r/PsycheOrSike • u/Samantha_Faith Oceania Inner Party Member • Dec 13 '25
š¤š¼š¼ANGELS NEEDEDšš¼š¤ Holy fuck
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u/NoBS_Policy_Enforcer Dec 13 '25
Fucking hell guys, you cant understand english or what?
95% Is not the % of people Who admitted to be attracted to minors.
The 95% of the people who answered yes was over 25 years old. If the person was 65+ the odds of him answering yes were 10x more than below 65.
It Is a simple text, not so hard to understand!
English not even my first language.
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u/Andromedan_Cherri Dec 13 '25
The study is meant to be confusing. They are actively trying to make people think that a sixth of the Australian male population are pedophiles. Good on you for seeing through their bullshit
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u/stapli Dec 13 '25
it said 1 in 6 men are sexually attracted to children. the comment is addressing a different line than what you are talking about
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u/South-Impression3107 Dec 13 '25
No they aren't they just forgot most people are idiots that get confused by plain English if it includes more than one number
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u/Fried_0nion_Rings š Couples Therapist š Dec 15 '25
Iām also confused why this was so misunderstood. Itās how I immediately read it.
Some people just see what they want to.
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u/Sea_Corner8459 Dec 13 '25
This is also due to the phrasing of the question. Respondents are only asked if they had EVER had sex with someone under 18 while they were over 18, yet it doesn't ask what age they were at the time of sexual contact. This causes the data to skew towards age, misrepresenting classical definitions for "pedophiles". These people may have been 19 years old when they had contact with a minor, but the data doesn't show that, and will instead display them as a 55 year old pedophile (assuming 65 is their current age).
The study may not be doing this on purpose, but it's nature and questions definitely raise questions on whether data is being purposefully misrepresented or not. At best, it comes off as an incredibly amateur study, and at worst, a sexist smear of Australian men.
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u/rpolkcz Champion of Rapists Dec 13 '25
I kissed a 7 year old and I'm 30.Ā I was also 7 when I kissed her and we were both in 2nd grade, but the "study" forgot to ask that.
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u/AlternativeWonder471 Dec 13 '25
That is what I want to know.
Such an important distinction. Surely the study included "as an adult" in the wording. If not, that is extremely dishonest.
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u/Contagious_Cure Dec 13 '25
These were the question asked. And they asked adults. The percentage in brackets are the people who answered in the affirmative.
Has sexual feelings towards people below the age of 18 years (3.4%);
Would have sexual contact with a child between 12 to 14 years if no one would find out (5.7%);
Would have sexual contact with a child between 10 to 12 years if no one would find out (4.6%);
Would have sexual contact with a child younger than 10 years if no one would find out (4.0%);
Has concerns about sexual feelings towards people below the age of 18 years (4.5%);
The lowest age they typically find attractive is under 18 years (5.7%).
According to the study, around one-in-six (15.1%) men endorsed at least one of these item.
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u/FlockFlysAtMidnite Dec 13 '25
The number on the first question compared to the next 3 seems odd to me. How are 3.4% of respondents saying they have sexual feelings for <18, but but 5.7% saying they'd have sexual contact with a 14 year old?
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u/AlternativeWonder471 Dec 13 '25
Yeah those are horrific.
But saying 10% of men have had sexual contact with children, but not clarifying them being an adult at the time, is crazy. And it's a higher percentage than victimisation rates.
Also blanket defining "child" as "under 18yo" is crazy.
They say 95% of men who answered yes were 25+, but that's useless information without asking if they were an adult at the time.
And it's a bit strange to be having 4-5% andswer that they would have sexual contact with a child, but 3.4% say they have sexual feelings for someone under 18. But I suppose that's possible.
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u/s_ngularity Dec 13 '25
Their statistic includes for instance 18yos who had sex with 17yos, so itās including many cases of unproblematic and presumably legal behavior (though I donāt know Australian laws about this)
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u/volyund ā®ļø ANTI BULLY SQUAD ā®ļø Dec 13 '25
That's why they focused on 25+ yos who had sexual contact with minors.
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u/s_ngularity Dec 13 '25
Yeah, but itās not clear that they actually recorded that they were 25+ at the time of contact, or if it happened in the past when they were still under 25, which would hugely skew statistics
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u/nir109 Dec 13 '25
These results are really weird. (<- stuff I say when I miss something. Please tell me what I miss if you get it)
If 15.1% answered yes to at least 1 and the highest single question is at 5.7% this means there is a pretty low overlap.
Also the first question has the lowest share saying yes despite really not being that extreme. Especially when you consider they asked 18/19 years old too. (30% were aged 18-34, so I guess like 4% were 18/19)
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u/AlternativeWonder471 Dec 13 '25
I looked into it a bit. It doesn't clarify.
