The correct term for a predator.

It's a lack of love and empathy that allows someone to behave that way.

If someone you know who has lots of love and empathy for young people feels romantically inclined towards young people... and strives to handle those relationships with care and caution... and behaves with respect and understanding towards their partners... and acts selflessly towards them, giving without ever expecting anything in return.... To name such a person "predator" because they may have a latent sexual desire which never enters the picture unless a young person explicitly wants it to, and even then which is restrained to protect the young person from participation in a criminal act... is completely wrong and ignores the beneficent reality of a situation in favor of appealing to a common narrative and destroying that beneficent reality.

There is a surplus of child abuse cases that were never abusive at all, and no one cares to examine the differences? (Well, not no one.)

But because the same negative terminology is used for all cases; when a "good pedophile" relationship happens (and is discovered), even if there was no criminal behaviour (which should in itself constitute cause for an examination of the relationship that takes nuance into account - what kind of person was this who was feeling a romantic attraction to your child? What were their motives? Was the child potentially feeling the same way? What negative consequences could directly arise from this? What about the positives?), it always sounds as though your child was on the verge of being a predator's next prey.

Use Kind as a non-clinical term for pedophile, use Pedophile for someone with a sexual attraction to children who does not necessarily have sinister intent, and use Predator for someone who clearly does have sinister intent... or just sociopath who sadistically preys on children.

The latter is not a common enough occurrence that we need a buzzword to describe it, and certainly not one that accidentally incorporates so many loving people to the detriment of a whole demographic.

End tragedy, not Kindness.

~ Rainbowloom