Posted on 03/05/2002 2:23:35 PM PST by MizSterious
Kidnap case opens doors to a secret world built on sexual fantasy
By Anne Krueger
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
March 3, 2002
David Westerfield is a twice-divorced design engineer who was little noticed in his suburban Sabre Springs neighborhood except when he washed his motor home or repaired cars in his driveway.
Yet, prosecutors say, Westerfield had another side that none of his neighbors knew about. Police searching his home in connection with the disappearance of 7-year-old Danielle van Dam say they found child pornography. Officials say Westerfield kidnapped Danielle for sexual purposes, then killed her.
Danielle's body was discovered Wednesday in Dehesa. Westerfield, who lived two doors away from the van Dams, is in jail without bail, charged with murder, kidnapping and possession of child pornography.
Could Westerfield, 50, have been a pedophile who hid his sexual interest in children for years?
Experts say that pedophilia is a lifelong condition that most try to keep secret because of the shame and stigma associated with it.
No one knows how many pedophiles there are because no large-scale surveys have been done. And, because most never act on their sexual fantasies, researching the issue is problematic.
"If they don't act out and don't get caught, it's unlikely that people will know they are pedophiles," said David Finkelhor, director of the Crimes Against Children Research Center at the University of New Hampshire.
Sometimes, though, the urge becomes too overwhelming or pressures build too high.
"Occasionally we do see people who have been law-abiding pedophiles for years who suddenly commit an offense due to overwhelming stress," said Park Dietz, a Newport Beach forensic psychiatrist who has conducted numerous studies on sex offenders and who is frequently an expert witness in such cases. Dietz emphasized that he was not talking specifically about Westerfield's case.
Dietz said a sexual interest in children usually develops in early adolescence, and is a sexual orientation just like an interest in men or women. Pedophiles can be attracted to either boys or girls. Virtually all known pedophiles are male, but they share few characteristics in common other than that.
Some are married, but most are not. Pedophiles tend to be somewhat socially isolated, with few adult friends, Dietz notes, but even that is only a weak indicator for pedophiles.
"The only tremendously strong characteristic is wanting to be around children," he said. "Normal adults, particularly men, don't want to be around other people's children unless they're being paid for it."
Pedophiles can come from all classes of society. Recent child molestation cases in San Diego County have involved a physician, a children's counselor, an electrician, an advertising salesman, a pastor and a former Navy pilot.
Pedophilia is classified as a mental disorder characterized by sexual fantasies or urges involving children younger than 13. Some pedophiles prefer boys or girls in a particular age range.
A slaying of a child by a pedophile is extremely rare, said psychologist Fred Berlin, founder of the Sex Disorders Clinic at Johns Hopkins University and one of the nation's leading experts on pedophilia.
"The overwhelming majority of people with pedophilia are not murderers," he said. "There's no higher frequency among pedophiles than among the general population."
Finkelhor said pedophiles often befriend their young victims rather than abduct them.
"The people who abduct are the kinds of pedophiles who don't seem to have the social skills that would give them access to kids. They resort to this more coercive strategy for fulfilling their desires," he said. "Frequently they murder the children as a way to try to keep them quiet."
The Internet has drastically changed the way pedophiles operate. Now they can use computers to download pornographic pictures, make contact with other pedophiles and lure young children through Internet chat rooms.
"The Internet is putting (child pornography) in a very readily available location," Berlin said. "They can access material in a way they had not been able to do before."
Berlin said pedophiles who otherwise wouldn't have access to child pornography may be more likely to get it from the Internet because of the ease of obtaining it in their own home.
But, he cautioned, "lots of people will look at pictures and won't go out and kidnap and murder a child."
NAMBLA's dream shrink. Herein lies the seed of the lie that will be watered for a few more years and blossom into a new protected class of people who will parade in the streets - taking pride in their shame.
Huh?
"The only tremendously strong characteristic is wanting to be around children, normal adults, particularly men, don't want to be around other people's children unless they're being paid for it."Meaning only approved by-the-government care workers can oversee children, no Little League coaches, no soccer league coaches, no Cub or Boy Scout MALE leaders, etc. etc.
No one knows how many pedophiles there are because no large-scale surveys have been done. And, because most never act on their sexual fantasies, researching the issue is problematic.Problematic, but gee golly, they know they are out there -- everywhere!
Danielle van Dam — Victim of "Alternative Lifestyles?" by Chris Weinkopf (Pt. 1)
FrontPageMagazine.com ( www.frontpagemag.com/columnists/weinkopf/2002/cw02-13-02.htm) | February 13, 2002
MAYBE, JUST MAYBE it was a total stranger who abducted seven-year-old Danielle van Dam from her San Diego home almost two weeks ago. Some thug could have picked her parents’ house at random and snuck in during the middle of the night, evading detection despite the home-security system. Somehow, the intruder could have found his way up to Danielle’s bedroom and removed her against her will—again, without being noticed. Then again, maybe not......
The practical realities and crime statistics—less than 1 percent of the 800,000 children reported missing in the U.S. last year were abducted by someone unconnected to the family—suggest otherwise. Yet to judge by the initial coverage of Danielle’s disappearance on national TV, one would think her kidnapping had to be the exception to the rule.