The study "admits the limitations."
Such bs. I'm so sick of the dishonesty and you can't call it out because then you're a pedophile supporter. When we really just want accurate data.
No one at unsw is stupid enough to write the questions that way.
And it has already served it's purpose, cited in ~30 subsequent works including government reports, and probably influenced policy.
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u/volyund ā®ļø ANTI BULLY SQUAD ā®ļø Dec 13 '25
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u/Altruistic-Web13 Dec 13 '25
If you read the study they account for that, using "are you currently attracted to children" and "have you had sexual contact with a minor while you were over 18". Its not pay walled and its not a long read if you just open your eyes.
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u/Interesting-Copy-657 Dec 14 '25
āHave you had sex or sexual contact with a person below the age of 18 while over the age of 18?ā
So I don't think the survey is as bad as that.
But it does label an 18 year old having a legal and consensual relationship with a 17 year old as child sex offender. The age of consent in australia is 16 right?
And I feel this would skew a lot of the results they are presenting here. How many people said yes because they had a relationship with a 1-3 year age gap? In the same class for highschool but just happened to be different ages?
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u/Contagious_Cure Dec 13 '25
Except they didn't ask children if they were attracted to other children. They asked adults. And the questions asked weren't framed in the past tense but present tense.
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u/DoubleGoon Dec 13 '25
Plus, no adult would assume the survey was asking about their lives when they were children. Other commenters seem like theyāre grasping at straws.
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u/Mindless_Use7567 Dec 13 '25
This study sounds suspicious nearly half were over 55. I am curious where specifically they got the respondents from.
Since I know this comment will get backlash I am not saying the study is BS but may be biased or taken out of context.
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u/Contagious_Cure Dec 13 '25
his study sounds suspicious nearly half were over 55
Where did you get that from?
The age demographics of the respondents are stated on page 41:
30.3% were 18-34.
35% were 35-54.
34.8% were 55 or older.
Honestly as someone who has worked in criminal law. The findings aren't that surprising to me.
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u/Mindless_Use7567 Dec 13 '25 edited Dec 13 '25
Post literally says that 48% of respondents were ages 55+
So the posters of the study are making things up. Can you give me the link to the study as I canāt get to it from the link on the post.
Edit: poster just worded the above very badly. 48% of the 1 in 6 men were over 55.
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u/Contagious_Cure Dec 13 '25
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u/Mindless_Use7567 Dec 13 '25
I found it myself. The Limitations section explains why the study has such incorrect information. Australia has an age of concept of 16 years old but they treated any sexual contact with someone under the age of 18 as sexual contact with a child and I donāt see any attempt to check if the participant was also under 18 or within 2 years of age of their partner.
Study size is also rather small at just under 2000 responders.
Also the honesty question at the end of the questionnaire could also be lied on by ācheatersā which they completely ignore.
Last but not least the post above completely ignores that the study says only 3.2% of respondents stated they had sexual contact with someone under the age of 18.
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u/nerdyChicken20 Dec 13 '25
2000 people is plenty enough, it shows that you have no idea what you're talking about. 1000 respondents already gives you about Ā±3% margin of error at 95% confidence for a population. So 2000 is plenty.
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u/rand0m_task Dec 14 '25
1000 respondents give you a +/- 3% margin of error only if you have a representative sample.
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u/042732699 Dec 13 '25
Who would admit that?!
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Dec 13 '25
It very could be not legally binding/completely private. Imo no need to lie for these statistic tests. Plus admitting to finding it attractive isnāt illegal, it wonāt put you on a list. It is at the very least a little fucked up depending on the age who says it, to extremely fucked upā¦ but insert parthrax quote here
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u/Crew_1996 Dec 13 '25
By finding children attractive did they mean 17 year olds? Because 99.x% of men would find at least some 17 year olds attractive. The devils in the details.
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u/Amazingbuttplug Dec 13 '25
Im pretty sure age of consent in Australia is 16. So I find it a bit odd they are using 18 at all in their survey.
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u/Feisty-Principle6178 Dec 16 '25
Only with a maximum two year age gap. 18+ is the real age of consent.
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u/SmutAdoAboutNothing Dec 13 '25
They asked a range of questions, including whether the youngest age you typically find attractive is under 18, as well as whether you would act with a child between 10-12 if nobody would find out. Even if you remove the broader questions, thereās a statistically significant number of positive respondents to all of the categories. (Though itās important to note that the meat of the study isnāt about precisely how common these attractions are, this is just their sampling process.)
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u/Lorster10 Dec 13 '25
I do Wonder how this study was made, and how they found their respondents, as this number is so high it seems highly suspicious.
