You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
From the standpoint of the psychopathologist, the term “pedophilia “carries a greater and more specifically definable meaning than does the more general literal translation: the love of children. To the student of abnormal psychology, pedophilia implies an erotic craving for a child of the same or different sex on the part of an adult, which is distinctly asocial only when at attains overt proportions. Unfortunately, it is usually only after these erotic propensities have become more or less uncontrollable that the victims of this disease entity are brought to the attention of the psychopathologist. Thus in each of the five cases studied by this writer, i.e., those which prompted this paper, the pedophilia had reached a criminal climax before apprehension.
The five cases surveyed are or were residents of the criminal department at St. Elizabeths Hospital. All were originally charged either with assault with attempt to rape, carnal knowledge with a minor, or actual rape. Strangely enough, it has been only in the past decade that these offenders have been suspected as victims of psycho-pathological processes by the courts or by the people at large except those which were very obviously deranged individuals. This naturally resulted in a dearth of clinical material in the mental institutions, and in a corresponding scarcity of literature on the subject.
The courts, both military and civil, have assumed more unrelenting attitudes in regard to this type of criminal offense than toward any other criminal entity, not even ‘excepting murder. Only recently in one of the cases mentioned a Judge Advocate of the Navy, after a long and emotional harangue on the immoral aspects of rape, strongly urged that the death penalty be applied, even in the face of purely circumstantial evidence. It so happened, however, that there were other members of this particular court-martial who waxed so forbearing as to reduce the sentence to only fifty-one years. It might be added also that the cour