Scientific studies dispute writer's claim

Scientific studies dispute writer's claim
By Charles Hundey
News Gazette - November 8, 2004

To the editor:

In a recent letter, a man stated that he was "preyed on" by homosexuals as a child. The Child Welfare League of America, the American Academy of Child Psychiatrists, the National Association of Social Workers, and the American Psychological Association have all taken the position that there is no correlation between homosexuality and sexual abuse of children.

Roland Summit, head physician of Community Consultation Service at Harbor UCLA Medical Center made the following statement: "The vast majority of offenders are heterosexual men. Male offenders who abuse young boys maintain adult heterosexual relationships. The habitual molester of boys is rarely attracted to adult males."

A. Nicholas Groth, Ph.D, then director of the Sex Offender Program at Connecticut Department of Corrections and co-director of the St. Joseph College Institute for the Treatment and Control of Child Sexual Abuse wrote, "The belief that homosexuals are particularly attracted to children is completely unsupported by our data. The child offenders who engaged in adult relationships as well were heterosexuals. There were no homosexual adult-oriented offenders in our samples who turned to children." (Groth, A. Nicholas & Birnbaum, B., Adult Sexual Orientation and Attraction to Underage Persons. Archives of Sexual Behavior 7:175181, 1978.)

If this man was preyed on by men as a boy, they were pedophiles, not homosexuals. If they also maintained adult relationships, they were almost certainly heterosexual ones.