doing the numbers: how many pedophiles offend?

## doing the numbers: how many pedophiles offend?

#### 7 November 2014
from celibate pedophiles

### ethan edwards

| I've often said that many pedophiles do not offend against children. It is the foundation of much of the rest of our message. Ethan Edwards is the co-founder of Virtuous Pedophiles. Blog posts reflect his personal views, and are not statements from the organization. I've often said that [many pedophiles do not offend against children]. It is the foundation of much of the rest of our message.It is possible to address this quantitatively. An average person's eyes are likely to glaze over, so let me give you the bottom line: "Between 2% and 45% of pedophiles abuse a child at some point in their lives." It's a vital enough question for us that I believe it's worth doing the analysis even if the results cover such a wide range. Here's the method: First you figure out how many sex offenses against children were committed in a given year. This is how many were reported, then multiplied by a factor to adjust for the percentage of such crimes that go unreported. You then reduce it by the number of crimes that were committed by people who are not pedophiles but instead situational offenders (primarily attracted to adults). You reduce it further to account for those pedophiles who abuse multiple children in a year. The result is the number of pedophiles who abuse at least one child in a given year. You then consider the population of the jurisdiction in question, the number of men, and the percentage of men who are thought to be pedophiles, and compute the number of pedophiles in the population. Divide the first by the second and you get the percentage of pedophiles who commit an offense in a given year. You then expand this to account for the many years in a pedophile's life. There are two extreme ways to do this. First, you can assume that each pedophile only abuses during one year, so the number of offending pedophiles is the number who abuse in a year multiplied by some large number like 50 (to cover age 15 through 65?). At the other extreme, you can assume that once an abuser, always an abuser — an abuser abuses every year, so the number in one year is the same as the lifetime number. The second seems much closer to reality. I made a little spreadsheet program to do all those calculations. So we have the theory. What about some data? One of the German members of Virtuous Pedophiles pointed us to . Given numbers in that article plus some he estimated and some others I estimated, we can turn the crank: 14,877 assaults on children reported in a recent year (2013?) If we assume only 1 in 5 cases of sexual assault is reported, we get 74,385 total assaults on children. If we assume 40% are by pedophiles, we get 29,754 assaults on children by pedophiles. If we assume each pedophile abuser has 2 victims on average in a year, we get 14,877 pedophiles making at least one assault. The male population of Germany is 40,000,000. If we assume 1% are pedophiles, that is 400,000. The percentage of pedophiles committing a crime in a year is 3.719%. If we assume a factor of 3 for the lifetime adjustment, 11.16% of German pedophiles have at least one hands-on offense against a child in their lifetime. This means that 88.84% never abuse a child! But as the old saying goes, "People fooling with statistics fool people with statistics." The lifetime adjustment factor is particularly uncertain. But if instead we go back one step the percentage committing a crime in a given year (3.719%) is itself a meaningful statistic. Yet that number is also misleading for it counts among the non-offending pedophiles both small boys who will one day turn into pedophiles and the men who are too disabled to have an opportunity to offend. Some of those numbers above are quite solid (number of assaults reported, male population of Germany). Most others have a range of variation but it won't affect the result beyond say doubling it or halving it (whether it's 20% of assaults by pedophiles or 60%, or whether the average pedophile has 1.3 victims per year or 4.0). Others have plausible values that would have a dramatic effect. These include notably the percent of pedophiles in the population (0.1% or 10%?), the number of unreported cases for every case that is reported (1, or 50?), and the lifetime adjustment (2 or 30?). If we change the above analysis to say there are 10 unreported cases of child sex abuse for every one reported, and that only 0.5% of men are pedophiles, then it is 15% abuse in a given year, and the lifetime percentage is 45%. You might also expect that sexual abuse by family members (mostly non-pedophiles) is less likely to be reported than abuse by people with a more distant relationship, so a lower factor of 3 would be reasonable there. Some have suggested that only 20% of child sex abuse is by pedophiles, and a high-end respectable estimate of pedophiles in the population is 3%. Turning the crank with those assumptions yields 0.37% in a given year (only 1 out of 250!). For such low numbers a higher lifetime adjustment makes sense, and using 5 yields 1.86% over a lifetime. The above examples make clear that this kind of analysis depends critically on the values of many variables which are not known with any certainty. Citing a range between 2% and 45% of pedophiles who offend in a lifetime reflects that uncertainty, but I'd hardly be confident saying it has to lie in that range, or that the chances are 95% that it lies in that range. There is just too much uncertainty. If a number as low as 0.37% of pedophiles abuse a child in a given year, you could ask how that differs from the number of males overall who will abuse. This number we can give with more confidence. It is 74,385 divided by 40,000,000, and if we assume just one victim per year we get 0.19%. It would be quite a revelation if pedophiles were only twice as likely to abuse a child as men in general! I hope those with a green eyeshade mentality will feel free to comment on my methodology and estimates. In closing, I'd like to return to the victims of the abuse, who barely made an appearance at the start of the analysis. If it turns out that only 2% of pedophiles abuse children, it in no way suggests that fewer children were abused than we thought. They suffer whether their abuser was a pedophile or not. While accounting for multiple victims reduced the number of pedophiles who abuse, it did not reduce the count or suffering of those victims. Victims are the most important people here, not pedophiles. But we as pedophiles inevitably focus on ourselves and our role. The large proportion of us who never abuse a child should not suffer for the actions of those who do. About the author: Ethan Edwards is a pseudonym. I am a pedophile, always celibate, and I have never seen child pornography. My attraction is strongest to girls around 4 years old, but I am also attracted to girls and women up through their 30s or beyond. Now in my late 60s, I'm divorced and living alone. I was married for over 10 years and was heavily involved with raising my 3 daughters. For most of my career I was a successful software engineer. I am very unusual for a pedophile in that I didn't realize that I was one until I was in my 50s—but it was there all along. I am angry that we all must remain silent or risk losing everything. That was my mindset when I co-founded Virtuous Pedophiles in 2012. I soon learned of the the terror of the typical pedophile who realizes as a teenager that his attraction isn't going to go away, who has nowhere to turn for help. The injustice I am most passionate about is the harsh legal penalties imposed on pedophiles who passively view illegal images of children. I stepped down from my role as a director of Virtuous Pedophiles early in 2024 and am delighted to pass the mantle on to a younger generation. This content was taken from Ethan's longstanding blog, Celibate Pedophiles. Some of the titles and taglines have been edited for their inclusion at thepword. You can see an earlier version of the blog at the wayback machine. |