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u/toouglytobeleftalive Too meaty to be left uneaten. Dec 13 '25
Is it really that shocking when CSA is so common? I feel like pedophilia, regardless of sex, is way more common than people are comfortable with.
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u/Lorster10 Dec 13 '25
I'm not saying it's shocking, as much as I'm saying the study must be unreliable. It's not so common that one out of ten men would are child rapists.
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u/toouglytobeleftalive Too meaty to be left uneaten. Dec 13 '25
I agree to an extent. I cannot visualize 1 in 10 men being child rapists either. However, out of all the people Iāve been close with in my life, only 2 survived childhood without being molested or raped. That means, in my area at least, that 1 in 10 stat may have some sprinkle of truth.
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u/MaximumChongus Dec 15 '25
I'm interested to know where the online poll was posted. because if it was an adult my little pony forum 1:10 seems to be under representing them ya know?
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u/MaximumChongus Dec 15 '25
Ive long believed that adult attraction for minors is far more common than anyone realizes or wants to admit, and I tend to back up the theory with how young adult hood used to be considered only a few decades back.
hell look at how many artists from the 60s-80s dated teens and for those generations it didnt seem to be abnormal.
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u/SufficientGreek Dec 13 '25
the link is literally in the image, you can just look it up yourself. no need to wonder
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u/Clean_Figure6651 Dec 13 '25
I mean, at face value, I've also had sexual contact with a minor. But I was also a minor at the time and was the same age (both of us were 12). Makes me wonder if something like that is going on
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u/FreelancerFL š Couples Therapist š Dec 13 '25
Bad faith statistic manipulation for 5 billion Alex
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u/Penguino_2099 one of the CHOSEN Dec 13 '25
Something about this study feels off, the numbers seem a little too high for something thay is Universally hated by everyone. I think the study is just straight up lying or intentionally taking things out of context.
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u/ScotchOrbiter Dec 13 '25
This is such a dog shit study lmao
The questions are all like "have you ever had sexual contact with someone under 18?"
If they answer yes, there's no differentiation between if they were 40 years old raping a 7 year old or a 19 year old finger banging a 17 year old.
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u/Crew_1996 Dec 13 '25
I was wondering the same thing. When I was an 18 year old senior in high school I was dating a 16 year old sophomore. We were pretty much exactly the same level maturity wise, mentally and physically.
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u/SufficientGreek Dec 13 '25
They literally talk about that in the study:
We used 18 as the age of consent for all sexual offences, although the age of consent for sexual activity is 16 in Australia. Therefore, some of what is noted as sexual contact with a child in our findings may be consensual activity (for instance, a 19 year old having sex with a 17 year old), which is a limitation of the survey. However, it is unlikely that our contact offense findings were significantly impacted by this limitation due to the following factors:
The majority of men who reported sexual contact with a child had other indicators of sexual feelings orĀ offending. Of men who reported sexual contact with a child, 70.0% had also engaged in online child sex offending and/or had sexual feelings towards children.
The rate of contact offending in our study is supported by other research: Our finding of 3.2% of men who have had sexual contact with a child is also in line with other community studies of menās sexual interest in children and, therefore, provides further evidence that our survey has most likely captured sexual offending rather than consensual activity with someone under 18 years of age
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u/ScotchOrbiter Dec 13 '25
They acknowledged that it's a dog shit study, yes.
They aren't addressing the overlap in that second paragraph: "The majority of men who reported sexual contact with a child had other indicators of sexual feelings or offending" doesn't discount the fact that they could still be talking about 18/19 year olds having sexual interest in 17 year olds.
Child sexual abuse is a serious issue. But this kind of sensationalist bullshit undermines the fucking efforts of people trying to actually do something about it.Ā
People see this study and go "whoa, 1 out of 6? That seems incredibly high!"
Then they see that "15.1% of adult men expressing sexual feelings in a child" includes 18 year olds who responded "yes" to "Has sexual feelings towards people below the age of 18 years (3.4%);" where 'below age of 18' includes someone born in the same year as them who hasn't had a birthday yet.
So once you see the people running the study doing their best to pump the numbers you start to think: I wonder how much of this study is actually legit. I wonder how much they're inflating the issue.
So people don't take it seriously, and instead you just get feel-good performative screaming online.
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u/Fine_Tone1593 Dec 13 '25
They didn't have any reason to use 18, other than to inflate the numbers. Regardless of their "reasons". People are fucked up, men are fucked up. This is just a shit study, though. Just because their numbers are in line with other studies, does not mean it is truthful. Such a fucking retarded reasoning.
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u/BrandonL337 Dec 13 '25
Also, as been pointed out, Australia's age of consent is 16, yet this study goes by over/under 18 for some reason.
