What is the profile of a child sexual abuser? I hardly have a complete answer to this question. However, I do have an insight that was brought to my attention by a very dear friend; and that insight is that a child sexual abuser is much more like to be married than not. Upon reflection it is easy to see why this is so. This is because being marriage provides the child sexual abuser with a considerable “cover” for his despicable behavior. Below, I shall say something about priests.
Of course, I am hardly suggesting that people who are not married do not at all sexually abuse children, as that would be an obviously false claim. Alas, the wrongs that people do is not entirely independent of the opportunities that initally present themselves to do that wrong; and there are several reasons why married men typically have a greater opportunity to abuse children than non-married men.
For one, married men understandably often have far greater access to children than unmarried men have; and in the case of stepfathers, married men have access to children who are not biologically theirs. For another, one naturally supposes that a married man is satisfying his sexual desires with his wife and thus not with children. Third, if a married man has children or is a stepfather, then his displaying a measure of affection towards a child strikes us as entirely natural.
Of course, an unmarried man may have nieces and nephews. However, from a social perspective that role simply pales in comparison to the role of being father. An uncle is not a father !
In the child sexual abuse scenarios of Pennsylvania State University and Syracuse University all the men accused of sexual abuse are married men. Notice that no unmarried male was even under consideration for having done anything inappropriate in this regard.
Are there single males (with no children, let us assume) who are child sexual abusers? Of course, that question has to be answered affirmatively. And the child sexual abuse of priests makes that manifestly clear. But notice that with priests precisely what we (or at least used to) have is a considerable social “cover” for priests to spend lots of time alone with young boys. Why, in the past the very idea of supposing that a priest would be having sex with a young altar boy, say, seemed blasphemous in and of itself.
Generally speaking, if an unmarried male has an ounce of prudence, then he has every reason in the world to be ever so circumspect in his interacting with young children. And part of the irony here is that the unmarried man has reason to be ever so circumspect precisely because, with regard to the sexual abuse of children, it takes so very little for people to be suspicious of him.
To conclude, what is so profoundly significant and alarming here is that mere social images do far more work in terms of the judgments that people make regarding who might be a child sexual abuser than the very reality of things. It has never been the case that the typical profile of a child sexual abuser was rightly taken to be that of either a single male or a single male who is not a priest. Yet, to this very day one would never know that. Alas, that is very much a pity.
In the matter of child sexual abuse, vigilance is always warranted. However, if it is true that the child sexual abuser is likely to have the “cover” of either marriage or religious office than to be a single male with no such “cover”, then our vigilance is terribly misguided if we do not revise it. And if we do not make the appropriate revisions, then what unequivocally follows is that in the matter of child sexual abuse a measure of culpability applies to us. Obviously, my point is not that we should straightaway suspect married men or priests of being child sexual abusers. Obviously, most married men are not child sexual abusers.
In general, we are rightly suspicious of any man who goes out of his way to spend an inordinate amount of time with children alone. Alas, our mistake has been to think that such behavior is acceptable if the man is married or a priest because no such man would have the sexual desires of pedophile. And my simple point here is that we continue to reason in that very erroneous way. Alas, at this point in time, such erroneous reasoning on our part is downright inexcusable. A 40-somethng unmarried male grasps from the very outset that it simply does not look good for him to have bunch of young boys constantly having out at his home. The odds are, then, that he does not so behave. By contrast, a married man or a priest has reasoned that he has a “cover” for having young boys around. And we as a society have been way too easily pacified by that “cover”. And that makes us part of the problem.
As I have already stated: Obviously, most married men are not child sexual abusers. The point of this essay, though, is that in most cases the child sexual abuser is likely to be a married man (or a priest).
© 2011 Laurence Thomas
