HARRISBURG (TNS) — Advocates for victims of childhood sexual abuse are excoriating a licensed sex therapist with the Commonwealth who is advocating that pedophiles be referred to as “minor-attracted persons.”

Miranda Galbreath, a Pennsylvania Department of Corrections sex therapist and counselor, this week engendered pushback after posting a video on social media seeming to defend pedophiles and calling on them to be referred to as “minor-attracted persons.”

“She is helping to minimize the problem,” said Mike McDonnell, survivor of clergy sexual abuse and a leader of the state Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests. “She’s helping to minimize the truth, the depth and the scope and gravity of the crime itself.”

In a YouTube video titled “Let’s talk about minor-attracted persons”, Galbreath said pedophiles were “probably the most vilified population of folks in our culture.”

“The term pedophile has moved from being a diagnostic label to being a judgmental, hurtful insult that we hurl at people in order to harm them or slander them,” Galbreath said. “I also like to use person-first language that recognizes that any label we apply to a person is only part of who they are and doesn’t represent everything that they are.”

PennLive reached out to the Department of Corrections for comment. Press Secretary Maria Bevins indicated she would respond to the inquiry, but had not done so by Friday afternoon.

McDonnell, who was abused by two priests when he was between the ages of 11 and 12 and who has for years advocated for victims of clergy sex abuse, pushed back on Galbreath’s suggestion.

“When I hear the term pedophilia I get a punch in the gut and I have to pay attention because I want to know more about that individual,” said, McDonnell, who testified in the investigation into clergy sex abuse in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia.

“I want to know if the community is going to be safe where he or she is going to be allowed to return to after serving time. Minor attracted individual absolutely is a slap in the face to sexual abuse victims globally. We were victimized. We were targeted by predators who had groomed us and who had used us as their bait and as their play. That is the crime and it needs to remain named a crime.”

Galbreath claimed that “many minor-attracted persons never act on their attraction”. She pointed to incorrect assumptions about child sex offenders and referred to them as an “already marginalized population.”

Marci Hamilton, a national advocate for victims of child sex abuse and statute of limitations reform, explains that Galbreath’s suggestion is not unique, but rather something that has in recent years gained traction.

“There is a nascent movement, largely led by parents of youth who were labeled as abusers, to push back on sex offender lists and to rename the offenders with more forgiving labels,” said Hamilton, founder and CEO of Child USA.

“They may have a point with child-on-child abuse, because when it comes to juveniles, they can receive treatment that will dramatically reduce their likelihood of repeating the crime. Few, however, receive the therapy they need. But this movement is undermining child protection when they seek labels like “minor-attracted persons” for all perpetrators, which normalizes this heinous crime against children.”

Child sex offenders have earned the moral stigma attached to “pedophile” or “ephebophile”, which refers to adults who are sexually attracted to adolescents, Hamilton argued.

“Attempting to make the perpetrator a victim rather than the child is another example of how our culture persistently tends to favor adults to the detriment of the children,” she said. “These sorts of labels muddy the clarity we need to actually protect all children from child abusers.”

In her video, Galbreath argued that “minor-attracted” persons don’t get to choose whether they are attracted to children, or not.

“[Minor-attracted person] simply means that the person has an enduring sexual or romantic attraction to minors. They have not chosen this attraction, just as the rest of us have not chosen whatever our attraction is,” Galbreath said. “You don’t get to choose to be heterosexual or to be gay or whatever you are, and you don’t get to choose to be a minor-attracted person.”