I regret to inform you that I was not one of those individuals who was molested as a child, and my sexual activity while growing up, from early childhood to the beginning of my college years, was what could be called "typical."

So, the common Western cultural narrative as to the "cause" of an adult developing a preference for minors does not apply to me. My orthodox sexual development doesn't explain my hebephilia, but it perhaps does explain why I don't have a knee-jerk loathing of the very concept of adult attraction to minors, and why I don't relate it to abuse of children or younger adolescents in my mind. I'm not saying all abuse victims do this, as some are genuinely interested in healing and putting their experience into proper perspective, but there are enough out there who are encouraged by our popular cultural narratives to be "damaged for life" and take a whole social identity surrounding them as Victims (i.e., marking the difference between victims and Victims, or as LGsinmyheart has referred to the latter, "professional victims"), and go out seeking vengeance rather than justice and perspective, and favor degrees of social control and condemnation of intergenerational attraction as "solutions" to the problem rather than social awareness and empowerment of younger people against all forms of abuse.

Though I sympathize greatly with all abuse victims (and this includes victims of all types of abuse, since I endured severe non-sexual forms of abuse), I only have respect for those who make a genuine effort to heal, and who seek understanding over emotionalistic responses like hatred.