Two varieties constitute the great majority of homosexual offenders vs. minors. Accounting for between one third and one half is the hebephile, the man who is sexually interested in boys ranging from puberty to their middle teens. The hebephile males are almost always more homosexual than heterosexual and also they often have retreated from adult homosexual competition by turning to boys. This is evident in the reasons they gave for their sexual interest in boys: that boys were more readily available, less demanding and less critical, and more easily dominated. Another common reason given was that boys are more responsive and uninhibited than men. This reason, while generally valid, incorporates the idea of maximal gain for minimal effort: the offender is not obliged to do much in order to evoke strong sexual response. Lastly, some men mentioned cleanliness as a reason for their preferring boys. Since boys in our culture are scarcely notable for cleanliness, we believe the men were referring to body odor and to the lesser likelihood of venereal diseases.
At one time we thought that the attraction of the boys might lie in their feminine attributes: lack of body hair, softer contours, higher voice, etc. This hypothesis seems to hold true for only a minority of offenders. Most of the men said that they preferred masculine-looking partners.
A fairly typical example of the hebephile variety was a man who was nearly fifty when we interviewed him, and who had been exclusively homosexual for many years. In childhood he had engaged in both heterosexual and homosexual play, but the former died out while the latter continued without a break into adult life. He seems to have fixated on a particular age of partner, thereby gradually becoming a hebephile as he himself grew older. This is evident in a listing of his “love affairs”—intense homosexual attachments. When he was fifteen he loved a boy of the same age; at seventeen he loved a boy of thirteen; at thirty his affection centered on a youth of fifteen; at forty-four he again fell in love with a thirteen-year-old; and so forth. The man gave the classic reasons for his preference: boys were easier to obtain than adults, they looked up to him, they were easier to dominate, and he felt more at ease with them than with adults.
The second commonest variety of homosexual offender vs. minors is hard to label. It consists of men who are usually primarily homosexual with other adult males, but who sometimes will have sexual activity with boys. These exceptions to the rule in some cases represent lapses of normal judgment and control in the face of temptation, just as a heterosexual man may become an offender vs. minors, while in others the offender is more like the amoral delinquent in his indifference to age.
Perhaps as many as 10 per cent of the cases of homosexual offenders vs. minors may be categorized as of the drunken variety: cases of a homosexual male, when intoxicated and not in control of his impulses, seeking contact with minors whom he would shun when sober.
After subtracting the two major varieties of homosexual offenders vs. minors and also the drunken variety, there remains a few per cent of recognizable varieties: the mental defective, the senile deteriorate, the amoral delinquent, the pedophile, etc.
*197\161\2*
