“An academic awarded a doctorate by Glasgow University for his thesis which described sex between adults and children as sometimes positive was criticised last night by child abuse experts. Richard Yuill said his research, based on interviews with paedophiles and their victims, ‘challenged the assumption’ that sexual relations between adults and under-16s were inherently abusive. ‘The conclusions are that in such relationships I think you’ve got the good, the bad and the ugly, and that’s where I stand on that,’ he said in the Times Higher Education Supplement. But child abuse experts said his thesis would play into the hands of paedophiles who justified their actions by claiming their victims were willing participants… ‘The law may well take that view,’ [the researcher] said. ‘The only thing I’m reporting is that the research findings do not concur with that overall picture. A number of respondents would concur with the law … but others found positive experiences or at least what I’d call neutral.’” —Guardian (UK)

(Thanks to alanr for the link.)

This doctorate jabs a stick into a wasp nest of issues. In the first place, you can’t help but notice that to even broach the idea that adult-child sexual relationships might not all be negative incites a firestorm — which suggests that, even if the proscription of such activities is right, it is also dogmatic. Though there are other times and other cultures that have not frowned on various degrees of sexual relations between adults and children, the contemporary western world doesn’t even want to contemplate the notion. Granted, it’s hard not to think that a grown man raping a nine-month-old baby is repellent. But what about all these twenty-something guys who end up getting arrested for trying to hook up with a fifteen-year-old that they chatted up on the internet? Is that really so harmful to the fifteen-year-old? There are gray areas in the proscription of pedophilia, and evidently Mr. Yuill’s thesis simply tries to elucidate what’s happening in those gray areas.

Opponents to Mr. Yuill’s thesis argue that his research does not take into account the well-known tendency of victims to identify with their aggressors. In recent years the Stockholm Syndrome — in which people who are kidnapped take on the beliefs of their kidnappers — has become well known. And a similar syndrome can operate within child molestation. One expert quoted in the article says: “When I work with people who have been abused it often feels like you’re talking to the abuser in the child’s head.” No doubt this is why victims of abuse often become perpetrators of abuse as well.

And yet, to look at the matter from an intellectual rather than a psychological standpoint, it obviously raises a difficult issue. Suppose a young person enjoyed a sexual relationship with an adult. Suppose that that young person experiences no regret, shame, or remorse about it in later years. Suppose further that that person does not himself become a child molestor. What, then, is the problem? Mr. Yuill’s thesis apparently interviewed just such people and arrives at just such a conclusion. If all parties involved are happy, then what’s the problem?

To say it again, to ask the question is not to advocate child molestation. But it is to say that pedophilia has become a hot-button issue surrounded by much hysteria, and it can only stand to gain through rational inquiry and responsible research. In this respect, kudos should be extended to Glasgow University for not withholding Mr. Yuill’s degree just because his thesis arrived at potentially disturbing conclusions.

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