Purity Culture is Pedophile Culture

Part 1: It's Not the Man in the Trench Coat you Should Be Worried About

If you would like to read this essay on our STRONGWILLED website, you can now do that. For this series we are exploring how purity culture, as prescribed by so many religious authoritarian parenting authors, created the ideal conditions to enable predators to sexually abuse children. This is part one in a weekly series on this topic. In typical STRONGWILLED fashion, we’ll be weaving together the history of this movement, the politics undergirding it, as well as analysis of evangelical books, and exploring the impact of those who grew up in purity culture. Please consider supporting our work on Patreon or Substack, and sharing this content if you find it valuable.

TW: sexual abuse, incest, child pornography (child sexual abuse materials)

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Part 1: It’s Not the Man in the Trench Coat You Should Be Worried About

“In the United States, society’s historical attitude about the sexual victimization of children can generally be summed up in one word: denial.” —FBI Special Agent Kenneth Lannings (1)

“The ordinary response to atrocities is to banish them from consciousness. Certain violations of the social compact are too terrible to utter aloud: this is the meaning of the word unspeakable. Atrocities, however, refuse to be buried.”— Judith Herman, M.D. (2)

The responsibility of keeping children safe from sexual exploitation belongs to all of us. And yet, in the United States there is still a shroud of mystery surrounding the scope and scale of the victimization of children. The loudest voices proclaiming they keep children safe — conservative Christians, in particular — are often the very communities where abuse of all kinds passes down from generation to generation. But before we talk about this unspeakable reality, perhaps it would be best to start outside the US with the so-called father of modern psychotherapy, Sigmund Freud.

In the late 1800s, Freud was one of several therapists interested in understanding hysteria in women. He asked his patients about their inner worlds and childhood experiences and in the process discovered that many of his patients recalled being sexually abused by their fathers or other men in the community. Freud was shaken by what he was hearing. As Judith Herman writes, “his correspondence makes it clear that he was increasingly troubled by the radical social implications . . . if his patients' stories were true . . . he would be forced to conclude that what he called ‘perverted acts against children’ were endemic, not only among the proletariat of Paris, where he first studied hysteria, but also among the respectable bourgeois families of Vienna.” (3)

Freud decided that intra-familial sexual abuse (incest) couldn’t possibly be as pervasive as his female patients from the upper and middle classes described. He eventually discredited these “hysterical” women, writing, “I was at last obliged to recognize that these stories of seduction had never taken place, and that they were only fantasies which my patients had made up.” As Herman writes, “Recognizing the implicit challenge to patriarchal values, Freud refused to identify fathers publicly as sexual aggressors.” In fact, he preferred to reverse course on his own findings rather than name the well-known secret that many psychologists, social workers, and police detectives know all too well: the shocking prevalence of father-daughter incest and acquaintance molestation, and the life-long consequences of this kind of abuse.

Several decades later, Freud was almost glib in his attempts to cover-up what he had found. Writing in his textbook, Introductory Lectures of Psychoanalysis in 1933 he said: “Almost all of my women patients told me that they had been seduced by their father. I was driven to recognize in the end that these reports were untrue and so came to understand that the hysterical symptoms are derived from phantasies and not from real occurrences . . . It was only later that I was able to recognize in this phantasy of being seduced by the father the expression of the typical Oedipus complex in women.”

It’s hard to put into words the horror of what the “father” of modern psychotherapy did to our collective ability to name and face trauma in our families. Freud actively collected the stories of child sexual abuse and incest survivors and then promoted a theory that it was actually the children who desired their fathers. He buried the truth of what was happening in the homes of the well-connected and the powerful, and he set the course for over a century of psychologists trained to downplay and belittle the stories of child sexual trauma survivors, especially if they implicated the fathers in a patriarchal society. But he was not the first, nor was he the last, psychologist who would do this kind of work —the damaging work of obscuring the truth of who was actually hurting children, all while claiming to protect them.

