Gunhild Archer, counselor

Pre-intro:

There are a few things I want to preface before you start reading.

1. The text is confronting. I will be surprised if you can read through the entire text without having reactions. Nor is it the point. I want to offer a chance to understand and see from a new perspective. If you want to have a conversation about what you have read, take ownership of what’s yours and be open to take in what is being said.

2. I believe in the good in people. That’s my baseline when I interact with, or work with, people. (I’m open to being wrong.)

3. “To solve a problem, you have to understand the problem.” Let me know if you still agree after reading the article, or if you want to change it to “When you have a problem, get rid of the problem”.

4. “Hurt people hurt people.” Again, let me know if you agree after reading the article.

5. What do you think would happen if you eliminated (I’m talking about take-them-out kind of elimination) anyone who has been sexually inappropriate with a child? If you could remove them from existence with the snap of your fingers, how many people do you think would disappear and what would be the societal consequence? It’s wise to be aware of the consequences, both the positive and negative. I personally think the problem will keep coming back, it will persist until we, you and I, sort out our own sexual deviations and shadows, which is why I’m sharing what I’m sharing.

6. If mass execution isn’t the appropriate course of action, if healing is worth a shot, we need people who are willing to be open about the truth (again, another reason why I’m sharing – I’m willing to look at the truth). It is not going to be comfortable. We need to have grace for ourselves and each other (writing this post, being honest about my experience and perspectives is NOT comfortable). Everyone is horrified of the Epstein files, but very few are able to be honest about their own deviations and shadows. You can’t expect your neighbor to have a clean house if your house is filled with filth, which is an invitation to do what you can within your own home.

Now, let’s get started.

Introduction, intention, and trigger warnings

This is going to be a post that it scares me to publish. When I think about being at the end of my life, I know I will regret it if I DIDN’T make this post, it’s a regret I can even feel right now… Hiding a perspective I see as true feels cowardly. Because it’s a sensitive and nuanced topic and I want to get my viewpoints across, it’s going to be one of the longer posts I have published. If you start reading, I recommend reading until the end. It’s not going to be an easy or comfortable read. I’m going to talk about pedophilia and incest in a way that will likely trigger. I’m going to talk about the topics in a personal way – I’m going to relate it to my own story. I imagine that can be triggering too. If you decide you want to read, it might change your feelings about me. No hard feelings if it does. It might want to make you remove me as a friend or sever any association you might have with me. Pedophilia and incest are not light topics; pedophilia brings out extremely intense reactions and incest tend to make people go silence.

I grappled with the idea “maybe I’m a pedophile…” since I was 16 or 17 after being turned on by boys half my age. I think I was 17 or 18 when I made out with someone who was 14, I didn’t know what to make of the age difference besides “I think he is too young?”. I was never deeply alarmed, and to this day I never fully understood why, but my attitude was mainly “it is what it is”. At 21 my partner showed me his collection of child sexual abuse material (I would have called it “child porn” back then) and when my body reacted by being turned on, I decided I knew. Since then, I have lived with the idea “ok, I’m most likely a pedophile”. The story has a lot of details that are important, but this is the start.

My intention for sharing is not to scream from the rooftops that I’m a pedophile (if that’s what I really am), it is to tell a story I think is necessary get told. Not many people want to talk about it, there are even fewer who want to talk about it from the perspective of being one. It’s similar with incest, people usually get a hard and contemptuous look on their face when the topic is brought up, yet incest and pedophilia (they kind of go hand in hand, don’t they?) are more common than we would like to believe.

Whether I share my story of not, nothing really changes. The matter of the fact is that my partner showed me child sexual abuse material and my body reacted. Of course, saying it out loud can change a lot, but it doesn’t change the facts… The experiences I have had, the thoughts and feelings I have had, and the reflections about those said experiences, thoughts, and feelings – nothing can remove them from existence. We can talk about pedophilia and incest, heal from it, we can decide what we want to do moving forward, but we can’t undo the original experience. Speaking out loud can lead to judgment and ostracization, and although I will be affected if that happens, a big part of me has the same attitude as Mel Gibson in Braveheart: I can die for a cause close to my heart.

