Disclosure Deterrent
Although participants discussed the negative effects of not dis-closing their sexual attractions as depicted with the previous subthemes, the reasons for non-disclosure were clear through-out the narratives and were related to the perceived risks associ-ated with doing so.
When it comes to discussing my sexual attractions, I can tell strangers anonymously but even that is difficult sometimes. I most certainly would never reveal it to my family or people I know because they would hate me. My older sister was sexually abused as a kid, so I don’t think my family would take too kindly to the idea of me being a pedophile. There’s that common misconception to get through first, the one where all pedophiles are child molesters.
(Participant 3)
The participant narratives here highlight the difficulty and fear associated with disclosure. For Participant 3, there is a recognition that even anonymous disclosure is not easy, though easier to overcome than the fear of disclosing to those who know her, with the participant confidently articulating how she would “never” consider this. This is likely due to the feared consequences of disclosure in that those she told would conse-quently “hate” her, which she attributes to a lack of understand-ing around minor attraction. With even anonymous disclosure being considered difficult, Participant 3’s narrative highlights the pervasive nature of societal stigma about sexual attractions to children (Jahnke et al., 2015a; Harper et al., 2018; 2021), in that MAPs are often reluctant to disclose these attractions even when they cannot be identified (Jahnke et al., 2015b). Similarly, a fear of hate and abandonment is what prevents Participant 1 from disclosing. As stated previously, there is a conflation of minor attraction (commonly referred to simply as “pedo-philia”) and child sexual abuse. This is likely due to misre-porting of child sexual abuse cases within the media, whereby such offenses (and those committing them) are ascribed the “pedophilia” and “pedophile” labels (Diefenbach, 1997; Harper & Hogue, 2017; Ischebeck et al., 2021; McCartan, 2010). Such reporting creates a heuristic in people’s minds, whereby the pedophile label intuitively evokes the thought of newsworthy predatory child sexual offenses (Harper & Hogue, 2015, 2017; McCartan, 2010). For Participant 3, fear related to this lack of understanding is further intensified by the sexual abuse expe-rienced within her family, and a concern about what this might mean for how her family may begin to view her. Although this fear may be warranted in that members of the public do appear to ascribe traits related to abnormality and dangerousness to individuals identified as being minor-attracted (Jahnke, 2018), there is no evidence of more punitive attitudes toward this group among victims of child sexual abuse (or their families). Indeed, there is some evidence to the contrary, whereby in some cases abuse occurs within the home, which leads to the media stereo-type of individuals who commit sexual offenses to be disrupted (Harper et al., 2017; King & Roberts, 2017; for a discussion of how the process of anti-stereotype humanization can decrease stigma toward MAPs, see Harper et al., 2018).If people knew who I really was then people would just run a mile and they would hate me. My partner, my fam-ily, my friends, they all would…everybody would desert me, and you know I probably end up homeless and a druggie or something. Those feelings were becoming more and more impossible to er ignore the feelings of what would happen if the people knew the real me.
(Participant 1)
Other participants discussed the risks that prevent them from disclosing to those in a professional capacity:
I think if I went to a support group I just wouldn't feel safe being around other people who would look at me and know what I was…I don’t want to lose my family, I don’t want to lose my job, I don’t want to lose my home, I don’t want to lose my friends. I would lose everything. I know I would if that information went into the outside world.
(Participant 4)
In the narrative above, Participant 1 discusses why she would not feel safe accessing support, with her reasons being driven by a fear of the potential consequences of revealing her sexual attraction to others. This involves not only the loss of close relationships but also of life security, such as her home and employment. As such, she believes that she has “everything” to lose by disclosing. These concerns may have some accuracy when considering the experiences of many MAPs who have lost social connections after disclosing their attractions to them (Freimond, 2013; Goode, 2010), and echo the concerns of our participants reported in previous subordinate themes. However, a key difference here is that the participants are discussing the likelihood of seeking support in a professional sense. For Par-ticipant 6 this risk is the result of mistrust of health profession-als due to a perceived lack of understanding around reporting laws. For both of these participants, the risks and potential con-sequences of accessing support greatly outweigh the benefits of seeking support. An anonymous survey by B4U-ACT (2011a) found that similar sentiments are shared by a majority of the MAP community, with 62% of respondents feeling that mental healthcare professionals would not keep their information con-fidential, potentially risking discovery and legal investigations (see also Dymond & Duff, 2020; Grady et al., 2018; Levenson & Grady, 2019). These concerns are not unfounded, with many health professionals being unclear about reporting requirements when working with MAPs with no offending histories (Beggs Christofferson, 2019). This may necessitate the development of best practice guidelines, adopted internationally, for ensuring that MAPs have access to non-judgmental, gender-responsive, and, importantly, confidential support when it is required (Lev-enson & Grady, 2019; Lievesley & Harper, 2021)Most health professionals have no experience with this and no decent understanding of mandatory reporting laws so you hear reports of people being investigated for just hav-ing these feelings and that’s not a risk that I will ever take.
