Two Predators, an ADHD Brain, and the Question I Asked Before the Research Did
“Didn't your mom teach you not to talk to strangers?”
Of course she did.
I could have been told a thousand times not to talk to strangers. I knew the rule, understood the rule, and if you had asked me to repeat it, I could have given it back to you perfectly.
That wasn't the problem. The problem was what happened when someone gave me positive attention.
I could blow straight through the rule.
For most of my life, I didn't understand that distinction. What happened to me as a child became entangled with a question about what I had done. I had talked to a stranger. I had violated the rule. An adult immediately reminded me that I had violated the rule. Somewhere inside that sequence, responsibility migrated from the predator to the child.
It stayed there for decades.
Two Predators, Two Different Doorways
I was sexually assaulted by two different predators as a child, and looking backward, I can see that they did not reach me through the same doorway.
The first was grooming. The abuse occurred over three separate, non-consecutive weekends. This wasn't a single impulsive encounter with a stranger. There was repeated access, familiarity, attention and time for boundaries to move. I didn't have the language for grooming then, but I can recognize the architecture now.
The second predator reached me differently. That experience went straight through impulsivity.
I knew not to talk to strangers. The information was sitting right there in my brain. But knowing a rule and reliably deploying that rule when an immediate reward appears in front of you are not the same neurological task. Give me positive attention in the moment and I could blow straight through it.
Rule learned >> positive attention arrives >> immediate reward captures behavior >> rule fails to govern behavior >> predator gains access
For years, I interpreted that sequence as something the child had done wrong.
Decades later, a couple of ADHD kids doing animal impressions would change that.
The Waiting Room
Around 2013, I was sitting in the waiting room of Dr. Joseph Llinas watching a couple of ADHD kids doing what ADHD kids do.
They were moving, improvising, bouncing from one thing to another. At some point they started doing animal impressions. Instead of telling them to settle down, I entered their world. I recognized what they were doing, gave them positive attention, and soon we had a competition going over who could do the best animal impressions.
They clung to me. That got my attention.
When I went into Dr. Llinas's office, I said:
“I know that ADHD kids are more prone to physical abuse in the home. What about sexual abuse? Is there any research on sexual abuse in ADHD kids?”
Dr. Llinas raised his eyes skyward and scanned his memory.
“No, I don't think there's any research on that.”
I responded:
“I believe that ADHD kids, because of impulsivity, are easier targets for pedophiles.”
Dr. Llinas looked at me.
“It's amazing how you make all these connections.”
And then another connection happened—not between ADHD and a research question, but between ADHD and me.
I thought about the second predator who sexually assaulted me as a child. I thought about what happened when I came home afterward and my mother's best friend asked me:
“Didn't your mom teach you not to talk to strangers?”
Of course she had.
I could have been told a thousand times not to talk to strangers. I knew the rule. But positive attention arrived, impulsivity took over, and I blew straight through something I absolutely knew I wasn't supposed to do.
For decades, that distinction had escaped me.
Sitting in Dr. Llinas's office, it suddenly didn't.
“It wasn't my fault.”
And I bawled.
A research question I had arrived at by watching ADHD children in his waiting room had reached backward through decades of my own life and changed the meaning of something I had carried since childhood. My mother had taught me the rule. I knew the rule. The failure to deploy it in that moment did not transfer responsibility from the predator to the child.
That was the moment the shame finally landed where it belonged: not on the little boy who talked to a stranger, but on the adult who sexually assaulted him.
The Soccer Team
In 2013, I had only part of the mechanism. I understood impulsivity, but I didn't yet understand the extraordinary power of being seen.
That came years later.
In 2019 and early 2020, before COVID shut everything down, I found myself mentoring a couple of ADHD middle-school kids who had essentially been thrown onto my soccer team as behavior problems.
One of them was particularly instructive.
In another environment, this kid could look anxious, oppositional and difficult. Conflict with a Karen mom was producing anxiety and something that looked a hell of a lot like ODD.
That wasn't the kid I got.
Once I connected with him, I got something almost comically different: a “coach-pleasing, stalking puppy who will run through a wall for you.”
Same kid. Same ADHD. Different relationship.
I hadn't medicated him, repaired an executive function, frightened him into compliance or finally discovered the perfect consequence. I had connected with him. He believed I liked him. He believed I understood him. He knew I was interested in what he could do instead of constantly waiting for what he would do wrong.
And his behavior pivoted.
Then my brain did what Dr. Llinas had commented on years earlier. It started making connections.
What If the Adult Isn't Me?
I knew what I was doing with that connection. I cared about the kid and wanted him to succeed. His attachment to me created an opportunity to coach him, encourage him and give him experiences of competence.
Then I inverted the equation:
What happens if the adult who discovers that doorway isn't me? What happens if he's a predator?
