A Descriptive Study of the Attitudes, Characteristics and Behaviours Differentiating Men Who Do and Do Not Want Help for Their Sexual Interest in Children

In the field of child sexual abuse prevention, secondary prevention services seek to engage with people concerned about their sexual interest and behaviours towards children prior to the onset of offending. There is a lack of robust information to inform program development and to seek to engage earlier with people concerned about their risk to children. Accordingly, this paper reports on the findings of a survey of 4,918 men, drawn from representative samples in Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The paper described the proportion of men in the survey with a sexual interest in children (n = 642), and the factors that distinguish between men who wanted help for that interest and men who did not want help. Study findings indicate that offending behaviour is a key motivator for help-seeking amongst men with a sexual interest in children. Men who wanted help were significantly more likely to be married or living with a partner and working with children, and they reported closer social bonds, compared to men with sexual feelings who did not want help, which suggests that their help-seeking may be motivated by concern about the impact of their offending on their close relationships, social ties, and reputation. This group also displayed heightened rates of other forms of sexual deviancy, such as arousal to animal pornography, as well as the use of encrypted social media apps, potentially to camouflage or hide their offending activity. These findings may be useful for secondary prevention services in order to build motivation to seek help amongst men with a sexual interest in children.