The Roots of Predation: Science, Power, and the Theft of Innocence
Understanding Why Adults Prey on Children: From Neuroscience to Systems of Extraction
Why do some adults sexually abuse children?
It is one of the most disturbing questions we can ask, and one of the most important. The answer is not simple. It lives at the intersection of brain science, broken systems, and something harder to name: a cultural pattern of extraction that runs far deeper than any single pathology.
To truly understand predation against the young, we need to look at all three.
I. What the Brain Tells Us
The clinical term is pedophilic disorder: a psychiatric condition in which an adult experiences persistent sexual attraction to prepubescent children. Research over the past two decades, particularly the work of neuroscientist James Cantor and his colleagues at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto, has produced a striking body of evidence: pedophilia appears to be rooted, at least in part, in differences in brain development that begin long before adulthood.
MRI studies have revealed that individuals diagnosed with pedophilia tend to show reduced white matter (the connective wiring of the brain) in regions associated with sexual arousal, social cognition, and impulse control. I will be writing and sharing a whole article on the specific neurodevelopment changes and scientific research that has been done on this topic, in a Substack article that I will release to my paid subscribers, tomorrow.
These are not differences that emerge from choice or moral failure; they appear to be neurodevelopmental, present from early life. Further correlations have been found with left-handedness, shorter average height, lower IQ scores, and a higher incidence of childhood head injuries - all markers that point to disruptions during prenatal or early postnatal brain development.
