Stigmatization of pedophilia

• Jahnke, S., Schmidt, A. F., Geradt, M., & Hoyer, J. (2015). “Stigma-Related Stress and its Correlates among Men with Pedophilic Sexual Interests,” Archives of Sexual Behavior, in press (preprint).

This is a new study of stigma based on a sample of German pedophiles recruited from the Internet. The main findings are:

• Although pedophilia is highly stigmatized, pedophiles overestimated the level of stigmatization. In a previous study, only a minority of the general population said that non-offending pedophiles should be incarcerated or would be better off dead, but pedophiles mistakenly believed these were majority views. “People with pedophilia may therefore lack opportunities to verify their assumptions about how the majority actually perceives them, but instead base their conclusions on their experiences with a small, but possibly very vocal, number of people or media expressing high levels of stigmatizing attitudes.”
• Fear of being discovered as a pedophile was linked…