Wanting to create a space to have these kinds of conversations IS a cause close to my heart. Opening up to a conversation about pedophilia doesn’t mean I condone hurting children (I never understood people whose logic made that make sense). I also don’t condone hurting people who hurt children, doing so doesn’t make sense in my eyes. I believe hurt people hurt people. When I’m hurt, I need help, not punishment. People have told me I am naive for believing in love as medicine, and maybe it is true, but so far, it’s the most sensible possible solution I have come up with. That being said, my intention for sharing my story is not to offer a solution, I want openness so we can have conversations. I also want people who need to talk to have space to do so. Nothing gets better by being silenced or kept in the dark, if anything, it gets worse. Secrets fester in the dark.

My first encounter with child sexual abuse material

My first partner at university had child sexual abuse material. How do I know? Because he showed me. I don’t remember why, but I think I accidentally walked in on him watching it. He got angry and told me to leave, but I assume he ended up feeling guilty and decided to tell me. I don’t know why he asked if I wanted to see the videos, or maybe it was me who asked to see (it wouldn’t surprise me given how curious and non-judgmental I am). If my memory serves me correctly, he had about 8 videos of children at different ages, all abusers were men and all the children were girls. Although I was familiar with the idea that maybe I was a pedophile for years at that point, my reaction when seeing the videos still caught me by surprise. My body reacted by being turned on.

At this point I am unaware of what is to come. I don’t know I will attend a week-long trauma recovery course in Berlin which will quickly lead to the recovering of memories pertaining sexual abuse. I don’t know those memories will thrust me into the most challenging and heart wrenching years of my life (years that will simultaneously help make sense of who I am). At the time my partner showed me the videos I had no explanation for why I reacted with being turned on and I had to reckon with the information I had. I never understood why I didn’t struggle more to accept it, or why I didn’t feel ashamed, but I didn’t. What I DO remember is a persistent feeling telling me “I didn’t choose my feelings” which made it feel like it wasn’t my fault.

Conversations with a friend

Something I find interesting when looking back at my early twenties are the conversations I had with a friend at the time. He was studying to be a psychologist and had a great combination of intelligence and open-mindedness. Him and I talked about pedophilia on multiple occasions. I remember telling him “I don’t think a child will be affected when they are molested, as long as they aren’t treated violently”. I genuinely believed that. Knowing what I know now, I see a young woman trying to justify and normalize a past she was not yet aware of. My subconscious told a story about a girl who didn’t want to be affected by what had happened as the consequences would be devastating. My psychology friend of course argued that a child at any age would be devastated by child sexual abuse, let alone incest. He told me a parent should never cross that boundary with their child. Looking back, I realize I didn’t even understand what boundaries he was talking about.

For most of my twenties and my early thirties, I lived with the idea I was a pedophile. It didn’t haunt me, I didn’t think about it obsessively, but it was there. On some level I knew it was wrong, but I didn’t feel bad in the way I expected to feel bad. During my twenties, I was thinking about having kid and I wondered what would happen if I did. Would I feel aroused in interactions with my kids or would a maternal instinct take over and make those feelings go away? Given the fact that parents, both moms AND dads, abused their children, it didn’t seem like something to bet on. Would I be tempted to cross lines? If I did, how would I justify it? Even if I didn’t do anything wrong, would they pick up my energy, and if I did, would it be enough to traumatize them? I remember thinking if that was the case, how would I be able to control my energy?

Condemnation without understanding

I didn’t actively talk about my feelings, but I also didn’t shy away from talking about it. Maybe because I was curious and open-minded, I kept getting into conversations about child sexual abuse material, incest, and pedophiles. I had a genuine desire to understand why someone was turned on by children, just as I was curious to understand why some people acted on it and others didn’t. The conversations quickly taught me that pedophilia is a loaded topic, so much that people I considered rational and open-minded reacted with disgust to then hastily shut down the conversation. The most common reaction I encountered was condemnation. Pedophiles should get the needle, be shot, burn in hell; they should be wiped from the face of the Earth. At times the blatant lack of humanity angered me. It was in those moments I didn’t shy, instead I decided to challenge the person I was talking to. How? I looked them straight in the eyes and told them the story about my ex and how seeing his videos turned me on. It changed the conversation entirely. I had made it personal. They were forced to double down on their initial stance which basically meant telling me to my face that they thought I deserved to die, or rethink their reaction. I would have struggled too, I’m careful about what I say about someone to their face. What I realized from those confrontations was that people’s first reactions are often not theirs, they are learned. If it was their personal truth, it would likely have been more grounded, felt more substantial, and had room for understanding. When they were faced with a person they knew, they were forced to question if they truly meant that I deserved death, which makes an important point… I think it is important that we remember we are talking about people – humans. Humans are multifaceted, we are complex, most of us carry trauma… We are not straight forward, and for me – I believe none of us are purely good or purely “evil”.