The story, as first told on The Today Show, Good Morning America, The Early Show, Larry King Live, and America's Most Wanted, mirrored the account of Danielle’s parents, Brenda and Damon: Brenda was out partying that Friday night with friends at a San Diego nightspot. Damon put the kids to bed around 10. Brenda and her pals showed up around 2:30 and joined Damon for some pizza. The friends then left, and Brenda and Damon went to bed without first checking in on their daughter. They didn’t discover that she was missing until 9 a.m. Saturday morning. As usual, the story behind the story has been available mostly outside the establishment media—on the Internet and talk radio.
Last Friday, San Diego talk-show host Rick Roberts presented his listeners with an alternative scenario for what might have happened. According to his "reliable" source "high in law enforcement," the van Dams are "swingers," and not in the dancing sense. They engage in "lots of wife-swapping," and reportedly did so in their garage the night Danielle disappeared. According to rumors circulating like mad on local talk shows and Internet bulletin boards, the van Dams lock their garage from the inside during their swingers’ parties to make sure Danielle and her two brothers don’t stumble in on the festivities.
That would explain why the van Dams might have failed to notice an intruder breaking into their home and walking off with their child. It also provides a motive for neighbor David Westerfield, the only suspect thus far identified by San Diego police. According to the rumors—which are, it should be noted, only that—Westerfield was a frustrated, would-be swinger who wanted to attend the van Dams’ soirees, but was denied admission for lack of a partner.
There’s more to the Westerfield angle: He saw Mrs. van Dam at the bar earlier in the evening, where, he claims, they danced (which she denies). He also high-tailed it out of San Diego and into the desert the next morning, which was enough to make police suspicious. So far, they have searched his home, where they found child pornography, and seized two of his vehicles, but they haven’t sought his arrest.
It’s easy to speculate by connecting the dots: At the nightclub, Westerfield might have learned about the orgy planned later in the evening. Mindful that Danielle’s parents would be distracted, he could have used the opportunity to sneak into their home and take her, thereby satisfying his perverted sexual appetites and exacting revenge against the van Dams for not including him in theirs.
This is another psychologist who should loose his license. I suppose his general population is made up solely of rapists and other perverted psychopaths. Saying child molesters aren't any likelier than the general population to be murderers is like saying that used car salesmen aren't any likelier than the general population to lie.
It’s just a theory, and it’s rooted purely in conjecture, but it’s also the best lead available so far, which raises a worthwhile question: Why have so many in the press, the national TV media in particular, been reluctant to pursue it?
Surely it’s not just that the stories are unsubstantiated. That, after all, never kept the media from investigating claims of Nicole Brown Simpson’s drug use, the basis of O.J. defenders’ absurd charge that drug lords were "the real killer."
For their part, the van Dams have yet to deny the innuendos categorically. Asked about the alleged swinging on a San Diego TV station, Mrs. van Dam replied that "rumors are rumors," and "they have absolutely nothing to do with this investigation." Newsweek, one of few national media outlets that’s questioned the van Dams’ telling of events, quotes their spokeswoman, Sara Fraunces, as issuing the classic non-denial denial: The van Dams "do not lead a perfect lifestyle," she said, but that’s immaterial to the matter at hand.
Fraunces no doubt chose her words carefully. In the last 35 years, the term "lifestyle" has become not only the code word for any sort of sexual deviance, but also the quick way to claim a certain immunity from inconvenient questioning about it. This is the same logic Bill Clinton and his defenders used to rationalize perjury and lying to the American public, because it was "just about sex." For Gary Condit, it justified denying his affair to Washington police. His lifestyle took precedence over their duty to find Chandra Levy, dead or alive.
Like the "right to privacy" (a term invoked almost exclusively in sexual matters), the "lifestyle" claim is an appeal to the sexual revolution and its promise of an uninhibited sex life free of all responsibilities and moral judgment. It supersedes even laws, justice, or, in the case of Danielle van Dam and others, human life. To many of the reporters covering the van Dam story, the couple’s right to privacy similarly transcends the need for a complete and thorough investigation of their daughter’s disappearance.
But the couple’s "personal life" is a legitimate subject of inquiry, and not just for investigators. With their appeals to the press and calls for volunteers to help look for Danielle, the van Dams have made the investigation into their daughter’s kidnapping a very public affair. Privacy concerns should keep neither police nor reporters from pursuing all viable leads—certainly not when there’s a chance Danielle may still be alive.
It may be, as Mrs. van Dam claims, that Danielle’s abduction has nothing to do with her parents’ sexual predilections, but at this point, there’s no way for the van Dams to know that for sure. If they are lying about that Friday night’s events, then their credibility on all matters must be called into doubt. And even if they are telling the truth about that night, but they hosted sex parties in their home on others, that could yield a long list of potential suspects—people with unhealthy sexual behaviors who know the lay of the house.
The fetishization of "privacy" shouldn’t keep the van Dams from being forthright, or preclude the press from doing its job. The life of a little girl is at stake.
Yes, if pedophiles develop this urge in early childhood, I seriously doubt that someone would be able to sublimate those urges to the age of 50.
Now they can use computers to download pornographic pictures, make contact with other pedophiles
The same technology that allows this to be done also allows sting operations to be set up. I hope we're doing that... using the internet to sting these creeps.
sw
This is not true. I know of at least one lesbian who was acted out sexually on girls.
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