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In the 1950s America was starting to hear more and more terrifying stories of children who had been sexually abused. The FBI responded by putting out posters warning children to stay away from strangers. The National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime in 1997 describes how “the primary focus in the literature and discussions on sexual abuse of children was on ‘stranger danger’—the dirty old man in the wrinkled raincoat. If one could not deny the existence of child sexual abuse, one described victimization in simplistic terms of good and evil.” This method was incredibly popular in the 1950s and 60s because it soothed the minds of the public. Sexual abusers were painted as outsiders and social pariahs, preventing society from investigating abuse perpetrated by those within their own trusted communities. (4)

Over time, however, people slowly became aware of the truth that had been deemed unspeakable: the prevalence of intra-familial sexual violence. “By the 1980s child sexual abuse for many professionals had become almost synonymous with incest, and incest meant father-daughter sexual relations; therefore, the focus of child-sexual-abuse intervention and investigation turned to one-on-one, father-daughter incest,” wrote FBI special agent Kenneth Lannings. “We began to increasingly realize someone they know who is often a relative — a father, stepfather, uncle, grandfather, older brother, or even a female family member — sexually molests most children.” Slowly, society showed an increased awareness that most sexual abuse was not perpetrated by an unknown stranger, but by trusted adults in the lives of children.

With this understanding that abusers were often operating within plain sight, eventually the FBI added one more important category to their study of child sexual predators: acquaintance molestation. It became more and more apparent that there was a subset of serial child predators who sought access to children by seeking out respected positions in the community. The Boy Scouts, churches, sports leagues and more found themselves in the position of having to contend with a type of predator who sought out access to youth while being well-liked and well-known, and who abused large numbers of children if given the opportunity. (5)

But a true reckoning with this reality was cut short before it even gained widespread acceptance. In the 1990s cultural awareness returned to a focus on stranger danger, and alongside it, Satanic Panic — a now-debunked conspiracy — which again shifted the focus from intra-familial sexual violence and acquaintance molestation towards a stereotyped scapegoat. (6)

This turns out to be a common pattern regarding the issue of systematic child sexual exploitation: whenever people try to bring up the unspeakable reality of who is sexually abusing children, society reverts to beliefs that protect the powerful abusers who remain in good standing in communities. Like in Freud’s time, if abuse is most often perpetrated by prominent men who are at the center of a society, the systems in these communities will protect those in power. Instead of focusing on the family as a place of possible sexual, physical, and emotional violence against children, loud voices wove myths about stranger danger that caught on like wildfire: Satanic Panic, immigrants, drag queens, and queer folks. But the current statistics on the profiles of serial child sexual offenders paints a completely different reality than the one being constantly broadcast on FOX News.

The statistics (from the 1980s on) have shown a different pattern: Most child sexual assault materials (CSAM, commonly referred to as child pornography) are made by the child’s biological father or stepfather. Only 1% of CSAM are made by someone who is outside of the home of the child. The average serial child sexual predator is statistically most likely to be male, married or formerly married, identifies as religious, and seeks out positions where they can be around children, including Christian churches. They are often people who are well-liked in the community, and they most commonly abuse the children of family and friends. (7)

While these sobering statistics are well known to sexual crimes detectives, forensic psychologists and social workers — and have been for decades — the average person in America is not aware of these realities. In general society it is still considered taboo to identify that a married Christian husband and father is much more likely than a transgender person to sexually abuse children. Why is this? Is it simply because we find the truth so horrifying that it is unspeakable?

Or have there been people along the way who have done everything they can to hide the truth from us in order to protect those who abuse?

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In 1985, Dr. James Dobson took on a very different role than he had previously as the mild-mannered family life advice coach of Focus on the Family fame. He proudly joined Ronald Reagan’s administration to be a part of an investigation into the dangers of pornography on American society. His one year serving on the Meese Commission on Pornography (named for then Attorney General Edwin Meese) was a story Dobson pulled out time and time again in his books, on TV interviews, and on his radio show.(8) He alternately bragged about his important role in warning America about the dangers of pornography and bemoaned all the hours and hours of “research” of viewing pornography that he had to undertake in order to serve his country properly.

