The idea that paedophilia is “a non-curable mental disorder without a known cause” (Incurable but not alone: paedophiles learn how to resist with professional counselling, 17 October) is a dangerous myth that holds back progress in addressing child sexual abuse and perpetuates the misery of adults who are unwilling bearers of this dreadful sexual dysfunction. It deprives them of hope for the possibility of cure and leads to despair, which itself drives many on to abuse children.
We were both on the “paedophile spectrum” as young adults and received in-depth psychotherapeutic treatment which cured us. Neither of us ever abused children either directly or indirectly, via pornography. We have since lived rewarding lives with fulfilling adult-adult relationships and loving responsibility for children.
One of us is a woman who was sexually abused in infancy by multiple perpetrators. She funded her own psychotherapy.
The other is a man who was damaged in boyhood by sexual attention from his mother. As a young adult he was sexually attracted to young boys and was referred to the NHS Portman Clinic. He received psychoanalytic psychotherapy for three years, which brought about a 100% cure. (The shadow that refuses to disappear, 25 February 2006).
The NHS Portman Clinic still offers in-depth psychoanalytic treatment to paedophiles. It is the only NHS clinic to do so, but it can now only accept referrals of offenders, and it focuses on eradicating risk rather than cure. So non-offenders cannot access its treatment, and the only chance of accessing it is to first offend. How can this be justified?
Names and address supplied
• Your article claims Germany’s four-year-old Dunkelfeld service marks a “radical difference” from all other countries’ treatment regimes with its strict patient-doctor confidentiality. This ignores entirely the Dutch confidential doctor services created in 1972. But it also ignores the work of Circles of Support and Accountability, imported here from Canada in 2001. You say that it is “impossible to evaulate” the German service. Circles does not revolve around counselling by professionals, but support by a group of three or four volunteers meeting regularly over 18 months with a child sex offender (not “paedophile”, the misleading and unscientific term used in the article), to whom they also hold to account over any lapses in behaviour.
However, independent research has proved Circles to be the most effective means of helping such offenders to manage their behaviour, with very low rates of reoffending – and when there is reoffending, that is of a less serious nature.
Terry Philpot
Co-author, A Community-Based Approach to the Reduction of Sexual Reoffending
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