Profiling of online pedophiles

Paraphilias represent a group of disorders characterized by a pathological sexual tendency or anomaly, with the impulses including intense sexual fantasies and urges that keep returning in regard to the unusual objects, activities, circumstances, and/or certain category such as the children. Pedophilia belongs to this group of disorders and it is alternatively labeled as a pedophile disorder, which includes specific incriminated actions, which in addition to prison sentences, generally result in a social stigmatization of not only perpetrators but victims too. It is a sexual affinity disorder mostly found in adults who have expressed sexual fantasies and a tendency to enter the sexual relations with children of the same or the opposite sex. Nowadays, a “digital space” has become a unique environment where these specific crimes take place, and the border between the virtual and real world is practically indistinguishable. In this digital environment, pedophiles and other sexual predators have got a new space in which they establish spontaneous contacts with potential victims (often with children). In a manipulative way, they recruit vulnerable individuals with the aim of various forms of abuse and sexual exploitation. Considering the fact that it is a delicate and variable disorder, which calls for an interdisciplinary approach, profiling these persons is crucial in relation to any countermeasure. Profiling is also necessary to systematically investigate the symptoms, nature, and factors of psychopathological conditions and deviations in the existences of the affected persons. After all, it is one of the ways of reaction to make pedophilia more visible as a part of preventive programs before the late manifestation. In this paper, there are applied the methods of a quantitative and qualitative content analysis, comparative analysis (reaction to pedophilia) as well as a descriptive and analytical statistics. The purposeful goal is to recognize pedophilia as a sociopathological phenomenon that requires an adequate response from the social community.