Category: Subjects Needed

Seeking People Interested in Being a Part of a Study about the Therapy-Seeking Behavior of Men Attracted to Minors

UPDATE: Participants may now be interviewed by email rather than voice chat if they prefer.

Male MAPs are invited to participate in a research study about understanding the help-seeking behaviors of men who are sexually attracted to minors. The study is also intended to help identify how mental health services can be made more available to those who are attracted to minors. My name is Heather Cacciatori, and I am a doctoral student of Psychology at Walden University. I am conducting this study for my PhD dissertation. The intent behind this study is to gain an understanding of the professional help-seeking behaviors of people who are sexually attracted to minors. The study will also help provide an understanding of how the decision to seek help or not has impacted your well-being. Your shared experiences will help me understand how you think about therapy, as well as how you believe you will be perceived by mental health professionals. Your experiences will be able to provide an understanding into how mental health professionals can make therapeutic services more readily available to those who are attracted to minors. Upon completion of the study, a one to two page summary of the results will be sent to the parties involved via email.

For those interested in participating, the interviews will be conducted by email or by using free internet-based software, such as Skype. If conducted by Skype, the audio will be recorded, but no video, if used, will be recorded or saved in any way. The interviews will take no more than an hour. Your identity will be protected so any data collected and reported will be anonymous.

Please email me at heather.cacciatori@waldenu.edu for more information.

You may be eligible to participate in this study if you can answer YES to all of these questions:
– I am a male who is 18 years or older.
– I am attracted to minors aged 17 or younger.
– I have never sexually offended against a minor or child
– I have never used pornography that involved children.
– I have no intentions to ever offend against a minor or child
– I intend to never use pornography that involves children.

All selected participants must be 18 or over and meet the above criteria. If you would like to participate in this study, please email me at heather.cacciatori@waldenu.edu to express your interest. When I receive your email, I will send you more detailed information on the study along with a consent form that will require your signature. Once the consent form is received, we will set up the interview.

UPDATE: The researcher has found sufficient MAPs for his interviews, and is therefore no longer seeking participants.

Mikkel Rask Pedersen is an anthropologist from Aarhus University in Denmark writing his final Master’s thesis on the relationship between how minor attracted people shape and manage their identity in resistance to societal representation and definitions of pedophilia, illness and desire. This means that he is researching how minor attracted people position themselves according to statements such as ‘It is only a matter of time before they offend’, ‘you cannot live a life repressing you sexuality’, ‘if they are attracted to minor that must mean they want to have sexual relations with them’ and, ‘minor attracted people need extensive therapy and help to not offend’.

The purpose of his study is twofold. One, to gain a better insight into the lived experience of being a minor attracted person through listening to their life stories. Two, to explore how the discourses in western societies shape, influence and restrict the ways minor attracted people are expected to act. Mikkel wishes to challenge the ways we talk about and understand sexuality and desires to create a more nuanced understanding of how people are not entirely defined by their desires, nor that desire must also mean wanting to act.

The research, therefore, does not focus on how to stop minor attracted people from offending, but how minor attracted people experience exactly such a rhetoric and discourse, always being stigmatized as a reliability. He is conducting interviews through mail and skype, maintaining the anonymity of participants.

MAPs are invited to take part in an online research study which consists of answering an anonymous survey. This study, which is part of a doctoral dissertation, is being conducted by Marc-André Goudreault, postgraduate student in the Department of Psychology at the Université de Montréal. The researchers are interested in examining the psychological and physiological traits of adult males (18 years old and older) depending on their sexual orientation.