Ideas - Bringing child sex abusers out of the shadows

Episode Date: May 23, 2025

No one likes talking about child sex abuse. But prevention experts say we need to bring pedophilia out of the shadows if we ever want to end abuse. They insist, it is not inevitable. CBC producer John Chipman explores an innovative new program in Kitchener, Ontario, that has sex offenders and abuse survivors working together to prevent future harm and promote healing. *This episode originally aired on Sept. 23, 2024.

Other People's Problems was the first podcast to take you inside real-life therapy sessions. I'm Dr. Hilary McBride, and again, we're doing something new. The ketamine really broke down a lot of my barriers. This work has this sort of immediate transformational effect. Therapy Using Psychedelics is the new frontier in mental health. Come along for the trip. Other People's Problems Season 5, available now. This is a CBC Podcast.

Hi there, it's Nala here. Thank you so much for listening to Ideas. Before we start today's show, I need to ask you for a favor. If you like Ideas, please hit the follow button on your app, whether you're using Apple, Spotify, or anything else. That way you won't miss any of our upcoming episodes. If you already follow us, I'd love it if you could rate and review us. You'd be helping us connect with more listeners out there who have yet to discover ideas.

Okay, here's today's show. Thanks for meeting. And as I said, I just want to let you know, is it like this is really hard for me? Welcome to Ideas. I'm Nala Ayed. And I think the first question always comes to mind with this is going, why did you do this? We'd like you to know that this episode is about a disturbing subject, one that nobody likes talking about. But for Kat Bowden, her path to move on from childhood sexual abuse has led her into an unlikely working relationship with a convicted sex offender. Very good question. At the time, my case, I grew my victim. This is Stan, who's committed sex offences, not against Kat, but against other minors. against Kat, but against other miners.

I didn't realize at first I was grooming them until as different meetings and acquaintances going on, I realized that I was grooming and in my case, if I want to use the words trickery, to participate for what I wanted. Stan and Kat are in a practice training session for an innovative new program aimed at promoting healing and preventing future child sexual abuse. Does it ever come across to their mind what damage they're going to do to that other person? At the time, no. But after, yes, if that makes sense. Realizing what harm I did do.

Their work provides a unique window into how child sex abuse prevention efforts are evolving right now. Do you feel that you should have been incarcerated? Incarceration has two elements. Punishment and correction. I needed both. And that's fair. Are you confident that you will not re-offend? I feel I have a lot of tools to help me not to re-offend,

but I know in my mind I have this DVNC that I have attraction to people that are young. I have a control now. I hope I can keep a control. But to say 100%, I guarantee you, never will do it again. I cannot guarantee you that. How's everyone doing? I'm doing good.

Yeah, doing good. Yeah, doing good. CBC radio producer John Chipman has spent months getting to know Kat and Stan to better understand how we're trying to prevent child sexual abuse and the difficult choices those efforts often entail. Do you want to take a break? We've been talking for a little while. Let's take a break here. I think actually we can probably shift over. Full disclosure here, Stan is not Stan's real name. CBC agreed to use a pseudonym for three

reasons. The pain that identifying him could have on his victims if they heard his name on the program. Then there's the possibility of Stan's family being targeted and also the potential that Stan himself could be physically harmed if he were identified. I could walk out of this interview and being arrested from an historical event. That could happen today, a week, a year, 10 years, 20 years, till I'm 90 years of age. In Canada, we do not have statutes of limitations. In 2016, Stan pleaded guilty to seven sex-related charges

involving five minors and was sentenced to 29 months in prison. After the initial charges were laid, an additional victim came forward with a complaint from the same time period for which he was also convicted and received a conditional sentence. Cat and Stan are volunteers at a non-profit in Kitchener, Ontario called Community Justice Initiatives, or CGI for short. The pair met shortly after Stan was paroled in 2017 when he enrolled in a support program at CGI. It offers to help sex offenders reintegrate into society and not reoffend. Cat was a volunteer educator with the program. And why, you may ask, would a sex abuse survivor want to help convicted

sex offenders? I came here because I had questions I wanted to ask offenders. I had questions that I needed to understand why this happened. That was where I was in my healing journey 10 years ago. It happened. There was forgiveness there for me, but it still wasn't complete. I can't say I 100% forgive because I lost part of my soul. I lost part of my being that I know I will never get back. I am from a small rural community and I'm a middle child, family of five children. I was offended against that starting at the age of nine all the way through to the age of 13.