Suppressed memories

When I was 29, I went to Berlin to attend a week-long trauma recovery training. The week consisted of lectures combined with hands-on exercises and Q&A sessions.  It was an intense week of learning more about ourselves. The second last day of the training, out of the blue, I got an unshakeable feeling that something bad had happened to me, something I couldn’t remember. It didn’t make sense; I couldn’t think of anything to explain the feeling. Interestingly, the feeling came with a memory of being 15 and feeling uncomfortable in regards to the relationship between my youngest sister and our dad. I remembered asking my sister if something inappropriate had happened. I left Berlin with a commitment to spend at least 30 minutes every day tuning into myself. A few weeks later, images of being touched surfaced. The feelings from the scenes wouldn’t appear until years later. What did happen, is that I would go through different emotional reactions to the scenes themselves. For 4 or 5 years it looked like oscillating between intense denial and confusion. I desperately believed I was making it up, followed by thinking “the images felt real”. I went back to therapy and started to unpack how my system was set up. Slowly, but steadily, I gained an understanding of how suppression saved my life. During that time, I got to see a lot of my behavior, feelings, and patterns in a new light. 10 years later, I can somehow make sense of why I reacted the way I did to the child sexual abuse material.

Evil?

I want to talk about evil for a minute. I have always struggled to understand what the word means and what it entails if someone is. “Evil” is one of the most common phrases people use when they talk about pedophilia (“Pedophiles are evil and should be taken off this earth.”) If seeing child sexual abuse material turns me on, does it mean I’m evil? When I imagine myself as a newborn, I can never label her as evil. If I’m evil as an adult, it must have been put into me somewhere along the way. Let’s say I am evil… If that’s the case, I still want to understand what it means. Am I evil because my body reacts the way it does? I can’t control how my body reacts, just as a rape victim can’t control if they get aroused and reach climax during the rape. If I fantasize about children, is it the decision to fantasize that makes me evil? What if my fantasies are intrusive, am I still evil? What if I, as a child, touched another child without their consent – was I evil as a child? Would you be less inclined to call me evil if I had a history of abuse and was reenacting my abuse? If I as an adult get turned on by watching child sexual abuse material, does it make a difference if it was a result of sexual trauma or not? What if didn’t know about my trauma due to suppression. It’s not a free card to abuse, but doesn’t it mean something if pedophilia can be traced back to suppressed childhood trauma as opposed to “it’s something you’re born with”? “Hurt people hurt people” is a commonly used phrase. Do we understand what it means, or is it a phrase without substantial meaning?

I remembering listening to an interview of a woman who had been sexually molested by her father, and later trafficked by her mother. She said that the men who abused here were deeply disconnected from themselves, that they had lost touch with their humanity, which, to me, makes sense. Disconnection enables inhumane behavior. To her, evil was a result of disconnection. Do you know how disconnected the general population is? Extremely. Does it mean that they are evil, or do they need to molest someone first?

I have tried to imagine standing in front of someone deeply sadistic (deriving pleasure from causing someone pain is the closest I can get to being “evil”), and I genuinely can’t imagine that they are evil. Maybe it’s a character flaw, but I have never experienced NOT seeing the innocence in people. A sadistic person might be lost, in pain, disconnected – yes, but evil… No.

I’m questioning whether pedophilia and incest is evil, partly because I want to understand, and partly because definitions matters when it comes to possible “treatments”. I assume “evil” is untreatable. If that’s the case, there’s no hope for pedophiles. If that’s true, I can see why people want to lock them up, or even “getting rid of them”. If, on the other hand, pedophilia can be understood, if there is a reason why people feel the way they feel, it must be possible to intervene and help.

