An Admitted Pedophile Says We Must Learn to Accept People Like Him
DR. DREW PINSKY, MD, HOST "DR. DREW ON CALL": Tonight an admitted pedophile goes public. He says we must learn to accept people like him. Can we? Could we? Plus hashtag shout your abortion. Women are sharing their experiences on Twitter and making a lot of other people angry. And it all starts right now at the top of the feed. A man claiming to be a pedophile wrote an article for the website Salon, in which he confesses to be sexually attracted to children, but never acting on these urges. He will join me in just a few minutes. But first, here is part of what he writes. Take a listen.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: To confess a sexual attraction to children is to lay claim to the most reviled status on the planet, one that effectively ends any chance you have of living a normal life. Yet I`m not the monster you think me to be. I`ve never touched a child sexually in my life and never will. Nor do I use child pornography. So, please, be understanding and supportive. It`s really all we asks for. Treat us like people with a massive handicap we must overcome, not as a monster.</s>PINSKY: Joining me AnneElise Goetz, attorney and host of "Your Life and the Law" podcast; Rolanda Watts, host "Sundays with Rolanda," podcast as well; Ryan Sorba, head of the Young Conservatives of California and legal consultant; and Bethany Marshall, psychotherapist. So, Rolanda, I`m going to sit you on this hot (inaudible) first. Sympathy for this guy?</s>ROLANDA WATTS, HOST "SUNDAYS WITH ROLANDA," PODCAST, LOS ANGELES: No. I think it took a lot of courage for him to come out because this is one of the most, as he even admits, one of the most vile positions you can have in society. And I just, you know, but, but at the same time, I`m happy to hear -- just to hear that side of the story so we know what`s out there. I think that it`s real. What concerns me is he says I haven`t molested a child. My concern is that if you hang out at the barber shop too long, you`re going to get a haircut. And so part of my concern is that where does that go? I mean.</s>PINSKY: That`s my concern too but, AnneElise, legally he has no problem, in indeed he`s been honest and he`s not acted on his impulses. And should we -- I`m just being polemic here, being a devil`s advocate, but should we applaud a guy that has -- you know, was sexually abused, has these orientations, and manages to control them.</s>ANNEELISE GOETZ, ATTORNEY AND HOST OF "YOUR LIFE AND THE LAW" PODCAST, SAN DIEGO: First off, yes. Legally, we don`t have a crime right now because in this country it`s not a crime to consider doing something that`s illegal. It`s not a crime to think I may rob a bank. You have to go to the bank and rob it. That`s where the crime occurs. With this guy, not only has he not committed a crime, I think it`s interesting his approach. I think that there is more -- he`s actually helping other people to prevent them from committing crimes. Because if you think about it, you know, what they`re doing is getting ahead of the problem. They`re getting ahead of -- we don`t want them in jail, we don`t want them in jail. We want them not committing the crime in the first place.</s>PINSKY: Except, except, Bethany, what`s the average age or most common age at which this comes on, when somebody`s going to act out with these sexual impulses?</s>BETHANY MARSHALL, PH.D., PSY.D., L.M.F.T., BEVERLY HILLS AND PASADENA, CALIFORNIA: The most common age of a child molester is age 13. And why guy -- what, what age did this guy say he was when he first really started realizing his sexual proclivities? Thirteen years old. You know, Dr. Drew, I`m afraid that we`re glorifying pedophilia because you and I both know, when a person is compulsive, what do they do? They wrap their whole lives around the compulsion. An alcoholic works in a bar, a pedophile works in a school. What does someone who has an orientation towards children do if they`re going to rationalize and idealize their behavior? They`re going to write articles about.</s>PINSKY: I heard Rolanda say they go to the barbershop.</s>MARSHALL: They`re going to write an article about. They`re going to go, they`re going to join online communities, all the things this guy has talked about. So I worry that this -- that we`re calling it a sexual orientation, but it`s a compulsion.</s>PINSKY: OK, so there are differences between a sexual orientation, sex addiction that goes to this, and sexual impulses that are -- suddenly they`re overcoming somebody at a certain period of their life. These are three different categories. He`s saying this is a sexual orientation, like being heterosexual, like being homosexual. It`s not something that can be changed. Is that accurate?</s>MARSHALL: He`s saying it`s a orientation fixed from birth, which some of the research is showing now. It`s hard to measure because, you know, children don`t have sex or look at pornography or all the things that we might use to measure sexual orientation. So we really don`t know. But, but an orientation is different from a compulsion, and one of the things we know about pedophiles is that they are often compulsion -- compulsive. By the way, pedophilia is where there`s more than five years age difference between the perpetrator and the victim, and the victim is prepubescent. So let`s call him someone who, who has a sexual orientation toward children. We don`t know if he`s really a pedophile.</s>PINSKY: I`m going to bring him in. He`s -- the name is Todd. This is the man who wrote the article. He says he is a pedophile. He`s a moderator for a website Virtual Pedophiles, V-I, virped.org. And, Todd, you were a young teenager when you first realized you were attracted to children. Is that accurate?</s>TODD: That`s correct. I was 13.</s>PINSKY: And what, and what did you do to combat this? How, how are we.? I mean I think some people would be skeptical when you say I`ve controlled these urges.