Dave, my dictionary includes this under perversion: pathological deviation of sexual instinct. On that basis I'd say the word is applicable to the condition of paedophilia. The same dictionary says under perverse: obstinately determined when in the wrong; capricious and unreasonable in opposition; wrong-headed, stubborn; wayward; deliberately wicked. I would not describe paedophiles this way.

Just to bemuse you a little further, I should emphasise that I am talking only about paedophilia and paedophiles. If they murder, rape, abuse children etc then those actions are crimes.

I don't want to put words in weelittledrummer's mouth, but I think the point you're missing is that a paedophile who refrains from child abuse consigns himself - and I accept that it is usually "he" - to lifelong sexual frustration, exacerbated by the fact that he has had that lifestyle thrust upon him - rightly thrust upon him, but putting him in a different category from, say, priests who opt for celibacy as a matter of free choice.

For that reason I do indeed, as WLD suggests, thank my lucky stars that I am not a paedophile.

Far from supporting your "mass epidemic" theory, your other figures merely confirm that wherever people have power over others, particularly in families and institutional environments, there is a tendency - one might almost say a predisposition - towards moral debasement and abuse of the vulnerable. This is not an epidemic, it's the human condition. And it's the same the world over. You'd better get used to it because it's not going to change much in our lifetimes.

Two minor points: 1) re the Mori poll, your eye has been caught by a figure from the 1970s. I was referring to 1995, as I said. 2) I should have given a link re the attitudes of US police chiefs. Here's one: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4457402.stm