That was when the question I had asked Dr. Llinas years earlier acquired another mechanism.
Impulsivity could create vulnerability in the moment. But now I was seeing something else: the extraordinary motivational power an adult can acquire when an ADHD child who has spent years being criticized, rejected or misunderstood finally encounters somebody who appears to genuinely see him.
A safe adult can use that connection to help. A predator can weaponize it.
Genuine empathy >> accurately see the child >> child feels understood >> trust >> connection >> growth
Invert the intention:
False empathy >> accurately identify vulnerability >> child feels understood >> trust >> access >> grooming >> exploitation
I contacted Dr. Llinas again and told him I thought this was why ADHD kids could be easier to groom. Impulsivity mattered, but so did the enormous power of positive attention and acceptance for a child accustomed to receiving something very different.
Dr. Llinas completely agreed.
Now I had two pathways that corresponded eerily well to the two predators from my childhood. One had groomed me over time. The other had benefited from my impulsivity in the moment. Decades later, coaching ADHD children had shown me just how powerful positive adult attention could be.
The Walter Rudin Kind of Obvious
The mathematician Walter Rudin was famous among generations of mathematics students for moving through difficult arguments with some variation of “It is obvious.” Mathematicians have been laughing about it ever since.
I understand the impulse.
“Obvious” doesn't mean easy. Sometimes it means that once the correct objects have been placed in the correct relationship, the conclusion becomes difficult not to see.
I had impulsivity, repeated rejection, the extraordinary reinforcing power of positive attention and two predators from my childhood. Now I also had a middle-school soccer player practically following me around like a puppy because I had discovered how to make him feel seen.
Put the pieces together.
Then Spotlight Made Sense
That realization changed how I understood the Boston Archdiocese sexual-abuse scandal.
In Spotlight, survivor Phil Saviano describes what attention from a priest could mean to a poor and vulnerable child. The point wasn't merely that the priest possessed authority. For a child who didn't have much, being singled out by someone important could itself be enormously powerful. The Boston Globe's reporting documented predators exploiting vulnerability through attention, apparent concern, authority and access.
Suddenly I wasn't merely looking at a story about abusive priests. I was looking at the machinery of grooming.
A predator doesn't necessarily begin by overpowering a child. He can begin by making himself valuable to the child.
That was the disturbing mirror image of what I had discovered on the soccer field. I had learned that genuine empathy could give me enormous influence with an ADHD child because the child knew I saw him. I was using that influence for the child's benefit.
A predator could discover exactly the same doorway.
The difference wasn't necessarily how the door opened. It was what the adult intended to do after the child opened it.
2021: I Saw the Pivot Again
During the hybrid school year in the spring of 2021, I began having similar experiences with older ADHD students who had experienced significant trauma.
These weren't simply kids who needed another behavior chart, another consequence or another lecture about making better choices. Some had accumulated experiences that profoundly shaped how they interpreted adults, criticism, authority and trust.
Getting through required real empathy—not performative empathy, and not the professional-development version where an adult says the approved sentence in the approved tone and waits for the child to become compliant.
The student had to believe it.
Almost every ADHD kid I worked with who had experienced significant trauma required me to have one foot across that line. They were looking for a trusted, empathic connection, and many had experienced enough adults by then to know the difference between somebody performing empathy and somebody who actually gave a damn.
I had to let them see enough of me to know I was real.
Once they believed that, I could watch the pivot happen. Kids whom other adults experienced as oppositional, unreachable or dysregulated could become startlingly different when the relationship changed.
Same kid. Same ADHD. Different relationship.
The soccer player hadn't been an anomaly. I was looking at the mechanism again.
One Foot Across the Line
And there lies the conundrum.
Teachers are taught not to cross the line with students, and for extremely good reasons. Adults possess authority, access and power that children do not. Professional boundaries exist because children need protection from adults who would exploit that asymmetry.
Nobody needs to explain that danger to me. I met two predators when I was a child.
But almost every ADHD kid I worked with who had experienced significant trauma required a trusted, empathic connection. Keeping both feet planted safely behind the professional line could make that connection impossible because the kid needed to believe I actually cared.
That requires something from the adult. You have to reveal enough humanity for the kid to know there is actually a human being standing there. Sometimes that means allowing them to see some of your own vulnerability. Sometimes it means letting them know that what happened to them genuinely affects you. Sometimes it simply means refusing to hide behind the institutional role when what the child needs at that moment is a human response.
One foot across the line.
That's enough for trust, attachment and the empathic connection to become real. It is also enough for you to start worrying about that kid as if they were your own. You go home wondering whether they're okay and what they're walking into that night. Their victories matter to you. Their setbacks bother you. Some of the kid comes home with you.
And, critically, one foot is already enough for exploitation.
