McCartan, K. (2008) Current understandings of paedophilia and the ...

in turn these changes influence individuals‟ opinions towards related matters (child
abuse, childhood sexuality, human rights, voters‟ rights). This is particularity potent
in relation to paedophilia, with many authors arguing that children currently are not at
more risk than previously, but that we are simply more aware of the frequency of this
abuse within society (Howitt, 1995; Jenkins, 1996; Taylor and Quayle, 2003).
However, this societal reaction to risk is best reflected though the current threat and
outcry surrounding the concept of stranger danger. For, even though, paedophiles are
seen as the major scapegoat of modern society (Brongersma, 1984; Kincard, 1998;
Silverman & Wilson, 2002; Taylor & Quayle, 2003), there is little knowledge of the
actual numbers of paedophiles in the at large in the community; but there an
expectation that these numbers are high (McDonald Wilson Bradford, 2000). This
proposition is actually false, because other forms of childhood sexual abuse, as well as
other forms child abuse (domestic violence, incest, physical abuse), are actually more
prevalent in society than paedophilia (La Fontaine, 1990; Howitt, 1995).
Moral panic and paedophilia
One of the ways that modern risk society copes with the inherent uncertainty, fear and
anxiety is though the use of moral panics, which allows the population to feel
confident and in control (i.e., the introduction of the USA Patriot Act [2001] which
allows for increased control over the population in order to protect it from the terrorist
threat (Moore, 2003)). As such moral panics can be viewed as a social construction
that helps to deal with the problem at hand (Hier, 2003).
Cohen (2002) defines a moral panic as an event/group/situation that has had a greater
degree of significance attached to it by society than it actually warrants, either in
relation to itself, or, in relation to other events. Moral panics are focused around
specific groups of „folk devils‟, which, are vilified and branded as deviant by society.
The „folk devils‟ suffer from a form of „offender apartheid‟ (whereby society excludes
and morally rejects them) (Kleinhaus, 2002), which then reinforced by „deviancy
amplification‟ (that the issue is so salient in society that anything that is related to it is
seen as it) (Cohen, 2002), leading to an extreme social response that often over-
shadows the threat of the actual problem (Silverman & Wilson, 2002). This in turn
creates a need for a solution, generally an emotional response that is not always well
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