The sexual abuse of children is one of the most morally unsettling and emotionally inflammatory issues in American society today. It has been estimated that roughly one out of every four girls and one in ten boys experience some form of unwanted sexual attention either inside or outside the family before they reach adulthood. An alarmingly common occurrence, sexual abuse is traumatic and life-altering for children in its impact.

How should society deal with the sexual victimization of children? Should known offenders be released back into our communities? If so, where, and with what rights, should they be allowed to live? In Unspeakable Acts, Douglas W. Pryor argues that much of this debate, designed to deal with abusers after they have offended, ignores the important issue of why men cross these forbidden sexual boundaries to molest children in the first place and how the behavior can possibly be prevented before it starts.

Based on in-depth interviews with thirty men who molested their own children or the children of people they knew, Pryor provides a unique glimpse of those who become offenders.

His analysis explores how the lives of offenders prior to their offending led up to and contributed to what they did, the ways that initial interest in sex with children began, the tactics offenders employed to molest their victims over time, how they felt about and reacted to their behavior between offending episodes, and how and why they stopped abusing.