I think it’s easy to not see each other as human. Seeking to understand requires some amount of effort. I don’t think it benefits anyone to take the easy way out when it comes to how we treat each other. I have a question… How would you feel if you were to look someone in their eyes and categorize them as evil (I’m curious how it feels to label them in and of itself, I suspect you wouldn’t feel good negatively categorizing someone. I’m also wondering how you would feel after having labeled them. It would put me in a state of heightened fear, which doesn’t benefit me or the other person.)

Understanding pedophilia through the lens of “parts”

There is a therapeutic model called Internal Family Systems (IFS) that explains how the consciousness fragments when we experience trauma. Some people call these fragments “alters”, but I like to call them “parts” or “young versions of me” (it helps to remind myself that they are valid aspects of my personality so as to not push them away). The personality splits are adaptations whose aim is to cope with the trauma they experienced. When we go through something traumatic, the sole focus is to find the adaptation(s) that are the most likely to help you survive, we don’t focus on creating socially acceptable adaptations. Certain types of traumas create twisted adaptations; incest is one of them. You can’t simply quit or override these adaptations with will-power or rational thinking; deep-seated feelings don’t work that way. Our emotions are powerful driving forces, as they should be so they can help us stay alive. If we could override feelings with rational thought, new year’s resolutions wouldn’t be a thing. We would do anything we set our minds to, end of story. Clearly, that’s not remotely close to reality – people have been failing their resolutions for decades.

Emotions are tricky business; they get us into jams all the time. It is just that for some, the jam crosses a line that shouldn’t be crossed. Not just incest, there are plenty of examples of situations where the line is crossed and the outcome is gruesome. When you experience incest, you create “parts” or “sub-personality”. You have to in order to cope with the trauma. One of those parts survives by believing sexual touch by your father or mother is a way of showing love. The setting in your mind says: sexual touch from authority figure = they care. The belief will be deeply embedded and ruled by emotion. If you, as a young adult, experience unwanted sexual advances by your boss, despite feeling off, deep down you will also feel like he cares. For someone who doesn’t have the same experiences and programming, it can be hard to imagine that they don’t understand that it’s not ok, but that is exactly what happens. The parts that were created during trauma will come out when your system deems it necessary for your coping and/or survival, or in situations similar the original trauma. I think most people will find it hard to believe that someone sees sexual advances by their boss as love, but that is the result of trauma.

Childhood experiences create your most deep-seated beliefs. The parts that are created during trauma can hold extreme perspectives. The good news is that, with the right approach, you can affect their current perspective and introduce new ones. The process isn’t comfortable, remnants of trauma IS grueling, but as long as you (a) work with a good practitioner, and (b) has a willingness to accessing yourself, you can, and will, change.

Anyway, that was a long sidetrack intended to say “it’s possible to be so deeply disconnected and traumatized that you lack the awareness to understand the pain you’re inflicting on another person”. I’m not saying every pedophile is unaware of the damage they are causing, I’m saying it’s possible that they aren’t aware. I know because I’m used to be that person.

Channeling my most out of aligned part

Some time in my mid to late twenties, I got curious about what in me was most out of alignment. I knew how to embody a specific consciousness through channeling, and one day I decided to set the intention to take on my most unaligned part. I had no idea what was going to surface, and was yet surprised when I ended up embodying the perspective of an adult man standing in front of a baby. The baby was innocent, helpless, and completely at my mercy. She was scared, she knew something bad was about to happen; her eyes were searching for mine in an attempt to find reassurance. “Are you here with me, am I safe, do I belong to you?”, her questions were palpable. From my perspective as the man, I felt myself getting off on her being at my mercy. I knew she would do anything to gain back my attachment. I feel an intense sexual excitement; my body was filled with pleasure as I severed the connection between us and a surge of fear filled her body. It was a power play. I feed off the fear, desperation, and despair I was creating. It took two before I suddenly jolted back to reality and, for the first time, I truly saw the baby laying in front of me. She was no longer an object; she was a living, breathing being, just as I was no longer entranced; the spell was broken, and I had also become a living, breathing being. I could see that her fear, heartbreak, and devastation was the result of what I did… She had just lost her dad. The realization hit me like a ton of bricks. I started sobbing. I had broken something in her that she could never get back. I had also lost the precious relationship that could have been between a dad and his daughter.

