part0009

John is a 42-year-old man who was convicted for possession of child pornography, distribution of child pornography through online trading, and sexual assault. He was identified by police during an wide-ranging undercover police operation that identified multiple child pornography offenders who were active in a private forum for sharing illegal content. John had a prior criminal conviction for a sexual offense against a 11-year-old almost 20 years ago, for which he served a long prison sentence. During a clinical assessment, John admitted that he was sexually attracted to young boys, that he fantasized and masturbated to fantasies about boys, and that he had used child pornography since his prior conviction. He thought he had been attracted to boys for as long as he could remember, and denied any sexual interest in adults. Computer forensic analysis identified a large collection of child pornography, mostly depicting prepubescent and pubescent boys, and most depicting explicit sexual acts between men and boys or between boys. There was also evidence of text interactions with a range of young adolescents, including evidence of sexual contacts with a 12-year-old boy he knew through neighborhood connections.

Richard is a 22-year-old male college student who was charged with sexual assault against a 14-year-old girl he met at a party. He admitted having sex with the girl the same night they met, but claimed that she told him he was 17 (the legal age of consent is 16 in his state) and he believed her because she was “really mature looking.” He added that they had both been drinking. He said they exchanged mobile numbers afterwards and that he texted with her several times, including sexually explicit messages and a topless photo that she sent him; it was on his phone at the time of his arrest. They met once more to have sex. They were discovered when the girl’s parents looked at her phone and saw the texts with an adult stranger. There was no evidence that Richard had ever accessed child pornography or engaged in any other sexual contacts with children. He reported an unremarkable sexual history, with puberty onset around the age of 13, his first sexual experience with a high school girlfriend, and a number of casual sexual partners in high school and his first years at college.

Jack is a 28-year-old man who referred himself to an outpatient clinic because of concerns regarding his sexual interest in children. He reported using a wide range of pornography since his mid-teens, but said he became increasingly “drawn” to child pornography as he sought more extreme or taboo content. He described himself as a “porn addict” because he looked at pornography multiple times a day, masturbated almost daily, and sometimes paid for sex, including escorts and webcam models online. He said that he gravitated towards “young looking” sex workers, and upon further questioning, admitted that he was most excited by escorts or models who were willing to pretend they were high school girls. After a number of counselling sessions, Jack admitted that he sexually fantasized about young teen girls, and that he had experienced these fantasies and masturbated to them since he was in high school.

Pedophilia is an example of a chronophilia , a term coined by Money (1986) to refer to variations in sexual age interests (see Figure 1.1 , reprinted from Seto, 2017b; see also Seto, 2002). Pedophilia is specific to prepubescent children, with different labels for those who are attracted to infants or toddlers ( nepiophilia ), pubescent children ( hebephilia ), or postpubescent youth who are not yet sexually mature ( ephebophilia ). These are all variations from the species-typical attraction to (young) sexually mature adults, as are variations reflecting interest in middle-aged persons ( mesophilia , a neologism from Seto, 2017b) or the elderly ( gerontophilia ). Although the emphasis in the clinical and forensic literatures has been pedophilia, and to a lesser extent, hebephilia (nepiophilia being so rare that only a few case examples have been reported), understanding all chronophilias could help researchers understand pedophilia and hebephilia better.