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This article explores the search for finality that arises in response to crime. Its focus is not simply upon how this search for finality functions, but on both the centrality of narrative within this and the question of consolation that arises when such cases officially remain unresolved. Examined by reference to one particular case – specifically, the deaths of five males in the South Australian city of Adelaide between 1979 and 1983 – the article explores the central role of cultural anxieties or phobias that often underpin infamous or iconic crimes. It examines the way in which the narrative of this case reveals particular anxieties associated with homosexuality and paedophilia as a means through which to investigate the complex way in which consolation is ultimately left wanting in spite of the presence of a narrative of culpability. In its entirety, the article attends to the enduring manner in which anxieties associated with sexual difference persist, and the haunting spectre that arises as a result of an unrealised search for finality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A scientific nomenclature of erotic age preferences informed the mid- through late nineteenth century joint appearance of homosexuality and sexual abuse of minors on the medico-legal scene. Yet, even in the twenty-first century, legal, psychiatric and culture-critical dimensions of related terms are rarely cleanly distinguished. Review of primary sources shows the ongoing Western suspension of notions of ‘sick desire’, alongside and beyond the medicalisation of homosexuality, between metaphor, legal interdiction and postulated psychopathology. Virtually all early attention to erotic age preference occurred in the context of emergent attention to erotic gender preference. Age of attraction and age difference centrally animate modern homosexuality’s pre-modern past; its earliest psychiatric nomenclature and typologies (1844–69); its early aetiologies stipulating degrees of sexual differentiation (1890s); its concomitant sub-classification (1896–1914); its earliest psychophysiological tests (1950s); and, finally, its post-psychiatric, social scientific typologies (1980s). Several identifications of ‘paedophilia’ were seen throughout the 1890s but as a trope it gained cultural momentum only during, and as a seemingly intriguing corollary of, the progressive depsychiatricisation of homosexuality across the Anglo-European world (late 1950s through 1980s). Early twentieth century sources varied in having it denote (1) a distinct perversion, thus possible ‘complication’ of sexual inversion (2) a discrete corollary of psychosexual differentiation akin to gender preference (3) a distinct subtype of fetishism, thus a likely imprint of early seduction (4) a more intricate expression of erotic symbolism or psychosexual complex or (5) a taste answering to culture, a lack of it, or a libertine disregard for it. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Thus far, four studies have used magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to test for differences in brain structure between paedophilic (i.e. sexually attracted to pre-pubescent children) and teleiophilic (i.e. sexually attracted to adults) men, revealing divergent results. To re-examine this issue, we acquired high resolution structural T1-weighted and diffusion MRI scans of the brain in 24 paedophilic and 32 teleiophilic men. We performed voxel-based morphometry (VBM) of the T1-weighted images and tract-based spatial statistics (TBSS) of the diffusion tensor imaging data to search for grey and white matter differences between groups. In contrast to previous studies, less than half of the individuals in our paedophilic group had a record of sexual offences against children, as subjects were partially recruited from two outpatient facilities of a child sexual abuse prevention project for self-acknowledged paedophiles. After adjustment for multiple comparisons and controlling for important confounding factors, we did not find any significant grey or white matter differences between the paedophilic and teleiophilic subjects. Together with the inconsistencies in the literature, these results argue against consistent structural differences at the macroanatomical scale between paedophiles and teleiophiles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a case study of a 43-year-old male man who was brought to Novo Mesto General Hospital in Slovenia following series of epileptic fits and was also sentenced to one year imprisonment for paedophilia-related offence. The patient was administered with diazepam to control his epileptic symptoms where he was somnolent and unresponsive. Moreover, the patient was diagnosed with acquired paedophilia.

