Old Dominion University criminal justice professor defends pedophilia

An assistant professor at Old Dominion University in Virginia is actively and publicly defending sexual attraction to children, and recently published a book regarding pedophiles’ ‘pursuit of dignity.’

Allyn Walker, a sociology and criminal justice assistant professor and female-to-male transgender person, said in an interview with the Prostasia Foundation that “Minor-Attracted Persons” ought to be understood and accepted by the public.

Protasia is a non-profit that claims to protect children with an approach that “combines [its] zero tolerance of child sexual abuse with [its] commitment to human and civil rights and sex positivity.” One of Protasia’s main advocacy efforts is its fight against laws that ban sex dolls designed to look like children.

“A lot of people when they hear the term pedophile, they automatically assume that it means a sex offender. And that isn’t true,” Walker explained. “And it leads to a lot of misconceptions about attractions toward minors.”

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“I’ve definitely heard the idea that you brought up though that the use of the term ‘minor attracted person’ suggests that it’s okay to be attracted to children. But using a term that communicates who someone is attracted to doesn’t indicate anything about the morality of that attraction,” Walker said. 

“From my perspective, there is no morality or immorality attached to attraction to anyone because no one can control who they’re attracted to at all,” Walker continued. “In other words, it’s not who we’re attracted to that’s either okay or not, okay. It’s our behaviors and responding to that attraction that are either okay or not okay.”

In June, Walker published a book A Long, Dark Shadow: Minor-Attracted People and Their Pursuit of Dignity, which likewise argued that “understandings about this population have been shadowed by moral panic” — and that “these misconceptions simultaneously place children at risk of harm.”

For instance, Walker argues that the assertion “All People Who Are Attracted to Minors Are Pedophiles” is erroneous because “overgeneralizing and referring to individuals who are attracted to minors as pedophiles further promotes misunderstanding about this population, pulling us toward our colloquial understandings of ‘pedophiles’ as child molesters.”

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In both her interview and book, Walker highlights the work of B4U-ACT — a coalition of mental health professionals and “people who are attracted to children” seeking to provide the latter group with “compassionate assistance in dealing with the difficulties of living in society with an attraction to minors.”

Campus Reform reached out to Walker and Old Dominion University for comment; this article will be updated accordingly.