by

JC Schildbach, LMHC

Okay, let me walk that title back a bit. I don’t really care if you call Roy Moore a pedophile, it’s just that he’s not a pedophile.

Okay, let me walk that back a bit. It’s impossible to prove a negative. It’s just that nothing Roy Moore has done suggests he’s a pedophile.

What Roy Moore has done suggests he’s a hebephile…or maybe an ephebophile.

I don’t think I really need to walk anything back there…I mean, as far as speaking in terms of what Moore has done vs. what he’s been accused of.  Done is almost certainly the more accurate term.

At any rate, what Roy Moore did indicates that he’s a not a pedophile, but rather a hebephile or ephebophile—which are just terms of gradation for those attracted to particular age groups/age traits. That is, hebephiles are attracted to pre-teens and teens, who are at least showing the beginnings of adolescence/development of secondary sexual characteristics, while ephebophiles are attracted to teens who are more obviously sexually developed, but not considered adults.

Judge, Senate Candidate, and (Accused) Pedophile Hebephile Roy Moore.

There are clinical, and perhaps legal, reasons to make the above distinctions in attraction. For instance, Roy Moore’s creepy behavior of hanging around his local mall to try and pick up teenage girls wouldn’t necessarily translate into concerns that he might try to sexually abuse kindergartners, but it would certainly lead to sensible precautions like keeping him away from the mall…and the local high school…and the local middle school…and teenage girls in general.  And, were he to land in sex offender treatment, he would generally be kept away from all minors.

But Moore’s ‘interest’ in teenage girls also potentially suggests redirection of that interest to more age-appropriate, even peer-age, women is less of a stretch than it would be if he was attracted to much younger children. That Moore’s most egregiously inappropriate and violent behavior toward teen girls seems (at least as far as we know) to have ended after he got married to a woman 14 years his junior, when he was 38, indicates he may have been able to at least point his sexual ‘attention’ toward an adult/adults.  That is to say nothing of his apparent need to assert his power in situations where he’s been told ‘no’–whether that ‘no’ is coming from a higher-court judge or a high school girl.

Of course Moore’s supporters have used age-of-consent laws to point out that (all but one of) his accuser’s were legally able to consent to sex in the state of Alabama at the time he stalked, or groped, or attempted to force them to engage in forms of physical/sexual contact they didn’t want.

Unfortunately for Moore and his backers, age of consent laws don’t really apply when there is no consent. The absence of consent is ultimately the problem with each and every one of his actions toward his victims—their ages adding further to the disturbing nature of the crimes.

At any rate, if you are concerned with the accuracy of your accusations, don’t call Roy Moore a pedophile. Call him a hebephile, or ephebophile instead. I think there’s ample evidence to apply either of those terms, with hebephile being the more damning, but possibly less accurate, of the two.

Other terms that appear to fit the bill for Roy Moore include sexual predator, sexual assault perpetrator, would-be-rapist, sex offender, and sexual abuser. Child molester still essentially fits the bill, since teens 17 and under are legally considered children. Teen molester certainly works.

If you want to ensure the complete accuracy of any of the terms mentioned above, you can add modifiers like “alleged” or “accused.”

And, really, go ahead and call him a pedophile if you want. But, hey, if you want to make sure some right wing, child-molester-defending troll isn’t going to call you a “moran” who needs to look up the definition of “pedophile”, address the honorable Judge Moore as a hebephile instead.