(1/13) Some #MichaelJackson fans have presented this cropped screenshot as evidence that MJ was not a child molester because he didn not have hundreds of victims.

Let's take a closer look.

I will be citing all of my sources, so bear with me!

(2/13) This quote can be found on page 15 of the December 1992 version (Third Edition) of Child Molesters: A Behavioral Analysis by Kenneth V. Lanning

(3/13) The study by Dr. Gene Abel found that pedophiles targeting young boys outside the home (i.e. not family members) committed an average of 281.7 acts with 150.2 partners (victims).

That sounds like a lot.

(4/13) The study mentioned here is Self-Reported Sex Crimes of Nonincarcerated Paraphiliacs.

That means the data was reported by the perpetrators, *not the victims*, and none of them were in jail.

The subjects were seeking treatment.

That puts a very different spin on the data

(5/13) The paper is from 1987 and based on interviews carried out between 1977 and 1985. 561 subjects participated.

There is no clear definition of pedophilic acts.

Let's have a look at those stats.

(6/13) Here are the number of acts. Mean of 281.7. Median of 10.1.

Wow. Look at the stat for pedophiles targeting boys.

(7/13) And here is the table showing the number of victims. This is important. The mean (number of victims divided by the number of perps) is 150.2 and the median is 4.4. This is a big disparity.
That means 50% of subjects had 4.4 victims or fewer.

(8/13) This indicates that there were a few pedophiles who were extremely prolific, bringing the mean up significantly.

Also remember that the number of victims was *self reported* so it's possible someone was extremely prolific with thousands of victims, or exaggerating.

(9/13) So my conclusion is that this little screenshot is not a reliable indicator of the average number of victims of pedophiles targeting males.

There is actually a more recent publication from Dr. Gene Abel.

(10/13) This one, from his book from 2002. This shows that pedophiles (sex of target unclear) had an average of 12 victims. This was from a study involving 2,429 subjects - much larger than the 1987 study cited in Lanning's book.

(11/13) Here's a screenshot from the 2010 version of Lanning's book (Fifth Edition):

The reference to Dr. Gene Abel's study seen in the 1992 version (18 years before) has disappeared.

That's how science works. Things get updated as we expand our knowledge

(12/13) Thank you so much for sticking with me to the end of this very, very long thread.

#MichaelJackson fans are kidding themselves into believing that MJ couldn't have been a pedophile because he didn't have enough victims.

(13/13) This misconception is based on a citation from an obsolete 1987 study which was cited in the obsolete 1992 edition of Lanning's book and has since been deleted in newer editions.

#MJGuilty