Have you ever been accused of being a paedophile?
AspieForty
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Joined: 4 Apr 2010
Age: 54
Gender: Female
Posts: 568
Location: North Carolina, USA
Speaking as the survivor of statutory rape, 2 of my attacker/s were married men with a wife, and even children. They were friends of my brother, whom, was probably Aspergers himself (19 years of age at the time) I dont know if he realized how foolish he was cooperating with their scheming. He told me to keep the crime secret, and I didn't question... it took years to grasp a terrible crime had even been committed. Some attempted to villify myself, the victim.
Only one of the men were single (21 years of age).
It was a very painful time in my life that haunts me to this day. No, the attackers were not socially withdrawn, loners or "chronically single".
I acted on my suspicions and Googled, and here are the statistics :
"...child sexual exploitation is most often triggered by proximity to children and the opportunity to exercise authority over them. It's more likely to happen in the child's home than outside it. The perpetrator is most likely to be someone the child and parents know, for younger children, a caregiver, for teens, a social contact."
- psychologytoday.com
most cases of sexual abuse occur between relatives, family friends or within the primary family unit. One study found that children are 36 times more likely to be molested by a husband or male partner (who has access)
Abusers are commonly known to the survivor
In their 2001 report on Family Violence in Canada**, The Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics found that family members, including relatives, constituted the vast majority (93%) of alleged perpetrators. Another statistical study conducted in 2001 by the Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics**** found that:
among family assaults parents were the perpetrators in 56% of physical assaults against youths and 43% of sexual assaults against youth victims 12 to 17 years of age;
siblings were responsible for approximately 25% of physical and 26% of sexual assaults in the family that were perpetrated against youth
extended family members committed 8% of physical, and 28% of sexual assaults against youth.
- facebook.com/pages/No-pardons-for-pedophiles/214643393731?v=info
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QuantumCowboy
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Many people can sense that there is something different about you. However, due to their extremely limited knowledge and imagination, they only have a few available options for "different" labels (eg. homosexuality, pedophilia, drug-addict). I would not take it particularly to heart. Instead, it is more a sign of their limitations...
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kx250rider
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Joined: 15 May 2010
Age: 56
Gender: Male
Posts: 2,140
Location: Dallas, TX & Somis, CA
People need to know what category you're in, and what you are, or it drives them crazy. If you won't fit into one of their narrow-minded categories, they'll make you fit into one. Example: Physically normal boy + no girlfriend by age 18 = Gay or weird somehow. Very hurtful and unfair. I've never been thought to be a pedophile, but plenty of people have thought I was gay, when I went all through my teens without being able to strike up a dating life, or have a girlfriend. I suppose if I were the type to have kids around, people might have though I was a closet pedophile. I sometimes think that about others, which I have no business thinking. However, a long-time friend of mine has confessed to me that he has those tendencies, but he has gone 74 years without acting on it. I think it's fairly common, especially for opressed/suppressed Gay men. They might have grown up in a household where homosexuality is evil, and therefore have never satisfied urges that naturally came to them as boys themselves. Maybe they were railroaded by society to be straight and marry, and by middle age, couldn't take the sexual frustration anymore. Just a hunch on my part.
Charles
I also have this need to know what category people are in and to want to make people fit into categories, only for me it isn't sexual, or wanting to make people fit into sexual pseudo-categories. For me it's a need to know if they are conservative or liberal, healthier than wanting to know what sexual category someone's in. Inevitably, of course, I'm wrong sometimes.
I have never been accused of being a pedophile, but because of being a gay. Main reason: they almost never see me with a woman. And I am immune to signals of interest, done by women.
An former autistic homemate is being accused of being a pedophile because he often talks with young children, without knowing them. That can cause controversial feelings to parents of the children that suddenly sees that man talking to them. I never talk to strange children unless their lives are directly endangered. For example, if a child is playing on the rails on a railway station and the mother is not around, I will tell the child to go away. If he doesn't, I will pick him up, and put him on a safe place. If the mother will get angry at me, I will confront her that I had to choose between the intervention or let train kill the child. It is quite obvious, which of the two options I will choose, isn't it?
When I was out with friends when I was in my 20's I had at least two women come on to me in front of my friends and I kept thinking they were trying to set me up to be laughed at or my friends talked them into to it so they could laugh at me. Because of this one of the women's friends called my a queer. My friends kept saying maybe she was right, normal guys do not get flustered then walk away real quick when asked out. But they were mostly teasing trying to get me flusterd. One of our gay friends from work said gay guys do not have a hard time talking to women he said proving I am not gay just shy around women.