The entire Meese Commission on pornography is a fascinating subject in and of itself — examining issues of media access right at the dawn of the personal computer. First Amendment rights of free speech were under fire by religious conservatives, and liberals were worried that they would maintain and gain more power over the US. A member of the ACLU named Barry Lynn was doing his level best to garner media attention around the event and bring free speech issues to the forefront. James Dobson in particular hated Lynn, declaring that he was undoing all the good work the commission was undertaking. Lynn joined Dobson and the 10 other commission members at some of their field trips, including pornography shops and public hearings.

According to Lynn in his autobiography, “Dobson and (Catholic priest) Father Ritter were the most traditionally ‘religious’ members, often voicing their religious beliefs during business meetings.” Lynn goes on to write: “I was a little late to one afternoon session and found myself listening to a discussion, led by Ritter, of whether Michelangelo’s statue of David could be considered pornographic. By a narrow vote, the Commission decided the answer was “no.”(9)

Publications like the Washington Post found this juxtaposition of serious religious men deciding on what was or wasn’t pornographic on the taxpayers dime almost hilarious. To Dobson, however, it was all business. "We often worked 11 or 12 hours a day with a 30-minute lunch break and a very meager meal served because of the tight budgetary constraints," Dobson says. "We received no compensation. I haven't even received a refund for my expenses for some of the trips. At one point they were $1,500 behind on paying me and not in a terrible hurry about it. Let me tell you, it was all give." But he also liked to bring up the process of having to watch, catalogue, and identify various kinds of pornography. "There is a desensitization process that takes place," says Dobson. "The human mind has an incredible capacity to adapt to whatever is shocking in the beginning.” (10)

This would be a continued theme from this point out for James Dobson — the desensitizing and progressive nature of pornography. Dobson wrote and spoke often about how pornography incited a portion of the population to engage in incredible violence against women and children. The crowning moment of Dobson’s pet theory occurred in 1989 when he was granted the last interview with notorious serial killer Ted Bundy. Bundy, playing into Dobson’s theory, declared that pornography is what made him kill women. Dobson was thrilled, and sold exclusive videotapes (called Fatal Addiction) of his conversation with Bundy for a suggested donation of $25 to Focus on the Family. People close to Bundy and criminologists alike were all skeptical of Bundy’s deathbed confession. Bundy was a serial liar, so why believe him when it came to this point? But Dobson had no qualms about using this national tragedy to direct people to his work at Focus on the Family, where he said they were all about keeping children safe.

But if keeping children safe was Dobson’s true aim, why didn’t he use his large network and platform to educate and inform people about the realities of child sexual abuse? Why did he latch on to stories and narratives that blamed pornography (and eventually queer people) instead of encouraging parents to talk with their children about consent, bodily autonomy, and safe and unsafe adults?(11)

We know that Dr. James Dobson was aware of the true dangers facing children — serial child predators and intrafamilial incest — because this was one of the topics talked about extensively on the Meese Commission. In the section of the published report titled Child Pornography, they wrote: “this Commission . . . has devoted a very substantial proportion of its time and energy to examining the extent and nature of child pornography. Indeed, one set of the Commission's hearings was devoted almost entirely to the problem, while extensive oral and written testimony on the subject was received throughout the year.”(12)

In one example, Lois Harrington, assistant attorney general of the United States, told the commission: “contrary to the popular stereotypes the child molester is not a stranger wearing rumpled raincoats passing out candy to children on street corners. He is a generally known and trusted and loved adult who has cunningly sought employment with children so he will have a steady source of victims. Many people who truly love children want to be their teachers and their coaches and their school bus drivers. But unfortunately, so do those who seek to exploit a child’s unquestioning love to satisfy their perverted urges.”(13)