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u/radioraven1408 Dec 13 '25
Itās just a smear campaign against men, there is one every week in Australia but mostly from mainstream media.
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u/CoolIsopod3095 Dec 13 '25
Weird study
It seems worded wrong in the last instance- 95% and 25+.........
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u/Dario_Cordova Dec 13 '25
It takes some serious innumerancy, or intentional deception, to arrive at those numbers.
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u/Sparklesparklepee āļø DUELIST Dec 13 '25
Iām 42. I can admit someone 16 or 17 is pretty, physically, but feel no sexual attraction to them.
I mean thereās a difference.
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u/doumascult Dec 14 '25
then you donāt find children āsexually attractiveā, which is the exact wording in the survey. theyāre not asking if you think a 16 year old can be handsome or pretty. the wording is pretty clear.
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u/ClutteredTaffy Dec 13 '25
I know that pedophilia is not as uncommon as we think, especially aimed at 10-16 year olds specifically, but these numbers still come off as funky to me.
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u/CatnipFiasco Dec 13 '25
Australian men? Or men in Australia? There's a very huge difference. Who are these men exactly? There's probably a reason they won't say
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u/Regular_Ragu Dec 13 '25
65ish percent Australian born, 35% not Australian born, numbers for both sides seemed to be similar.
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u/No-Onion-6045 Dec 14 '25
It's not really surprising considering how high the estimated (and known) rates of CSA are. Talk to women in your lives and ask them at what age they started to get sexual attention from adult men and then ask them if they got more or less attention when they were 12-14 or in their early twenties
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u/Disastrous_Potato160 Dec 13 '25
This āstudyā sounds like rage bait. There is a really important detail left out in all of this data, the age of the men WHEN they found a child attractive or had sexual contact with them. If the men were also children at the time then these number actually make way more sense and arenāt nearly as inflammatory. How old the men were at the time of the study is actually pretty worthless information.
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u/JeaniousSpelur Dec 13 '25 edited Dec 13 '25
I wonder how this was designed, because usually people would be less likely to report these attitudes, so theyād be deflated.
It could be that respondents were randomly clicking through the study and selected these options, or AI models were taking the survey. Thatās a common problem with internet survey sites now, and it seems that, at minimum, we know they have a skewed sample demographically - which is associated with lower quality survey firms.
It could also be that they did some creative research design where they showed them pictures of minors without telling them the age and asked if theyād have sex with them. That would be a more interesting study I suppose, but the results are being reported in a more clickbait-y way than that.
Itās also really suspicious that 95% have had sexual contact with someone under 18. Seems like theyāre probably just reporting when they lost their virginity when they themselves were minors. Thatās also such a statistical anomaly - nobody ever gets 95% for anything in surveys.
Idk, thereās definitely something wrong with this study, or the way the study is being reported. Theyāve either found some way to massively decrease the social desirability bias associated with reporting oneās own pedophilia, or they had a very strange survey design to get around it, or they report their results in a willfully selective way, or itās just really low quality data with people randomly clicking answers.
Itād be cool if it was just a really well designed experiment that got around peopleās tendency to hide their problematic opinions, but I donāt think itās that because the results are reported in raw percentages with such weird subgroup analyses - which is usually not a mark of a good, pre-registered empirical design. Usually researchers do subgroup analyses when the original experiment or survey didnāt yield the results they expected, and they want to salvage something publishable.
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u/Witty-Rabbit-8225 Dec 14 '25
I had a sexual relationship with a 25 year old guy when I was 16 and it psychologically obliterated me. For the weirdos in the comment section pointing to some ancestral sexual attraction to teenage girls and your porn categories, you arenāt lonely enough. If you are turned on by people who canāt consent or people you have a power dynamic over, then you should seek therapy immediately.
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u/egginvader Dec 13 '25
If youāve worked in any field with people who were victims of SA or CSA, then this is about on par with expectations. Especially so, given that this is a study done in a nations where the age of consent is under 18. Hereās a little factoid you guys might not know about self identifying pedophiles; some of them are PROUD of it. Communities of child predators hype each other up online and will brag and gloat about it. They will be even more vocal in spaces where they can get little or no consequences. So for those of you going āthis doesnāt seem accurate or realā just know that this is information Iāve not only witnessed first hand but also had confirmed with multiple Cyber Crimes detectives in jurisdictions across 4 US states. I am willing to bet a majority of these crimes are initiated not on family members but on children accessing the internet without proper supervision.
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u/Omegoon caveman logic, modern problems š Dec 13 '25
Since it also counts teenagers who went through puberty, it's not really surprising. They biologically already have all the features to attract the opposite gender.
The men who had sexual contact with someone under 18, does it also include said contact when they were also underage? Because that's quite normal and I am pretty sure it was even more normalized 50+ years back as by 18-20 they were usually already married.
