This letter is in response to Aaron Mandel's letter yesterday ("Molestation of young boys a homosexual act," Feb. 19). As a former case manager for adolescent sex offenders and a current trainee to become a professional counselor, I feel it is important to point out how pedophilia and homosexuality differ. Specifically, to help clarify what a "sexual encounter between a man and a boy" is -- this is pedophilia.

Pedophilia is defined in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM IV) as fantasies, urges or behaviors involving sexual activity with a prepubescent child generally 13-years-old or younger. It is possible to be attracted to both adults and children. This would mean that a man could be attracted to both someone of his same gender who is an adult and to a child of one or both genders. This would mean that this man would be both pedophilic and homosexual.

I would agree with Mandel's argument if there were an epidemic of priests who were having sexual encounters with other male adults, but the complaints of sexual misconduct in the Catholic church have been with children -- not other adult males.