A guest poster over at Blonde Sagacity has provided us with a wonderful, if challenging to read, profile of a pedophile.

The writer is a Marine Reservist, formerly active duty (5 years). He now works as a sherriff’s deputy somewhere in MI. He works within the court system there, as “the enforcement arm of the family court to which [he] is assigned.” In the 3 years or so that he’s been doing this, he’s seen lots of things. And his observations should make you stop and think.

Probably the most important part of his post (which will be continued on Monday in part 2) is this:

We’ve all heard that rape is about power; it’s not about sex. With child molesters, it’s different. It is about sex.

What’s sick is that often we pick up that these people genuinely love kids. It may sound perverted to say this, but they genuinely love kids. A lot of people get upset by that notion. “How can somebody love a kid and do that?” they ask.

You can’t deny that. And that’s why when you see the person who operates the day-care center or the beloved Pop Warner football coach accused of CSC with a minor, there’s almost always an out pouring of sympathy for the defendant. Letters to the editor of the local paper in support, nasty letters to the prosecutor and the police about how unjust we are. People see someone who genuinely appears to love children and they say “Someone like this who really likes kids couldn’t possibly do this.” People get confused by that. But let me tell you, Pedophiles genuinely love kids… and they have a sexual desire for kids. Take the Michael Jackson case in California as a great example of this phenomenon, public support for a molester because of the molester’s love for children. Some people are fooled by that love. Don’t be.

Whenever I hear somebody say, “Wow, did you hear about that schoolteacher, that priest, that camp counselor, who abused the kid?” it doesn’t surprise me. It doesn’t surprise me a bit. I’d expect it.
(snip)
This is something we in Law Enforcement go insane trying to tell parents and kids. When I was a kid all you heard about was the “Dangerous Stranger,” the outrageous, scary-looking guy that would kidnap you from K-Mart. Mr. Dangerous Stranger is out there. There are individuals who pick up children, torture them, and murder them, they do exist. They are also less than one percent of all CSC cases.

Let me tell you, sex offenders are very normal looking. I arrested a [large car company] VIP for child porn once. Most have “normal” families, children, and jobs. It’s usually not the weird looking dude in the trench coat outside the school yard with a hand in his pants. It’s usually is the basketball coach at the Y. I tell my daughter to look out for the one you know.

Pedophilia is probably my number one “kill them all and let God sort them out” issue. I have no sympathy for it, no interest in it, and no compassion for the perpetrators. I don’t watch the Lolita-type films, and I don’t wink and smile at the school-teacher-pregnant-by-her-teenage-student stories. Maybe because it all strikes a little too close to home, for me. We had a baby-sitter living with us when I was a small child – one of my alcoholic parents’ alcoholic friends. He and I were …. very close, shall we say…probably too close, if anyone had been paying attention. But what did I know? I was only 4. I have a friend whose dad first raped her before she was a year old. Another good friend was molested by her grandmother for most of her early childhood years.

So yeah, not a lot of sympathy from me for these poor, previously abused perpetrators. ‘Cause the cycle does NOT have to continue. Help is out there. I should add, for full disclosure, that I have an alcoholic sister who spent a year in jail for molesting a 12yr old boy she was babysitting, when she was in her late 20s.

Anyway… odds are good that someone you know was abused as a child. And according to the post’s author, odds are good that someone you know is a pedophile (scary thought). You owe it to yourself and your kids (and your neighbors’ kids) to be informed.

Go.

Read.

Learn.