The difference between pedophilia and child molestation is a conversation that absolutely nobody wants to have. It's depressing enough to contemplate people being sexually attracted to children without getting into which model of windowless van they prefer. But they say knowledge is power, so let's power up. A pedophile is someone attracted to prepubescent children, while a child molester is someone who sexually abuses them. Although not every pedophile will molest a child, most of them look at child pornography, which obviously hurts the children forced to participate in it. Unfortunately, demand is high. To understand this problem better, we reached out to one of the consumers. We spoke to "Charlie," who's been arrested twice for possession of child pornography. He's not looking for sympathy, or trying to play the victim. He told us ...


5 Ironically, Interest In Child Porn Often Starts As A Child Ironically, Interest In Child Porn Often Starts As A Child "I was 12 years old when I first looked at pornography," Charlie explains. "At first it was adult pornography. Shortly after, I started looking at more and more porn. I kinda fell into a black hole in the internet which eventually led to taboo porn (BDSM, domination, etc.), which led to incest porn. Finally, while clicking around the many sites dedicated to incest porn, I found a link to a chat room. I was a kid in a chat room with a bunch of adults. I did not try to hide my age on there, either." Gil-Design/iStock

Needless to say, he suddenly found himself alarmingly popular. Occasionally, the users would post child porn, and no one would make a big deal about it ... until they found out they had an actual child in their midst. Oh, they freaked out, but not in the way you'd hope. Charlie received many messages in that chat room, often accompanied by pornographic images of kids. "These pictures were of kids my age," Charlie told us. "There wasn't anything wrong with me looking at this stuff, right? And that's exactly what the people in the chat would assure me of. They'd say things like, 'It's normal to look at these pictures ... a lot of people do, they just don't talk about it." nyaberkut/iStock

Sadly, that's probably the lie they were telling themselves, too. This is grooming -- befriending a child and teaching them about sex like you're simply a pal and educator ... right up until you can demonstrate it to them in person. Fortunately for Charlie, he was smart enough to never meet any of these people in the real world. But what they said made sense to him. Why shouldn't he look at naked girls his own age? So he kept doing it. And you remember Matthew McConaughey's most famous quote, don't you?

4 Consuming Child Pornography Can Be Like An Addiction Consuming Child Pornography Can Be Like An Addiction While reading the confessions of professed pedophiles, which is not a fun hobby we would recommend, you start to notice that many of them talk about addiction. "I'm attracted to boys between 7 and 12, and I'm addicted to porn videos, photos and drawings," says one anonymous pedophile. "I often want to say 'stop,' I erase everything I have on my computer, I go to dating sites, I try to be normal but it never lasts I crack again I re download and spend sometimes the whole night looking at this porn files on my pc." Charlie says, "When I was 15, I moved from Florida to Washington. It was here when I would say that I got addicted to child porn." ronstik/iStock

One of the rare times Adult You would prefer that 15-Year-Old You had developed teen alcoholism instead. Many forms of addiction apparently develop much in the same way as grief. They stem from loneliness and isolation, and involve a lot of bargaining, anger, and depression. This is exactly how it went for Charlie. "I knew no one in Washington. On top of all the normal teenage hormones and angst, I had no friends. I ended up spending all day on the computer. I isolated myself. I spent probably seven hours a day looking at porn at the peak of my addiction." dfphotonz/iStock

Basically every waking hour not spent eating or at school, with nothing to show for it except a slew of felonies. So like any other 15-year-old with an internet connection. But in Charlie's case, he was watching child porn. By then, Charlie was considerably older than the kids in his pornography of choice, which made it harder for him to justify watching it. That's when he entered the bargaining stage. "I set deadlines for myself," Charlie explains. "Like, one was when I have sex, then I'll stop. Like if I had sex with a girl my age, then I'd magically be cured of this addiction. Then, of course, I entered into a sexual relationship with a girl my age and I still didn't stop. Then it became when I turned 18 I would stop. This never happened, obviously." SAKDAWUT14/iStock

When it destroys my life, I'll stop. Eventually, Charlie started hating himself so much that he "literally could not look at myself in the mirror. I was disgusted with myself because I knew that what I was doing was wrong." And yet he couldn't stop. Remember, calling child porn an addiction doesn't justify it; it only helps us understand the problem better, and it may even help us find a way to stop non-offending pedophiles from ditching that vital prefix.