Congratulations to Simon Fraser University graduate/past B4U-ACT workshop attendee Carin Freimond on the successful completion of her Master’s thesis, Navigating the Stigma of Pedophilia, which features the testimony of MAPs recruited with B4U-ACT’s help.

On October 5, 2013, Co-Founder and Board Chair Russell Dick, LCSW, served as a panelist for a workshop sponsored by the Eastern Pennsylvania Conference of the United Methodist Church, part of an all-day symposium focusing on social and political issues.  Sharing the panel with a YWCA counselor as well as a member of B4U-ACT’s own “Family & Friends of MAPs” online support group, Russell discussed society’s punitive mindset toward MAPs, emphasizing how the negative effects of stigma frequently prevent MAPs from seeking mental health services in advance of crisis situations, drawing particular attention to the dearth of guidance and support for adolescents — possibly within their own communities and congregations — grappling in secret with emergent sexual attractions to younger children. Eighty to 100% of attendees evaluated the panelists as “Excellent” or “Good” in addressing their objectives.

The two surveys that B4U-ACT completed and published on our website (click here) were among the 11 studies related to the stigmatization of MAPs that were reviewed in a  recent article published in the International Journal of Sexual Health, entitled “Stigmatization of People with Pedophilia: A Blind Spot in Stigma Research.” The article discusses “the need for more theory-driven, rigorous, and representative empirical studies and propose[s] perspectives and requirements for the scientific study of stigma against people with pedophilia.”

Researchers at Albert Einstein College of Medicine are continuing their study, developed in cooperation with B4U-ACT, of a non-forensic sample of MAPs.