THE ORIGINS OF FANTASY IN EXPERIENCE
If pornography is not the origin of the major themes of the deviant fantasy
of paedophiles, then what is? Very little has been written on this matter. Indeed, in some ways, the
neglect of the question is the result of the common view of fantasy as existing independently of
reality.
Reality-fantasy is a dichotomy that places fantasy in a separate realm of experience from real life. Freudian theory
eventually chose to regard fantasy as the expression of things that were psychologically too dangerous to reveal, even to oneself.
Ultimately this has meant that fantasy is construed as a stream of consciousness
far removed from everyday thought. But this
assumption has not been very productive in helping us to understand paedophile fantasy.
There is reason to think that much sexual fantasy is grounded in early experience, just as
is offending behaviour. Modem researchers have often concentrated on the role of
fictional materials in creating mental representations of many different aspects of experience.
A rare study of the development of fantasy in childhood is Kirkendall and McBride's (1990) retrospective
study using male and female students at an American university. Fifty per cent claimed that their childhood fantasies had been
influenced by childhood sexual experiences. These early sexua1 experiences
provided food for the fantasy in many cases. Although the authors give no details, some who had unpleasant sexual experiences
found that these inhibited fantasy.
Most typical by far was that sexual content involved a heterosexual encounter in which the
fantasizer was seduced. Although fantasy could "mature" and fantasy people were replaced by people they were involved with, in 59% of the
students the earliest sexual fantasy still remained their favourite fantasy, although we are given no
details as to the sexual activities and sexual partners involved. This is important, bearing in mind the
following about paedophile fantasy:
There seems to be a marked tendency for paedophiliac fantasy to
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reflect at least broadly the childhood experiences of offenders, especially those of a sexual nature. In other words,
real-life experiences were responsible for the sexual fantasies, not vice versa.
This is clearer than an evidence that pornography was implicated in causing deviant sexual fantasy.
The broad themes of fantasy appear to be laid down early in life, the details obtained from a variety of sources. In other words, the broad framework of sexual fantasy relates closely to early sexual
experiences in childhood and adolescence. Furthermore, some non-sexual elements of
early experience may make important contributions to the sexual fantasies of some offenders.
Garry , whom we first discussed in Chapter 3 to illustrate the nature of the "grooming" process, was essentially sexually aroused by indecent exposure and public masturbation. His sexual history fits in very well with this, and much the same theme dominates not only his offending but his early sexual experiences:
"... I first started off back when I was 14 or 15 and the first memorable case I had was in the Boy Scouts when I was in the tent with
11-year- olds, I was one of the older ones. And I was masturbating in the tent and one walked in on me by
mistake ... what I had done is set it up really because I had the feeling that somebody would walk in.
... Before that, I don't know, exactly the first time I was shown how to masturbate was about 11 or 12 by my brother.
... Well he masturbated in front of me and came and that showed me how to do it. I hadn't really bothered doing it before then
... [A]bout 8 and 9 ... I'd seen other blokes around the same time, down on
the ... canal, masturbating behind bushes. ... [He was also paid money to give a man oral sex.]"
"Flashing" characterizes his offending. It should be mentioned, however, that one of his attempts at contact abuse involved oral sex, which he had tried to persuade some of his victims to allow him to do. Although no amount of persuasion allowed him to get his way on this, it remained a long-term wish:
" ...[While having sexual intercourse with adult women] I would be fantasizing about screwing a 12- or 13- or
11-year-old girl ... most of [my] early masturbation fantasies were just exposing myself in front of boys, blond boys with blue eyes, slender boys with lovely rounded
bottoms ... so what I was doing in real life was actually in my fantasies or I would masturbate fantasy over an incident that happened that day
... of a boy or odd times very rare a girl. ... I would go back to my inner mind and pick out an incident that stuck out in my mind or an incident that day.
... [T]he fantasies did change later on, punishment did come into it. ... they used to cane me and I used to cane them in my fantasies, but in real life it was
only one way -- the girls used to cane me ..."
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Garry attributes his caning fantasy to a bad experience with a girl in his adolescence, but it was he who wished to punish her. Despite
Garry's "top" fantasies being of oral sex and caning girls, he never did these things to a child. Although there are close parallels between
some of his fantasies and his offending, as he explains, fantasy was not always enacted as it was
pictured -- for example, the caning was done by the child to him.
Or we can take the case of Bernard, in his late 60s when interviewed. His sexual history starts very young:
"And then [when he was 63] a family moved along the same road that we lived in and
there was a young schoolgirl there. She was 12 and she was very well developed, quite a big girl for her age, and she used to wear short skirts and I did try and fondle her and abuse her. But she wouldn't have any of it, but I did another girl and that was my first offence.
... that was indecent assault.
"[My] earliest recollections of sex is about the age of five. I can remember then I always used to be interested in girls and exposing
myself to them and always chasing girls. And about the age 7, I started masturbating quite a lot and then that's when fantasy started I should
imagine around about then ...
[M]y most vivid recollection I think, the one that affected me my whole life, my mum first caught me in bed,
masturbating and, of course, she told my father and also the brother and elder brother. And they kept on to me what'd happen to me
if I kept masturbating. And to cap it all they even marched me up to school one
day and the headmaster stood me out in front of the class and told everybody what I was doing, what a weakling I was and I'd be a
physical wreck if I carried on. And that stayed with me. And then at that time, I would say about 12, 13, I came to realize then that, now I blamed masturbation for all of this, I was very small build. In actual fact, at the moment, I am about like a boy of 6 or 7 sexually you know, sexual organs you see. And it was pointed out to me by other children at school, that I was a lot smaller than what they were. The girls, when I used to chase them, used to also point out to me that I was a lot smaller than boys of my age group."