A predator does not need both feet across the line. Once a child trusts an adult and that adult has become emotionally important, the machinery required for exploitation may already exist. That's precisely why this is a conundrum rather than a neat professional-boundary diagram.
The very connection that gives a safe adult the ability to help can give a predatory adult the ability to harm.
The difference is what the adult does with the trust.
What the Second Foot Means
Having both feet across the line means something different to me. It isn't the threshold where exploitation suddenly becomes possible, and it isn't the point where you suddenly begin worrying about the kid as if they were your own.
Both can already exist with one foot across.
The second foot changes the weight.
With one foot across, you're already carrying some of that kid with you. With both feet across, the emotional investment becomes much deeper. Their problems occupy more of your mind. Their pain becomes harder to leave at school. You begin carrying their life with something approaching the emotional weight you carry for your own children.
I've done that, and it is emotionally exhausting. You might be able to carry one kid that way, maybe two. Try doing it with three, four or five traumatized kids and the emotional arithmetic stops working.
There simply isn't enough of you.
The line, then, isn't a simple progression from safe to dangerous. It describes different depths of human involvement:
Both feet behind >> professional empathy >> boundaries intact, but the traumatized child may never completely believe the connection
One foot across >> trusted empathic connection >> you worry about the kid as if your own >> enormous potential to help—and already enough trust to exploit
Both feet across >> profound mentor attachment >> the same concern becomes substantially heavier >> you carry much more of the kid's life with you
Pretending exploitation only becomes possible after some obvious final boundary has been crossed creates a comforting fiction. A predator doesn't need that much.
One foot can be enough.
The ethical responsibility therefore begins the moment the connection becomes real. A safe mentor never uses the child's attachment to satisfy his own emotional needs, manufactures exclusivity, turns trust into secrecy or makes the kid responsible for him. The relationship exists for the kid.
That's the anchor.
Even a Toe Across the Line
There is another reason clinicians and other professionals maintain distance that has nothing to do with misconduct.
Emotional arithmetic.
Imagine a clinician responsible for sixty patients. If that clinician had even a toe across the line with every one of them—just enough emotional investment to carry a little piece of each person's trauma, fear, family crisis and future home every night—the cumulative weight would become exhausting.
A toe times sixty is a lot of emotional weight.
Professional distance makes the work sustainable.
I didn't have sixty kids. I could make an unusually deep connection with one or two. With one foot across the line, I was already worrying about them as if they were my own. With both feet across, the emotional weight became substantially greater.
A clinician can't do that sixty times.
That realization changed how I thought about professional distance. Distance isn't necessarily evidence that a clinician doesn't care, doesn't understand the value of connection or doesn't know what deeper empathy might accomplish. The clinician may understand perfectly well how powerful that connection can be.
They may also understand that even a toe across the line, multiplied across sixty patients, can become emotionally unsustainable.
And there lies a larger problem.
Some of the traumatized ADHD kids who most need a deep, trusted human connection may need precisely the kind of connection that the professionals responsible for dozens of patients or hundreds of students cannot sustainably provide at scale.
The problem isn't necessarily a failure of empathy.
It may simply be the mathematics of empathy.
Connection has power >> connection creates vulnerability >> connection creates emotional weight
The deeper the connection, the greater the responsibility and the heavier the load.
Someone still has to stand in that gap.
Then Denmark Caught Up
I wasn't running a university laboratory. I didn't have a research grant, wasn't querying national health registers and wasn't constructing a longitudinal cohort.
I was a layperson watching children and remembering what had happened to one particular child decades earlier.
Me.
Around 2013, I had asked Dr. Llinas whether ADHD children were disproportionately sexually abused. I had proposed that impulsivity could make them easier targets for pedophiles.
Then Denmark started putting numbers behind the association.
In 2020, a Danish nationwide prospective birth-cohort study examined reported sexual crimes against 679,683 children. Children with ADHD had an odds ratio of 3.7 for recorded sexual victimization compared with children without disabilities.
Seven years after I sat in Dr. Llinas's office asking whether the association existed, an enormous national dataset was finding exactly the kind of elevated vulnerability I had wondered about.
Denmark didn't prove my proposed mechanism. It didn't establish that impulsivity caused the increased risk, that the powerful response to positive attention I had observed caused it, or that predators preferentially identify ADHD children through the pathways I had reconstructed from my own experiences.
Those remain research questions.
But the population-level association I had predicted was there.
And I am proud of that.
I don't need to inflate what I discovered to appreciate what happened. I was a layperson who used my own childhood, observations of ADHD children and an intensely analytical brain to ask a question years before enormous population studies began answering it.
Then Denmark did it again.
A second national birth-cohort study followed 570,351 children through age eighteen. Among 8,860 recorded cases of sexual victimization, ADHD was again associated with markedly elevated risk. Even after adjustment, children with ADHD had approximately twice the odds of recorded sexual victimization.
