Your friend tells you they're a paedophile

[robvalue]

Thanks everyone for your answers. It's been very interesting.

I got the idea from the other thread about this subject. I'm trying to explore people's feelings about this, to get them thinking about paedophiles as people.

*Edited out bits I'm not referring to

This is one of the major problems I find when people talk about paedophilia IMO. It's like a knee jerk reaction is to deem all discussion about it 'messed up'. It's so uncomfortable for people to think about.

We're not talking about molesting our own kids here. I think it's a very valid question and the answers say a lot on how society views and deals with this problem. 

I strongly believe that paedophiles don't choose to be paedophiles, controversial as that may be. I don't think that simply being a paedophile == being a child molesting rapist either.

Paedophiles are people. Same as gay/straight people are people. Same as BDSM lovers are people. Same as Donald Trump supporters are people. Murderers and rapists are people too, and how we deal with people is always dependent on context and their behaviour. 

Treating paedophiles as sub-human purely because of the fact they are a paedophile, is literally thought policing and does fuck all to solve the problem of kids getting raped. 

I don't know what kind of forums there are or if paedophiles can even get help, but if a friend came to me and admitted something like this, I wouldn't consider myself a very good friend if I immediately demonized a person who I had otherwise considered good enough to be my friend in the first place. 

Obviously, if they turned around and said "oh hey I've fucked 12 kids", then I'd be straight onto the police. But I don't think that's the scenario the OP intends to discuss, correct me if I'm wrong.

Excellent post, I totally agree!