(Participant 6)
Conclusion
In this paper we have presented what we believe to be the first in-depth analysis of the lived experiences of female MAPs. The themes emerging from participant narratives highlight a number of important consistencies between the experiences of our participants and the male MAPs recruited in previous work. For example, our participants reported how they feel that they cannot be open about their sexual attractions due to a fear of los-ing close friendships and family relationships (see also Dymond & Duff, 2020; Freimond, 2013; Goode, 2010; Houtepen et al., 2016). The narratives of the participants in this study further stress the importance of disclosure in the formation of a healthy identity within which they can integrate their sexual attractions and live a wholesome life with authentic personal relationships. However, they also identified how holding back this aspect of themselves can stop MAPs from accessing professional support for both emotional wellbeing-related issues, and (in some cases) in an effort to prevent them from acting upon their attractions (Grady et al., 2018; Houtepen et al., 2016).
Importantly, though, the first superordinate theme (“A minority within a minority”) highlights some unique challenges faced by female MAPs. However, there is a tacit assumption that this group may experience less stigma from society than males who are sexually attracted to children. However, our par-ticipants suggested that this lesser stigma only exists because of the lack of knowledge that female MAPs exist. This lack of knowledge extends to the MAP community too, meaning that the women in our sample felt like a minority within a minor-ity, which further exacerbates their feelings of isolation. Even where our participants shared the experiences of their male counterparts, known sex differences in peer support styles (which relate to themes of alienation and identity concealment) may exacerbate these in women with sexual attractions to chil-dren. That is, although men might experience a sense of social alienation due to societal stigma (Elchuk et al., 2021; Jahnke et al., 2015a, 2015b), the male-typical social organization of larger and more emotionally distant peer groups (Vigil, 2007) might mean that these individuals are not missing the direct dis-closure of issues related to their sexual attractions to the same degree as the women in our sample (for more a greater female tendency toward personal disclosures in peer relationships, see Agrawal et al., 2002).
Despite this feeling of intersectional alienation, it should be noted that participants felt that there were few gender-related differences between their experiences and those of male MAPs in the broadest sense. As emphasized by Participant 1 “there is not a lot of difference between men and women, we are all experiencing the same sort of distress and hatred from society.” Nonetheless, our participants acknowledged the importance of being able to find support by specifically engaging with other women who experience sexual attractions to children.
This study further highlights how current services for minor-attracted individuals are inadequate (B4U-ACT, 2011a; Cantor & McPhail, 2016; Seto, 2012; Levenson et al., 2019; Lievesley & Harper, 2021). Although wider society (and many aspects of the professional clinical community) might see the behavioral control of sexual attractions as a key concern (Jahnke, 2018; Stephens et al., 2021; Walker et al., 2021), this was barely men-tioned by our participants. Instead, coping with the absence of romantic or intimate experiences, loneliness, poor self-concept, and stigma-related stress were more pressing worries (see also B4U-ACT, 2011a; Dymond & Duff, 2020; Elchuk et al., 2021; Jahnke et al., 2015b; Lievesley & Harper, 2021; Martijn et al., 2020), which again might indicate a difference based on gender. That is, the evolutionary psychology literature suggests that men are more inclined, on average, to pursue sexual variety and short-term mating opportunities than women, whereas women have a statistically greater desire for deeper romantic connec-tions (e.g., Schmitt et al., 2012). Even within informal support spaces, female MAPs feel alienated from the majority of the rest of the MAP community because of their gender. It may be a positive step for those involved in such initiatives to develop women-only spaces for this population to have a specific place to share their experiences and offer peer support, free from the additional stigmatization that they might experience on mixed-gender forums.
One limitation of this present study was its reliance upon self-reported experiences. That is, participant narratives could have been influenced by a social desirability bias, such as a wish to avoid negative evaluations. This may influence the extent to which behavior-related difficulties were discussed in compari-son with wellbeing or emotion-related concerns. It should also be noted that no participants were visible during the interview process as these were conducted via Skype audio (n = 5) and email (n = 1) which could present some limitations. For exam-ple, verification of their status as a female MAP was not pos-sible. Although this lack of verification is an issue for any study wherein participants are not directly observable by the research-ers as they provide data, it may be particularly important to note here in light of the small sample size and the importance placed in IPA on the analysis of participant narratives. Addi-tionally, it could be argued that the loss of the non-verbal cues that are obtained in face-to-face data collection could impact the quality of the data collection and analysis. However, this is not considered essential for IPA where richness of the data relating to the participants experiences is a priority (Smith et al., 2009), with both methods employed here considered both suit-able for achieving this (Curasi, 2001; Smith et al., 2009) and comparable to that of face-to-face interviews (Ratislavová & Ratislav, 2014).
