New Study - Online Social Support Forums

[Kailey Roche]

SUMMARY OF RESULTS FROM THIS STUDY
FULL PUBLICATION IN PEER-REVIEWED SEXUALITY JOURNAL FORTHCOMING

From February to April 2021, we recruited for a study on child-attracted persons’ use of online forums for social support. This past September, I presented the results at the Association for the Treatment of Sexual Abusers (ATSA) virtual conference, and this topic, as well as the findings, were positively received. Currently, myself and my colleagues are working on writing up the results for publication. The manuscript will not only consider the quantitative results, but the qualitative portion as well (i.e., the open-ended responses). Our team believes that capturing the voices of child-attracted persons is incredibly important to gaining a better understanding of your experiences and allowing us to make better progress in our research.
Due to the nature of academic publishing, our article on these results will not be available for quite some time. In the meantime, I wanted to share a summary of what we found and what I presented at the ATSA conference. If you have any questions or comments about these results, please feel free to comment in the forums, or contact me at kaileyroche@cmail.carleton.ca. Thank you so much to everyone who took the time to participate, whether it was by completing the survey or providing us with constructive criticism. This type of research would not be possible without you and we hope we can continue to work together in the future.
Kailey Roche, Skye Stephens, Sarah Moss, and Michael Seto.
Summary of: Social Support and Online Forum Use by Child-Attracted Persons.
Background
- We know that social support is important for general well-being and reduction of risk (for those who are at risk. We acknowledge that there are many who are attracted to children who do not struggle with their sexual attraction).
- Social support can be difficult for child-attracted persons due to the intense stigma they face
- Online forums act as space spaces where child attracted persons can connect with other like-minded individuals and discuss their attraction and other topics without judgement.
- Most previous research on these online spaces have focused on perpetuation of offence-supportive beliefs and discussion of sexual coping mechanisms.
- We wanted to focus on the benefits that child-attracted persons receive through forum membership.
Present Study
- Our study was mostly exploratory, but we wanted to focus on three overall questions:
- 1. What types of social support do child-attracted persons received/provide to others on forums? (We focused on emotional, tangible, and information support).
- 2. Are these types of social support related to participants characteristics?
- 3. How helpful do child-attracted persons find the forums for navigating their sexual attraction?
Measures
We used an anonymous, online survey hosted by Sosci. We asked about the following topics:
- Age/gender attraction ratings
- Reason for initially seeking out forums
- Forums used
- Frequency of logging on/posting
- Social support received
- Social support given
- Helpfulness of forums (for sexual attraction and for general life issues)
- Importance of forums
- Quality of offline support
Participants
- Our study included 353 people (This is a great turn out! Thank you!!).
- Average age: 35
- 89.4% Male
- 84.2% White
- 53.6% North American
- 58.4% Single

[Kailey Roche]

