view. Some years ago the police of a certain large town were
informed that "child-lovers" haunted a particular place. It appears that
here the children were in the habit of swinging on a chain suspended
between two pillars, and that the watchers waited to catch a glimpse of
the children's genital organs, or merely of their bare legs, when their
petticoats flew up occasionally in the act of swinging. Many paedophiles
become sexually excited at the mere sight of children sympathetic to
them. In other cases, by no means rare, men experience sexual excitement
whenever they see a little girl with short petticoats; these men will
follow such little girls all over the place, without, as a rule,
speaking to them or interfering with them in any way, being withheld
from doing so either by the fear of punishment or by moral restraint. To
many the mere sight of the child appears to afford sufficient sexual
gratification; and to others the simple contact of their hands with the
child suffices, and nothing more is attempted. But, in other cases,
handling the child's genital organs plays the chief part, frequently
because the offender can himself obtain sexual gratification only
through inducing sexual excitement in the child and watching this
excitement. Sometimes, however, the offender has no interest in the
child's genital organs; far from being excited sexually by regarding or
handling these organs, he may even find them repulsive; but in such
cases the sight of general nakedness often induces sexual excitement.
This is often associated with sadistic feelings, and this alike in men
and in women. In other cases, a woman will make attempts at coitus with
a little boy, having first induced erection of his penis by manipulating
the organ, by tickling it, or in some other way. Finally, there are
cases in which all kinds of other actions are performed. To the more
complex perversions I shall return. Here I shall only point out that
children may sometimes be utilised for the wildest orgies. A case was
formerly published by Tardieu, in which servant-maids in conjunction
with their lovers carried out with the children under their care all
sorts of perverse acts: cunnilinctus, masturbation, the introduction of
various objects into the vagina and the anus. Finally, it may be pointed
out that in the lack of an object, the paedophile will naturally satisfy
himself with the aid of imaginative ideas, masturbating the while, or he
may be content wi