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Media Coverage of Pedophilia and Its Impact on Help-Seeking Persons with Pedophilia in Germany—A Focus Group Study

The public stigma associated with pedophilia, the sexual attraction to prepubescent children, is tremendous. Previous research indicates that undifferentiated media coverage plays an essential role in perpetuating the public stigma by falsely equating pedophilia and child sexual abuse (CSA) and thus...

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Autores principales: Stelzmann, Daniela, Jahnke, Sara, Kuhle, Laura F.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9368625/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35954714
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph19159356
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author Stelzmann, Daniela
Jahnke, Sara
Kuhle, Laura F.
author_facet Stelzmann, Daniela
Jahnke, Sara
Kuhle, Laura F.
author_sort Stelzmann, Daniela
collection PubMed
description The public stigma associated with pedophilia, the sexual attraction to prepubescent children, is tremendous. Previous research indicates that undifferentiated media coverage plays an essential role in perpetuating the public stigma by falsely equating pedophilia and child sexual abuse (CSA) and thus may stop persons suffering from a pedophilic disorder from seeking professional help. Until now, a comprehensive examination of positive as well as negative media effects on affected individuals is missing. Therefore, the present study explores if and how media coverage impacts the lives of help-seeking persons with pedophilia by conducting four qualitative focus group discussions with a clinical sample (N = 20) from the German Prevention Network “Kein Täter werden”. Present results demonstrate that media coverage of pedophilia was perceived as mostly undifferentiated, even though participants observed an increase in fact-based reporting over the years. Moreover, it seems that media coverage has strong emotional and behavioral consequences for patients (e.g., negative reporting reduced self-esteem). In sum, our results highlight that differentiated media coverage could play a key role in supporting help-seeking persons with pedophilic disorder, while the impact of undifferentiated media coverage appears to be mostly negative. Therefore, our results point to the need to reframe pedophilia using differentiated media coverage to help affected persons receive treatment efficiently and thereby prevent CSA.
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spelling pubmed-93686252022-08-12 Media Coverage of Pedophilia and Its Impact on Help-Seeking Persons with Pedophilia in Germany—A Focus Group Study Stelzmann, Daniela Jahnke, Sara Kuhle, Laura F. Int J Environ Res Public Health Article The public stigma associated with pedophilia, the sexual attraction to prepubescent children, is tremendous. Previous research indicates that undifferentiated media coverage plays an essential role in perpetuating the public stigma by falsely equating pedophilia and child sexual abuse (CSA) and thus may stop persons suffering from a pedophilic disorder from seeking professional help. Until now, a comprehensive examination of positive as well as negative media effects on affected individuals is missing. Therefore, the present study explores if and how media coverage impacts the lives of help-seeking persons with pedophilia by conducting four qualitative focus group discussions with a clinical sample (N = 20) from the German Prevention Network “Kein Täter werden”. Present results demonstrate that media coverage of pedophilia was perceived as mostly undifferentiated, even though participants observed an increase in fact-based reporting over the years. Moreover, it seems that media coverage has strong emotional and behavioral consequences for patients (e.g., negative reporting reduced self-esteem). In sum, our results highlight that differentiated media coverage could play a key role in supporting help-seeking persons with pedophilic disorder, while the impact of undifferentiated media coverage appears to be mostly negative. Therefore, our results point to the need to reframe pedophilia using differentiated media coverage to help affected persons receive treatment efficiently and thereby prevent CSA. MDPI 2022-07-30 /pmc/articles/PMC9368625/ /pubmed/35954714 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph19159356 Text en © 2022 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Stelzmann, Daniela
Jahnke, Sara
Kuhle, Laura F.
Media Coverage of Pedophilia and Its Impact on Help-Seeking Persons with Pedophilia in Germany—A Focus Group Study
title Media Coverage of Pedophilia and Its Impact on Help-Seeking Persons with Pedophilia in Germany—A Focus Group Study
title_full Media Coverage of Pedophilia and Its Impact on Help-Seeking Persons with Pedophilia in Germany—A Focus Group Study
title_fullStr Media Coverage of Pedophilia and Its Impact on Help-Seeking Persons with Pedophilia in Germany—A Focus Group Study
title_full_unstemmed Media Coverage of Pedophilia and Its Impact on Help-Seeking Persons with Pedophilia in Germany—A Focus Group Study
title_short Media Coverage of Pedophilia and Its Impact on Help-Seeking Persons with Pedophilia in Germany—A Focus Group Study
title_sort media coverage of pedophilia and its impact on help-seeking persons with pedophilia in germany—a focus group study
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9368625/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35954714
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph19159356
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