When I reflecting on the channeling, I realized I had either internalized my dad or left a part of me inside him during as a way to stay safe. Either way, a version of him, along with his twisted actions and feelings, were a part of me.

The channeling helped me understand the motives and mindset of a pedophile. Being in my dad’s perspective made it clear that, from his perspective, I couldn’t see or feel the damage I was doing. I had been consumed in my own feelings, existing solemnly in my own bubble. If you have a hard time wrapping your head around it, think about a situation where you lost control… Everyone experience conflict that leaves lasting wounds, say something they didn’t mean when after being stretched to the brink of exhaustion, some people cheat when temptation gets overwhelming… My point is, everyone has experienced what it feels like to be locked in a perspective to the point where you can’t see or feel the person in front of you.

“They should have known better”

“Ok, so they don’t understand what they are doing in the moment, what about before or after, they should look back and realize that it was wrong!” I don’t have a good answer to that. It’s hard to wrap one’s head around how awareness works. Everyone knows, on some level, that raping a child is wrong. Yet, when my friend and I talked about pedophilia, I was adamant that the child would be unscathed as long as the adult didn’t use force, I genuinely couldn’t access a different perspective. You can also look at the statistics for child sexual abuse; it speaks for itself. I have heard numbers as high as 1 out of 10. If the number of perpetrators equates to the number of victims… 1 out of 10 adults who should have known better, yet don’t… 

(1) How should they know better? And why? If the abuser was abused themselves, how should a child whose normal was violation know that violation is wrong? 

(2) If the abuser knows better, why aren’t they doing better? Are they stupid? Lazy? Maybe they don’t care. Do they lack empathy? A baby is full of love and trust; they are pure and innocent. Maybe there are exceptions, but the exception is not 1 out of 10. Babies are born innocent and can be raised into healthy adults, if they aren’t, where and how did it go wrong?

(3) OK, so they should have known better, but THEY DIDN’T. The question then becomes: Now what? From my point of view, it makes sense to ask ourself what we can do ensure that we know better, and then figure out the best way to go about it.

I think back to the conversation I had with my friend. Now that I know more about my past, I can see what I said in a different light. What I see from my current perspective is a woman who subconsciously tried to NOT be affected, she wanted what happened to her NOT to be painful. If what he did wasn’t painful she could continue being in a relationship with him. If I WAS hurt on the other hand, the situation would be different.

Refusing to see the truth

Facing the truth is often an unpleasant event, even more so when it hits close to home. Pedophilia, incest, and child sexual abuse are not easily digestible topics. Is that why we refuse to face when a partner, parent, or someone we look up to, violate our kids, and that IS what we do – close our eyes. I have read countless stories of parents who turns a blind eye, denies, or enables the abuse to continue. I have stories of police investigations where evidence suddenly “goes missing”, officers who are “reassigned”, cases are closed because “lack of evidence” (naturally so, because the evidence had “gone missing”)…

What would be so bad if didn’t close our eyes? That’s a genuine question. What do we think we would lose if we opened our eyes?

What are we creating when we refuse to see what is happening right in front of our eyes? When the victim can’t restrain the effects of the abuse and starts to suffer mentally and emotionally, they alienate themselves, takes justice into their own hands, OR they become an abuser themselves, what do we do? We judge.

“They should know better.”

Does it not make sense that someone who was repeatedly molested in their most formative years are exactly that, formed? It would be nice if the victims choose a coping strategy based on what WE think is an acceptable way to cope, but that’s not how it works. I’m not saying “let’s give abusers a free pass because they had a rough childhood”. What happened to you was not your fault, but what comes next is up to you. We all have a responsibility for what we want to do with our lives. That leads me to:

(1) There has to be enough openness so we can talk and seek help

(2) We can’t keep closing our eyes

(3) How can we help people see the truth

My two cents is to start with ourselves. Practice being open towards the parts of you that are seen as unacceptable. Don’t close your eyes when you see something you don’t like, instead let yourself feel the discomfort. Find something that makes it easier to face the truth, and find a way to make others feel comfortable facing the truth.