And my father was a farmer as well. So what I'd also do is if I could, I'd spend as much time in the barn as I could because I felt safe with my dad. My father had no idea what was going on and I still have a memory of me as a little girl when I was probably about 10 and I remember I used to just sit on the beam in the barn and I'd just be able to hear my father's voice in the beam in the barn. And I'd just be able to hear my father's voice in the bottom of the barn. So I'd probably be about 20, 25 feet off the ground. And I'd stay there because I knew no one would get me

from either end because they'd be afraid to walk across the beam. What was your relationship with a person who caused you harm? He was a family member. My mother knew that I was being sexually offended against. And my mother would just close the door. And that was probably one of the biggest, most emotional, crushing thing for me is I had nowhere to go.

It was a big, eye-opening experience for me, especially when it was something that was considered such a norm, and my mom accepted it. Kat was looking for answers she couldn't find anywhere else. She couldn't ask her offender, because even if she could have mustered up the strength to face him, he was dead. Kat was understandably terrified at the prospect of stepping into a room full of sex offenders, but terror wasn't the only emotion she was fighting to control. I still remember going in that first time and I'm going, I have to be careful to make

sure I'm not going to lose it. And I'm going to end up being that person that flies across the table and, you know, and rip someone's face off. That's exactly how I felt. How is this gonna go? Why did you want to put yourself in that situation? Like why was that important to you to be in that room with people who have caused harm like the person who harmed you? Because I needed to stop blaming myself.

Ever since I was a little girl it was my fault because that's what I got told. And people don't realize that that is one of the biggest struggles with individuals that have been offended against, is the self-playing. It's like a burden that you carry because you're going, I gave everything. Everything, there wasn't anything else for me. It's all gone. And because it never got talked about and never got dealt with, it's still going on. I even, personally, I have a nephew that just got incarcerated a couple years ago, and he's a sexual offender. This is something that is passed from generation to generation

because it was part of our family cultural norm and that is a very, very common thing. Kat says she's not against sending sex offenders to prison, but she doesn't believe that prison alone will fix the problem. For her, it's less an issue of punishment and more a matter of ownership. I believe wholeheartedly in accountability because if you don't have that accountability, it's just going to be a repeat circle. It's just going to be like a mouse on a wheel.

You have to be able to stop the individual and say, OK, you did something wrong. And also see if we can work together and talk about this to make sure that's not something you do again. Get the help before you do the offense. People may have a hard time with me saying that. I do not want anybody to go through this experience that I went through. And if that can solve the problem, is to get the help before the offence happens,

then let's do it that way. The idea of stopping potential sex offenders before they cause any harm runs up against conventional thinking about child sex abuse. I mean, I think there's this overwhelming idea that child sexual abuse is inevitable and that therefore the only thing you can do is to wait until it happens and then punish the individual. But child sexual abuse is preventable. It's not inevitable. Dr. Alan Walker is a research associate at the Moore Center for the Prevention of Child

Sexual Abuse in the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. I also spoke with Dr. Ainsley Heesman, a psychologist at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto. Both are leaders in the field of child sex abuse prevention efforts, before the fact, not after. Historically, the criminal justice system has focused on arresting, convicting, and incarcerating offenders. And then after they're released, authorities monitor them and try to limit their access

to children. These can be effective tools, but they work only after a child has already been harmed. What if you could prevent harm from happening in the first place? To do that, we have to understand the difference between a pedophile and a sex offender. The terms are often used interchangeably, but Dr. Ainsley Heesman stresses they do not mean the same thing. Pedophilia specifically is a sexual attraction or sexual preference for prepubescent children. And it seems like a large segment of society uses the word pedophilia as synonymous for child sexual abuse, which is very much not the case. We know maybe 40 to 50 percent of

individuals who engage in sexual offenses against children don't have a preferential or sexual interest in children. So that's a significant number of individuals that are crossing boundaries for reasons unrelated to sexual attraction and sexual preference. Adam Chapnick Sorry, so I just, so there is a difference between attraction to minors and action against minors is what you're saying. Katie McHugh Absolutely. Adam Chapnick And where does that come from? The minors and action against minors is what you're saying. Absolutely.