Mitch McConnell (yes, that Mitch McConnell), who testified as an expert on child sexual exploitation, made a point to identify the average profile of a pedophile to the commission: “He is most likely a middle-aged male living in the suburbs, married, [and] has children. This type of person is usually reasonably well-connected. The typical child molester is not some shiftless bum in a trench coat.” McConnell, who made a name for himself in the area of child protection before being elected to Congress in 1985, suggested much harsher sentences for child molesters, be they strangers or family members, due to the prolific nature of these types of abusers. As he told the commission: “Let me say that the child molester is five times, I repeat, five times more likely to repeat the crime than any other criminal. Here we are talking about a criminal activity in which the rate of recidivism is much more pronounced than virtually any other area of crime.”(14)

Dobson also heard testimony of a polygraph expert Detective William J. Phelps, who shared that he believed the sexual abuse of children was for many people, “the perfect crime,” in part because it was so underreported that there was a high likelihood of getting away with it. Phelps shared statistics that matched his findings: “The National Center for Child Abuse and Neglect showed that 1 out of 4 girls is sexually abused before age 18 and 1 out of 7 boys. The average age of the child abused was 11 . . . 80% of the abusers in the study were the child’s own parents.”(15)

Again and again the experts and victims who testified for hours in front of the Meese Commission focused in on the harms of child sexual assault materials, and the reality of who was creating these materials and sexually abusing children in the United States. Thousands of pages of testimony were submitted, and from FBI Detectives to feminist scholars to state senators, in the early 1980s there was a sense that the general population might finally be ready to have the conversation it had been dreading. Thanks to the feminist movement, abuses of all kinds were finally being addressed in the public square. As America struggled to think through the issues of pornography, free speech, the computer age, and child sexual exploitation, there was a sense of relief at finally looking at the issues in the light of day.

So why do we find ourselves here, in 2025, with almost no conversation, research, or discussions on the wide-spread problem of intra-familial sexual violence, father-daughter incest, or even acquaintance molestation? Why do the myths around stranger danger, queer people, and trans folks in bathrooms capture the public imagination in ways that do not match up to the reality of who is sexually abusing children in America?

Once again, we can look to popular psychologists for the answer. We can look to those who focused on replicating the patriarchal family in American society, and who did everything in their power to convince the American public that strangers were the real dangers to us all. We can look to the psychologists who heard the stories of harm, abuse, and incest repeatedly, and did nothing to stop it — and who in fact helped create the conditions where these abuses could thrive and flourish.

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As a part of the Meese Commission, Dobson penned a personal statement that addressed the issue of child pornography, writing: “I look back on this fourteen-month project as one of the most difficult, and gratifying, responsibilities of my life . . . sifting through huge volumes of offensive and legally obscene materials has not been a pleasant experience. Under other circumstances one would not willingly devote a year of his life to depictions of rape, incest, masturbation, mutilation, defecation, urination, child molestation and sadomasochistic activity.” He evidently was paying attention during many of the hearings, since he wrote: “fathers, step-fathers, uncles, teachers and neighbors find ways to secure photographs of the children in their care. They then sell or trade the pictures to fellow pedophiles.” Dobson then went on to describe in graphic detail some of the child sexual assault materials (CSAM) the commission was shown, positioning himself as a person who truly cared about women and children.16

Interestingly enough, he also made his personal case against legalizing any kind of pornography by stating “For a certain percentage of men, the use of pornographic material is addictive and progressive…it is my belief, though evidence is not easily obtained, that a small but dangerous minority will then choose to act aggressively against the nearest available females. Pornography is the theory; rape is the practice.” This was a stance Dobson taught over and over again: pornography made people act out their violent fantasies in real-life. This narrative created an us/them framework, between the religious community and broader culture (including sexual liberation movements), placing the threat of sexual abuse outside of religious communities. The Commission, however, could not find substantial enough evidence to support this claim that pornography directly contributed to sexual violence.

