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

The ambiguity surrounding definitions of paedophilia are exacerbated when
paedophilia is compared to other forms of childhood sexual abuse, particularly those
which are not necessarily paedophilia, but that seen as being similar or are often
confused with it (incest, hebophilia, child molestation). This is significant because the
terms child sexual abuse and paedophilia, are often used in the literature, as well as in
the public domain, as a blanket term to cover all forms of child sexual abuse and all
types of child sexual abusers (Rind, Tromovitch & Bauserman, 1998). However, not
all forms of childhood sexual abuse are similar, with different types of offenders
(child sexual abuser, paedophile, incest abuser, hebophile) who all offend in different
ways. For instance, a child sexual molester/abuser is someone who sexually abuses a
child for their own personal gratification, using the child as a sexual aid to bring them
pleasure (Goldstein, 1999). Although, a paedophile may not necessarily be classed as
a child sexual molester, for they may not choose to offend against the child (Howitt,
1995; Leberg, 1997), or they may not wish to actually harm the child and they may
believe that they are actually in „love‟ with the child (O‟Carroll, 1980; Brongersma,
1984). Alternatively, because incest offenders tends to offend within the family, as
such the abuse is not just limited to the adult/child relationship (brother-sister incest),
and this abuse usually has little to do with sexual attraction, unlike paedophilia, incest
is generally focused around adolescent children (La Fontaine, 1990); therefore you
may have a paedophile who may not offend against their children, but will offend
outside of the family (Howitt, 1995). Also a hebophilie is a person who gains sexual
gratification from contact with children aged between 14-17 years (Blanchette &
Coleman, 2002), as such they are not strictly a paedophilia, but hebophilia does seem
to fall into the remit of what the public (McCartan, 2004), the government and the
media seem to regard paedophilia as. However, despite the fact that the hebophile is
legally classified as a paedophile, the law does seem to indicate a separation between
the two, even in passing, for sexual relations with a pre-pubescent child (13 or under)
is considered statutory rape (Sex Offenders Act, 2003), whereas this is not the case if
the child is post-puberty.
Gender and paedophilia
Paedophiles are generally known to be, and thought of as being, male offenders
(Finklehor & Russell, 1984; Howitt, 1995; Dobash, Carnie & Waterhouse, 1997;
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