After an exhausting election season, American democracy finally proved stronger than would-be autocrat Donald Trump. Trump’s base relished in spreading salacious false conspiracy theories about child sex trafficking and pedophilia, that Trump repeatedly refused to contradict. However ultimately it was his incitement of the QAnon-led siege of the Capitol on January 6 that served to seal his downfall.

QAnon’s ringleaders have been very calculating in their distortion of hot-button issues such as sex trafficking to gain clout for themselves and their movement. But although it’s disheartening how many people fell for this ploy, why should we be surprised that self-identifying patriots should align themselves with a movement that plausibly claims to have the blessing of the President of the country?

It’s equally unsurprising that QAnon was able to grow its influence by leveraging its claims about child trafficking through groups of parents, specifically mothers. Motivated by natural concern for their own children, these mothers were then indoctrinated by the cult-leaders into supporting a spurious conspiracy theory that has nothing to do with saving children. In the process, their instincts towards the protection of children were twisted and betrayed.

Now cut off from major social platforms, and with Trump’s failure to fulfil QAnon’s predictions, the future of that movement remains in flux. But the incoming Biden administration should not ignore that a significant base of Americans remain highly susceptible to moral panic over simplistic narratives about child sexual abuse. Indeed, Biden played to that very demographic as a sponsor of the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act, which established America’s public sex offense registry system.

Things have changed since then. Despite its popularity, the regime established by Biden’s Adam Walsh Act has come under fire for failing to keep the public safe. Internet companies finally recognized the danger of allowing conspiracy theories about trafficking and pedophilia to blow up into real life violence. And for once, an Internet law based on fear and stigma made less progress in Congress last year than a law based on prevention education.

In our 2020 Annual Report we wrote, “as the tide of public and official sentiment has turned against QAnon in 2020, we have a golden opportunity to respond with stigma-free, scientifically accurate information about CSA and its prevention.” Will the Biden administration seize this opportunity to advance evidence-based child protection policies, or fall back on populist solutions that center the criminal justice system and Internet platform regulation?

There are reasons to be hopeful. President Biden has shown awareness of the true nature of the problem of child sexual abuse, describing it accurately as a leading health risk to children. In September 2011, the then Vice President launched a campaign called 1is2many aimed at reducing dating violence and sexual assault among students, teens and young adults. In the same week of January, President Biden ordered the Department of Justice to end the use of private prisons by the federal government, and ended discrimination against trans people in the military.

On the other hand, there is a long record of bipartisanship around the use of sex work prohibition, mass incarceration, surveillance, and censorship to quell public awareness of the problem of child sexual abuse, rather than addressing its causes. Changing course now will upset powerful powerful interest groups, and could be politically costly.

But the costs of allowing conspiracists and fear-mongers to drive child protection policy are even higher. We cannot adopt an effective, evidence-based approach to the scourge of child sexual abuse while QAnon-style misinformation on the topic dominates public discourse. A public health approach must inform all public programs and legislation, and support for that approach must come from the top.

Child sexual abuse prevention received a huge boost last month as Prostasia received our first major grant from a charitable foundation. The $100,000 grant will be used to hire staff and to support our unique research project on fantasy sexual outlets and prevention.

This project is a pilot 1-year study to investigate how fictional and fantasy sexual outlets (e.g. shoticon/lolicon, stories, child like sex dolls) are used within the Minor Attracted Person (MAP) population. Data and results obtained from this project are expected to contribute to the development of an ongoing multi-year research study into not only the roles fantasy and fictional sexual outlets play in the MAP population, but also how they affect coping behaviors/skills, interpersonal relationships, and contribute to offending behavior.

The project has two strategic aims: 

1. Identify the “what” of fantasy/fictional sexual outlets. Who uses what material, in what way?
2. Identify correlates of use as possible risk or protective factors for offending behavior.

This project plays a vital role in child sexual abuse (CSA) prevention. Without a full understanding of how MAPs may use these outlets, we may be missing a critical opportunity for investigation into possible protective factors. It is currently assumed that access to any sort of fictional child-based sexual stimuli will act only to increase the likelihood of the person to engage in CSA behaviors. Without evidence for that assertion, it is entirely possible that within subpopulations of MAPs, these outlets actually act as protective factors. This project will allow us to identify those factors and develop rigorous empirical investigations to test them. 

by Sheila van den Heuvel-Collins and Bly Rede

Literature reviews are designed to make life easier for researchers. What’s nice about these scientific travel guides is that they make the journey easy by pointing out the pros and cons of each paper, including any questionable methodology, so the reader can easily skip the sketchy no-man’s-land stops and go straight for those with at least a few stars.

B4U-ACT recently released their first official English literature review. Any researcher will be relieved to have this resource, as there is a boatload of literature to swim through. The reviewers consist of professional researchers and, best of all, minor attracted persons—people who are intimate with the territory.

Despite the editor-in-chief’s desire for MAPs to use this guide, it feels like it’s directed almost entirely towards researchers and clinicians who work in child sexual abuse prevention or sexual neurology. It reflects a few different fields: criminology, neurology, and hormonal biology. The review has to trot across the disciplines because there is not yet one body of research focused on minor attraction itself. Of the eight papers, only one is about non-offending pedophiles.

MAPs without a background in psychology are likely to be despondent by the end of the Table of Contents. “Pedophilic disorder”, “brain abnormalities”, “child sexual abusers”: sadly, this is the common vocabulary in research on minor attraction. Should a MAP care to brave the territory, there are several papers which might be of interest: coping strategies, sex dolls and enhanced processing of faces are topics which may help the curious MAP explore their own attraction. The paper on coping strategies was written by reading the posts on Virtuous Pedophiles (virped.org).

MAPs will appreciate the reviewers consistently pointing out the misuse of the term “pedophile”, conflicting “evidence” and logical inconsistencies; however, friends and family looking to understand the sexual orientation of their child, partner or friend will likely be overwhelmed by the technical language and the difficulty in elucidating papers written in complex language. 

This issue shines the headlights on the fact that the research is mostly a) in recidivism prevention and b) not concerned with the mental health of those who do not sexually offend. Professionals are not always willing to open themselves up to the controversy and stigma MAPs traverse every day, but this review offers a formal platform via which another perspective could be offered. Hopefully, it will guide researchers and clinicians to the best approaches and, above all, to improve on them.

B4QR concludes with “Meet the Next Generation”—introducing a PhD candidate who shows interest and promise in the field—and a list of recommended resources.

This quarterly review is highly recommended for those who are willing to accept the field of minor-attraction research for the muddle of unlaid tracks that it is and see the increasingly-bright lights at the end of the tunnel.