This article discusses several sets of rumours and contemporary legends studied by the author since the 1990s. The common theme concerned with children as prey, victims of ruthless predators, unites narratives of organ theft, the social construction of disappearances and kidnappings, and sexual abuse of children and adolescents. In light of these facts, the denial of yesterday has turned into an ever-growing obsession. This paper examines children as prey through three subthemes, attending to the individual features and to the ways they overlap and also engage contemporary anxieties. An overview of recent events in the United Kingdom and France indicates the persistence of some scary and hazardous hypotheses regarding the children as prey theme. The concluding remarks are presented in three parts: first, a review of key transformations in the discourse around the children as prey by the adoption of a different approach; second, an in-depth discussion of the well-known tale of the Slaughter of the Innocents, as always present in the successive sets of accusations linked to the emergence of collective faces of the Evil; and third, an analysis of the concept of the utmost, a special type of the extreme. Finally, the author's hypotheses on the contemporary obsession with child sexual abuse are presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Numerous meta-analyses and reviews have been conducted on the effectiveness of psychological treatment of sexual offenders in reducing recidivism, but no meta-analysis has been done on sexual offenders against children (SOAC) specifically. A moderate treatment effect has been shown in several evaluations of general sexual offenders, while many scholars maintain that the question remains unanswered until an adequate number of effectiveness studies with a strong research design have been carried out. In this meta-analysis, we evaluated 14 studies selected and coded according to Collaborative Outcome Data Committee (CODC) criteria. They included 1,421 adult offenders in psychotherapy and 1,509 nontreated controls, with a minimum average follow-up period of 3 years, published in peer-reviewed journals in 1980 or later. Recidivism was defined as rearrest or reconviction. Study quality was classified into strong, good, weak or rejected. The analysis revealed a treatment effect size of r = .03 for nine studies evaluated as Good or Weak, while all studies yielded an effect size of r = .08, including five studies classified as Rejected. The results show that the available research cannot establish any effect of treatment on SOAC. Despite a large amount of research, only a tiny fraction of studies meet a minimum of scientific standards, and even fewer provide sensible and useful data from which it is possible to draw conclusions. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Nobody could deny that the safest place for children is their home and the most trusted people in life of children are their parents and siblings but the media and government reports indicate that it is no longer true now. The mask of Indian tradition and culture hides increasing number and variety of heinous crimes of incestuous relations. There was self-denial about these crimes in our communities. This pathetic condition is noticed by literary giants like Vijay Tendulkar and Mahesh Dattani who could not ignore it and so they presented the situation to alarm and warn the people through their plays. The present article is an attempt to investigate how Tendulkar and Dattani have handled the incest in their plays Silence! The Court is in Session and Thirty Days Has September. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Clio. Femmes, Genre, Histoire is the property of Belin Editeur and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Clio. Femmes, Genre, Histoire is the property of Belin Editeur and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The current study examined the discriminative and convergent validity of three Implicit Association Test (IAT) measures designed to assess sexual interest in girls, in boys or in children. Sex offenders against children (n =29) did not differ from non-sex offenders (n=28) on these IAT measures. The IAT measures were related to a physiological measure of sexual interest in children, but not to a file-based measure of sexual interest in children or the sexual preference item of the STABLE-2007. The relationship between the IAT measures and risk scales designed to predict sexual recidivism was counter-intuitive. Greater sexual interest in boys, as assessed by the IAT measure, was related to lower risk of sexual recidivism. The current study did not provide compelling evidence for the validity of IAT measures designed to assess sexual interest in children. A better understanding of construct validity of IAT measures is needed before their use in the assessment and management of sexual offenders against children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Following a medical examination, in late March 1908, Rebecca Levi, a young in-patient in the West End Hospital for Nervous Diseases, made a serious allegation against Jones. Having discussed the matter, behind closed doors, the hospital Committee called upon Jones to resign. Many years later Jones wrote up his account of the 1908 Affair, which his biographers and historians of psychoanalysis have accepted more or less without question. Such uncritical readings raise questions as to how the psychoanalytic community chooses to engage with the allegations of indecent (child) assault levelled against Jones. Reading the contemporaneous documents, including Ian Malcolm's letters to Jones, Dr Savill's account of Rebecca Levi together with various other texts, reveals serious discrepancies in Jones's narrative, thereby suggesting a far more disturbing scenario than Jones ever allowed. The paper concludes by examining the distinctions to be drawn around Jones's sexual relationships with his adult patients as opposed to his treatment of prepubescent girls. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reviews the current neurobiological literature on the aetiology of developmental and acquired paedophilia and examines what the consequences could be in terms of responsibility and treatment for the latter. Addressing the question of responsibility and punishment of offenders with acquired paedophilia from a neurobiological perspective is controversial. Consequently it is essential to avoid hasty conclusions based strictly on neurobiological abnormality justifications. This study establishes a distinction between developmental and acquired paedophilia. The article investigates whether offenders who fulfil the diagnosis of acquired paedophilia should be held fully responsible, particularly in cases where the offender's conduct appears to result from volitionally controlled behaviour that is seemingly incompatible with a neurological cause. Moreover, the article explores how responsibility can be compromised when offenders with acquired paedophilia have (partially) preserved moral knowledge despite their sexual disorder. The article then examines