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TEDx speaker and sex crime expert, Dr Madeleine van der Bruggen, has said we need to be mature, break taboos, and stop hating pedophiles if we wish to solve the problem of child sexual abuse.
Dr Van der Bruggen, a psychologist and criminologist working with the Dutch National Police, said from an emotional point of view, she can “kind of understand” why people would want to lock-up pedophiles or push them out of society, but ultimately, for Madeleine, that approach “doesn’t make sense.” And why doesn’t it make sense? Because according to Madeleine, pedophilia is a sexual orientation.
“We’re talking about biology,” Dr Van der Bruggen said. “We’re talking about a sexual orientation. Something that we simply cannot change. And on top of that, every day, new people are born with the same difficulty. So, it’s not practical to eliminate these people from society. They haven’t done anything wrong.”
“How can we be open about the problem now? How can we break the taboo? Well, first of all, let’s stop with hate. Let’s stop with negative vibes in the media and let’s stop with throwing rocks at offenders’ houses because it’s not going to take us anywhere. It’s never going to solve this problem,” she said.
Simply, this is one of the initial stages of the desensitising process. Talk about a taboo subject in an “academic” and “theoretical” manner. Suggest that removing the stigma or taboo will actually better achieve the goal of prevention than the stigmas themselves. Once the stigma is removed, the taboo itself is socially easier to tolerate. And as we’ve seen with the sexual and homosexual revolutions, once a taboo is socially tolerated, it’s not long until it’s publicly celebrated.
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