He is a twice-convicted pedophile. Has forced sex on an 8-year- old boy and molested a girl the same age. Stalked and propositioned countless older children, mostly boys.

He is now free on parole, living in a quiet East Bay neighborhood. In his mid-30s, Robert, who asked not to be identified by his real name, said in an interview that he gets injections once a month to curb his sex drive and goes to therapy to rewire his thoughts.

Predatory pedophiles like Robert are at the center of a debate over how society's pariahs should be treated and how to protect children from them once they are out of prison.

A growing number of mental health professionals say men who prey on children have a disorder with genetic origins similar to alcoholism that can be effectively treated. Victims' rights groups see pedophiles as untreatable deviants who deserve life behind bars.

"We've got to start a dialogue on this," said Dr. Fred Berlin, who runs one of the largest pedophile treatment programs in the country at Johns Hopkins University.

Berlin says there needs to be better collaboration between criminal justice and mental health systems. He developed his clinic in the 1980s because there was little treatment available for sexual predators.

"Right now, pedophiles are made into monsters," Berlin said. "People don't think it's acceptable to look at them as humans who have real problems, treatable problems."

For those who have had their lives damaged by the deviancy of others, pedophiles are just that: monsters.

"All I've been doing all summer long is tracking serious pedophiles," said John Walsh, who created the crime show "America's Most Wanted" after his 6-year-old son, Adam, was abducted and decapitated. "I know one thing: The longer these monsters are in prison, the less chance they have to hurt kids. I don't buy this notion of treatment."

HARD ISSUE FOR SOCIETY TO FACE

Pedophilia has been filling the news of late: children molested by priests; children and teenagers abducted, raped or killed by predatory strangers or neighbors.

Last month, U.S. Customs Service agents announced they had made 20 arrests in a global ring of pedophiles, including a group of parents who sexually molested their own children and sent pornographic pictures of them worldwide over the Internet.

Customs officials said 45 children, including 37 in the United States who ranged from age 2 to about 14, were victims and had been removed from the care of those indicted. One of the alleged leaders of the international child pornography ring lived in Clovis, a quiet community in Fresno County, where he reportedly took sexually oriented pictures of about 20 neighborhood children.

"This is a large public health problem that's been around for decades if not centuries, one that society doesn't want to look at," said Dr. Doug Tucker, a clinical associate professor at the UCSF School of Medicine who has treated pedophiles in the past, including Robert.

As of late July, there were 96,162 convicted sex offenders living in California, including more than 20,000 in the Bay Area. An estimated 70 percent of sex offenders are pedophiles, the California Department of Justice says.

Tucker, who has evaluated sex offenders for possible release from prison, added, "In my practice, I have seen all types of pedophiles, from successful university professors to homeless psychotics. Society chooses to think of these people as bad, rather than sick. I think of them as both."

In California, only 1 percent of sex offenders released from prison are sent to state hospitals for psychiatric treatment. These are sexually violent predators, including pedophiles, who have a diagnosed mental disorder and are most likely to reoffend. A 1996 law allows the state to keep these people in custody even after their prison terms have ended.

The vast majority of sexual offenders released from prison never get any psychiatric treatment, Tucker said.

OPTIONAL CARE IN ATASCADERO

Currently, 302 sexually violent offenders, including 182 pedophiles, have been committed to Atascadero State Hospital in San Luis Obispo County. State law provides that treatment in the locked hospital is optional. Of the pedophiles in Atascadero, 51 are participating in psychological counseling, and 28 are taking medication to lower testosterone. Only one woman has been committed under the sexually violent predators law. She is being held at Patten State Hospital in San Bernardino.

The state is planning to expand its treatment of sexually violent predators. By 2004, as many as 1,500 sexual predators are expected to be assigned to a new maximum security site in Coalinga in Fresno County.

Matthew Hennessy, a psychologist who works in the sexual offenders unit of Atascadero, believes that there is no cure for sexual deviancy, but that there are ways to reduce the risks.

"Trying to find a cause of why someone will commit deviant sexual acts is often futile," Hennessy said. "What we can do is look at what were the things that increased the likelihood of acting out."

It is impossible to create a "profile" of a pedophile, he said.

Often, but not always, pedophiles are emotionally immature, fear adult relationships and relate better to children, Hennessy said. They choose girls as their victims twice as often as boys. Many report having witnessed sexual experiences at a young age, or were sexually abused as children.

Traumatic events such as a divorce or being fired from a job may cause someone who already has an appetite for children to act out. And sexual offenders who have never been married are considered to be at a higher risk to reoffend.

Having said that, Hennessy and other therapists who work with sex offenders are reluctant to generalize.

"People who commit sexual offenses come from all walks of life," he said. "There's a myth that sex offenders can be identified by the way they look or walk or act."

Recent news accounts of child abductions -- including Danielle van Dam, Elizabeth Smart and Samantha Runnion -- became fodder for group discussions at Atascadero, Hennessy said.

"We talk about victim empathy and what the family is going through," he said. "I ask the men to think about what would have caused the abductor to strike out. These cases do make them fearful for their future because the public is going to be that much more hateful."

Psychologists and academics say that if the crime-and-punishment model of treatment worked, there would no longer be heinous reports of child abuse in the United States.

'IT WAS OUT OF CONTROL'

The convicted East Bay pedophile, Robert, who began having regular sexual contact with another little boy at the age of 5, said he would probably always be attracted to children, especially to young boys who remind him of those early encounters. However, through therapy and injections of Lupron, a synthetic, hormone-like drug that lowers testosterone levels, Robert said he was "not at risk of reoffending."

"I used to be in a state of denial that what I was doing was hurting these kids," he said. "I had very high testosterone levels. I had to have sex every day. It got to the point where it was out of control. I would drive around with my pants down, looking for boys."

After Robert had been paroled on his second conviction, he sought treatment on his own. He attended therapy sessions three days a week for four years, had biweekly injections and went on antidepressants. Through behavioral therapy, Robert said, he has learned why he's attracted to children and realizes the pain he's caused.

"I now think about how the kids must feel," he said. "I see these cases in the news, and I think about how scared the kids must have been when they were approached by a stranger. And I know how desperate the offender was. I know what he's going through."

John Walsh, who lived through the horror of his own son's abduction and murder, said that until he sees a long-term study that shows that treatment works, he will push for serious prison time.

"This has been a bad summer," Walsh said. "Every case includes heartbreak and torture. It reminds me of my own son. They never found the rest of his body. The main suspect was a repeat pedophile."

Research on treatment programs remains mixed. Criminologists and victims' rights groups cite studies showing treatment does not reduce recidivism; mental health advocates use research reports to show treatment can be effective. Treatment ranges from chemical castration to group therapy.

Research is consistent in one area: Sex offenders have a lower recidivism rate than other types of criminals. Of the 927 felons who had committed lewd acts with children and were released from California prisons for the first time in 1999, 36 percent returned to prison within two years. The average recidivism rate for all types of crimes is 56 percent.

"Data on offender treatment is controversial and not particularly good," said Peter Isely, a psychologist and a director of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests.

Isely, who ran a treatment program for victims of sexual abuse and was himself sexually abused by a priest, said, "Treatment of pedophiles is still a primitive science. In talking about this as a sickness -- as mishaps, mistakes, illness -- it decriminalizes the behavior. They use every word except 'crime.' "

Whether one believes pedophilia is a sickness or not, the problem will not go away on its own, experts say.

Tucker, the UCSF professor, agrees. "If society doesn't think we should treat these people, they are guaranteeing we will have more and more victims."