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Why do people believe that all MAPs are doomed to offend? Many people find it hard to separate two concepts: 'a person sexually attracted to children' and 'a non-offender'.
When presented with the idea that these are separate things, people often resort to saying that everyone with the attraction will eventually offend anyway.
The person then doesn't have to grapple with the implications of the existence of non-offending pedophiles.
What is the fallacy?
The idea that anyone who is sexually attracted to children will inevitably offend, either by physically abusing a child, by interacting sexually with one online or by use of illegal material.
What makes it false?
The fact that some people with attractions to children make it through their whole lives without abusing a child. Others make it through a lifetime without other offences too. This is something we know anecdotally, but don't have systematic evidence of.
To disprove a statement that begins "all pedophiles...", there only needs to be one exception in order to disprove it, and we have evidence that there is at least one such case.
Therefore there is not enough evidence to make the statement. It is based only on prejudice.
Why do people believe it?
It is hard to know where this fallacy comes from, other than a common desire to accuse a group you don't like of crimes because it makes it easier to justify your dislike of them.
The fallacy persists, because if people contradict it, they are seen as being more sympathetic to the "criminal" group (even when the group are not actually criminals). The stigma is used against the target group and then is easily transferred to anyone who points out the target group is not universally guilty.
Is any part of it true?
The key part that is true is the fact that the opposite is not true. If somebody said "people with attractions to children are destined never to offend" this would be false, as many do offend.
Since the second one is clearly false and also outrageous, people are comfortable sticking with the first, which is a very common belief and unlikely to be challenged. They may also prefer to believe it is fairer to potential victims to begin with suspicion of anybody who says something that suggests they have the attraction.
However, something's opposite being false does not make it true.
What if it were true?
If it were true, a great deal more attention would be given to research that can identify the potential for pedophile attraction so that if it is detectable before birth or at some point in childhood, such people could be managed as a known and predictable risk. We do not do this because we implicitly accept there is not a specific, known risk level for people with this attraction.
It is hard to reconcile a society that "cares about abuse" as being the same society that maintains mandatory secrecy for the people it assumes do the abusing. It seems more likely that people in charge of policy have an implicit understanding that it is not reasonable to classify whole groups as criminals and worthy of punishment or restraint simply because of their membership of a group.
What would it take to get people to stop believing it?
Despite the fact that a single case ought to be enough to show the fallacy, the bar is high to prove even this negative.
For people to accept that a single person with the attraction had gone their entire life without an offence, it would be necessary for one person to be closely observed throughout their life to ensure that there was never an offence, and that if there were an offence, that person could not realistically lie about it. This would require a total lack of privacy for that person which would not be proportionate or practical.
If such a study concluded that the person had died without ever offending, people would likely shift to a new fallacy: "this person didn't, but the overwhelming majority do!"
For people to stop believing that, it would require a full and verifiable long-term study of a very large number of people with the attraction, tracking in each case whether they offended. This would be an impractical study to undertake, and would involve more disproportionate invasion of privacy.
However, there is no evidence base for the fallacy either. There is no study that tracks everybody with the attraction and "proves" that all of them at some point offend. This is for the same reasons that the studies above do not exist.
The only other way to tackle the fallacy is to point out that the same doubt about legal behaviour could be applied to any other population, and this would be unfair. In the past many people have believed that certain ethnic groups were "all criminals" and this is now rightly seen as a false generalisation based on dislike of the group rather than evidence.
Even if you believe that sexual attraction groups are different, it is not reasonable to suppose illegal behaviour is inevitable based on any other sexual attraction pattern, even where there is potential illegal behaviour (e.g. rape) attached to it. In fact, if you argued "all heterosexual men are doomed to rape", people would criticise you for denying that straight men could choose not to rape.
Even if you believe that pedophiles, by their very nature, have a higher risk of sexually offending than people with other sexual attraction patterns (because they have few other potential outlets), then the generalisation is still based only on the offending that is reported, versus the non-offending that is not.
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