cassowarhea replied to your post “hey! I hope it's ok to ask, but what did u mean in that last post when...”
Do you have sources for the %s?
Leading child sexual violence researcher David Finkelhor, found that only about 33% of child molestation by adults meets the 6-month diagnostic criteria for pedophilia. Additionally, this study by Wortley and Smallbone found 50-75% of child molestation involved only a single child or a single incident, and thus did not meet the diagnostic criteria either.
Critically, one-time offenders are almost always opportunistic offenders and not pedophilic ones. Pedophilic offenders are by far the most prolific, with an almost 40% recidivism rate once they begin offending, and large numbers of victims. Which is another reason why preventing these people from becoming rapists in the first place is so critical. In fact, historic rates of recidivism for pedophiles were in the 80-90% range, but therapeutic advances have helped to cut that down dramatically.
Another factor one must remember when looking at these numbers is the rate of child-on-child sexual abuse. While I describe this about as being about 1/3 of child molestation, numbers actually vary from 30% to 50%, with most sources settling for an approximate 40%.
I apologize for the slapdash nature of these numbers. Research on the subject is painfully sparse, and most of the papers I used to cite have been moved from their previous URLs; since I don’t memorize the titles of these studies, I have difficulty finding them again once moved.