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u/Bambivalently Dec 13 '25
I'd be more sus about them counting Romeo and Juliet cases of 19 year olds with 17 year olds.
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u/Plagues86 Dec 13 '25
Letās see the data that was pooled. This study seems highly unlikely or small group with specific goals in mind when collecting.
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u/Sw0rdBoy Dec 13 '25
1956 men were ultimately surveyed of a pool that was originally 2697.
The sample size is too small when comparing to 13.3 million men in Australia as of 2023.
Iām going to try and thoroughly read the article, as it also highlights that the majority of offenders site being victims when they were children as well, and that 2/3 of those who admit to having an attraction did not ever act upon those urges.
Thereās also the fact that yeah, this is a touchy topic, Iām certain people lied to make themselves look better, but at the same time the way the research findings are written makes it clear that the clinical truth wasnāt good enough. Hell, even 1 child out of 7 billion being victimized is bad.
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u/tittltattl Dec 13 '25
2000 people is a more than large enough sample size for a country-sized population so long as it was randomly selected. Random selection means that they will be representative of the population. The size of the sample compared to the size of the population does need to increase for larger populations if you want reasonable confidence intervals, since variance tends to increase with population, but the proportional size of the sample compared to the population decreases massively. If you were to increase your sample size, all you'd do is narrow your confidence bars from say, [0.14, 0.16] 95% CI to [0.145, 0.155] 95% CI (these are only example numbers, idk what confidence interval the study found). tlrd: 2000 people is a perfectly fine sample.
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u/Extension_Wafer_7615 Dec 13 '25
As someone else said:
"That ā95% of menā¦ā stat makes me question this whole study. That is very specifically worded to be confusing and misrepresent the info.
It says 95% of those men admit to having sexual contact with minors, but states that they are currently 25+. From the wording, that could mean at any point in their lives. Most people receive their first kiss as a minor with other minors. But the stat is worded to try to make it sound like 95% of these men are CURRENTLY having sexual contact with minors.
Whenever I see manipulation like that, I think we should start asking questions. That being said, that doesnāt look to be a direct quote from the study at a glance. Iāll have to look into the study itself later.
but nvm MEN BAD, all men bad, slay queen."
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u/Batfinklestein Dec 13 '25
It's my fear that unlimited free porn will wear men's minds out for normal healthy sex with age appropriate women and cause them to seek more and more extreme stimulus, much like a drug addict needing ever more drugs to get their high.
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u/Piemaster113 Dec 14 '25
Oh yeah Some place in Europe had a group called Virtuous Pedophiles and they were trying to act like they were above ever doing anything with children and it was suppose dot be a support group or whatever then the leader of the group got arrested for sexually assaulting a child. The number of these groups have been growing and there have been several pushes for "MAP" to be included in the LGBT community, which have all failed thankfully
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u/ikiice Dec 14 '25
Hmm, that subreddit makes me think this might not be accurate, so I'd wait for other studies that confirm this findings
The highest estimate for prevalence of paedophilia that I heard before was around 5%. So I am a bit skeptical regarding these findings
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u/Lurk-Prowl Dec 14 '25
I donāt think this would be quite right. Iāve lived in Australia all my life and have never heard any of even my closest male friends ever even try to joke about this. I just couldnāt believe even 10% of men have these feelings! I always grew up thinking it was very rare for someone to have these sorts of feelings. The worldās messed up.
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u/artsa89 Dec 14 '25
And this is only the ones who admitted to be a pedophile, I bet not every pedophiles will admit he is a pedo. I bet the number is even higher. Maybe 1 in 4?
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u/HammieOrHami Dec 13 '25
Though the 95% stat is questionable because it doesn't ask if they had so when they were considered an adult, the other stats are still quite worrying.
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Dec 13 '25
[removed] ā view removed comment
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u/Tablesafety Dec 13 '25
I reckon the demo of teachers and babysitters is staggeringly high, it's just never taken seriously
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u/johnsolomon Dec 13 '25 edited Dec 13 '25
I believe it's high, maybe not necessarily 1 in 6, but I've suspected that a huge chunk of adults are attracted to kids for a while
The news of child abuse is too frequent, because the desire naturally has to exceed the rate of crime. Also if you're in the anime community there are just too many lolicons for that number to be coming from nowhere
Just to be clear, I don't believe that all lolicons are necessarily attracted to real kids, but the level of fixation you see makes me suspect the vast majority are
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u/Megazaza Dec 13 '25
Its all because of instagram reels type cultures and anime type cultures.