the option of offering mandatory treatment as an alternative to imprisonment for offenders with acquired paedophilia. Furthermore, the article addresses the ethical issues related to offering any form of quasi-coercive treatment as a condition of release. This study concludes that decisions to fully or partially excuse an individual who fulfil the diagnosis of acquired paedophilia should take all relevant information into account, both neurobiological and other environmental evidence, and should proceed on a careful case by case analysis before sentencing or offering treatment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Multiple factors determine handedness including genetics, prenatal stress and post-natal environmental conditions. Atypical handedness, whether manifest as increased sinistrality or decreased strength of lateral preference, has been noted in a wide variety of populations with neuropathology. Those with atypical sexual preferences, specifically paedophilia, also manifest reduced rates of right-handedness. This paper uses the largest sample of phallometrically assessed men to date to establish the pattern of atypical handedness in paedophilia. Specifically, whereas prior research has largely characterized participants dichotomously as right-handed or non-right-handed and/or used self-report of writing hand, this paper expands upon such reports by using the Edinburgh Handedness Inventory's laterality quotient. Participants' handedness and phallometrically assessed sexual preference were analyzed both as continuous and categorical variables, and the responses of those scoring in the range of ambiguous-handedness were evaluated to ascertain whether they were ambiguously handed or more accurately described as mixed-handed. Results indicated those producing scores in the range of ambiguous-handedness demonstrated response patterns consistent with ambiguous-handedness, rather than mixed-handedness. Paedophiles demonstrated high rates of non-right-handedness primarily manifested as sinistrality, whereas those who had a sexual preference for pubescent children evidenced increased ambiguous-handedness. Results support a view of ambiguous-handedness as less pathological than previously hypothesized, and of a neurodevelopmental origin of paraphilic sexual preferences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background Many hypotheses have been proposed to address the relationship between sex offenders and neuropsychological functions. Method The purpose of this study was to evaluate differences in executive functions between juvenile sex offenders and non-sex offenders with/without low IQ by using the Behavioural Assessment of the Dysexecutive Syndrome (BADS) and the Wechsler IQ Test. Results The sex offenders with low IQ had significantly lower scores than the non-sex offenders with low IQ in switching attention, processing speed, working memory, and prospective memory. No differences between the sex offenders and the non-sex offenders without low IQ were found in all tests. Conclusion These findings show that the neuropsychological characteristics of juvenile sex offenders are related to their IQ level, and suggest that juvenile sexual offending is related to the possibility of having developmental deficits. The combination of cognitive behavioural therapy and neurocognitive training for treatment is therefore important. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this single case study, I will address the question of how incestuous sexual abuse causes doubt of three distinct types: (1) honest doubt that is essential to the pursuit of knowledge; (2) inherent doubt that can result from a trauma that leaves the victim's mind fragmented and confused; and (3) the sadistic imposition of doubt intended to deceive, disorient and attack unbearable knowledge in the victim or another person familiar with the abuse (in this case, the analyst and the victim's later victims). During the course of my psychoanalysis of a paedophile, it became clear that this third form of doubt played an integral role in the patient's sexual abuse of children, a role I will link to the nature and function of paedophilia and to the experience of working psychoanalytically with a paedophile. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides a close analysis of a scandal that broke in Mexico following publication of a book that accused businessmen and politicians of involvement in child trafficking and paedophilia. The book's author, Lydia Cacho, was abducted, imprisoned, threatened with violence and charged with defamation. As further evidence of complicity in the protection of paedophile rings surfaced, a firestorm of public anger and media scrutiny focussed on the plight of Cacho and key political figures including a state governor. A rare political space was thus opened for a debate on child rights. Yet it was a space that CSOS and child rights networks failed to exploit. This paper examines how child rights discourse had limited salience in circumstances where esos were compromised, uncommitted and disunited. Developing the concept of a 'rights effect', we argue that advocacy for child rights must not assume a natural fellowship with discourses of human rights generally, or with women's rights, press freedoms and rule of law. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines vigilantism and the question of hate crime. Broader shifts in penology have occurred in tandem with changes in the ways in which child sexual abuse has come to be understood. Using these shifts as a contextual backdrop, the article examines vigilance against the fear of crime where it manifests into vigilantism against real or perceived paedophiles. In doing so, the article attends to the politics of hate crime: namely, whether these actions belong within the confines of hate crime provisions or, alternatively, whether such provisions should expressly exclude the category of paedophilia. In its entirety, the article interrogates the dimensions of disgust associated with paedophilia, and explores issues arising from an alignment between paedophilia and hate crime. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the up-to-date problem of child maltreatment and insists upon the idea that, most frequently, we return to justice to solve the cases of abuse and not to the specialists in human problems - psychologists, sociologists, social workers, psychiatrists. The paper analyses the characteristics of the abusing parents and those of the abused children. Also, it describes the main types of paedophiles and their modus operandi. It is reopening to debate a proposal from 60s of the Romanian criminologist V.V. Stanciu regarding the necessity of a crime prevention code. Some of his ideas are very fruitful for the todays searching of the prevention measures of the degradation of the social contexts that generate violence and moral decadence. The study was carried out within the National Plan of Research, Development and Innovation PNII, the "Ideas" Program, the project named: "Domestic abuse on children and their social protection. Multidisciplinary victimization study".

