a relationship could thus serve to generate an opposing view of the self, possibly intensifying feelings of demoralization.
Facilitating Connections with Children
Hospital files showed an average of 10 years between the age at which participants became aware of their desire to engage in CSA and the age at which they were first charged for a sexual offense (Mean = 26 and 36 years old, respectively). This time gap is consistent with participants’ narratives, which indicated that although participants situated their offenses in relation to experiences of sexual overregulation, abuse, and demoralization, these experiences alone were rarely sufficient to overcome the social/moral codes that typically prevent the extreme subversion of social norms. Rather, nearly all participants reported having successfully prevented themselves from acting on their desire to form connections with children until their moral agency was tested to the point of surrender by one or more internal/external factors. Participants described how during these moral breakdowns they “gave up” resisting their desires, precipitating their decision to engage in CSA. Joseph explained, “You know you shouldn't, and you can’t get away with it, and it's wrong. These things do interfere. So, it's kind of a battle…a very dangerous battle…does something tip the scale? Yeah, I believe it does.” The factors most commonly expressed by participants included: (a) multiple stressors, (b) substance abuse, and (c) sexual arousal.
Substance use was one specific stressor that was described as both endangering and intensifying participants’ need for connection. A minority (28%; n = 7) of the sample believed that chronic substance use had indirectly facilitated their involvement in CSA by negatively impacting their relationship with their adult partner. Their offenses occurred in the context of losing connection with their adult partners and seeking new connections outside their existing relationships to satisfy their desires. John stated:
I was drinking, drinking, drinking. Way, way, too much…this killed my sex drive and also hurt our marriage very badly. My wife wanted nothing to do with me, so there was a long period of time where there was no sexual relations between us.
Kris described how his substance use contributed to his decision to seek these connections with children rather than adults: “Drugs isolated my mind and actually prevented me from making, you know, proper relationships with adults.”
In addition to problems resulting from chronic alcohol abuse, two of the participants who expressed this subtheme had committed their offenses while intoxicated. Kevin noted, “I think certainly when I drink the inhibitions go down and makes it easier to convince yourself to do stupid things.” Richard situated his decision to engage in CSA in relation to both substance use and sexual arousal:
Every time I drink my sex drive goes up, and then it gets to the point sometimes – it will act up like that for quite a few days before something will happen. But you figure, well I’ve got it under control, nothing’s going to happen…and then, you know, you’re under the influence and everything, and something’s going to happen.
The majority of participants (64%; n = 16) reported experiencing intense feelings of sexual arousal before and during their offenses, which were described as facilitating their pursuit of connections with children by temporarily obstructing or overruling the moral imperatives that would typically prevent these behaviors[3]. Kevin explained, “I almost went into a zone...you know, ‘using the head below your belt’ type of expression, and just kind of not worrying about the consequences, not worrying about the harm I’m causing. Just fulfilling that need.” Similarly, Sam reported, “I knew it was wrong, I knew that; but then somehow, the desire transcended.” Participants described these imperatives as having come rushing back immediately following orgasm, raising sudden and intense resurgences of guilt, shame, and fear:
After having my orgasm there was such a feeling of shame and disgust with myself for what I had just done…it was the worst feeling I’ve ever had in my life. (Scott)
You get the high euphoria of an orgasm and then you [go] totally straight down…where you berate yourself and put yourself down…you think of yourself as disgusting and can’t understand how you got back there again. (William)
The experience described above denotes a familiar feeling of demoralization among participants, of failing to meet the standards of ethical behavior within the moral ontologies they had internalized over time (inconsistent or contradictory though they may have been). Ironically, this experience often facilitated further offending, as the heightened state of sexual arousal associated with these behaviors seemed to provide a temporary respite from participants' ongoing feelings of demoralization. Thomas expressed how engaging in CSA thus came to be perceived as both a cause of and a (very short-term) solution to demoralization:
When you think about it, it’s very hard to believe I would’ve done it again after feeling so bad. But I think that’s part of what fueled doing it again was the fact that now I feel so bad…then having this opportunity to have this…euphoric feeling again, and it falls back into a cycle.
It is important to acknowledge the role of demoralization in CSA, both as a driving force in the desire for connection that CSA serves, and as the fallout of engaging in actions that further deplete people’s sense of their moral selves.
In addition to identifying specific factors believed to facilitate their pursuit of connections with children, some participants (24%; n = 6) situated their decision to engage in CSA within the context of feeling thoroughly overwhelmed by a combination of life stressors. William’s story not only demonstrates this experience, it also provides an example of how even participants with a persistent sexual interest in children described making a conscious effort to avoid engaging in CSA until experiencing moral breakdown:
I recognized the interest suddenly, earlier on, and then I sort of fought it off and took steps to try and minimize the risk of offending. At some point there was just, you know, too much going on in my life – there was alcohol, there was stress, there was death in the family, and I was working a lot. There was just so many other factors that kind of played into that, that I just gave up and committed the offense, as opposed to trying to fight it off.
While the experiences discussed throughout this paper were perceived by participants as motivating or facilitating their decision to pursue connections with children, nearly all participants explicitly stated that their attempts to understand and explain their own harmful behaviors (i.e., the narratives they constructed around offending during the interview) were not intended to justify or defend their actions:
[Drinking] definitely did not help the situation, but I am not going to blame it on alcohol. Of course, I chose to drink, so I am responsible for it. (Tim)
Alcohol abuse, lack of physical and emotional support from my wife…were the biggest contributing factors. I don’t say they excused, but they were factors. Bottom line, I made the decision, so it lies on my shoulders. (Scott)
People are responsible for their decision to engage in CSA, regardless of the motivating factors, and giving PCSO-C the opportunity to explore the reasons underlying this decision should not be misconstrued as an attempt to justify or minimize their behavior; nor did it appear to be perceived as such by participants. Rather, allowing people to construct narratives around their decision to offend is intended as a means of identifying factors that may hinder criminal desistance; ideally, factors that can be addressed through treatment interventions to better protect children from sexual harm.
[3] We have previously described this experience as hyperfocused sexual arousal and discussed its potential role in the onset and maintenance of child pornography offenses (see [name blinded for review]).