Facts About Homosexuality and Child Molestation

  Historically, lynchings of Black men who were falsely accused of raping
  White women have been common. And Jews in the Middle Ages were accused of
 murdering Christian babies in ritual sacrifices. In a similar fashion, gay
    people are often portrayed as a threat to society's most vulnerable
                                  members.

  When Anita Bryant campaigned successfully in 1977 to repeal a Dade County
      (FL) ordinance prohibiting anti-gay discrimination, she named her
      organization "Save Our Children," and warned that "a particularly
deviant-minded [gay] teacher could sexually molest children" (Bryant, 1977,
        p. 114). [Bibliographic references are on a separate page]

  The number of Americans who believe the accusation that gay men and women
are child molesters appears to be decreasing. For example, Gallup poll data
    in 1992 indicated that 41% of Americans would allow gay people to be
   elementary school teachers, compared to 27% in 1977 (Colasanto, 1989).
  Nevertheless, many of the remaining 59% probably continued to accept the
                                stereotype.

Whenever we evaluate research on child molestation, our task is complicated
  by several problems. One problem involves sampling. Most studies in this
 area have been conducted only with convicted perpetrators, so they exclude
   child molesters who were not prosecuted or convicted. As a result, any
  profile that we try to construct of child molesters may not necessarily
                describe molesters who have not been caught.

  A second problem concerns terminology. Sexual abuse of male children by
 adult men1 is often referred to as "homosexual molestation," which implies
    that the perpetrator is himself gay or has a homosexual orientation.
  Usually, however, the adjectives "homosexual" and "heterosexual" really
refer to the victim's gender in relation to that of the perpetrator, not to
                   the perpetrator's sexual orientation.

     The distinction between gender of victim and sexual orientation of
 perpetrator is important because many child molesters have never developed
 the capacity for mature sexual relationships with other adults, either men
  or women. Recognizing this fact, Finkelhor and Araji (1986) proposed that
      discussions of the sexual attractions of perpetrators should be
conceptualized along a continuum ranging in degrees from exclusive interest
            in children to exclusive interest in adult partners.

 Similarly, Groth and Birnbaum (1978) categorized child molesters as either
    fixated or regressed (see also Groth, Hobson, & Gary, 1982). Fixated
 offenders never developed an adult sexual orientation of any sort, whereas
  regressed molesters have done so. Thus, regressed molesters can be adult
homosexuals, heterosexuals, or bisexuals. But it is meaningless to speak of
  fixated molesters in these terms - they are attracted to children, not to
                               men or women.

  Using this distinction, Groth and Birnbaum (1978) found that none of the
      175 adult males in their sample - all of whom were convicted in
    Massachusetts of sexual assault against a child - had an exclusively
homosexual adult sexual orientation. 83 of the men (47%) were classified as
        "fixated;" 70 others (40%) were classified as regressed adult
  heterosexuals; the remaining 22 (13%) were classified as regressed adult
  bisexuals. Of the last group, Groth and Birnbaum observed that "in their
  adult relationships they engaged in sex on occasion with men as well as
  with women. However, in no case did this attraction to men exceed their
    preference for women....There were no men who were primarily sexually
                attracted to other adult males..." (p.180).

 Another researcher took a different perspective. Dr. Carole Jenny reviewed
  352 medical charts, representing all of the sexually abused children seen
in the emergency room or child abuse clinic of a Denver children's hospital
during a one-year period (from July 1, 1991 to June 30, 1992). The molester
  was a gay or lesbian adult in only 2 of the 269 cases in which an adult
         molester could be identified (less than 1% of the cases).

  Do Any Studies Show That Homosexuals Are More Likely To Molest Children?

 One individual has claimed to have data that prove homosexuals to be child
                                molesters at
      a higher rate than heterosexuals. In a 1985 article published in
  Psychological Reports, Paul Cameron purported to review published data to
          answer the question, "Do those who commit homosexual acts
  disproportionately incorporate children into their sexual practices?" (p.
  1227). He concluded that "at least one-third of the sexual attacks upon
  youth are homosexual" (p. 1228) and that "those who are bi- to homosexual
  are proportionately much more apt to molest youth" than are heterosexuals
                                (p. 1231).

