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Physical Height in Pedophilic and Hebephilic Sexual Offenders

  • Original Article
  • Published:
Sexual Abuse: A Journal of Research and Treatment

Abstract

Adult men’s height reflects, not only their genetic endowment, but also the conditions that were present during their development in utero and in childhood. We compared the adult heights of men who committed one or more sexual offenses and who were erotically interested in prepubescent children (pedophilic sexual offenders; n = 223), those who were erotically interested in pubescent children (hebephilic sexual offenders; n = 615), and those who were erotically interested in adults (teleiophilic sexual offenders; n = 187), as well as men who had no known sexual offenses and who were erotically interested in adults (teleiophilic nonoffender controls; n = 156). The pedophilic and the hebephilic sexual offenders were significantly shorter than the teleiophilic nonoffender controls. The teleiophilic sexual offenders were intermediate in height between the nonoffenders and the pedophilic and hebephilic sexual offenders and not significantly different from any of the other groups. This suggests that—regardless of whatever psychological sequelae might also have followed from the conditions present during early development—pedophilic and hebephilic sexual offenders were subject to conditions capable of affecting their physiological development.

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Notes

  1. Authors use pedophilia to refer to the erotic interest in prepubescent children (von Krafft-Ebing 1965), hebephilia to refer to the erotic interest in pubescent children (Glueck 1955), and pedohebephilia to refer to the superordinate category that includes them both (Freund et al. 1972). Thus, one might refer to factors that are pedophilogenic, hebephilogenic, or pedohebephilogenic; however, unless it turns out that the aforementioned erotic interests are produced by different factors, such a distinction is moot, and we choose, albeit arbitrarily, to apply the shorter and more intuitive construction, pedophilogenic, to refer to factors that increase the probability of developing either pedophilia or hebephilia.

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Acknowledgments

This research was supported by Canadian Institutes of Health Research grant 79276 to James M. Cantor. We are grateful to Drs. Meredith Chivers and Carolyn Abramowitz for their comments on an earlier version of this article.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Law and Mental Health Program, Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, 250 College Street, Toronto, ON, M5T 1R8, Canada

    James M. Cantor, Michael E. Kuban, Thomas Blak, Philip E. Klassen, Robert Dickey & Ray Blanchard

  2. Department of Psychiatry, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada

    Philip E. Klassen, Robert Dickey & Ray Blanchard

Authors
  1. James M. Cantor
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  2. Michael E. Kuban
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  3. Thomas Blak
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  4. Philip E. Klassen
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  5. Robert Dickey
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  6. Ray Blanchard
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Correspondence to James M. Cantor.

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Portions of this research were presented at the 33rd Annual Meeting of the International Academy of Sex Research (Vancouver, Canada) and the 26th Annual Conference of the Association for the Treatment of Sexual Abusers (San Diego).

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Cantor, J.M., Kuban, M.E., Blak, T. et al. Physical Height in Pedophilic and Hebephilic Sexual Offenders. Sex Abuse 19, 395–407 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11194-007-9060-5

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