The question wasn't crazy. The association wasn't imaginary.
The children really were at greater risk.
And Eventually, Russell Barkley Was Talking About Trauma
There is an irony here that connects this story to another argument in this book.
Dr. Russell Barkley spent decades as perhaps the most influential proponent of understanding ADHD through behavioral inhibition, self-regulation and executive functioning. He formally retired from clinical psychology and neuropsychology at the end of 2021, although he continued publishing and educating publicly afterward.
Then, on June 14, 2023, Barkley devoted a public commentary to ADHD and Childhood Trauma.
By then, I had been asking my sexual-victimization question for roughly a decade. I had moved from the original impulsivity hypothesis to a more complicated grooming hypothesis through my work with ADHD kids. I had watched the power of empathic connection with traumatized ADHD teenagers.
The first Danish sexual-victimization study was already public. Research had begun explicitly examining ADHD as a predictor of subsequent adverse childhood experiences. By February 2023, another Danish cohort of more than half a million children had demonstrated strikingly elevated physical-violence victimization among children with ADHD.
Eventually, Barkley got there too.
I am allowed to enjoy that chronology. I had no laboratory, grant or national registry. I had two predators, an ADHD brain, a psychiatrist willing to listen to me, a bunch of kids other adults found difficult, and an irritating tendency to connect things that weren't supposed to belong together.
Sometimes that's enough to find the question. It isn't enough to prove the answer; that's what research is for.
But somebody has to ask the fucking question first.
I Knew the Rule
Being early isn't the most important thing this discovery gave me.
For decades, a sentence followed me: “Didn't your mom teach you not to talk to strangers?”
It contained an entire theory of childhood responsibility: you knew the rule, you broke the rule, look what happened.
But ADHD has taught me something about rules.
Knowing isn't doing. Possessing information isn't reliably deploying it. Understanding a future consequence doesn't guarantee that the future consequence will defeat an immediate reward. A child can know every safety rule adults have ever taught him and still remain vulnerable to an adult who understands exactly which buttons to push.
The second predator didn't need me to be ignorant. He needed me to be impulsive.
The first predator didn't need the same doorway. He had time to groom me.
Decades later, I discovered from the safe side how powerful human connection could be. I watched ADHD children change when an adult stopped treating them as collections of behaviors and made them feel genuinely seen.
Eventually, I understood the terrible symmetry: the trusted empathic connection that can help a traumatized ADHD child is also enough connection for someone with different intentions to exploit. There is no magical intermediate zone where the connection is authentic but powerless. If it is powerful enough to help, it is powerful enough to abuse.
That doesn't mean we retreat from connection. It means the adult bears an enormous responsibility for what happens once the child trusts us.
It also means recognizing the emotional cost of becoming that person for a child. With one foot across the line, some of that kid is already coming home with you. With both feet across, the weight can become enormous. A clinician responsible for sixty patients may not be able to put even a toe across that line sixty times without eventually carrying more emotional weight than one human being can sustain.
Yet some traumatized kids still need somebody willing to make that connection.
That is the part no boundary diagram solves.
The line was never as simple as I had been taught because human connection isn't simple. The same trust can heal or be exploited. The same empathy that reaches a kid creates responsibility for the adult. And the deeper the connection becomes, the more emotional weight the adult agrees to carry.
After two predators, decades of shame, a psychiatrist's waiting room, a soccer team, traumatized teenagers and eventually a couple of enormous Danish datasets, there is one part that has become obvious to me.
The child needs adults willing to make the connection.
The child also needs those adults to understand the power—and the weight—that comes with it.
One foot across the line—and know exactly why it's there.
References
Christoffersen, M. N. (2020). Sexual Crime Against Schoolchildren With Disabilities: A Nationwide Prospective Birth Cohort Study. Journal of Interpersonal Violence. The Danish study included 679,683 children and reported an odds ratio of 3.7 for reported sexual-crime victimization among children with ADHD.
Elklit, A., et al. (2023). Sexual Violence against Children with Disabilities: A Danish National Birth Cohort Prospective Study. Scandinavian Journal of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Psychology. The study followed 570,351 children and found an adjusted odds ratio of approximately 2.0 for sexual victimization among children with ADHD.
Lugo-Candelas, C., et al. (2021). ADHD and Risk for Subsequent Adverse Childhood Experiences: Understanding the Cycle of Adversity. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 62(8), 971–978. First published online in 2020.
Barkley, R. A. (2023, June 14). ADHD and Childhood Trauma. Public video commentary.
The Boston Globe Spotlight Team. (2002). Investigative reporting on sexual abuse by Catholic clergy in the Archdiocese of Boston. The Boston Globe.