Chapter 1
INTRODUCTION
Paedophilia, a relatively rare phenomenon, describes "that form of compulsive deviation in which an adult engages in sexual contact with a child of either sex. There are many sex offenders who seek sexual gratification by enticing children of various ages to participate in sexual activities involving either fellatio, pederasty, cunnilingus, or fondling of the sexual organs. Most paedophiliacs are men. However, offenders have also been known to exist among women." (Frank S. Caprio, M. D., Variations in Sexual Behavior, p. 250.)
The cases in this book are devoted to the relations between adult women, usually in their late thirties or older, and young males, generally of high school or of college age. The cases have been collected from a variety of sources, generally psychiatrists or physicians who have heard of our research and cooperated with our goal of increasing knowledge about the forms of sexual psychopathology.
We have chosen to present the case histories in the patients' own words. The histories given here were transcribed from tapes recording the patients' own stories; they were placed beside a tape recorder and invited to describe the details of their relations with young males. Occasionally we have edited portions of the typescript to remove redundancies or repetitions but this has been minor; for the most part the cases are presented exactly as the patient gave them. In every case the words are the patients' own words.
As Dr. Frank Caprio, one of the more astute researchers in the field of sexual psychopathology has pointed out, "there are many factors involved which explain the prevalence of this paraphilia. For one thing, the offender identifies himself with the child. The eroticism is derived from the knowledge that the child is sexually innocent and is being aroused. It represents for the adult a psychological return to the sex life of his own childhood. Another factor is the sexual inferiority which these deviates harbor in relations to the opposite sex. They feel less inferior in their sexual intimacies with children, as less is expected of them. As a rule they masturbate to excess. Not all of them are dangerous." (Caprio, Variations in Sexual Behavior, p. 251.)
There is a widespread belief that paedophiliacs are also sadists and that they delight in murdering the children whom they despoil. This is a misunderstanding of the situation. It is true that children are occasionally killed by paedophiliacs but a close examination of the cases will reveal that the vast majority of these murders are accidental. That is, the adult did not intend to kill the child and did so only in the course of quieting a frightened child; occasionally one finds that a child has been murdered after the sex act has been committed.
This is not to excuse the child murderer, of course. It is only to point out that psychologically the sexual act was not related to the murder. There are cases of extremely warped individuals who take an erotic pleasure in torturing and killing children but from the psychiatric viewpoint these individuals are not paedophiliacs; they are sadists.
Our concern here is with the paedophiliac. All our case histories involve individuals who were quite gentle and who were never in any danger of detection by the legal authorities. As the reader will find when he has completed the book, it is absurd to think of these people as being classified with child murders. Our concern has been to explain their behavior, not to exalt or to condemn it. We trust that the reader will be similarly concerned with understanding the female paedophiliac.