In all the recent public uproar about alleged serial predator Bert Vasquez - most people have been asking, what would drive a grown man to prey on children, particularly with such determined, and, apparently, deadly insistence.
To try and get into the thoughts of such a predator we today spoke to psychiatrist Dr. Claudina Cayetano. She has dealt with such cases in her training at McGill University in Canada in and her professional practice. Today, she discussed - in general terms - the dark forces that drive pedophiles to prey on children.
We stress, she has never met Bert Vasquez or studied him, and is not speaking about him in any specific way.
But she says, it is important that society understand how pedophiles think:
Dr. Claudina Cayetano
"I totally applaud what we saw in San Ignacio. A lot of these girls must be talking at home about how not to talk to strangers and how to behave on the street. I think it is important that we continue to be vigilant - sometimes we see these things on television and we can't believe that it can happen in our country, so I want to encourage people to continue being vigilant and intolerant to behaviors like that. They need to be reported and they should not be let loose."
"When someone has that mental disorder, there are certain patterns of behavior that they engage in. Unfortunately, because it is not well recognize and because people are not think about it as a disorder it can grow for years, you know all these destruction and all these deaths - all the children and families that suffer - it's the entire community and now it's the entire country that its affecting."
"What we tend to see is that there is this attract action for pre-teens, pre-adolescence, for children - it could be also specific, which would be only girls and some of them could be only boys or a mix type. It can also be only specific only to children or it could be pre-teens, children below the age of 13 and below the age of 15. Most of the time it's a little bit older than kids, at least 5 years older. It's because they have the inability to be able to feel sexual pleasure with adults, so there is that attractiveness and there is that obsession and there is that inner cravings towards young girls and that's the only way to be able to get that pleasure to the point where their judgment and their thinking - because it becomes an obsession and the only way to satisfy that is by preying on these girls."
"If we are to sit with them, they don't have this way where they tend to normalize. They don't look at it the way you and I would look at it. For them it's a pleasure that the child is arriving or this is also good for the child - they have a way of interpreting. I think for people like me and you and all the Belizean who may be listening to this is inconceivable, you cannot imagine how a person could think that way. The only reason I am saying this is because for the person to be driven to do this there is a way to justify why they are doing this - it's because they have that great anxiety, they have that great feeling that they have to do this - there is no other way, it's like an addiction, so they are constantly looking for that pleasure."
Jules Vasquez
"There is no normalized sexual behavior between an adult male and a girl child."
Dr. Claudina Cayetano
"We agree on that yes."
Jules Vasquez
"Is there perhaps an unresolved sexual issue that the adult male is unable to have normal relations with an adult female? So then the adult male seeks out a child."
Dr. Claudina Cayetano
"Clearly, totally unacceptable, I agree with you."
Jules Vasquez
"Does the pedophile gain any thrill from it being an illicit, taboo behavior?"
Dr. Claudina Cayetano
"Pedophiles are not worried about me and you. They are someone who does not logical in their thinking, so are not worried about if this is taboo, it's not about that. It's a sexual satisfaction - it's more about them than about the other person."
Jules Vasquez
"Is someone able to be a psychopath, a pedophile and a brute that hold guns at women and beats them? Is that possible?"
Dr. Claudina Cayetano
"We see those things and of course it is possible. Again I am not diagnosing anyone, what happens is that in the sexual gratification - the sexual excitement that these people think or what they go through - it only comes through contact with children and so because it comes through the contact of children - all the sexual excitement that they are experiencing. Clearly these are kids - this is not what children are for. There is an element that they go overboard - they abuse, rape and kill them and discard them."
"Clearly the individual is not a person that is thinking correctly - it's not about thinking logical. That absolutely doesn't make logic to anybody. An individual that engage in this kind of behavior have been engaging in this behavior gradually, so there is a gradual exposure. In order to do what they do they go through lengths of things in order to get what they have to get. If they have to use a gun or if they have to kill, whatever they have to do they will do it. These are the things that we are now being faced with; we should avoid them if we knew they have previous attempts before."
Tomorrow we'll have an even more revealing look into the actions of a pedophile - as we'll speak with one of Bert Vasquez's victims as she narrates the terror she endured at gunpoint.
