I am so glad that I took the time to read this, and then went back to read it aloud to my boyfriend to discuss it with him. This article offered us a lot of insight for a difficult problem that is not well understood and difficult to research. I have honestly always wondered why we treat non-offending pedophiles so cruelly when they struggle every single day in an effort to make the rest of us feel safer, even though they will never be thanked for even bothering to try when there are plenty of pedophiles out there who enjoy the wrongness of what they do and don’t care at all. Can’t we at least give credit where credit is due?

I have always wanted to talk to a pedophile, it is something that I would like to understand better, because I think that everyone would feel safer — the pedophiles in hiding and the rest of society — if there was a little more information and a little less supposition and prejudice.

I don’t know, maybe someone who is struggling with their feelings of attraction will read this message and know that there is at least one person (with no real reason to be interested in or have any reason to attempt to empathize with pedophilia, as it’s not relevant to my life) who has never thought that it could possibly be as simple as good vs. evil, or that everyone and anyone who struggles with these urges is somehow less of a person, or inherently sick or evil.

We all have our demons, every last one of us. We are not meant to be defined by the counting of our demons, only how hard we fight to overcome them.