      Cameron's findings are based on his assumption that all male-male
 molestations were committed by homosexuals. Moreover, a careful reading of
  Cameron's paper reveals several false statements about the literature he
                         claimed to have reviewed.

    For example, he cited the Groth and Birnbaum (1978) study mentioned
    previously as evidencing a 3:2 ratio of "heterosexual" (i.e., female
victim) to "homosexual" (i.e., male victim) molestations, and he noted that
  "54% of all the molestations in this study were performed by bisexual or
  homosexual practitioners" (p. 1231). However, Groth and Birnbaum reported
  that none of the men in their sample had an exclusively homosexual adult
     sexual orientation, and that none of the 22 bisexual men were more
  attracted to adult males than to adult females. Cameron's 54% statistic
does not appear anywhere in the Groth and Birnbaum (1978) article, nor does
                      Cameron explain its derivation.

  It also is noteworthy that, although Cameron assumed that all male-male
    molestations were committed by homosexuals, he assumed that not all
male-female molestations were committed by heterosexuals. He incorporated a
  "bisexual correction" into his data manipulations to increase further his
    estimate of the risk posed to children by homosexual/bisexual men.

  In the latter half of his paper, Cameron considered whether "homosexual
    teachers have more frequent sexual interaction with their pupils" (p.
 1231). Based on 30 instances of sexual contact between a teacher and pupil
 reported in ten different sources published between 1920 and 1982, Cameron
    concluded that "a pupil would appear about 90 times more likely to be
 sexually assaulted by a homosexual practitioner" (p. 1232); the ratio rose
          to 100 times when Cameron added his bisexual correction.

   This ratio is meaningless because no data were obtained concerning the
   actual sexual orientation of the teachers involved; as before, Cameron
      assumed that male-male contacts were perpetrated by homosexuals.
  Furthermore, Cameron's rationale for selecting particular sources appears
  to have been completely arbitrary. He described no systematic method for
   reviewing the literature, and apparently never reviewed the voluminous
literature on the sexual development of children and adolescents. His final
 choice of sources appears to have slanted his findings toward what Cameron
     described as "the relative absence in the scientific literature of
  heterosexual teacher-pupil sexual events coupled with persistent, albeit
    infrequent, homosexual teacher-pupil sexual interactions" (p. 1232).

 A subsequent paper by Cameron and others (Cameron, Proctor, Coburn, Forde,
 Larson, & Cameron, 1986) described data collected in a door-to-door survey
   in seven U.S. cities and towns, and generally repeated the conclusions
    reached in Cameron (1985). As before, male-male sexual assaults were
  referred to as "homosexual" molestations (e.g., Abstract, p.327) and the
       perpetrators' sexual orientation apparently was not assessed.

  This study also suffers from severe methodological problems: The sampling
methods were not adequately described; the representativeness of the sample
   is highly doubtful; the locations for data collection (Omaha [NE], Los
      Angeles [CA], Denver [CO], Washington [DC], Louisville [state not
 specified], Bennett [NE], and Rochester [NY]) appear to have been selected
 solely on the basis of convenience (see Brown & Cole, 1985, for a detailed
   critique). In addition, because the response rate appears to have been
 unacceptably low, the sample does not permit generalizations from the data
                          to any larger population

In summary, the findings reported in the papers by Cameron et al. cannot be
        considered valid. The work is too methodologically flawed.

                                Conclusion

    The empirical research on adult sexual orientation and molestation of
  children does not show that gay men are any more likely than heterosexual
    men to molest children. This is not to suggest that molestations of
    children by adult homosexual men never occur. They do. But molesting
      children has nothing to do with whether a man is heterosexual or
                                homosexual.

                                    Note
  1. Sexual abuse by women appears to be uncommon. It has most often been
 documented in cases of a female accomplice assisting a male perpetrator in
    procuring victims, or an adult woman seducing a young male (Erickson,
Walbek, & Seely, 1988; Finkelhor, 1984; Johnson & Shrier, 1987). Perhaps it
is not surprising, therefore, that the child molester stereotype is applied
          more often to gay men than to lesbians. (return to text)