And where does that come from? So certainly some individuals who have a pedophilic attraction engage in sexual abuse of children, but certainly not every individual who does have pedophilia, who does have those preferences and attractions follows through with behavior because they very much understand the harm and the implications of engaging in that behavior. Individuals who engage in childhood sexual abuse could do so for any number of reasons, could be related to pedophilia, could be related to impulsivity, substance use, antisociality, loneliness.

You're saying that there are people who have no sexual attraction to children, to minors, who do actually harm children. Absolutely. There's a number of reasons and contributing factors for anyone to engage in child sexual abuse. Certainly, having pedophilia is not a requirement or a precondition for engaging in abuse of children. There can be a number of other factors that influence someone's decisions to cross boundaries. And we also know that many to most offenses are not committed by adults preferentially attracted to children.

In fact, between 50 and 70 percent of sexual abuse against children is committed by other children. So the peak age of child sexual abuse against pre-pubescent children is 14 years old. Okay, so yeah, so that's also kind of unexpected, I guess, too. So, because again, I think people have kind of a preconceived notion of what a pedophile is, and it's typically not a 14-year year old. Where is that coming from? There are a lot of teens who don't understand what behavior is okay and not okay with younger children and especially about sexual behavior. You know, we teach children not to hit, tease younger children. We don't give clear guidelines to adolescents about

what behavior is okay and not okay with younger children regarding sexual activity. We don't tell them that children cannot consent to sex. So a lot of the time it is just ignorance. It can also be impulsivity. It can also be these other factors that Dr. Heesman was talking about. Dr. Walker, you had said the number I think was 50 to 70 percent is committed like acts against minors is committed by other minors? Yes. Yeah, because that, I mean, I would think that that would pose a lot of challenges in terms of how you prevent those kind of acts when we think about how we typically, you know, try to prevent

it against adults is a completely different group of people. Is it not? Yeah. So we often think that sexual abuse recidivism rates are really high, but as I think Dr. Heesman was just saying, 95% of children adjudicated for sex offenses never are convicted of another one. And the same is true for adults. 80% of adults convicted of sex crimes never go on to commit another sex crime. So this indicates that behavior is controllable, that abusive behavior is not inevitable, and therefore that first-time offending can be avoided. In the case of Stan, the convicted sex offender volunteering in Kitchener, Ontario, he clearly did progress from attraction to harm. But the question is, can he prevent himself from

doing it again? Stan says he's attracted to adult women as well. He had age appropriate relationships when he was younger, although he's never married and he has no children. My male interests after CAMH and the philometric testing is majority in adolescents, males, but I'm also very interested in adolescent females. The people under the age of 10 or before puberty is very little interest in I have. Stan insists he hasn't offended since his initial arrest, but he also admits that he

hasn't been charged or convicted for all the harm he caused before he was arrested. Do I have concerns that I still have a couple more that could come forwards? Yes, I do. It's the monkey they'll wear on my back for the rest of my life. But that's a small monkey compared to what a victim and the monkey that they wear on their back by not coming forwards. Do you remember the first time that you realized that you had these attractions? The first time was probably late 20s, early 30s, and I became very confused on that.

Why is this flaring up in my mind? Has it been always there and I kept it suppressed. I don't know even today on that if was I sexually assaulted when I was young. I don't recall. I say no I haven't. What did you do about it? Absolutely nothing. Until later on I started acting out on it. On my urges, on my thoughts. I wish I knew of places like CGI that I could talk to.

I felt once I had to act out, I couldn't go to my doctor because the doctor would have to report it. I don't want to go to jail. It sounds like you have multiple victims over multiple time. Like, how do you rationalize it to yourself to do this to kids? At the time, it's because I was just thinking of myself. And I did not take any thoughts on how this was going to affect the kids in the future. I wish

I went for help sooner. When things came to light Were they the worst days of my life or were they the best days? Meaning the harm that I caused stopped. They were the best days of my life. And I hope for years to come that I don't hurt anybody ever again. Dr. Heesman, if you have these attractions, you have to figure out some way to exist with them and how does that play into harm that may happen down the line?

