Why do they do it?

Press, 21 June 1984, Page 15

Why do they do it?

Why do some men — including some fathers, grandfathers, de factos, and close family friends — sexually abuse little girls? David Riley, senior psychologist at the Justice Department, says it is hard to name one single cause, but frequently such offenders have an arrested level of emotional development. They relate in a passive, child-like way to someone — a child — who is their emotional equal.

“As far as rape is concerned,” says Mr Riley, “that is an aggressive, hostile act. But I suspect there are differences when the object is perceived as a child and not an adult.

“Girls of 13 to 16 may be read as responding heterosexually, but when the girl is very young it is hard to see it as a primarily sexual act.” % Unlike the women of the Incest Survivors’ Group, Mr Riley does not see sexual abuse of children as an expression of the wish for power and dominance. “It to me not to do with power, but with

a child-like attempt to relate,” he says. He points out that a young child is physiologically not able to react to such advances in a sexual way, and puts the offender’s behaviour down to infantile emotional development. But that is not to say that they do not know any better. “In law, they are responsible for their actions because they are not suffering from a disease of the mind,” he says. “And they certainly know it’s legally wrong, but in line with their passive and, technically speaking, hysterical personality, they can deceive themselves about the nature of what they are doing, their reasons for it, and the consequences for the victim.” An offender will sometimes try to explain away his actions by claiming that he was really just expressing affection for the child — showing his love for the child — and claiming that the child encouraged him. Mr Riley says that if such a statement is genuinely made, then it represents a gros/ mis-reading of the child’s natural

affection as sexual encouragement. “It doesn’t make any sense for them to place any responsibility on the child,” he says.

However, Linda Morgan, of the Incest Survivors' Group, is convinced that sexual abuse of children is a crime of violence. “It’s to do with power,” she says. “It is not to do with the sex act itself. It’s the way society sees women and children as targets. It’s also to do with the way people see children as property.” But, she adds, most child molesters do not see that they have done anything terribly wrong. They will often say that they have just given the child “a bit of sex education.” In the United States and Britain some child abusers have “come out” as self-confessed paedophiles, blatantly trying to justify sex with children as one of the human freedoms. “Sexual freedom for children is bullshit,” says Linda Morgan, angrily. “They can’t consent to what they don’t know about.”