NORFOLK, Va. — Old Dominion University assistant professor Allyn Walker has been put on administrative leave after an interview about their research on people sexually attracted to children went viral.
In a statement, the university said that reactions to Walker’s research have prompted concerns for Walker’s safety and that of the campus.
“I want to state in the strongest terms possible that child sexual abuse is morally wrong and has no place in our society,” said ODU President Brian O. Hemphill in the statement. “This is a challenging time for our University, but I am confident that we will come together and move forward as a Monarch family.”
The interview on Walker’s research happened earlier this month. Walker spoke with the nonprofit Prostasia Foundation — a group aimed at ending child sexual abuse, according to its website — about their book, “A Long Dark Shadow: Minor Attracted People and Their Pursuit of Dignity.”
The book focuses on people who do not act on their sexual attraction to children as well as strategies to prevent them from offending.
A segment of the 28-minute interview tore through social media after it was posted by the Twitter account “Libs of Tik Tok,” which has nearly 394,000 followers. In it, Walker states that they use the term “minor-attracted person” in lieu of pedophile because “it’s less stigmatizing.”
Walker said in the interview that “child sexual abuse is never okay.”
“But having an attraction to minors as long as it isn’t acted on, doesn’t mean that the person who has those attractions is doing something wrong,” Walker said.
Also in the interview, Walker differentiates between child sexual abusers and people who haven’t acted on their attraction to children.
“MAP refers to someone who has preferential attractions to minors, and that can include children who have gone through puberty or not. And child sexual abusers are people who have committed a sexual offense against a child.”
Many child sexual abusers are “indeed MAPs,” Walker said, but others may commit those crimes for reasons other than attraction to children.
In response to controversy, ODU and Walker released a statement Saturday. Walker reiterated in the statement that “child sexual abuse is morally wrong and inexcusable crime.”
“As an assistant professor of sociology and criminal justice, the goal of my research is to prevent crime,” Walker said. “My work is informed by my past experience and advocacy as a social worker counseling victims. I embarked on this research in hopes of gaining understanding of a group that, previously, has not been studied in order to identify ways to protect children.”
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