So more and more research is happening currently, typically anonymously over the internet with surveys looking at individuals who identify never having offended or never having been caught for any particular offense to try and understand how they navigate and how they understand their interests, to understand that it's not their fault, that they didn't choose for this attraction, but that they're absolutely responsible for their behavior and their choices going forward, and that they can live a healthy and happy and productive and safe life. The folks in my research, I had interviewed 42 people who are attracted to children, all

of whom are adults and none of whom had engaged in sexual activity with a child ever. And they all really grew up in this society that told them people with attractions like theirs are monsters. And so a lot of them wanted to tell someone to protect children from themselves or to tell someone to deal with the anxiety and depression and sometimes suicidality that came with this realization that they had these attractions. There are risks with telling family and friends, including rejection, including being kicked out of their homes, being outed to others without their consent, being treated with

suspicion generally. So because of these risks, a lot of people in my study just decided that they would never tell anyone. Child sexual abuse happens in secret. So the more that we avoid creating conditions for individuals to come forward and get help to process what they're experiencing, the more we are reinforcing secrecy and living with this experience and the secret by themselves. We are paradoxically, I think, creating or furthering conditions which really support the potential for child sexual abuse instead of bringing it into the light,

having the difficult and uncomfortable conversations about what it truly means to prevent child sexual abuse. You're listening to Ideas, where a podcast and a broadcast heard on CBC Radio 1 in Canada, on U.S. public radio, across North America, on SiriusXM, in Australia, on ABC Radio National, and around the world at cbc.ca slash ideas. You can also find us wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Nala Ayed. Hey there, I'm David Common. If you're like me, there are things you love about living in the GTA and things that drive you absolutely crazy. Every day on

This Is Toronto, we connect you to what matters most about life in the GTA, the news you gotta know, and the conversations your friends will be talking about. Whether you listen on a run through your neighborhood or while sitting in the parking lot that is the 401, check out This Is Toronto, wherever you get your podcasts. It's something we don't like talking about. Childhood sexual abuse. Treatment programs do exist.

Historically, they've happened after the fact. It's typically the only place where free, intensive therapy has been available to individuals. Is once boundaries are crossed, offenses have occurred, victimization has happened, and many individuals are suffering as a result. So sorry, just to clarify, so this is after harm. After harm. This is after harm and preventing it from happening again. But what if you could prevent abuse

from happening in the first place? We need to have a multi-level approach to prevention. Dr. Ainsley Heesman is a psychologist at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto or CAMH. Producer John Chipman brings us this documentary about innovations in how we can best address childhood sexual abuse before the fact. The trouble with after-harm treatment programs is just that. Perpetrators have already committed their offenses. These individuals, some were saying, you know, I wanted to reach out for help, but I didn't

know where to go or how to get it or if it was safe. So Dr. Heesman started a new kind of program at CAMH called Talking for Change. Talking for Change launched in August of 2021 is funded by the federal government. It's really only one of about four countries in the world that has federal funding specifically to prevent child sexual abuse, to offer both anonymous helpline and chat line services, as well as traditional assessment and psychotherapy, which is free for individuals. So they don't have to cross boundaries. They don't have to be involved in the criminal justice system before they can put their hand

up and say, I need some help. So yeah, can you walk me through exactly what that looks like, like what we know about who's accessing it? So we developed two components to our program because we know there, as we've been talking about, there's substantial and significant barriers to individuals reaching out for help. So we wanted to develop programming that was accessible to all and accessible to youth and adults across the country. That service is across the country, 12 to 6, Eastern Standard, Monday to Friday, for

anyone who is concerned about their sexual attraction to children, concerned about their risk to use child sexual abuse material, or concerned about crossing boundaries offline. In just over two years, we've had over 500 conversations with individuals who have reached out primarily about themselves. And typically we are the first people they have ever told they feel like monsters, they feel like no one would understand. They feel that if people knew what their internal struggles were, that they would lose everything

known to them. And so many talk about their commitment not to offend. They know the incredible harm that would come from causing harm, but they want to help to understand and address and manage these attractions in ways that allow them not to feel like monsters and not to feel like priors in society. Besides the helpline, CAMH's program, Talking for Change, offers therapy sessions as well. We have assessment and therapy. At this point, that service is offered in Atlantic Canada, Ontario, Quebec,

Nunavut. So that is not anonymous, whereas our helpline absolutely is anonymous and confidential. Currently it's for individuals 18 and older, done entirely virtually or they can come on site to CAMH in Toronto if they prefer. But we go through a detailed assessment with me. I do that interview with them. And then they have the opportunity to participate in our therapy program, which is typically conducted in group therapy, led by myself and a colleague who is a social worker. And that's a 16 to 20 week program to understand these attractions, to understand their development and develop skills to live a life that is healthy and safe and satisfying. We've had about 140 referrals for assessment and therapy since we

launched. Dr. Alan Walker is a research associate with the Moore Center for the Prevention of Child Sexual Abuse at the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. Dr. Walker, is there anything similar happening in the United States through the Moore Center where you're working? Right now we have Help Wanted, which is an online self-guided program designed for people who are attracted to children who do not want to harm a child. As part of this program, the Moore Center developed videos to teach people about what child sexual abuse is for people who might be unsure what behavior is okay or not okay. The program website has now been viewed over half a million times and we're currently in the middle of research to examine the effectiveness of the program.

