A white man in his mid-30s, in prison for molesting prepubescent girls, volunteered for an interview with a sex researcher. He had been reared in a rural area by lower-middle-class parents with a grammar-school education. His mother, who was extremely prudish, frightened her son with tales of venereal disease and the dire consequences of masturbation and impressed upon him that all sexual activity was nasty and that men were "beasts." He therefore felt guilty about his heterosexual urges and his preadolescent heterosexual play and with puberty at age 12 ceased all heterosexual activity. Masturbation had begun a year before puberty and ceased a year after puberty, evidently because of the maternal warnings. During adolescence he was shy and fearful of females, although he desired them. Girls accused him of being "tied to his mother's apron strings."