The Prince And The Pedophile

You've seen them: Those lone, slightly unwashed men at your local park, who are staring at your children but are not looking after any little ones themselves. The older guys who pat your daughter's hair in the grocery store queue while making some sick-making comment about her beauty. And you've seen them in the news; their disgusting pictures along with details of abuse to shock you to your core.

If you think that these sentences describe the man (because in the vast majority of cases, it is a man) who is most likely to target your children, you may be putting them in danger.

Pedophiles do not usually appear as “monsters” — in fact, far too many times, they are described as upstanding citizens, community leaders, charming and nice people. Stranger assault does happen, but it is so rare that we don't even need to discuss that today. All active pedophiles who do not simply grab a child off the street and victimize them have several things in common. They are:

• Pedophiles need to have access to their victims, so engineer opportunities to be alone with the child.
• Pedophiles need to minimize the chance of being punished for their crime. Therefore, they either choose a child who is unlikely to tell, unlikely to be believed, or a child who has “care givers” that do not care that their child is sexually abused. (Yes, it happens. In fact, the abuser may be a parent.)
• Pedophiles need your trust or your consent. If you are reading this, I don't think it is possible that you fall into the second horrific category. Loving, responsible parents need to trust a predator in order for him to succeed. Examples of people who trust may be relatives, teachers, a new partner, sports coaches, or family friends. 

• The Tactics That Help Pedophiles Select Their Victims

How do pedophiles select their victims? How do they gain your trust? Why do so many children remain silent about the sexual abuse they endure? The tactical steps a sexual predator would take are going to look something like this:

1. Create a non-suspicious situation in which they are in frequent contact with children, so they can select a victim, or simply look out for an appealing child. Some pedophiles only target specific genders, ages, or have preferences for certain appearances. Others do not want much, and the very innocence of the child is quite enough to get them off.

2. Once an individual potential victim has been selected, the predator will start off with low-risk moves to test if this particular child and their family are a good match — in other words, to test if abuse would go unpunished. Simultaneously, the pedophile will work on gaining the care givers' trust.

3. If the situation is judged to be favorable for the predator, he can then move on to actual abuse, perhaps building its severity up over time. More about this later.

The man who victimized me was a stranger when he chose me as his best potential target from a group of young girls — he spotted me at an outdoor summer party my school friend's mom had organized for the whole class. He was attending a birthday party at the neighbor's house, and took the opportunity to strike up a conversation with me.

During that first conversation, the predator got some extremely valuable information. He found out that my father had passed away and I lived alone with my mom, that she worked long hours at her job, and I kept snakes as pets. He also found out that I was feeling bad about my multi-ethnic background. Amazingly, several of my school friends commented that he creeped them out and may be a “child molester”. Nothing wrong with their intuition. These are signs to pay attention to.

Several weeks later, he showed up at my doorstep. My mother opened the door, and he gave her a book about snakes. He explained that he met me at the party, and had obtained my address from my friend's parents. My mom didn't see what my friends saw. She saw a nice and charming man. Their first conversation lasted for hours. He became the “love of her life” very soon after that. Abusers are actually often step fathers, so this story is not unique by any means.