We also have Responsible Behavior with Younger Children, which is a school-based prevention program for sixth and seventh graders. So research shows that one of the key risk factors among adolescents who engage younger children in sexual behavior is a lack of understanding about what behavior is okay. And early research showed that students in the program had increased understanding of sexual abuse norms and laws and increased intention to avoid or prevent child sexual abuse. So while these kinds of pre-harm prevention efforts sound worthwhile, they also raise a central question. Dr. Walker, is there much research or data to support that this new approach is actually effective?

So far, the research is looking really positive. Right now, we're conducting a randomized control trial to evaluate the effectiveness of the Help Wanted program specifically. And so that's ongoing research, and hopefully we'll have those results pretty soon. Dr. Heusman, like, has there been any research into the effectiveness of talking for change in terms of preventing sexual harm? It would be wonderful if we could say, you know, X number of children were saved from the provision of this particular service. But I think as a function of this type of work, it's going to be impossible to say that. But by the same token, how could it not? How could it not

help to intervene since our current strategy universally across the country is not 100% effective? So how could this not provide a level up in terms of prevention, but we absolutely are evaluating everything we do, both the helpline and therapy. You mentioned mandatory reporting. What is that exactly? Canada has mandatory reporting requirements for professionals, for individuals who work with children and truthfully for just citizens of the particular province. So anytime we understand that a child has been abused or neglected or is at risk of being abused or neglected, and we have some basic, and it's relatively low threshold, but some basic information about that child who is at risk or who has been abused and

required or required to notify a child protection agency. Pete By law. Katie By law, absolutely. And there's a misunderstanding, I think, or a lack of understanding really about how broad the mandatory reporting legislation is. And many folks who reach out to us on the helpline believe that simply for identifying having these thoughts that we would need to report them to the police or child protection. That's absolutely not the case. We are not the thought police. We want to help them navigate those thoughts. But if we believe a child has

been abused or is at risk of being abused, we need to notify child protection in order to keep that child safe or get them the support that they may need. But to make clear, it's not that any child in the country or the province would be at risk as a function of these attractions. There has to be a specific child that we have concerns about or a specific group of children that we have concerns about in which to exercise that mandatory reporting obligation. So like on one level, mandatory reporting makes a lot of sense. Of course, if you know that a child is being harmed or a threat of being harmed, like, of course you'd want to report authorities

to protect that child. But if you're trying to provide services to people who are at risk of harming children, like, that would seem like it could get in the way as well. It is absolutely a barrier for many people reaching out for help. And part of what we do on the helpline and in our website, on our website is to help clarify the mandatory reporting requirements so individuals have accurate information about what would and would not be shared. And we also do training with professionals across the country because I think there is also a general lack of information or confusion about the mandatory reporting laws amongst professionals who may

also see their clients in their private practice offices or in their medical clinics and wanting to help providers also understand those barriers. My own research has shown that people in professional mental health often are not educated about the definition of pedophilia, the definition of pedophile, the fact that people who have these attractions are not the same as people who have committed an offense. And if someone discloses attractions to children to them, they then make that leap to assuming that they have committed an offense.