When I was arguing that it was ok to abuse a child as long as the abuser wasn’t violent, I was miles away from the truth of what had happened to me. That same truth was a prerequisite to understanding that abuse isn’t actually ok. 

Unexpected reactions

Some people (men) react to my “I want to shock them”-moments” by showing a weird and off-putting interest. They start to ask seemingly innocently questions that becomes increasingly more probing and sexually loaded. They say they want to understand, but they are using the conversation to turn themselves on.

I remember reading an article about how women are being infantilized in literature and movies. The author described women in their 30’s acting naïve and innocent, while their male counterpart was tasked to introduce her to her embodiment, the body of a woman. 

A big ask

Happy people don’t want to hurt others, while “hurt people hurt people”.

We want to stop children from being molested. What if we flip the sentence and say:

We want children to be treated with love, understanding, and respect. We want to listen, and honor, when a child says “no”.

We want to stop abusers from molesting children, and make it so that abuser don’t re-offend. I don’t see how locking offenders up solves anything. The only solution I see is to figure out their attraction pattern and take it from there. There has to be a desire to understand oneself, and a willingness to face one’s emotions. Is society conducive to doing that kind of work?

What would you choose, being the victim or the perpetrator?

I find the question extremely interesting, would you prefer being the one who’s wronged, or the one doing wrong? We tend to empathize with the victim, but I think it’s hard to face the truth no matter what the truth is. To heal, you have to reconnect with the truth, you have to feel what you have been trying to avoid. The process of reconnecting and, if you have buried the truth, uncovering, will affect you. When you uncover a history of abuse, you have to face a number of difficult feelings, but being honest about being the abuser brings you face to face with shame, “you should have known better”, “lack of character”, having a degraded sense of morals… A victim gains sympathy. If you do the work necessary to heal, you also experience the rise from victimhood which is a story that works in your favor, whereas taking responsibility as a perpetrator is the least you should do. No one wants to be seen as bad, vile, or evil. A pedophile has to live with what they have done in multiple ways: fear of being caught, fear of the victim speaking up, fear of losing people you love, jail or other types of punishment, stigma, opportunities lost… Their actions follow them for the rest of their lives.

IF an abuser deciding to face the truth, coming to terms with having hurt someone will be devastating. I have worked with mothers and sat through breakthroughs (and breakdowns), moments where they realized the impact of their words and actions, and I have never heard more painful cries (and the mothers never inflicted anything even remotely close to the kind of violation a pedophile inflicts).

Meeting with a therapist who specializes in pedophilia

At some point I wanted to know what the attitude was amongst those who are supposed to know what to do about pedophilia – the therapists. I reached out to the leading expert in my country and set up a meeting. He told me two things I find important:

(1) It’s treatable, at least in most instances.

(2) Your body reacting to watching a sexual act with a minor doesn’t mean you’re a pedophile.

From what I understood, he believes there is a link between childhood experiences and attraction/pleasure/desire. He gave me an example of a man who moved away from his best friend (a girl) when he was around 10. At 50 years old, he was looking at two friends who were playing outside his kitchen window when he suddenly felt a surge of desire towards the girl. The therapist explained the desire as a strong manifestation of the fond feelings he had towards his friend back when he was a child, and when the feelings surfaced as an adult, he interpreted them as sexual feelings. It makes me think of spiritual gurus who talk about sexual energy and life force energy as the same thing. Maybe our lack of understanding what we feel can help explain pedophilia. From what the therapist said, the man who lost his friend at 10 years old needs to understand the root of his feelings, which helps him reframe them, and that’s the solution. The therapist also told a story about a 14-year-old boy who came to therapy because he was suicidal. He had been turned on by watching a sexual act being done to a child and was terrified of being a pedophile. Suicidal, not because he had done anything, but because he had a feeling he knew would be frowned upon. I wish I could remember what the therapist said, but he made a clear distinction between signals that triggers arousal and not feeling sexually attracted to anyone besides children. My therapist once said “It’s not weird that you react to child sexual abuse material, your pleasure signals have been distorted by what you have been through”. According to the leading expert when it comes to pedophilia in my country, I’m not a pedophile, my signals have been disrupted. I don’t know what the difference is between someone who’s signals have been disrupted and someone whose sole attraction is towards children, but I think either position comes with challenges and difficult feelings. And societal judgement.