One of the people who testified multiple times to the Meese Commission was FBI Special Agent Kenneth Lannings. As a part of his work to educate the US government on the realities of who was sexually exploiting and abusing children, agents like Lanning had to become experts in identifying the profiles of people who abuse children. He testified before the Meese Commission in 1985 on pedophiles and started by explaining that this is a group of people who collects images, artifacts, and any materials that justify their obsessions: “a lot of this stuff they save and collect to validate their behavior, as a part of their attempt to convince themselves and others that they are really good people . . . and for that reason, they often collect academic and scientific material.” Lanning then went on to make a startling assertion, theorizing that that there were pedophiles in the room as he spoke:

“It is for that reason why, that in this audience today, there are probably pedophiles . . . any time there is a public presentation about this, you can be sure pedophiles will come. Because they want to hear what people are saying about them or what behavioral scientists are saying about them — they collect this kind of material.”17”

And Lanning turned out to be right. There was a pedophile, serving on that very commission, obsessed with the discussion of pornography and positioning himself as a beacon of moral authority and a champion of the heteronormative Christian family.

Within the year of the Meese Commission being published, Father Bruce Ritter — who was James Dobson’s fellow soldier in the patriarchal culture war — would be accused of sexually abusing at least 15 of the young boys he was in charge of at Covenant House.

The person to be worried about abusing children wasn’t a man in a trench coat, it turns out. But a man who was obsessed with appearing as a good and godly man, all while abusing the vulnerable children in his care.

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Read Part 2 of Purity Culture is Pedophile Culture here.

Read Part 3 here.

Read Part 4 here.

Many thanks to STRONGWILLED member Elizabeth Gonzalez, who was able to access and photograph transcripts from the Meese Commission hearing at the National Archives and Records Administration.

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Endnotes:

1. Lanning, Kenneth. Child Molesters, a Behavioral Analysis. Updated 2010. P 4. Accessed here.

2. Herman, Judith,Trauma and Recovery, p 1.

3. Ibid, p. 14

4. In 1997, the FBI put out information to combat the Satanic Panic era. In it, they write: “The FBI distributed a poster that epitomized this attitude. It showed a man, with his hat pulled down, hiding behind a tree with a bag of candy in his hands. He was waiting for a sweet little girl walking home from school alone. At the top it read, "Boys and Girls, color the page, memorize the rules." At the bottom it read, 'For your protection, remember to turn down gifts from strangers, and refuse rides offered by strangers."

5. Some organizations – like the Boy Scouts of America -- did contend with the prevalence of acquaintance molesters, often as the result of lawsuits, while others have ignored this reality.

6. Satanic Panic in many ways originated with the book Michelle Remembers written by a psychiatrist who married his former patient. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelle_Remembers

7. For more on these statistics, see our interview with R.L. Stoller.

8. Meese went on to have a cozy relationship with various conservative Christian political movements, serving as a trustee of the Heritage Foundation from 2017-2024

9. Lynn, Barry, Paid to Piss People Off: Porn (Book 2) p. 39.

10. https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1986/06/07/descent-into-the-world-of-porn/f1b783a9-93cc-4911-89b4-3e367748b4b8/

11. We know one reason why Dobson and other Religious Authoritarian Parenting experts did not teach about consent or bodily autonomy is because that would negate the entire structure of corporal punishment. For more on this topic, please see Chapter 15 of the STRONGWILLED project entitled A Recipe for Abuse

12. Attorney General’s Commission on Pornography Final Report Part 1 (1986). P. 405 Accessed Here.

13. Transcript of proceedings United States Department of Justice Meeting of the Attorney General’s Commission on Pornography Volume II. Washington DC, June 19^th 1985. P. 12

14. Ibid, Pp. 56-57

15. Transcript of proceedings United States Department of Justice Meeting of the Attorney General’s Commission on Pornography Volume II. Miami, November 19^th 1985 p. 284.

16. To read more, see Dobson’s personal statement, page 76 of part 1 of the Meese report

17. Transcript of proceedings United States Department of Justice Meeting of the Attorney General’s Commission on Pornography Volume II. Miami, November 19^th 1985 p. 236