I've had some experience and training in some of the issues in this thread in a past area of work. Trying to word this post very carefully!
In my experience, people with a sexual fixation on children are normally 'made' rather than born and the opportunities for this to happen are many. There are a few parallels with sexual fetishes, where the libido becomes somehow connected to a particular material, object or normally non-sexual body part (eg feet). In some people the sexual desire-urge becomes switched to a side-track, although I don't wish to equate kink/BDSM/fetishes with the crime of paedophilic attacks at all. And whether the attacker thinks it's a consensual thing, it cannot ever be so as the power is loaded against the child at all times.
Paedophiles can be treated with therapies and training to reduce the risk of them acting on their feelings, but the person has to have clear insight into their destructive and abusive tendencies and most paedophiles don't or wont see their behaviours clearly. Many prefer to believe that the abuse is actually a consensual act in the context of affection.
People who engage in paedophilia online (in common with some people who view a lot of mainstream adult pornography) often cannot make the connection between 'real' people being exploited for the images they consume. They do not see themselves as the abusers, although the demand they create results in more sexual attacks. They are in fact child rapists by proxy.
Some children who have been abused can show unusual or strange sexual behaviours (it's one of the big warning signs) and if an adult responds then they, again, are compounding a criminal act of sexual violence against the child. One of the most heartbreaking things I ever experienced was hearing of training for potential foster/adoptive parents and how to deal with sexualised behaviour shown by tiny children who'd been removed from abusive families.
I am concerned that the exposure to a an avalanche of 'normalising' images and videos available so easily online are actually creating new paedophiles where maybe that person might not have been sent onto that particular track in the absence of such material.
There is also concern in developing countries that the easy availability of any kind of porn on mobile phones in the absence of education putting the porn into any kind of context is leading to increased attacks on younger girls by adolescent boys.
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com...aphy-during-lockdown/articleshow/75127399.cms
https://feminisminindia.com/2020/06/12/ticking-bomb-online-child-sexual-abuse/
Paedophiles have always existed, and I think the level of sexual abuse is no more common now than 50 years ago. It's just that people are listened to now, they are taken seriously and the justice system has
finally started to levy appropriate sentences.