The aim of this article is straightforward and practical: by utilising elements of routine activity and rational choice theories, it explains how online child sex offenders use the Internet and what can be done to counter the challenge they pose. The discussion opens with definitions of child pornography, child erotica, child exploitation material and paedophilia. Its main objective is to promote online protection of children. It is explained that online child sex offenders and paedophiles use the Internet to create virtual communities; collect, share and trade images; tempt, seduce and groom children. Then the article explores what has been done in the Western world to combat those criminal activities. Successful campaigns against child pornography require shared responsibility and effort by parents, Internet Service Providers ( ISPs), legal enforcement and the international community at large. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Taking my cue from a number of theories on paratextuality and specifically peritextuality, this essay argues that the hitherto unaddressed peritextual features of Ana Clavel's Las Violetas son flores del deseo (2007), including illustration, title, jacket copy, and epigraph are central in understanding the strong reactions which the image on the front cover provoked. I argue that the peritextual dimension, which ambiguously anchors but also disrupts meaning(s), works to underpin the novella's central themes of paedophilia, rape, and questions of reader-viewer collusion. Even as we are forced into the position of accomplice, our awareness of the constructedness of the peritextual devices functions to relinquish us from becoming mixed up directly in the brutality which the image suggests. Nevertheless, the peritextual also alerts us to the view that the implied crime is not merely the product of artfulness but also the result of our own imagination and longing for that violence. It will also be argued that the erotic content of the image, which implies both a knowing and an unknowing, perturbs the viewer-reader's comfort zone. Indeed, the image ambiguously plays upon a perceptible incongruity between innocent childhood and sexualized child-teenager and thus disturbs any possibility of offering a safe interpretation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Most neuroimaging studies investigating sexual arousal in paedophilia used erotic pictures together with a blocked fMRI design and long stimulus presentation time. While this approach allows the detection of sexual arousal, it does not enable the assessment of the immediate processing of erotically salient stimuli. Our study aimed to identify neuronal networks related to the immediate processing of erotic stimuli in heterosexual male paedophiles and healthy age-matched controls. Methods: We presented erotic pictures of prepubescent children and adults in an event related fMRI-design to eight paedophilic subjects and age-matched controls. Results: Erotic pictures of females elicited more activation in the right temporal lobe, the right parietal lobe and both occipital lobes and erotic pictures of children activated the right dorsomedial prefrontal cortex in both groups. An interaction of sex, age and group was present in the right anteriolateral oribitofrontal cortex. Conclusions: Our event related study design confirmed that erotic pictures activate some of the brain regions already known to be involved in the processing of erotic pictures when these are presented in blocks. In addition, it revealed that erotic pictures of prepubescent children activate brain regions critical for choosing response strategies in both groups, and that erotically salient stimuli selectively activate a brain region in paedophilic subjects that had previously been attributed to reward and punishment, and that had been shown to be implicated in the suppression of erotic response and deception. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For the purpose of this research, three case studies of convicts who are serving a sentence in the Penal – Correctional Institution in Zenica were carried out. Their crimes included continued criminal offenses concerning child molestation. During a period of eight months, the researcher has met the men she had been observing, deputy director of the prison, a psychologist, social workers, educators and keepers. The result of these encounters is a paper that tries to synthesize research results in the field of paraphilia (focusing on paedophilia) with specific cases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores legal, scholarly and social responses to women identified as sex offenders. While much has been written on the male paedophile, rapist and sex offender, little research has been done on the role of gender and sexuality in sex offending. This article examines the ways in which the female sex offender is currently theorized and the discourses surrounding policy, legislative and media responses to their crimes. We identify contradictory public discourses where perceptions of female child abusers in particular often succumb to moral panic, in spite of many such offenders being given lenient sentences for their crimes. An examination of the discursive construction of female child abusers suggests that these contradictions are informed by underlying assumptions concerning harm and subjectivity in sex crimes. In exploring these contradictions we illustrate the ways in which such discourses are impacted by social