Pedophile hunter: why no reform, how to protect

Retired police colonel and former head of the children«s department of the Main Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs for St. Petersburg and Leningrad Oblast, Alexei Rodin, spent 22 years solving crimes against children and knows the psychology and techniques of serial pedophiles well. It is unlikely they can surprise him anymore. Fontanka spoke with him while the whole city was searching for missing 9-year-old Pavlik — in broad daylight in a crowded place under the watch of many cameras. The questions for the expert were the most »layman«s»: how is this possible, why aren«t pedophiles afraid of surveillance, and what really helps save children — long sentences, total control, or talking to a child about screaming and running away.

— Unfortunately, there are enough such scoundrels, and they can in no way be justified. One cannot say: «Well, he»s a sick person, he needs treatment«...

— Here, most likely, we are dealing with a so-called situational crime. A person sits in a car, smokes or eats a hamburger, and at some point a child approaches him: to ask for money, food, help. What was originally embedded in him kicks in — genetic pedophilia. Yes, it is a disease, but it is incurable. And the punishment will be not for the disease itself, but for the specific crime. He might have never committed such acts before, might have known nothing about himself — but in that particular situation, his desire spikes, and he starts luring the child: «Get in, I»ll give you money, buy you food, give you a ride.«

After the interview was published, it became known about the arrest of the kidnapper and murderer of 9-year-old Pasha. The boy«s body was found in one of the lakes of Leningrad Oblast.

— In most such cases — no. It«s not a story where for a week they choose a route, avoid cameras, prepare a car and cover stories. If a person wanted specifically to kidnap a child, he would act differently: choose a place without cameras, without extra witnesses, consider dozens of factors. Here it is precisely about a situational crime: a minute ago he wasn»t sure he would do it, and a minute later he is already putting the child in the car. In the moment, he doesn«t think about cameras or consequences.

— Because at the moment of realizing his desire, his brain shuts off. Conditionally: he sits and does not plan a crime. A child appears, a trigger appears, and then it«s not calculation but pathological attraction that takes over. He doesn»t sit with a risk calculator. He sees the child and a situation in which he can realize the fantasy. The fact that his license plate is clearly visible on dozens of cameras, that he will be identified in a few hours — he remembers that later, when it«s too late.

— In my practice, there are many people who were indeed born pedophiles. It«s not about »he lived poorly, someone corrupted him.« The person himself says: »I remember myself this way always.« He may try to »keep himself in check,« may feel shame, but that does not remove the attraction. One convict told me directly: »I served 19 years and all those 19 years I dreamed of only one thing — to get out and start committing the same acts again.« This is not a figure of speech; it»s a literal internal mindset.

— No. Both 20 years ago and 300 years ago, they were the same. Technology changes, cameras and databases appear, but the nature of these people does not change. They are monsters drawn to children, and as long as they are alive and free, the risk of recidivism is monstrously high. I have observed dozens of cases where a person served 15–20 years, was released — and within a few months returned to the same. Not because «they were poorly rehabilitated,» but because nothing changed inside them.

— To be honest — in the case of pedophiles, no. Prison in these cases works not as a tool of reform, but as a tool of isolation. While a person is imprisoned, he does not commit crimes on the outside. As soon as he is released, in the vast majority of cases, the urge does not go away. He may fear returning to prison, may become smarter, more cautious, but not a «law-abiding citizen.» This is not a question of morality, but of psychiatry and biology.

— Theoretically, one can imagine isolated cases where a person himself realizes the danger, fears causing harm, and tries to seek help. If a psychologist or psychiatrist could truly bring a person out of this state — one would have to pray for such a specialist. But in my experience, no real pedophile comes to a doctor himself: he understands that he might be reported to the police, he fears losing freedom.

Parents sometimes bring adolescent children with cruel behavior, with sadism towards animals — that«s a separate story. But an adult pedophile: »cure me, please« — I have not seen that.

— For public safety, the answer is simple: maximum long sentences. The longer a person is in prison, the less time he has free to commit new crimes. Follow the logic: each year of freedom for such a criminal is potential new episodes. So if choosing where to invest resources, I would first seek to toughen the practice of punishment and control over such convicts, rather than try to build a system of caring psychological support around them.

— There are two key skills: to be able to scream loudly and to be able to run towards people. And this is not a cliché, but a real survival factor. In my practice, there have been hundreds of cases where a child avoided the worst precisely because he screamed, broke free, and ran to people.

— Most children — no. They are indeed taught not to make noise: «Don»t scream, don«t embarrass yourself.» So the parent«s task is to specifically state: there is a situation where screaming loudly is possible and necessary. If someone is dragging you, persuading you to go somewhere, grabbing your hand — you have every right to scream as if a fire has started. You literally need to allow the child to be »inconvenient,« »impolite,« to behave badly — when it comes to his safety.

— Exactly about these screams, running, escaping, that you shouldn«t stare at this scoundrel like a rabbit at a boa constrictor, because that»s what they want, they want to dominate. They are insignificant people, insignificant men, and he wants to be the general here. So screams, yelling, scratching, something else… that«s not what he needs.

And he will get scared and run away. Someone might say: «But what if he kills me?» — «Well, he will kill you anyway.» But this way you still have a chance to stay alive.

It«s like if you are thrown into water and you try to swim out, you have a chance. But if you just swallow water and go down, then you definitely won»t swim out. Well, roughly about this I would talk to children. What more can you tell them. It goes in one ear and out the other. The main thing here is to constantly drill it into them. They are like train cars. And the main thing is the locomotive — throw fuel into the locomotive so it can move.

