Miranda Galbreath, a licensed professional counselor who provides evaluations and treatment to sex offenders in prison and in her community, called for the destigmatizing of pedophiles in a YouTube video posted in July.
Galbreath, who is a member of the American Association of Sexuality Educators, Counselors, and Therapists (AASECT), called pedophiles “minor-attracted persons,” claiming they are “probably the most vilified population of folks in our culture” in the video.
“Most folks are making incorrect assumptions about them [pedophiles] without actually knowing much about them, and those assumptions create harm for an already marginalized population,” Galbreath said. (RELATED: Left-Wing Activists Urge Big Tech To Censor Anti-Pedophile ‘Smear’)
“You may have noticed that I’m using the term ‘minor-attracted persons,’ sometimes abbreviated to MAPs, instead of the more commonly used term pedophile. And I’m doing this because the term pedophile has moved from being a diagnostic label to being a judgmental hurtful insult that we hurl at people in order to harm them or slander them,” she continued.
Galbreath claimed pedophiles do not “choose” to be attracted to children.
“They’ve not chosen this attraction, just as the rest of us have not chosen whatever our attraction is. You don’t choose to be heterosexual, or to be gay, or whatever you are, and you don’t get to choose to be a minor-attracted person.”
Galbreath also claimed there is a distinction between being sexually attracted to children and molesting children.
“Just like all the rest of us, acting on an attraction is a choice that we make,” she said.
Galbreath bemoaned the fact that there isn’t a lot of research on pedophiles, claiming this is due to false stigma attached to people who want to have sex with children.
🚨 Licensed counselor and sex therapist advocates for “MAPs” (minor attracted persons). She says they are “vilified” and “marginalized” and shouldn’t be referred to as pedophiles pic.twitter.com/Fu5PVF7uwY
— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) August 10, 2022
“We unfortunately do not have a lot of good research on minor-attracted folks because the label is so stigmatizing that most of these folks do not feel safe to come forward to participate in research or seek support when they need it,” she continued.
“Most of these folks hide their attraction for fear of losing their entire life if they came out as a minor-attracted person. They risk losing their family, their friends, their job, and their safety in the community if people knew of their attraction,” Galbreath said.