Results
Seeking out Forums: Most initially sought out forums to not feel alone or for “other reasons” which included: curiosity and gaining a better understanding of self; getting involved and staying up-to-date with research; engaging in discussion and exchanging ideas about sexual attraction to children; sexual gratification and dating; helping others and making friends.
Frequency of Use: On average, people had been using forums for 6 years. Approximately 60% logged in “less than monthly.” Around 48% posted “less than monthly” with 32% posting “monthly.”
Receiving and Giving Support:
- Receiving: 81.7% said they received emotional support, 65.3% received informational support, and only 11.7% said they received tangible support from online forums.
- Giving: The vast majority (83%) indicated they provided support to others on forums! An equal number of people said they provided emotional and informational support (88.8%) and only 14.8% said they gave tangible support.
Helpfulness and Importance of Forums:
- Helpfulness for navigating sexual attraction: 80.7% said forums were “helpful” or “extremely helpful.”
- Helpfulness for general life issues: 82.3% said “neither helpful/unhelpful” or “helpful.”
- Importance: 79.5% said “important” or “extremely important.”
Offline Support:
- Most people (74%) had told at least one person in their life about their sexual attraction to children. Most disclosed to a friend, mother, or mental health professional.
- Quality of external support was moderate (3.4 out of 5).
Associations:
- Those with stronger attraction to boys had higher quality perceived offline support than those attracted to girls.
- No significant relationship between offline support and number of social support types endorsed.
- The more people disclosed to offline, the less online support (but not statistically significant).
- The more forums that were visited, the less helpful people found the forums.
- The more one logged into forums, the more helpful they rated them for both navigating sexual attraction and general life issues.
Preliminary Results for Open-ended Questions
We developed some preliminary themes from an initial look at the open-ended data for the following question: “Please explain in what way the forums/discussion boards have (or have not) helped you in managing any struggles related to your sexual attraction to children.”
- Forums as Helpful:
o Sense of Community: “makes me know that others are like me”; “gives me a place to talk to people of like mind.”
o Acceptance/Decreased Stigma: “the online groups helped me immensely with accepting my attraction and realizing that I’m not doomed to offend because of it”; “…It’s just nice to be able to talk openly about these attractions and not be judged for having them.”
o Mental Health: “multiple times people on the forum have prevented my own suicide attempts”; “…they have helped me in times when I’m down, or during panic attacks, or other mental health issues borne out of my pedophilia.”
o Anti-offending: “it also helps me establish boundries [sic] of what I shouldn’t do”; “the discussion board also help me for my addiction to child porn. It’s been 4 months without any kind of awful content.”
o Promotion of Sexual Outlets: “it also allowed me the opportunity to read fictional stories about children so I could enjoy the thought of these scenarios without any children being harmed.” PLEASE NOTE: Stories and drawings of children engaged in sexual scenarios, even fictional, may be classified as child pornography in your country/state. For example, at the time of writing this, such fictional depictions are legal in the state of California, but are ILLEGAL in Canada.
- Forums as Unhelpful
o Alienating: “The most potentially useful forums come with a strict caveat that one MUST be committed to not offending in any way (even consuming CSA images)… So I feel like I’m either lying by being there or being excluded and judged by a group that is meant to do the opposite”
o Differing Ideologies: “Sometimes there have been strong ideological disagreements with others about how they define MAPness… This has been invalidating sometimes…”; “There’s of course drama in any board, especially with a topic as varied and inflammatory as pedophilia as well related topics such as the age of consent and adult/youth relationships…”
o Pro-contact Discourse: “They might have had a negative influence on me during formative years (I started visiting them as an early teen”

Discussion:

- Forums are not black and white. They can promote positive well-being and a prosocial lifestyle while also fostering pro-contact discourse. Overall, more people described more positive attributes of forums rather than negative. Forums were helpful for both general issues and navigating sexual attraction, and most people felt they were an important part of their life. Most people felt they were able to both give and receive emotional and informational support, and forums attracted people who sought not to feel alone in their attraction.
- This is the first study that has looked at the benefits of forum use for child-attracted persons. In the future, we hope to look at whether forum use can help decrease stigma-related stress faced by child-attracted persons.

[Caspar Ibichei]

Hello Kailey,

Thank you for submitting these study results.
I like to take part in new studies.

These studies paint a new picture of pedophilia and people who perceive pedophiles.

[Kailey Roche]

Thanks for participating, Caspar. It's very helpful for us! Hope you are well.

[Markus]

Hi Kailey Roche,


I think its great that more and more Resources are being invested in scientific work. I'll read through the study results in Peace, even if my English is a bit rusty. New Studies ? Well im Ready

Thanks

many greetings

Markus

[Kailey Roche]

Hi Markus,

I agree! There are lots of new researchers interested in tackling stigma, which is very promising. I do have a new study we are recruiting for posted here if it applies to you

All the best

Kailey

[Markus]

I think every Pedophile can help the science to understand so many Problems wich comes with the Pedophile Feelings. Im Pedophile and i think the study applies to me.