It is important to differentiate between sexual abuses among children of the same age group because this situation is not accepted as a pedophilia. It is known that approximately half of the child sexual abusers started such actions during adolescence. Although this does not show that all cases showing sexual behavioral disorders, during adolescence will be pedophile in their adult years. These data points out those sexual acts to children during adolescence should not be considered as sexual behavior disorder that occurred only during adolescence. If an action is detected at this age, serious problems that may arise during adult years can be avoided by necessary measures are taken or treatment methods are used for adolescents. According to the study of Christopher et al., it is stated that 40% of sexual abuse to children <12 years of age is done by adolescents in the USA. In their study, they showed that 40% of people diagnosed with pedophilia had a history of sexual abuse of children during adolescence.

Cohen et al. showed that the most important environmental reason found to increase the probability of an individual to sexually attack the child in the future is the sexual abuse of the person himself. This relationship is called the 'victimization-aggression cycle.' The frequency and prevalence of this situation vary from 28% to 93% from study to study, from where and how the sample was taken.
In the studies of Richard and Ryan, it has been determined that pedophilia, which are the age preference of children to be sexually abused, choose children at the age they are sexually abused.

The clinicoanatomic cases of acquired pedophilia that have been published in the medical and forensic literature up to 2019 are reviewed. Twenty-two cases fit our inclusion criteria. All but one were men, and in only one case the injury was localized to the left hemisphere. Hypersexuality was present in 18 cases. The damaged areas fell within the frontotemporoinsular cortices and related subcortical nuclei; however, the anterior hypothalamus was spared. Damage to parts of the right frontotemporoinsular lobes with sparing of the anterior hypothalamus seems to be critical for the emergence of acquired pedophilia.