</s>TODD: Well, when I was 13, I repressed a lot of it. I kind of felt like it was a, a -- you know, it was something that I would get past eventually, and I didn`t really dwell on it too much.</s>PINSKY: And, Todd, you had sexual abuse in childhood. Is that accurate?</s>TODD: Yes.</s>PINSKY: And, and you became a drug addict also, right?</s>TODD: Yeh, but that had to with when I was depressed and.</s>PINSKY: Well, but being unregulated, being traumatized, that, that`s -- you know, most, I would say 100 percent of my patients, well, for sure. If you had a bad enough addiction that you needed to see me when I was running a program, you had physical or sexual or both abuse in childhood. That`s just the way it goes. But, but -- so drug addiction is set up by this many times. My question then is how do you know what you did when you were loaded?</s>TODD: Well, I never got that high. I took a few hydrocodone just to kind of deal with the pain. I was working out every day, you know, so I was in physical pain a lot from that because I was depressed. And, you know, when you`re depressed, you -- your brain doesn`t deal with the, or doesn`t produce the chemicals that alleviates pain.</s>PINSKY: Todd, Todd, I want to get some info from our audience here, if you don`t mind. Yes, sir, go ahead.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I just have a question about what support exists for that? If we`re saying that it is like alcoholism, is there programs, is there support to prevent people that have come out as saying this is something I`m inclined towards?</s>WATTS: I think that`s part of the issue. That`s the main thing.</s>GOETZ: So what do you do? I think it`s creating the community. He`s creating a community so if you have these feelings, as opposed to acting out on them, which is a horrible crime, that means that a child is being put in that position, you go to this community and you try and work through with other people.</s>PINSKY: Yeh. And that`s your.</s>WATTS: And it`s also dealing with the mental health issues that we don`t deal with in this nation well.</s>MARSHALL: Is he going to the community for treatment, or is he going to talk about having sex with children? It`s like a drunkalogue at an AA meeting.</s>PINSKY: Well, tell us about Virtuous Pedophiles. Is it a place to support people in their containment of these behaviors? Todd?</s>TODD: (inaudible) we, we deal with a lot of different issues surrounding pedophilia and sometimes issues that are kind of tangential to that, aren`t really pedophilia itself. But basically it`s a support community. We, you know, we`re trying to help people stay legal, stay moral.</s>PINSKY: But, but let me just say, I -- listen, Bethany, I, I know a lot of people that treat sex addiction who take pedophile (sic) and try to help people before they hurt somebody else. It takes an army of professionals to do that. I`m not so sure I want a group -- it`s one thing with a group of people who are trying to stay sober in a 12-step community and support each other. It`s another when people have really dangerous criminal impulses and they`re with a supportive sort of group of non-professionals. It (inaudible).</s>MARSHALL: There are certain people you do not put together in a group. You don`t put people with eating disorders `cause they give each other tips on how to throw up. You don`t put people who are anxious together because they all get anxious together. People who are suicidal, want to jump off a bridge. Do you put people who have a fixed sexual orientation towards children in a group and expect them to monitor each other? I have questions about that.</s>PINSKY: Yes, ma`am.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: My friend is a psychologist. She works with pedophiles. And she believes, unfortunately, that there`s no cure.</s>PINSKY: Well, that`s I think what Todd would agree with you. But there`s a way to prevent the behavior is what he`s saying. And I guess we`re having technical problems right now, but I don`t think any of us disagree with what her friend would say.</s>MARSHALL: You know, we don`t disagree but maybe what would be nice would be if these groups became a little bit more regulated, if there were certified counselors.</s>PINSKY: Yes.</s>MARSHALL: .but they weren`t online, you know, where secrecy tends to breed. And so because when are they going to cross the line from orientation towards impulsivity. Dr. Drew, you and I know that pedophiles are usually compulsive.</s>PINSKY: Yes. Oh, it`s very difficult. Listen, heterosexual impulses are -- it`s hard, you know what I mean, Ryan? It`s hard for anybody.</s>RYAN SORBA, CHAIRMAN, YOUNG CONSERVATIVES OF CALIFORNIA, ORANGE COUNTY, CALIFORNIA: Dr. Drew, I`m really concerned about Todd because he seems to have a long history of -- on the Internet -- of talking about this issue. And because he has that long history of talking about this issue on the Internet, it makes me, you know, wonder what are his real motivations?</s>PINSKY: Well, I`m hoping.</s>SORBA: Is he actually trying to normalize this behavior?</s>PINSKY: Well.</s>SORBA: Is that an undercurrent of his motivation?</s>PINSKY: That`s something that Beth is worried about too is trying to validate the feelings. Which is, if it ends up with the behavior`s not manifesting. I just, again, without a real professional.</s>SORBA: They`re playing a victim there.</s>PINSKY: We got to take a quick break. Later on I`m going to shou -- we got something called shout your abortion. It`s a hashtag. It`s generating a lot of heat on Twitter. We`re back with that after this.</s>TODD: At times I`ve wondered why I`ve even bothered to stay legal. Maybe prison would be better, even at the risk of getting shank as a short eyes. At least then it would be all over with. But, alas, I could never hurt a child, no matter what. Some small part of me still holds out hope that things will go back to normal, or as close to normal as a celibate pedophile with little prospect of a future can get.