moralities, and how social moralities construct offender and victim subjectivities differently, based on differences in gender, age and sexuality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years there have been several culturo-criminal discursive shifts, which have oriented political and public concerns away from ‘real world’ sex crimes against children and the people most likely to commit them. These include the construction of the dangerous stranger as the primary threat to children; the widespread use of the terms ‘paedophile’ and ‘child pornography’ in the common lexicon and the placing of both the paedophile and pornography in virtual rather than real space. Such discourses not only fail to protect children, but may even work to fetishize youth and youthful bodies colluding with the widespread commercial sexualization of children. In the ‘cyber-paed’ the news media have created the monster of our age and orchestrated what some criminologists might term a moral panic about both ‘cyber’ and ‘paeds’. This has occurred in a culture that, simultaneous with the castigation and outrage of the ‘cyber-paed’, routinely sexually objectifies children and infantilizes women to sell products, or pleasure as product; a culture that also largely ignores the evidence that most sexual crime against children happens in families. This article explores the contradictions and deflections inherent in contemporary constructions of sexuality and childhood and assesses the panic about paedophiles in cyber-space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents two theoretical approaches to incest, one from the point of view of psychoanalytic theory and the other from the point of view of the law; and two cases of sexual abuse, one represented directly as an abuse, the other protected by laws relating to the civil rights of polygamous groups. The objective is to study together both theoretical systems and examine the ways in which they can help to shed light on the formation of masculinities; and to examine the cited cases together, to present the various forms that abuse suffered by girls in two different cultures may take. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Child molesters are frequently uncomfortable in adult company but show high emotional congruence with children. It was hypothesized that these emotional problems may be mirrored by physical intimacy problems such that child molesters would show exaggerated disgust reactions to the thought of coming into physical contact with adults, but not children. It was demonstrated that the discomfort shown by both offenders and non-offenders at the prospect of coming into contact with the bodily fluids of another person increases in relation to the age of the person that the bodily fluid came from. Furthermore, child molesters, in comparison to non-offenders and violent offenders, showed excessive concern at the thought of being touched on the lips or tongue with a re-sterilized surgical swab. These exaggerated anxieties combined withthe implicit belief that children are less contaminating than adults could add to the drive for child molesters to seek physical intimacy with children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Morgan Luck raises a potentially troubling problem for gamers who enjoy video games that allow the player to commit acts of virtual murder. The problem simply is that the arguments typically advanced to defend virtual murder in video games would appear to also support video games that allowed gamers to commit acts of virtual paedophilia. Luck's arguments are persuasive, however, there is one line of argument that he does not consider, which may provide the relevant distinction: as virtual paedophilia involves the depiction of sexual acts involving children, it is therefore an instance of child pornography. I argue that virtual paedophilia involves the depiction of sexual acts involving children, which amounts to child pornography. I then draw on arguments to show that child pornography is morally objectionable. Finally, depictions of virtual murder are not instances of pornography, and so are not morally objectionable for this reason. So, there is a relevant moral distinction to draw between virtual murder and virtual paedophilia that is able to justify the former but not the latter. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper will discuss professionals' contemporary definitions and understandings of paedophilia, based upon empirical qualitative research with a range of professionals working within paedophilia, or in related fields (practitioners, academics and members of the media) (N = 28). The research used semi-structured interviews, interpreted through qualitative (thematic) content analysis. The findings reveal that in general the professionals seem to have similar, but differently nuanced understandings of paedophilia. The professionals believe that the current definition of paedophilia, as a result of a number of factors including disparate professional discourses, has become problematic as it does not reflect the complexity of the issue or the population in question. This disharmony in professional discourse and public discussion has led to the broader societal discourse surrounding paedophilia to become maladaptive and not fit for purpose. Therefore the professionals believe that the current discourse surrounding paedophilia, and its resulting definition, needs to be readdressed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]