Demonstrating a Link between Child Pornography and Pedophilia

Justice statistics suggest that there is an increase in the child pornography investigations. Given this, clinicians may be asked more often to assess child pornography offenders. A particularly useful question during assessment is whether a child pornography offender is a pedophile. CAMH's Drs. Michael Seto, James Cantor and Ray Blanchard published a study in the Journal of Abnormal Psychology, entitled Child Pornography Offenses Are a Valid Diagnostic Indicator of Pedophilia, which investigated whether child pornography offenses are a valid diagnostic indicator of pedophilia.

Using a sample of 685 male patients referred to CAMH between 1995 and 2004, the study showed that 61% of child pornography offenders, 35% of offenders with child victims, 13% of offenders with adult victims, and 22% of general sexology patients met diagnostic criteria for pedophilia by showing greater sexual arousal to stimuli depicting children than to stimuli depicting adults in the laboratory. In other words, child pornography offenders were almost twice as likely of being identified as a pedophile, compared to the participants identified as offenders against children (sexual offenses against children 14 or young)

The results indicate that child pornography offending is a valid diagnostic indicator of pedophilia. This group was significantly more likely to show a pedophilic pattern of sexual arousal during testing compared to the other study groups. The results suggest that child pornography offending might be a stronger indicator of pedophilia than is sexually offending against a child. In fact, child pornography offenders - regardless of whether they had a history of sexual offenses against children - were more likely than child offenders to show a pattern of sexual arousal consistent with the pattern of identified pedophiles.

Currently, clinicians rely on three potential sources of information when considering a diagnosis of pedophilia: self-report, a history of sexual behaviour involving children, and psychological assessment. While useful, these methods do have limitations. These results from Dr. Seto and colleagues may be a particularly helpful diagnostic tool in circumstances in which a person denies a sexual interest in prepubescent children, or has no documented history of sexual behaviour involving children.

 

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