Article: To protect their children, parents urged to understand pedophilia.(Knight Ridder Newspapers)

Dr. Fred Berlin, a psychiatrist who founded the Sexual Disorders Clinic at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in Baltimore, wants you to do something very difficult.

He wants you to understand pedophilia. For your children's sake.

"One of the least understood things is nobody has pedophilia out of choice," Berlin says. "It's someone who discovers he has a terrible affliction."

A pedophile is someone whose primary sexual attraction is to prepubescent children _ a condition that's anathema to most adults.

But Berlin and others say that unless the public understands that pedophilia is an illness, our public policy will continue to be ...

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