Bernard's belief in the smallness of his sexual organs is not unique among sex offenders. The immaturity of his sexual organs
contrasts markedly with his sexual fantasies in which he is a "super-stud"
-- so much so that the fantasy appears to be an overcompensation for his beliefs about reality.
Fantasy reversed reality in this sense.
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A great deal of the sexual behaviour that Bernard describes is governed by his obsession over his self-proclaimed genital inadequacies.
Intimate contact with women is avoided because "his secret" would be
revealed and attract comments that would disturb him:
"[T]he fantasies basically, from when I was 12 ... 14 have stayed the same all the time.
... [N]ormally it would be in my own home. I would always get a woman into my own home and we would start off by just normally kissing and cuddling and put my hand down over her breasts and basically undress them and kiss them allover their bodies and kiss their vaginas and things inside her thighs
... -- I think now and again oral sex came into it but not significant --
never really, now and again I would think.
I would fantasize that a woman was having oral sex with me. I'd shove it in her mouth you know but never any great significant part
... I would get undressed and we would have normal sex but there again ...
when she saw my penis she would say you have got a really big one. ... that was still there all the time that I was bigger than any other man
... we have sex two or three times and I'd always want to turn them over and have anal sex.
Even in my fantasies a lot of women wouldn't agree to it and with schoolchildren the same thing but something in my mind told me that I couldn't have it both ways
... I couldn't really be built like a stallion and then have anal sex with them
... it would be too painful ...
[I]n my fantasy all the women were all very [well] built women, voluptuous women, there was the breast, the bottom, everything. [Then, speaking of his first real-life victim, he said] I was mixing with women and one of them, in particular, her daughter she was between 12 and 13
... she fitted the fantasy perfectly. She had the figure, she had the look. [The mother] would come round to my flat quite often and the girl used to come and sit on my knee a lot and things like that although, knowing the risks, it was a long time before I actually started touching her ."
So, for Bernard there is a partial match between fantasy and reality. In particular, fantasy begins over a particular type of woman or girl. The sexual acts involved are considerably different from the reality
of his sexual activity but interrelated with his sexual concerns. Anal sex is a common theme in Bernard's fantasy but he had never
attempted buggery with anyone irrespective of their age or sex.
Fantasy went substantially further than reality but his interest in anal sex bears a significant relationship with the small size of his
penis -- perhaps so small that he believes that it would not hurt his partner or victim. His fantasies stopped when he got to know a particular woman or girl better.
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Turning to Brian, his sexual experience covers the gamut from adult homosexuality to paedophiliac activity with children of both sexes.
Some of his youthful sexual experiences parallel his adult offending to a
remarkable extent.
This is not quite true of his fantasy. In other words, his fantasy and childhood experiences differ. In particular, the adult fantasy tends to involve activities like penetrative sex with young females or them engaging in fellatio with him, which were not characteristic of his offending. Indeed, heterosexually he was a virgin:
"... I ended up in a children's' home when I was 13 ... and I had a young girl sitting on my lap and I just started touching her up.
... I left there after a year and went back home ... and at this time my sister was about two and a half.
... I put my hand into her nappy and I asked her to [urinate] on me ...
[As a teenager] I was abused in the public toilets ... I know it included oral sex and that a guy paid me more money if he could have
... anal sex on me ... I was doing oral sex anyway ... memories of that are very vague
... [T]here was an incident when my stepfather got me to wash his penis ..."
"... I still carried on abusing and I got involved with a family of five children. I knew the oldest two from a church I was going to. I'd already decided that a church was an easy place to meet people when I first came to London, having gone to church in prison
and ... I realized that's the social place that's OK ...
So having walked them home on a number of occasions, not having met the rest of the family, I was hoping to call round and find
out ... why they hadn't been around. ... So I got invited in, got to know the mum and all the rest of the family.
... I found out that their dad had died and that's why they'd stopped coming to church. And from
that ... I had just been larking around sexually with these two oldest girls, you know, unclipping her bra and things like that [they were 11 and 13 years old]
...
I started abusing the oldest girl ... but that didn't carry on ... but it did carry on with the next girl and the boy who was about 8 at the
time ... and the other girls they were about 6 and 4 at the time.
[Or, concerning another family met via the church] I was left to babysit them when they were about 3 years old I suppose, and then did oral sex on the youngest girl and the boy was the twin brother. He saw what went on. And for a couple of months I still tried to touch the girl up
... through her clothing and she said don't be rude. So that stopped.
"[The fantasies] vary ... young girls, sometimes young boys and sometimes blokes
... [W]ith children who I see ... in the street ... I can ... picture ...
about her undressed or thinking of being sexually involved with me in relationship to all sorts of incidents from the past like my sister being in bed with me or my sister [urinating] over me or some of the involvements with different
children ... with boys like the buggery with the boy and things like that ...
it could be oral, it could be them [urinating over me], it could be intercourse, could be caressing, could be being in the fields and
then ... the children would first start to come to me and undressing me and I undress them ..."
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Brian's fantasy overlaps with his offending to a degree but the relationship is far from perfect, the most significant difference being that he
claims that he did not carry out penetrative intercourse with any of the girls although
penetrative sex is part of his fantasy. Although he attempted anal sex with one boy this was a marked departure from his paedophiliac activity. His fantasy "partners"
are not recognizable as individuals.
Clearly, many paedophiliac contacts are substantially different from
what is implied by the "SEX MONSTER" type of newspaper headlines.
Based on our sample and general survey findings, much paedophiliac activity is,
for the want of a better description, of a less serious nature than the headlines imply. It
has to be acknowledged, though, that some commentators would consider it inappropriate
to use descriptions like "less serious" (Kelly, 1988, 1989). In the context
of legal definitions, such phrases are more precise than are general terms like sexual abuse.