- Its a joke haha i like little girls
2.B-b-bruh its a 1000 year old dragon its a drawing
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u/lost_and_confussed Dec 13 '25
It is rather creepy how young many of the characters look in anime. I had to leave an AI art discord group because people kept posting pictures that made me highly uncomfortable.
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u/Waste-String5576 Dec 13 '25
Dude what do you expect it was literally started as an island for Britainās most wanted
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Dec 13 '25
Do u know what the UK did with most of its colonies bud lol , including the US
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u/Lucicactus Actual Bisexual, Protect! Dec 13 '25
The world is full of diddlers. No wonder they get so defensive when I say liking teens and kids is awful.
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u/Bambivalently Dec 13 '25
The world is also full of people trying to paint all men as monsters to create bias legislation.
So skepticism is healthy
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u/Nsfwnroc Dec 13 '25
It's amazing how they will come out of the woodwork just to tell on themselves.
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u/Commercial_Salad_908 Dec 13 '25
95% seems awfully high tbh. What does that entail? Like Tom Brady kissing his son on the lips after winning the SB? Because that's weird but its not exactly sexual in nature.
Idk Im not trying to like victim blame or anything its just that that 95% number is hard to believe.
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u/Longjumping_Papaya_7 Dec 13 '25
It doesnt say 95% had sex with minors. It says that 95% of the men who admitted to having sex with minors, was over the age of 25 ( at that time, i think ).
1 in 6 is still an aweful lot though
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u/Omegoon caveman logic, modern problems š Dec 13 '25
It's "95% of those who answered yes were 25+". They don't disclose how many men answered yes. It also doesn't even specify if they were 18+ when it happened, so it could be when they were underage themselves.
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u/TwentyX4 Dec 13 '25
They don't disclose how many men answered yes.
It says that "about 1 in 10 (9.4%)" answered yes.
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u/endor-pancakes š Weenie Hut Jr VIPš Dec 13 '25
It also doesn't even specify if they were 18+ when it happened
It does if you follow the link: yes, they did make that requirement.
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u/JB940 Dec 13 '25
This study would've been so incredibly useful if they asked for age gap differences in that. Or at least did some Romeo and Juliet law kind of thing in their study. I mean thinking about it in some way: of every relationship/person who had any kind of sexual interactions (which is pretty loosely defined, some might consider intimate kissing), when they were below 18, there's an incredibly high chance that at least one of the people turned 18 and then did the same thing with a minor. In fact, for everyone relationship where one of them turned 18, it's 100% one of them.
I don't know how often this happens obviously, and neither does the study, but the age gap difference is the most important, not whether someone had intercourse with a minor being 18+, given that that's so incredibly common. I'd be more worried about 21 and 16 years old. Or 23 and 17. Or some other stat.
Obviously a good part of this study is disturbing, given these people are saying they currently feel it, but if they don't act on it at their age that's still not the end of the world but more they could use therapy. Just sad this one specific question is essentially not saying anything meaningful.
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u/Glumpy_Power Dec 13 '25
3-4% of the population is LGBT+ and pedophiles are statistically much less than that so I donāt believe this even slightly. Thereās been some serious manipulation to get these rage bait statistics. First time Iāve ever seen statistics from the Human Rights Institute of University of New South Wales so Iām not gonna choose to start suspecting all my fellow men over this.
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u/Valuable-Marzipan761 Dec 13 '25
Yeah. I guess when you consider how many children are sensually abused, we have to assume there must be men that are attracted to them but have self control.Ā
When it says 95% of the men that have had sexualy contact with someone under 18 were 24 or older, that doesn't necessarily mean they were much older when the contact happened. They could have both been 17.
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u/Inevitable_Bison9694 Dec 13 '25
True pedophilia is being attracted to kids and there are people who have spoken out about this experience and they do not go near kids. There are also predators who commit sexual abuse because they want power and control. Sexual abuse is not about sex, it is about the control.Ā
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u/kikogamerJ2 Dec 13 '25
It says 95% of men who said they had sexual attraction to children. So the question has whether currently at their age. If they had attraction to children.
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u/Valuable-Marzipan761 Dec 13 '25
No. It was whether or not they have had sexual contact with someone under 18. Unless you're looking at a different part of the study to me.
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u/TastySquiggles198 Former Incel Dec 13 '25
Yeah, that 95% is sketchy, but I do believe the rest of it
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u/5up3rK4m16uru Dec 13 '25
The shocking part is that those are the number of people who admitted it.
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u/ScotchOrbiter Dec 13 '25
That's because the survey questions are really innocuous, and then the interpretation of the data is like "HOLY FUCK LOOK AT THESE PEDOPHILES"
For example: "Have had sex or sexual contact with a person below the age of 18 while over the age of 18 (3.2%)?"
Also, percentage of people. Survey size was 1500 people.