other relevant items

other relevant items

cp viewing and raw prejudice |  | can you trust stopitnow's anti-cp campaign? |  | argentinian map advocate gonzalo interview
ethan edwards Imagine a man who sees a shocking video of a 4-year-old girl being abused. He went looking for this video in particular, and he finds it terrifically exciting. He is excited by what is happening. How do we make sense of this? |  | ethan edwards The UK branch of StopItNow has launched a campaign to help people stop looking at CP. At its heart is a set of web-based modules. This is an exciting and promising new initiative — subject to one huge caveat |  | global prevention project Candice interviews MAP advocate Gonzalo as he shares his passion for helping educate others on why MAPs are human beings not human doings and deserve support.

cp viewing and raw prejudice ethan edwards Imagine a man who sees a shocking video of a 4-year-old girl being abused. He went looking for this video in particular, and he finds it terrifically exciting. He is excited by what is happening. How do we make sense of this?
can you trust stopitnow's anti-cp campaign? ethan edwards The UK branch of StopItNow has launched a campaign to help people stop looking at CP. At its heart is a set of web-based modules. This is an exciting and promising new initiative — subject to one huge caveat
argentinian map advocate gonzalo interview global prevention project Candice interviews MAP advocate Gonzalo as he shares his passion for helping educate others on why MAPs are human beings not human doings and deserve support.