According to Finkelhor (Finkelhor, 1984; Araji and Finkelhor, 1985) there are four components that contribute, in differing degrees and forms, to development of a child molester's behavior. To explain the diversity of behavior of sexual abusers, there are four factors in a complementary process. These four factors are sexual arousal, emotional congruence, blockage, and disinhibition:

Sexual arousal: In order for an adult to be aroused by a child, there has frequently been cultural or familial conditioning to sexual activity with children or early fantasy reinforced by masturbation. In my 25 years of working in recovery with sexual abuse survivors and sex offenders, all sex offenders are either physical and/or sexual abuse survivors as well. Contrary to popular belief, the majority of sex offenders can be healed and live a normal life without offending. The key to successfully treating sex offenders is to address their physical and/or sexual abuse after affects. Once their emotional wounds are healed their attraction to pre-pubescent or pubescent children is non-existent. The reason for this is that sex offenders are acting out what was done to them