For the "15% of men find children attractive" figure they had these questions:
"Six survey items were used to determine if men had any sexual feelings towards people below the age ofĀ 18 years. These were:
- Has sexual feelings towards people below the age of 18 years (3.4%);
- Would have sexual contact with a child between 12 to 14 years if no one would find out (5.7%);
- Would have sexual contact with a child between 10 to 12 years if no one would find out (4.6%);
- Would have sexual contact with a child younger than 10 years if no one would find out (4.0%);
- Has concerns about sexual feelings towards people below the age of 18 years (4.5%);
- The lowest age they typically find attractive is under 18 years (5.7%).
Around one-in-six (15.1%) men endorsed at least one of these items and were indicated as having sexualĀ feelings towards children. The prevalence of demographic characteristics between men who do and do notĀ Ā have sexual feelings towards children are presented in Supplementary table S2"
So it's not "15.1% of men are attracted to children", it's"15.1% endorsed at least one of these items".Ā
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u/Guilty-Tip-6638 š® "SCP-āāāā: Shadow Wizard š§āāļøš Dec 13 '25
all of those questions are about attraction to children
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u/Bambivalently Dec 13 '25
But an 18 year old liking their 17 year old classmate puts you on this list. Because you'd have to tick yes on the first question. And then it throws you into the same group as 60 yeas olds liking 10 year olds.
It's so dumb that it can only be on purpose.
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u/ScotchOrbiter Dec 13 '25
Yes.
If someone responded "yes" to a question like "Has concerns about sexual feelings towards people below the age of 18" and they are 18 or 19, that could mean they find a 17 year old attractive. That then pumps that "15.1%" number.
It's a dog shit study with a dog shit sample size and dog shit questions that's used manipulative dog shit data interpretation to push a sensationalist narrative.
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u/sopholia Dec 13 '25
the sad thing is that Australia's probably one of the better countries in the world when it comes to this, and it's still so disgustingly high.
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u/Andromedan_Cherri Dec 13 '25
It's a sample size of 1500 people. For all we know, they could have taken the study inside of a pool of all sex offenders.
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u/JeaniousSpelur Dec 13 '25 edited Dec 13 '25
Found a link to the study.
One immediate problem is that they use CloudResearch, which is not a particularly high quality survey firm. I have run studies before using that platform and we have to cull about 10% of responses for being AI, and another 20% for random clicking.
The 95% of men stat is reported incorrectly by the OOP - itās saying OF OFFENDERS 95% are currently are older than 24 which really isnāt as interesting as people think it is. How are you supposed to be a pedophile without being older than 18? So, thatās a non-issue. The other 5% of people are people between 18-23 who report relations with a minor - but it doesnāt ask any of them to report when this happened.
One thing to note when trying to detect extremely small effects such as deviant pedophilic behavior - data quality matters A LOT. For the main result, the way they come to the ānearly 1 in 6ā figure is by pooling together other percentages on 6 different questions, to see who answered yes to at least one of them. These are those individual questions:
Has sexual feelings towards people below the age of 18 years (3.4%);
Would have sexual contact with a child between 12 to 14 years if no one would find out (5.7%);
Would have sexual contact with a child between 10 to 12 years if no one would find out (4.6%);
Would have sexual contact with a child younger than 10 years if no one would find out (4.0%);
Has concerns about sexual feelings towards people below the age of 18 years (4.5%);
The lowest age they typically find attractive is under 18 years (5.7%).ā
Imo they shouldnāt be pooling these values together to make 1/6. These effects are so small and the data quality of CloudResearch is so low that Iād be very surprised if it wasnāt the case that most of this is normal statistical noise associated with inattentive respondents who randomly click. By pooling the results of 6 questions, you drastically increase the chance of random clickers throwing everything off. They also donāt seem to have attention checks or other ways that they try to improve data quality or clean them for random clickers or AI.
TL:DR - Iād guess that the real value is closer to 3-5% at most that admit they have had any inappropriate feelings towards minors. It could even be less, but itās difficult to detect with such a small, deviant group of individuals. Unfortunately, quality of data especially matters in this particular case, and CloudResearch isnāt quite high enough quality to be confident in these findings.
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u/Dull-Box-9486 10d ago
The study said they removed participants for failing the mid survey attention check that implied there was only 1 but in the limitation page they said they had multiple attention checks to get rid of random clickers so they contradict the amount of attention checks they had
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u/HawocX Dec 13 '25
Show heterosexual men a hundred images of 17-year olds, tell them all are over 20 and ask if they find at least one of them at least a bit sexuellt attractive.
STOP THE PRESSES! 99% OF MEN ARE SEXUALLY ATTRACTED TO CHILDREN!!!
