Grooming, Child Abuse, & Child Sexual Exploitation
The Prevalence of Paraphilic Interests in the Czech Population: Preference, Arousal, the Use of Pornography, Fantasy, and Behavior.
Open Access: No.
Abstract
The number of population-based studies focused on the prevalence of paraphilic sexual interests in men is very low and for women, the subject remains largely unexplored. The two main aims of this study are to investigate the prevalence of paraphilias and to explore sex differences in an online representative sample of Czech men and women using various dimensions of sexual experience. We collected data about sexual motivations and behavior from a representative online sample of 10,044 Czechs (5,023 men and 5,021 women). In a standardized online interview, participants answered questions about selected dimensions of sexual experience within specific paraphilic patterns: sexual preferences, sexual arousal, sexual fantasies in the past 6 months, pornography use in the past 6 months, and experience with paraphilic behaviors. Our results show that 31.3% of men (n = 1,571) and 13.6% of women (n = 683) admitted to at least one paraphilic preference. Moreover, 15.5% of men and 5% of women reported more than one paraphilic preference. Except for beating/torture and humiliation/submission, in terms of real experience with such behaviors almost all paraphilias were more common among men than among women. Our results indicate that the high prevalence of some paraphilic patterns might render their pathologization problematic.
Relevance
the study investigated 13 types of paraphilic or unusual sexual interests, including pedophilia (sexual interest in prepubertal children) and hebephilia (sexual interest in pubertal children). Others included fetishism, exhibitionism, voyeurism, beating/torture, humiliation/submission, zoophilia, biastophlia (arousal during sexual assault), and immobilization.
The study investigated five dimensions of paraphilic interests: the subjects preferences, how arousing they find certain acts, frequency of porn use depicting those acts, fantasizing about those preferences, and actual behavior (How many times in your life did you engage in such activities?).
The most prevalent paraphilias for all five dimensions combined were voyeurism, frotteurism/toucherism, fetishism, and humiliation/submission.
Among respondents, the four types of paraphilic pornographic content most frequently watched in the past 6 months were fetishism, voyeurism, immobilization, and humiliation/submission.
Furthermore, porn use was for men “significantly positively correlated” with almost all paraphilic interests, including sexual assault and child abuse.
Citation