This work sheds light on the need to consider gender as an important variable when seeking to understand MAP experi-ences. However, one limitation of our recruitment strategy was the self-selecting nature of the sampling, where we recruited female MAPs from online forums and social media. We did not set any inclusion or exclusion criteria about specific gen-der identities, nor did our interview schedule explore gender identity in a specific sense. There is a lack of current research into gender diversity within the MAP community. Future work might look to explore the intersections of gender diversity and sexual minority status within this population. This would also continue to move the area away from having a forensic focus and more toward exploring the experiences of living with sexual attractions to children in a more holistic sense (Elchuk et al., 2021; Jahnke et al., 2015b; Lievesley & Harper, 2021; Lievesley et al., 2020).
Furthermore, it is important to warn against the generaliza-tion of these findings due to the relatively small sample size. Nonetheless, the sample within this study is comparable to recent qualitative analyses of MAP experiences (e.g., Dymond & Duff, 2020), with the potential participant pool being further limited by the hidden nature of female MAPs within this popu-lation. However, it was never our aim to produce generalizable insights that apply to all female MAPs, nor is this ever an aim in qualitative research. Instead, we were interested in their lived experiences and have used these to identify themes that may be interesting to study further in subsequent confirmatory studies. We have touched on some preliminary suggestions for future work, including the design of gender-responsive interventions and support services for women who are sexually attracted to children. This could include the formation of specific women-only boards on prominent support forums, where this group can discuss the specific challenges facing them, share advice, and communicate in a way that resembles the gendered norm of intimate peer discussions among women (Agrawal et al., 2002; Vigil, 2007). More fundamentally, though, there is a need to more comprehensively study women with such sexual attrac-tions, exploring how known sex differences in social styles, relationship preferences, and sexuality interact with their sexual attractions to children. Methods of coping with sexual celibacy and a lack of intimate partners (or how adult–adult intimate relationships are managed within the context of their attractions to children) would be useful starting points for this research program. One potential stumbling block relates to access to a sample that is large enough to draw meaningful conclusions and generalizations. In the existing research on female MAPs, samples of just 42 (Tozdan et al., 2020) and 20 (Stephens & McPhail, 2021) have been available for analysis. In the current analysis we suggested that it may be that women do not recog-nize their sexual attractions to children or minimize inciden-tal attractions due to an ability to maintain adult–adult sexual behaviors as a result of a higher degree of sexual fluidity than men (Diamond, 2016). As such, researchers might not focus on recruiting samples from established MAP-specific forums, but instead look at the prevalence of incidental, regular, and pervasive minor attraction among larger community samples of women (and indeed of men). Precedence for the viability of such large-scale analyses comes from Bártová et al.’s (2021) work into the prevalence of paraphilia in the general commu-nity. Reaching such a large sample to assess both paraphilic interests and behaviors should be considered a priority in this area of work. In doing so, more accurate prevalence estimates may be possible to calculate, and the extent to which minor attraction plays a role in women’s sexualities can be factored into analyses. In addition, although we recruited self-selecting women in this study, a recent informal investigation suggested that approximately 7% of the MAP population could have trans or non-binary gender identities (Herzog & Singal, 2021). Although this is not a peer-reviewed source and stems from a journalistic exercise, this figure would represent a significant minority of the MAP population and warrants further investiga-tion into the additional intersections between sexual and gender identities among MAPs.
To conclude, this analysis of the lived experiences of female MAPs sheds light on the unique experiences of this popula-tion and provides a stepping-stone for further investigation. By adopting some of our recommendations in relation to responsive support design, the targeted recruitment of female MAPs in larger-scale quantitative work might explore both the convergence and divergence of needs and experiences among both male and female MAPs, including their experiences of stigmatization, their relative wellbeing, and the management of sexual attractions in everyday life. In doing so, we hope that this work inspires more targeted work to improve the design and implementation of effective services for assisting all MAPs in their pursuit of greater wellbeing and assists professionals in their goal of sexual abuse prevention.
Declarations
Conflict of interest The authors declare that there is no conflict of interest. Ethical approval All study procedures were approved by the Nottingham Trent University School of Social Sciences Research Ethics Committee prior to commencement of the research.
Informed consent All study participants provided written informed consent prior to participation.
Data Availability Data are not shared in this work in order to preserve the confidentiality of this population. Materials in the form of the inter-view schedule can be accessed from https://osf.io/xeshn/?view_only=013ebee ... 264140b4cb.
Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attri-bution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adapta-tion, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this lisence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
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