In all the research I have done on this topic. What is true for every situation is the cause is always because of a deprivation of love and respect. It is a scenario where every one is a victim. The perpetrator was usually a victim of abuse, who then in an unconscious manner (I say unconscious because they are motivated by some subconscious trigger that they often don’t understand) tries to resolve the abuse by acting it out, therefore making more victims. Even the mothers of these children were more than likely victims of abuse. Everyone is a victim.
“Only hurt people, hurt people.”
Hurt people are the only kind there are. We are a sorry race in that respect. It is relatively rare, however, for a wound to have no prospect of being healed.
There is, however, a real difference between a strong precipitating temptation and an excuse. The only person who wouldn’t be at all culpable for this kind of behavior is someone who had never been taught that it was morally repugnant or someone who truly had no ability to resist the impulse to offend. That doesn’t mean all who are culpable are equally culpable, but even the scientists who doubt whether free will has a physiological basis believe that people do best when they choose their actions *as if *they had free will! Removing all culpability is a false compassion in a world where forgiveness is available to the contrite.
Lack of a knowledge of this particular moral law cannot be assumed in anyone of marriageable age. No one old enough to have a child escapes the knowledge that sex with the child is utterly taboo. For instance: No one ever brings this kind of past up at a dinner party and finds to their surprise that sex between children and adults is forbidden, and especially sex between children and parents.
Likewise, if anyone has ever been driven against his or her will to engage in sex, let alone sex with a minor, that person has belonged in a secure setting…that is, a setting in which he or she would be totally denied the opportunity to offend. That would be a dangerous level of mental illness, too dangerous to expose to the unsuspecting.
This is why, though, it so important to let victims know they have options and that their situation is not unique or inevitable. If you don’t know you can break the cycle, if you don’t know you can have the dominant player stopped, if you are never told that the threats of perpetrators are empty threats, you may fail to use free will that you have. That is a tragic sort of ignorance.
I do take your point, though. How is a perpetrator who was suffers from a literally unspeakable compulsion supposed to feel safe in coming into the light? This is a sin where the sinner is very often hated and reviled, rather than lead compassionately to a place where the compulsion will never again win the day. That is also tragic, because as you imply, it too often keeps the cycle going.