And that's a lot of the time where that misunderstanding about needing to make a report comes from. Everyone I spoke to for this documentary stressed that children need to be protected from ongoing and future sexual abuse. Where the issue gets complicated is how to deal with admissions of past abuse from offenders when they're seeking help to control their future behaviour. Currently in Canada, if someone admits to previously abusing a minor, it must be reported to child protection services. And that's a major reason why child sex offenders rarely seek help. I think it was an unintended consequence of the development of mandatory reporting

legislation. It's a difficult notion to accept, the idea that not having to report past sexual abuse may prevent more abuse in the future. But according to Dr. Heesman, the legislation as it stands now may not be working as effectively as it could. If this legislation prevents people from getting that help, it paradoxically and unfortunately could further drive individuals underground, promote secrecy, and feeling like they're all alone and have no one to talk to and hence don't reach out to get the help that they would need. Dr. Heesman points to one country whose reporting laws do not require the disclosure of past abuse. Germany is commonly looked at as the country that originated or developed one of the first

programs, prevention programs like this, because they have an incredibly high threshold for when they can breach confidentiality for potential abuse of a child in the future. You must imagine that about 90% of offending against children will happen not known to the legal authority. So it's really important to address these cases. Dr. Klaus Bayer is a sexologist in Berlin. He's also the driving force behind a prevention program called DUNKENFELD, which literally means dark field. Dunkelfeld, the German pronunciation, means all these cases not known to the legal authorities. The DUNKENFELD program was founded in 2005, but its genesis goes back to the early 1990s.

And what I learned is that there are self-motivated persons with a pedophilic inclination coming to specialized institutions like sexological units, but most of them are very much afraid. They are often socially isolated, which increases the risk of using child abuse material. And so I thought about a possibility to reach out to them via advertisements. This is the starting point for our campaign. We used billboards in the street, we used TV spots. Just to make clear, listen, we know you are out there and we know how to help you, but you must come by yourself and this will be anonymously. Nobody will know your name and it will be free of cost, and this works. After overcoming some initial public skepticism,

the Dunkenfeld program has expanded to include 12 branches across Germany. What motivates us are the long-term consequences for the victims, and the data are very clear, and every country needs to wake up in my eyes because it's a huge part of the population. We are talking about 10 to 20% of the population are victimized.

So this is really in my eyes, there's a need to invest in preventive measures. So, I think the one other thing that's quite interesting about Germany is it has kind of a different setup or requirements around mandatory reporting. Can you walk me through that? Yeah, that's the legal situation in Germany is a huge advantage. And according to German law, it is considered a breach of confidentiality for the treating therapist if he would report to the police something about committed child sexual abuse in the past. So that would be a problem for the therapist.

And I know that very many countries are having these mandatory port laws, and this is a huge disadvantage for prevention. We need to create circumstances allowing a lot of people to show up and not to hide themselves. So this is the ethical dilemma in my eyes with mandatory report laws in different countries like Canada. Yeah, because I think most people would think that mandatory report laws are a good thing, right? I mean, we're holding people to account, requiring a community around those people to,

in essence, police their behavior. That on its surface seemed to suggest more protection, but what you're saying is that actually pushes people further into the shadows and further isolates them. Yeah, definitely. This is a mistake in my eyes. them. Yeah, definitely. This is a mistake in my eyes. Of course, it's very much driven by emotional thinking and it's hard to face these problems. I know that very, very well. But from a preventive perspective, it's really wrong.

And you've touched on this, but I really do want to ask, because I think a lot of people's starting point when we get into this discussion is, what are you talking about? Mandatory reporting is about protecting children. What would you say to that notion that allowing people to admit to harming kids is a good thing. It does kind of fly in the face of common sense.

And so I wonder what you'd say to those kind of criticisms that were you're being easy on people who cause harm to children. I'm working my whole academic life to develop prevention programs. And again, there's no contradiction between law enforcement and imprisonment for those ones who don't want to be reached by prevention measures. But there's another group who will not show up because of mandatory report laws. This is the point. And we need to create circumstances

where they can show up, because then we can prevent children from being harmed. The number of children who are not allowed to show up is increasing. The number of children who are not allowed to show up is increasing. Dr. Heismmin, you mentioned earlier about how a number, I think you said 40 to 50 percent of people that harm children don't have underlying pedophilic attractions or tendencies and stuff. How do you reach those people?