I have never been called a pedophile mostly because I do not want to be around children I hate the sound of their laughter and their crying. I am also afaid they are going to punch me in my junk.
ZOMG! Sometimes called it openly, often talked about and I can see it in most people's head when I'm out with my camera.
I'm a guy, I go to a public places and photograph architecture or street-scenes (or bunny-rabbits, flowers in a hot-house, whatever). People look at me strangely in the first instance because they don't understand what I am doing (already not fitting into a comfy pigeon-hole for them) then they see my camera and then in the majority of people's minds I'm like Jesus (the Big Lebowski one). Sometimes folks will come over and chat (they want to investigate) and then joke about thinking I was a paedophile/terrorist/bogey-man, laugh to themselves and walk away (and I hate talking to random, purposeless people in public places; it's the height of idiot-vanity).
I don't really deal with it properly I suppose. I know that I'm not there taking photos of children to masturbate over or sell later. I try to accept it as an uglier part of the art I choose to express myself. Like all negative interactions with people, they burn into my memory and I replay them at strange/unrelated times.
I often wonder that were I a woman, would it happen less/at all? This thread has changed my mind a little after the mud-throwing post. I think it'd still happen and that being girly, *more* people would talk to me. God I hate morons. Morons trying to pick me up would irk me no end.
Well, I have two gay colleagues and they are not autistic, but they can interact socially very well with women. I often read on forums that women get socially or sexually attracted by gay men because they interact so well. I was stunned when female collagues at work told me that I am very good at interacting socially with NT women. Very good at interacting socially...? I may be very good at making jokes and making the women laugh about it. Now what the...? I am autistic, so I am not "supposed" to be good at it. In the 17 years I have been working on the same place, I had had 3 women in love with me, but exactly at that moment things go wrong and the love that they feel gets unanswered by me. Because of this, I am sometimes called a gay because... as I said they never ever spot me with women romantically.
No, never.
I am not formally diagnosed, but it has been long established that I'm, uh, "odd". I am also gay. I realized, a long time ago, that this combination could make me an easy target for such an accusation. Therefore, since about age 25 or so, I have consciously avoided contact with kids, other than them simply being in someone's home when I was there, or other such incidental exposure.
That's a really good point.
I'm a 25 year old woman and I still remind myself to be careful around kids. There's this teen aspie boy I'd love to befriend out of curiosity, and to maybe be of use to him, but I know pursuing that will cause neurotypical alarm. When I first met his family and they told me he had AS, even though I didn't know I had it yet, I said, "Oh wow! That's awesome!" The mother looked so sheepish and confused by my enthusiasm, though. She said, "yeah, he's different alright." I felt instantly bad for him as I remembered how people tended to view AS. I hope he has positive input somewhere in his life.
I know I look weird in general. I act weird. I say weird things. So... I try to avoid kids. The last kids I talked to were drinking Dr. Pepper in the street. I told them off good and proper, said it was too high in caffeine and sugar for their body size, and that their parents would not approve! I feel that was a safe stretch.
I know this thread was posted last year, I have found this interesting, and I do have a story for this topic.
Yes, I was accused of being a paedophile, and no I am not a paedophile. And yes, I am a girl! When I was 14 I had an obsession (and you know how us Aspies are with our obsessions - we can't move on until we've found out every last detail about our current obsession, if we're that type of Aspie ). My obsession was with a couple with a baby who lived next door to my cousin. (God knows why I got obsessed with someone so random!) I had a stupid crush on the bloke, and got friendly with his wife (she was a friendly person) and I even said to her how lucky she was to have a husband like him. But I used to hang about near their house a lot, waiting for the bloke to come out to his car or put rubbish out or something. They used to see me waiting there, kicking a ball about or something, and although they knew I fancied the bloke, they thought I was after their baby (which I definitely was NOT). I don't even like small children, and I have not got those paedophile feelings in me at all. And I live right near door to a primary school, and they know I do, but I am not one bit interested in the children whatsoever. In fact, the disgusting thought has never, ever crossed my mind. Oh, yuk! And I go on the internet every day, and I've never even thought of looking on pawn sights of children - ohh that just makes me sick! But anyway, long story short, I grew out of the obsession with that stupid bloke 4 years ago, and hopefully they have bloody well learnt that I have never been interested in their kid. I never even looked at it.
That's my story on how I was accused of being a paedophile. My mum actually had got worried that they were accusing me of something I'm not, and so she did ring the police, and told them that I was just a 14 year old child with Asperger's who just had an obsessive crush on a 26 year old bloke, and luckily the police was on our side and understood the situation. I didn’t get questioned or anything, but she just had to call them to make them aware of the situation, and that if I had got into trouble by this couple then I would already be proved innocent.
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