Hybristophilia

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article or section does not adequately cite its references or sources.
Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. (help, get involved!)
This article has been tagged since August 2006.

Hybristophilia is a paraphilia involving being sexually aroused by people who have committed crimes; in particular cruel or outrageous crimes.

The sexologist John Money defines hybristophilia as:

"a paraphilia of the marauding/predatory type in which sexuerotic arousal and facilitation and attainment of orgasm are responsive to and contingent on being with a partner known to have committed an outrage or crime, such as rape, murder, or armed robbery"

Many high-profile criminals, particularly those who have committed atrocious crimes, receive fan mail in prison, presumably as a result of this phenomenon. In some cases, admirers of these criminals have gone on to marry the object of their affections in prison. An example of this is Ted Bundy who is known to have received about two hundred fan letters each day from female admirers.

[edit] References

Sheila Isenberg: Women Who Love Men Who Kill, 3 edition, Backinprint.com 2000, ISBN 978-0595003990
Jacquelynne Willcox-Bailey: Dream Lovers: Women Who Marry Men Behind Bars, Wakefield Press 1999, ISBN 978-1862543812
Why are women drawn to men behind bars?, The Guardian, Monday 13 January, 2003
Women who have killer instincts, The Indepedent, 27 January 2005
Liz O'Keefe: The partners of prisoners: Their reality, how they contribute to the criminal justice system and prisoner rehabilitation and how we can assist (PDF), paper presented at the Women in Corrections: Staff and Clients conference convened by the Australian Institute of Criminology in conjunction with the Department for Correctional Services South Australia, 31 October-1 November 2000, Adelaide, Australia