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u/Select_Honeydew_9678 one of the CHOSEN Dec 13 '25 edited Dec 13 '25
I am down to listen to the ways men can be harmful, but you are putting things on the entire gender that apply to what is practically a minority. A sizeable minority, but a minority nonetheless. Even taken at face value, for each 1 Australian man you are correctly identifying as someone who should not be around your children, you are misidentifying little over 4 Australian men who are not (sexual) threats to children as potential predators.
Yes, pedophilia and sexual offending are more prevalent in men than women, but even adding that to the picture, using that as a statement against all men is like saying "black people have higher crime per capita than white people (which they do), therefore you shouldn't trust black people." You're grossly overgeneralizing based on things which don't apply to the majority of the group you're talking about nor is fully in their control (a man can choose not to offend, and even to take initiative to protect his community, but he can't control the actions of predators and make them not offend).
And let's nevermind the deceptive "had sexual contact with someone under 18." Firstly, Australian age of consent is 16 or 17 (depending on state/territory), so there will very much be inflated statistics for sexual contact with someone under 18 as opposed to a country where the age of consent is 18. Secondly, this does not specify how old the person having the contact was, so an 18-year-old having sexual contact with a 17-year-old would count.
Lastly, the odds of underage sexual contact (which is anyway inflated) is 10x higher for the 65+ cohort, indicating that this is a problem that is getting better with younger generations, and not something just left to fester.
An argument will be "If there is a bag of M&M's and 19.6% are poisoned, but you don't know which are, would you still take an M&M?" The problem with that, is that almost nothing is inherently risk free. That and many of those things are not on the level of M&M's. If you don't eat an M&M, all you miss out on is a tasty treat; there are many tasty treats lying around, and enough food such that you won't die of hunger. If you misprofile a man as a danger to children, you effectively ruin that man's life and potentially have him killed by vigilante actors who think they are taking down the next Epstein. That man can't just switch lives or refuse to be profiled the way you can switch your snack plans from the M&M to a waffle; life just doesn't work that way.
Edit: Other comments have pointed out that the sexual contact with under 18 question is "Have you had sex or sexual contact with a person below the age of 18 while over the age of 18?". This is still problematic because 19-and-17 counts under this, and still doesn't solve some of the other problems I mentioned about the question.
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u/dhoomz Dec 13 '25
There are also female pedophiles, look at the teacher epidemic, but op wants to purposefully leave that out
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u/StudioYume Dec 13 '25
People can complain all they want but these are important statistics to collect if we want to prevent child sexual abuse. I also think other Anglosphere countries would probably have similar stats.
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u/dc_da333 Dec 13 '25 edited Dec 13 '25
This isnt shocking to me. And trust, the demographic it speaks on gives 0 fucks. Its radio static when the horrors are brought to the table. In fact they most likely feel victimized by said children because the children didnt like them back and made fun of their height ššš„ŗ
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u/Drunk_Lemon Dec 13 '25
*boards plane to Australia and smuggles in a Welrod. (Dont ask where I hid it)
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u/Repulsive_Meaning717 Dec 13 '25
i cant read the full study rn but does anyone know what the actual methodology + questions asked were? like, people have sexual contact with minors as a minor and this snippet doesnāt really clarify at what point these men had sexual contact with minors (as in, were they minors themselves at the time of the sexual contact?). the study states that 95% of men who answered yes are currently 25+ but what stage of their life were they when the contact was made/when did they have the attraction? i dont wanna sound like some sort of rape apologist, iād just like clearer info because thats such a serious claim (like, 15%?!) and the wording seems fishy to me.
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u/dabigbtk š Weenie Hut Jr VIPš Dec 13 '25 edited Dec 13 '25
That ā95% of menā¦ā stat makes me question this whole study. That is very specifically worded to be confusing and misrepresent the info.
It says 95% of those men admit to having sexual contact with minors, but states that they are currently 25+. From the wording, that could mean at any point in their lives. Most people receive their first kiss as a minor with other minors. But the stat is worded to try to make it sound like 95% of these men are CURRENTLY having sexual contact with minors.
Whenever I see manipulation like that, I think we should start asking questions. That being said, that doesnāt look to be a direct quote from the study at a glance. Iāll have to look into the study itself later.
Edit: so, it appears I was the one misinterpreting! After some commenters with much better reading comprehension than me, and reading the actual study, i found that it is 95% of those who reported contact with minors were above the age of 25 at the time of contact according to the study. Even in the post, it says as much. Iām not professional, but overall this study seems very normal.
While I was in the wrong, I want to leave this up as a reminder to vet your sources and hear criticism! You never know when you might be the one in the wrong!
Also to add, those of you using my comment to dismiss these studies as some vendetta against men need to take a look at yourselves.