Is Pedophilia Trivial?

Richard Dawkins, of “The God Delusion” fame, mentions in his recently published autobiography that he can’t condemn the teacher who molested him at one of the boarding schools he attended as a child.  He also claimed indifference toward the older boys at another boarding school who attempted to molest him in the middle of the night on four different occasions.  He said the former was more disturbing to him than the latter, but in the long run the incidents are not all that significant.

Dawkins doesn’t condone the behavior of the teacher (or the older boys for that matter) but he said the “schoolmaster who touched me up . . . didn’t actually do me any physical violence.”  He said mild pedophilia shouldn’t be viewed in the same category as the forcible rape and murder of children.  He added that what happened to him doesn’t compare to the “mass murders carried out by Genghis Khan in the 12th century.”  I guess not when you put it that way.

But I find the comparison interesting.  He did not compare his experience with being bullied, for example, although he writes in his autobiography about standing by and doing nothing as a gang of other boys at his school mercilessly bullied a classmate.  He still feels guilt about that, he says.  He is disturbed especially because he felt no empathy for the boy at the time.  Yet he had to minimize the impact of his experience at the hands of a teacher by comparing it to the mass murders of Genghis Khan.  Curious.  (more...)

Is Pedophilia Trivial?