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Pharmacy Links

VARIETIES OF SEX OFFENDERS VS. CHILDREN: MENTAL DEFECTIVES

27th March 2009

The mental defectives constitute the largest variety of offenders vs. children except for the pedophiles; perhaps as many as one seventh to one fifth of the offenders vs. children fall into this classification. While they are not immune from other problems, their offense behavior is due chiefly to their mental deficiency: they rate no higher than middle-grade moron, and quite a few have been in institutions for the feebleminded. The great majority are not troubled by feelings of shyness or inferiority, nor does sexual deprivation seem an important factor, although about a third of the men have rather blank sociosexual histories —defectives often have low sex drive and expectations.

Their offense behavior sometimes appears to be the consequence of lack of appreciation of or thought for social rules—a sort of unthinking simple-minded opportunism. In other instances one feels the offender was for all practical purposes an overgrown child indulging in prepubertal sex play. Data concerning duration of activity with children are hard to obtain, but in most instances such activity continues sporadically over a period of years. When the defectives become aged they tend to blend with the senile deteriorates.

They are apt to have very little sexual activity of any sort, and their petting with children seems as much a matter of seeking attention and affection as of seeking specifically sexual gratification. As an illustration, we have the case of a feeble-minded man of nearly sixty whose heterosexual activity with adults consisted solely of experiences with prostitutes plus one brief marriage. He had been fond of young children and babies for some time and took to petting little girls who came around the shack he inhabited as a railroad flagman. On the other hand, a similarly feeble-minded male in his thirties had had coitus with a hundred companions and several hundred prostitutes, supplementing this with substantial outlet from masturbation and nocturnal emissions. This ample sexual activity did not prevent him from approaching young boys and girls when he encountered them in parks and motion-picture theaters. One has the impression that he regarded any human of reasonable physical size as a sexual object.