Wesley Stevenson
speaker
1,470 appearances
54 recordings
1 series
first heard Sep 2010
last heard May 2015
Wesley Stevenson’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
But he says it's a difficult question to answer.
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Now another figure that I've seen quoted in some of the reporting surrounding the Pope's comments is 5%, and this comes from a book written by a guy called Dr Michael Seto, who's a clinical and forensic psychologist at the Royal Ottawa Healthcare Group.
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He told me how he came to this figure.
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So clinically, even people who have thoughts but don't act on them can be referred to as a paedophile.
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And this highlights a problem.
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What actually is a paedophile?
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How do you define the term?
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It's quite widely used, but it means different things to different people.
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The public and the media often use it to point to anyone who sexually abuses a person under 16.
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But given that in some countries, and even some states in America, you can marry below the age of 16, this becomes a tricky cut-off.
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The clinical definition is different to this.
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The change in definition would affect the prevalence in the general population, but whether that figure is half a percent or one percent, you can be assured that in any group of people, whether they be politicians, entertainers or Catholic clergy, then you're likely to find some paedophiles.
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If we're to compare the number of paedophiles in society with those in the Catholic Church, though, we need to know what definition the Pope was using.
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But the figure reportedly given by the Pope wasn't really surrounded with a lot of detail.
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But there may be a clue.
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There isn't a lot of research about the prevalence of paedophilia among Catholic clergy, but one study stands out in this area, and it's one done in the USA.
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I spoke to Professor Philip Jenkins from the Institute of Studies of Religion at Baylor University in Texas.
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He's written about sexual abuse and the Catholic clergy.
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So the John Jay College study came up with the figure of 4.2%, but as Dr Phillips points out, their study includes not just abuse against prepubescent children, but also adolescents.
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And if you look at the strict definition of paedophilia, then the number of paedophiles identified by this survey is actually closer to 1 or 2%.
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Showing 261–280 of 1,470 · page 14 of 74
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