How do you prevent that from happening? Yeah, I mean reaching these individuals continues to be a work in progress, and there's a lot of room for growth. I think it's a good question. How do you reach people who don't necessarily know they need help yet? And I think part of that is shifting the societal conversation so that we can start to normalize asking for help if you start to have thoughts that you're concerned about, whether those thoughts stem from an underlying attraction or stem from anything else. If you start to have those thoughts,

that it's OK to reach out for help. I think that's such an important point. And just going back to this question of who else offends, and going back to the fact that a large number of people who do commit these offenses are other children. So we do need these prevention measures for children. And that's why at the Moore Center, our Responsible Behavior with Younger Children program

is a universal prevention measure. So it's not just meant for, you know, children who are at risk. It's meant to teach all children, all adolescents, new adolescents about responsible behavior. And that will hopefully reduce that ignorance about what's okay and not okay. It's interesting we've been having this conversation today. I often find academics and researchers are really more than happy to come in

and talk about the work that they're doing, but I hope I'm not speaking at a turn here, but it took me a while to come to the two of you. There was a lot of hesitancy among people that work in this field to come on and talk about this. Again, Dr. Walker, I hope you don't mind me saying this, but you voiced some concerns before you kind of agreed to come on and talk. And I'm just wondering if you feel comfortable talking a little bit about the personal stakes, like why it is

difficult to work in this field and why it's difficult to talk publicly about working in this field. Certainly. So I did write a book called A Long Dark Shadow, Minor Attracted People and Their Pursuit of Dignity. And this really came because I used to be a sexual assault victims counselor, and I never really felt like I was helpful enough. I just really wanted to prevent the abuse that they had experienced. At the time, I didn't know that people who were attracted to children were different from people who commit offenses. And when I found that out, I really wanted to

know what we could learn from these individuals, from people who are attracted to children, who have never committed an offense against a child. So I engaged in this research with 42 adults who are attracted to children who've never engaged in sexual activity with a child. who are attracted to children who've never engaged in sexual activity with a child. And yeah, so I found out they wanted to be able to protect children. They wanted to make responsible choices. They wanted to be good people. So out of an interest in trying to help get these people support, help spread the word. I wrote this book and I gave an interview about the book in which I also discussed my own identity as a transgender researcher.

Unfortunately after that interview it became national news in the United States. Here's one example. A self-described non-binary assistant professor at Old Dominion University, we have no idea what that means by the way, but that's what this person calls him or herself. Professors called Alan Walker is now teaching students to use a term called MAP. What does that mean? It means minor attracted persons. Why use that phrase?

Because according to the professor, it is less stigmatizing to pedophiles. News stories about me highlighted the fact that I'm trans and also implied that I was advocating for rather than against sexual abuse. Yeah, you would want to stigmatize pedophiles. So I ended up experiencing a lot of threats and hateful messages. There were a lot of transphobic messages. That was the most frequent theme that occurred within my hate mail. They wrote about me having a gay or trans agenda.

They also made threats against children in my family, which was pretty terrifying. I mean, it really is hard to overstate exactly how big of a deal it became for a minute in the United States. I think they even took shots of you on Saturday Night Live. Is that correct? Yeah, yeah, they did.

A professor at a college in Virginia is being criticized after saying that it is not immoral for adults to be sexually attracted to children. Find out why in his new book. wait, hold on, hear me out. I understand at the time you were working at a different university as well than you are right now. You were not at Johns Hopkins University at the time. No, I wasn't. So what happened?

Like, did you get support from the leadership at that university through all of this really difficult period? No, that was a pretty emotional time that I find pretty difficult to talk about. Okay, yeah, we don't have to get into it. Thank you. How did that experience affect your work going forward? You're still doing this work.

You're at another institute that's very focused on the exact same thing that you were working on at that time as well. I am. I'm so grateful to be at the center doing this important prevention work. There were so many misunderstandings about people who were attracted to children within my hate mail. And seeing these misunderstandings really reaffirmed how much is at stake, why we need these prevention services and to really try to make people understand because we're trying

to prevent child sexual abuse. Back in Kitchener, Ontario, Kat and Stan are wrapping up their practice training session. Did you ever hear the words, I'm sorry? Not for my offender. Would this mean anything to you now if I words, I'm sorry? Not from my offender. Would this mean anything to you now if I said, I'm sorry? I've heard many I'm sorries. The I'm sorry is accepted and I hear it, but it's a different type of I'm sorry. It's not like I'm sorry because, you know, I knocked your bicycle over.

I'm sorry is not enough for me personally when part of my very being is gone and I can't get it back. For Kat, healing and preventing harm are more important than getting an apology. That's how she found herself working alongside Stan, as well as other sex offenders and survivors. Jen Baudin is the coordinator of the surrogacy program at Community Justice Initiatives.