— In a sense, yes. I would directly act out situations with them: a «nice uncle» approaches you, offers something, asks for help, invites you somewhere — and we practice the correct reaction together. Don«t agree, don»t go, and if pressure continues — scream and run towards people. Children should have not only a set of words but also bodily experience: they have already screamed once in a «training» situation, it is familiar to them, not as scary.

— Any normal child can be deceived. A psychologist, teacher, coach — any adult who understands child psychology a little can easily choose the right story. «Mom is in the hospital, let»s go quickly,« »a puppy fell,« »we need to help a girl« — there are dozens of such scenarios. So it»s important not to try to teach a child to recognize all possible «stories» in advance, but to instill a simple rule: never go anywhere with unfamiliar or little-known adults, no matter how nicely they speak. And if someone is dragging you somewhere — scream and run.

— This is the most difficult topic. For a child, a coach or teacher is almost a demigod. Especially in families where the father drinks, beats the mother, or is absent. A successful, strong, charismatic coach very easily becomes a figure of trust for a teenager. If such a coach has pedophilic tendencies, he has an almost ideal situation: access to children, authority, closed spaces. For years and decades, no one may notice anything, and children are afraid to speak. There is only one protection here: trusting relationships in the family and the willingness of an adult to believe the child and go all the way if he tells about abuse.

— All manifestations of pedophilia are put under the control of the leadership of the police, the Investigative Committee, and personally Alexander Ivanovich Bastrykin. That is certain. If a case is opened on violent sexual acts against a child, it does not stay «somewhere down below.» The leadership of territorial bodies, specialized criminal investigation units, the Investigative Committee — all get involved. If a small town lacks resources, more experienced officers from the region go there, and in especially complex cases, specialists from Moscow. Yes, this does not rule out human errors, but one cannot imagine that «pedophilia is investigated by no one.»

— Exactly, nothing has changed since Ancient Rome. Especially if it«s not a biological daughter but a stepdaughter — that»s a fairly common story. It happens, of course, also with one«s own biological daughters or boys. The latency here is enormous: children do not always want to put their parents in prison for understandable reasons.

— And mothers don«t want to, because some kind of man still brings in some kopecks. This is the lowest level, the bottom of society, but it exists. Incest is a common phenomenon.

— If we are talking specifically about pedophilic incest — almost no. How can you defeat it? There sits a man at home, «it doesn»t work« with his wife, something else. I had a case: the wife thought her husband was impotent for ten years. But all those ten years he was having intimate relations with their daughter. At eighteen, the girl finally says to her mother: »Mom, you know, dad has been fucking me for ten years.« And the mother: »But I thought he was impotent, how is that possible?«

— Possibly so. Many women truly don«t want to think about it, believe it, or know anything at all. But then she deserves the same place as her hubby.

— A criminal case against a mother will be initiated if it is proven that she knew and in some way facilitated it. Not just lay on the couch like a «quiet dog,» but deliberately left, turned off the lights so as not to hear the father molesting the daughter in the next room. Then it«s already a group of persons, the same Article 132, violent sexual acts, part four, but as part of a group.

— For that — no. Burn in hell? Yes. But there will be no criminal liability for simply closing one«s eyes.

— The most dangerous age is approximately 9 to 12 years old. This is no longer a toddler who always walks holding parents« hands, but also not yet a teenager capable of serious physical resistance. The child can go alone to clubs, to the yard, to the store, while being trusting, oriented towards adults, and poor at recognizing manipulation. It is at this age that pedophiles most often lurk for children near entrances, in yards.

— This is one of the most difficult questions. When a migrant manages to leave, we are faced not only with a criminal case but also with international law, different legal systems, and frankly, different ideas of what is even considered a crime. In some countries, sexual contact with a schoolgirl is a serious crime; in others, formally «both sides wanted it, so what»s there to talk about.« And when we send materials to colleagues: »So-and-so citizen raped a minor, here is the evidence« — we cannot force them to look through the prism of our worldview.

— Unfortunately, yes. No state owes us anything just because we sent a criminal case. Almost no one extradites their own citizens; this is normal practice: we don«t give ours, and others don»t give theirs. The maximum we can hope for is that the person will be detained at home and convicted there under local laws. That happens. We had a case: a citizen of one Central Asian republic raped and killed a boy. He was identified, managed to leave, we sent materials, and they replied that he was detained and «hanged himself in a zindan.» We cannot verify that — we can only take it on faith.

— Because identification is the key to speed. As long as we have neither fingerprints nor genotype, we can spend months not understanding who committed the crime and even what country he is from. As soon as there is a biological trace and a specific person«s genotype in the database, we can identify him in one day, calculate his route, find connections, get to those hiding him. This means he simply has less time to escape. The faster we identify and detain him, the less chance he has of reaching the border. Ideally, he should sit in our prison, under our sentence — that is the only real guarantee of punishment.

— With the detectives and investigators on the ground in the former Soviet republics, we usually have normal human contact: they also consider murderers and rapists scum and do not want such people walking around their cities. The problem is not that «everyone there is bad,» but in their systems: in the laws, in how courts interpret them, in the policy of extradition and non-extradition of citizens. We can gather perfect evidence, but then everything runs into another jurisdiction. Therefore, the best way to really protect our children from such criminals is not to let them leave Russia and to ensure that everyone who comes here to work is unequivocally identified by fingerprints and genotype.