Expert warns against labelling 12-year-old Lethbridge boy charged with incest as a pedophile

One of Canada's leading experts on sexual abuse is warning people should not jump to conclusions after a 12-year-old boy in Lethbridge, Alta., was charged with sexually abusing his younger sisters.

The Lethbridge Regional Police said in a news release they've charged the boy, who can't be identified under the Youth Criminal Justice Act, with two counts, each of incest, sexual assault, sexual interference and invitation to sexual touching related to multiple incidents between May and July of this year.

Children under the age of 12 cannot be charged criminally but those who are between 12 and 18 face justice in youth court. The boy made his first appearance last week and is due back later this month. He was released to his family on condition that he's not allowed with anyone under 12 without adult supervision.

Most incest cases involve adult family members abusing underage children. Dr. James Cantor says cases where children are seen as the perpetrators rarely go to criminal court.

“Cases of sibling-on-sibling incest are actually pretty common," said Cantor, clinical psychologist and senior scientist at the Centre for Addition and Mental Health in Toronto. "It’s a very large proportion of what gets gathered up in most sexual offence statistics.”

That's unfortunate, he said, because they often get lumped in with the very heinous cases involving adult predators.

“The sibling-on-sibling cases represent a very different phenomenon in general," Cantor, who also edits the scientific journal Sexual Abuse, said in an interview with Yahoo Canada News.

Cantor would not discuss the Lethbridge case but observed sibling incest should not be tossed in with predatory psychopathic pedophilia.

[ Related: Sexual assault, incest charges laid against Sherbrooke man ]

Cantor said while a "regular pedophile" is motivated by a sexual preference for children, sibling incest tends to occur inside very chaotic households. It usually comes together with physical abuse and neglect, with parents providing little or no oversight of their children.

“When it’s sibling-on-sibling abuse, usually its part of a larger anti-social pattern within a family with many different kinds of problems."

The justice system should also treat them differently but law enforcement often finds itself handcuffed by a "very punitive, vengeance-motivated public," rather than taking time to look at what science has to say about dealing with the problem.

“Unfortunately a lot of prosecutors and legal systems are forced by legislation to go through certain behaviours and forced to consider crimes in a certain way, despite the science that shows us that it can often do no good and sometimes be counterproductive," Cantor said.

Children may not have been given the proper role-modelling or have behaviour boundaries set by adults. They could also be imitating what they see older kids, such as teenagers, doing when it comes to sexual behaviour.

Cantor said there's also a predictable amount of sexual experimentation among children, often with siblings.

“It’s very, very common and there’s no evidence outside of real coercion that innocent sex play, including between siblings, is at all a problem."

Lethbridge police were not releasing details about the incidents that led to the boy's arrest. But, executive officer Kristen Harding told Yahoo Canada News: "these are very serious allegations and the evidence supported the laying of criminal charges."

Cantor said the line between playing doctor and sexual abuse is hard to draw. Coercion is an important factor, as is a family's overall psychological health.

“Unfortunately we know very, very little about childhood sexuality. There remains an enormous stigma about doing high-quality sex research, even among consenting adults, never mind among children."

Cantor said the kind of testing that can help identify adult male pedophiles – putting a sensor on the penis to measure arousal based on a range of images – isn't useful with child subjects. Young boys nearing or in puberty tend to get erections by looking at almost anything.

“Until one hits maturity, all bets really are off. Their natural sexualities really haven’t crystallized yet. Their natural response is that they often don’t differentiate among potential sexual stimuli.

"That’s also why same-sex play is so common at that age. The differences have not yet hit their maximum.”

Cantor said the awareness of child sexual abuse, which grew in the 1980s, has also created an atmosphere of hysteria around any clinical discussion and research of child sexuality. Researchers have become paranoid about being labelled as sympathetic to pedophila if they want to explore childhood sexuality. Despite a crying need to understand it, the subject is largely taboo.

“It’s one of the running jokes in my field, how impossible it is to get a research grant to work on solving a problem that every single person in society wants us to be working on."

Cantor said the justice system does have a role to play but ideally the time to intervene is before the problem gets to that point.

“We’ve already failed the kid by the time the kid is in jail – almost always a boy."

[ Related: Virtuous Pedophiles group gives support therapy cannot ]

One admitted pedophile said it doesn't appear the Lethbridge boy should be in court.

"My immediate reaction (to the news report) is that there's no reason to think this boy is a pedophile," said Ethan Edwards (a pseudonym), who runs Virtuous Pedophiles, a web site that aims to help pedophiles control their urges. He said he's never acted on his.

"He's a troubled child with sexual curiosity but serious boundary issues. It definitely needs intervention — maybe he needs to live somewhere else for a while. But assuming there aren't aggravating factors involved, my personal opinion is that it's misguided social policy to have him in the criminal justice system."

Key questions, he said, are when did adults know and did the parents try to intervene before calling for help?

Although youth criminal records are sealed, would the boy, if convicted, carry a lifetime label as a potential pedophile?

Serial killers' childhoods are often analyzed for clues to adult behaviour – did they torture pets, for instance. But there's no similar research into pedophilia.

“There hasn’t been that kind of direct connection for childhood sex play and adult pedophilia," said Cantor. "But there has been a reasonable amount of research connecting childhood coercion – whether or not it’s sex –with adulthood anti-sociality, whether or not it’s sex.

“There’s nothing special about the sex. It’s the coercion.”