There was an episode of This American Life a few years ago about a young guy that basically realized he was attracted to children and didn't know what to do about it. He was terrified, and confessed it to his therapist who wasn't helpful and I think told his mother, which obviously didn't go well. But he eventually got some level of help, and now he runs a support group for people like him, with the understanding that the people in the group have never and will never act on their urges. Not sure what to do with that information, but it was an interesting story.
If someone ran a support group for people with violent temper problems, or problem drinking, or any number of objectively bad things, that would not be a problem.
If you're trying to treat their condition and prevent them from acting on their urge to do the bad thing, why should that be shameful?
yeah imo it's a massive issue that "pedophile" and "child molester" are being used interchangably nowadays
i can imagine that there are plenty of people like the guy in question here, who would never act on these thoughts, but who would never tell a soul about their problems because being a pedophile is pretty much worse than being an actual murderer
There was an episode of This American Life a few years ago about a young guy that basically realized he was attracted to children and didn't know what to do about it. He was terrified, and confessed it to his therapist who wasn't helpful and I think told his mother, which obviously didn't go well. But he eventually got some level of help, and now he runs a support group for people like him, with the understanding that the people in the group have never and will never act on their urges. Not sure what to do with that information, but it was an interesting story.
That's nice and all but like
Slides up next to girl at a bar Yeah, I run a pedophile support group
Isn't that stigma kind of the problem though?
If someone ran a support group for people with violent temper problems, or problem drinking, or any number of objectively bad things, that would not be a problem.
If you're trying to treat their condition and prevent them from acting on their urge to do the bad thing, why should that be shameful?
yeah imo it's a massive issue that "pedophile" and "child molester" are being used interchangably nowadays
i can imagine that there are plenty of people like the guy in question here, who would never act on these thoughts, but who would never tell a soul about their problems because being a pedophile is pretty much worse than being an actual murderer
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That, too, is a problem.
It sounds like this article might be about the same guy? It's difficult to read (huuuge CW) but very thought provoking.
Is he the guy who started the support message board for non-offenders? There were a ton of articles that came out about him a couple years ago.
It was a more private Gchat thing in the article, idk if he expanded to a message board since then. Prob the same guy tho yeah