thread: what help?

## thread: what help?

#### 11 December 2018
from twitter and bluesky threads

### bly

| In response to the many accounts that simply tweeted, Get Help! Thank you to all of the many accounts who over the last week have wished for NOMAPs to get help. We appreciate your concern! Let's have a little talk about what help is available, what help is suitable and what help can achieve, shall we? >> thread >> > Firstly, let's consider what help it is that we need. Although the world is only just starting to learn about us as a group, we're all individuals and we all have a slightly differing set of needs. That means that not everybody who is a MAP needs exactly the same help. > > Let's start with the people we should be most worried about - MAPs who offend. If they have already committed a contact offence, but not been caught, they are for the time being best helped by being caught, and by being dealt with by the criminal justice system. After that > > we would hope they would get therapy, counselling, a chance to reflect on the harm caused and hopefully a chance to rehabilitate, become safe and avoid recidivism. obody who chances on NOMAP twitter feeds should assume that we don't prioritise stopping contact abuse asap. > > Then there are the people who although they would never commit a contact offence, have found themselves straying into dodgy corners of the internet and looking at illegal material. They need help from professionals like @StopSO_UK , @DontOffendIndia, @StopItNowUK so that they > > can avoid perpetuating harm to victims of Child Sexual Exploitation Material by staying away from such material. There are specialists - far too few - in helping people in that situation. But there are others of us too. > > and there are not many options for those people. Ironically, though (or perhaps understandably) there are more programmes for people who ALREADY broke the law, especially if that involved a contact offence. And those are often mandatory or are a condition of release/parole. > > Now, finally, this question of what exactly will help achieve? What is possible? Can a MAP go to a therapist and say "my goal is to no longer experience an attraction to underage people"? What reaction will they get? > > Well, if the therapist has done their homework, the likely answer is this: "at the moment there is no known method to remove an attraction to a particular group of people, so we have to focus here on your being able to accept yourself as you are, and focus on your behaviour." > The reason that is the most likely answer is that we don't yet understand what causes pedophilia/hebephilia etc. and therefore there's no clear route to a 'cure'. In other words, getting help, as everyone shouts at us to do, probably won't mean stopping having MAP attractions. > However, it CAN help all MAPs to look honestly at who they are, what they think and to make damned sure that what they think doesn't govern how they behave toward kids, directly or indirectly. And that help, subtle though it is, is huge. > > Can we improve this situation? Yes, yes, in all kinds of ways. We could expand projects like Dunkelfeld, we could better fund anti-online-abuse charities, we could let teenagers in this situation know they can tell someone, we could stop talking as if every pedophile in the > > world is Sidney Cooke or Ian Brady. We could start funding more research - like @JamesCantorPhD 's - into what happens in the brains of pedophiles who offend, and those that don't. And we could end the silence which enables everyone to believe that the world divides into > > pedophiles who are irredeemable, evil incarnate, tabloid monsters and everyone else who is normal. Because this is not the truth. It might feel like the truth in a moment of moral outrage at what some people do, but it is not. > > We can only establish the actual truth about who MAPs are and what they do by removing the barriers and stigma that keep us silent, just as we try to do with those who are abused and who are also afraid to speak. Silence will kill and create more victims. Talking will help. :: Addendum. If you're a MAP seeking help or a therapist seeking to help MAPs, there are guidance and guidelines at https://b4uact.org Further addendum. If you would like to make a genuine contribution to a MAP getting help, then there's a special fund, run by @ProstasiaInc where anyone can donate. About the author: I have been writing and talking about the experience of being a pedophile since 2017. Once on twitter until my account was banned in 2020, I co-led Virtuous Pedophiles from 2021 to 2025. I now continue to look for ways to improve the lives of pedophiles, but never at the expense of harming children. I have never viewed illegal material, and never sought or engaged in sexual activity with any child. The rest of my life is countryside walking, friends, Radio 3 and feeling doleful about ageing. |

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censorship36
social media37
therapy17

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