So when somebody comes forward and says, I want to have a dialogue with someone who's experienced harm or caused harm for my own healing, that's what we developed was a training for people with lived experience to have a dialogue with those people seeking answers to their questions and for them to connect with someone who has the opposite lived experience, right? So, if the participant is a survivor, they could talk to somebody who's caused harm. If they're somebody who's caused harm, they could talk to a survivor. Since November 2022, when the initiative first launched, the surrogacy program has worked on seven facilitated dialogues for survivors and offenders. The other benefit of the program is that it creates a community of support and accountability around sex offenders like Stan to help them not re-offend. Hey! Hey there. Be nice. Hey. Who is this man?

Yes, and he's... well the good news is when we first got him he would have bit you. Stan does have another support network outside of CGI. It's small, but significant. His neighbours know about his crimes. So does his employer. And while Stan has been shunned by most of his family since his convictions, a cousin and a niece continue to be in his life. So I believe there's good and bad in everyone,

and I believe that if people are going to do better, they need support. So... Yeah, and I mean, I'm a firm believer that you are like the five people you spend the most time with. So if you're putting somebody in a locked-up institution, the five people they spend the most time with. So if you're putting somebody in a locked up institution, the five people they spend the most time with are other people that have been convicted of the same offense. And so by having that support of, you know, the five people that he spends the most time with are now more positive people that are not engaged in that kind of activity, then that's what stops the behavior. The support is there if we heard of any new charge, the support would be withdrawn.

And he knows that. And I think that's part of what keeps him honest, too. We're there for you. Just let's be good. There's a level of condition. There is. There is a bit of a condition. What do these relationships mean to you, Stan?

Huge. Huge. A lot of people that caused harm or sex offenders don't get much connection with families anymore. We burnt bridges. We destroyed bridges. We didn't burn them. We destroyed bridges. We destroyed bridges. We didn't burn them. We destroyed them. And these two, along with some others, have been very good at helping me rebuild my bridge

of trust. That small but significant support Stan has is also what pre-harm prevention efforts boil down to, assisting, even trusting, sex offenders and pedophiles. And that's also the biggest impediment facing their rehabilitation. I think that a lot of people, they don't want to support convicted sex offenders. And so, like, what do you say to people who are like, why in God's name would I ever be invested in the well-being of someone who has caused as much harm as you have? If I was in their shoes, I would think a certain percentage of me would feel the same. Put them in the cell me would feel the same.

Put them in the cell, throw away the key. I understand that. I don't agree with it. Someday the person will get out of jail. I deserve to be punished. You work with people that can help you to control your mind. Do I still fight the demons and thoughts in my mind? Yes. Is it less? Yes. Will it ever stop? According to some things that you read, they will always be in your mind. You can't do it alone. Because if you could do it alone, you would never,

ever done it the first time. You got to surrender yourself and reach out and ask for help. People like myself are trying our best to correct ourselves, to keep our minds in a better controlled spot. I hope the day that I die that somebody says there is a recovered sex offender at my funeral. That's what I hope for. What kind of relationships have you built with people who have caused harm through your work here? It was quite the experience for me because the majority of the individuals that actually that I was in that education program with, I'm now friends with, or I'm now acquainted

with and the reason being is because we're across the table from each other and you cannot be looking at them as a rapist and that's all you're seeing. You're not seeing that as an individual, as a husband, as a brother, fireman, a policeman, pastor, you know, they've lost all that because of the offense. And you cannot be condemning and taking somebody's humanity away from them because of a mistake they made. For me, education is a very important part of prevention, because right now our society has such a block view. You need to educate the public

that they need to give the individuals their humanity back. And yes, what they did was incredibly wrong, but let's work together so there's not more of us, there's not more survivors. This documentary was produced and presented by John Chipman. Sound design was by Sam McNulty. Sound design was by Sam McNulty. Thank you to all the guests who participated in this episode. A quick note that since the production of this episode, Alan Walker has moved from the Moore Center for the Prevention of Child Sexual Abuse at Johns Hopkins University to become an assistant professor

in the Department of Criminology at St. Mary's University in Halifax. And one more special thanks to add to Kate Crozier at Community Justice Initiatives in Kitchener, Ontario. The web producer for Ideas is Lisa Ayuso. Our technical producer is Danielle Duval, and with additional technical help from Gabby Hagarilis. technical help from Gabby Hagarilis. Nikola Lukcic is the senior producer. The executive producer of Ideas is Greg Kelly, and I'm Nala Ayed. For more CBC podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.