Does America breed Molestation?

Perhaps my thread here is a way to bring fair news to the world regarding sexual abuse towards all women. My other incentive in opening this provacative thread is due to the frustration felt by reading coverage on AE of women mainly in Islamic lands.

• 1 in 4 girls is sexually abused before the age of 18.
• 1 in 6 boys is sexually abused before the age of 18.
• 1 in 5 children are solicited sexually while on the internet.
• Nearly 70% of all reported sexual assaults (including assaults on adults) occur to children ages 17 and under.
• An estimated 39 million survivors of childhood sexual abuse exist in America today.

http://www.darkness2light.org/KnowAbout/statistics_2.asp

• Nearly 70% of child sex offenders have between 1 and 9 victims; at least 20% have 10 to 40 victims.
• An average serial child molester may have as many as 400 victims in his lifetime.

Incidences of sexual assaults against children have risen when compared with previous decades, and children are increasingly kidnapped by family acquaintances (27%) and strangers (24%) instead of close relatives. Yet more than 90% of sex offenders are never sentenced, in part because their victims are people within their circles usually family members and these children are pressured with threat or shame not to press charges.

That's why I'm in favour of castration (I refer here to hormonal treatment, not removal of sexual organs) for offenders. I also think a government service should be established for people who have uncontrolable sexual urges like these which might result in molestation, so that they can undergo psychological treatment or hormonal castration if that proves necessary.

There's a very fine line between doing what you suggest above, and doing the same for homosexuals. The line really only is what a society considers to be sexually immoral. I don't think this is a good precedent for any country to set.

I think lot of this molestation is possible because: Sally and Hubby are off to have a good time and have asked uncle Bob to look after their daughter Susan. This kind of thing happens more rarely in conservative and traditional countries. So a female child will end up as a responsibility of the aunt and almost never of a male. Couple this with more control over the child's activities and environment. Of course there are many other factors, too.

Edited by malizai_ - 22-Sep-2007 at 07:03

^It is something that is observed, usually in the form of early segregation of sexes. The control and authority asserted by the elder members of extended families, where children are usually subject to their watchfull eye. You need two hands to clap.

Though national data on child abuse is subjective due to the amount of processed reports collected or not the following are from more studies.

Incidence of child abuse and neglect in the United States

Like Australia, the United States collects statistics about the number of reports made to state child protective services - that is, the incidence of child abuse nationwide.

Of the three million reports made to state child protection services in 2001, 28 per cent of reports were substantiated. Of these:

• 59 per cent had experienced neglect
• 19 per cent had experienced physical abuse
• 10 per cent had experienced sexual abuse
• 7 per cent had experienced emotional abuse

In the United States in 2001, the number of children in substantiated cases of abuse was 12.4 per 1,000 children. This compares with rates in Australia which range from 0.9 per 1,000 in Tasmania up to 7.4 per 1,000 in Queensland.

In the US, roughly ten percent of substantiated claims are of sexual abuse towards children.http://www.aifs.gov.au/nch/pubs/sheets/rs1/rs1.html

Regarding Gay men in America.   Two conflicting reports.   The American Psychological Association has sponsored a work that asserts: "Recognized researchers in the field on child abuse,... almost unanimously concur that homosexual people are actually less likely to approach children sexually." (2)   as opposed to:   ...evidence suggest that the 1%-to-3% of adults who practice homosexuality (3) account for between a fifth and a third of all child molestation.   About a third of the reports of molestation by the populace have involved homosexuality. Likewise, between a fifth and a third of those who have been caught and/or convicted practiced homosexuality. Finally, a fifth to a third of surveyed gays admitted to child molestation. http://www.familyresearchinst.org/FRI_EduPamphlet2.html

Now for this second section. It is times like this I am glad I am doing my honours year, as it has given me the patience to carefully look at the source of the data, and what sources they rely on to make their conclusions. Firstly, this website arrogates itself the name of "Family research institute" - a rather self-important mask for what is really a rabidly anti-homosexual conservative society who will draw on whatever source they can to paint gays as being on a par with Hitler.

Taking a look around their site, we come across such obviously impartial book lists like this: http://www.familyresearchinst.org/FRI_Bookstore.html

As we can see here, the article previously posted was simply one of a number of documents created by this organisation which has an obvious agenda to slander and discredit the gay community.

But let's examine some of their other takes on the state of the world, such as the right of gays to actually express their intimacy and love for one another:

Originally posted by FRI On June 28, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) announced that the U.S. birth rate had dropped to its lowest level on record. On the same date, the U.S. Supreme Court declared laws against same-sex sexual activity unconstitutional in Lawrence v. Texas. Both events illustrate the continuing deathward march of American social policy. By a 6 to 3 vote � wielding its dictatorial power � the Supreme Court overturned centuries of Christian-inspired laws against homosexual activity. In large part, the court�s decision stemmed from its contempt for, and desire to, diminish society. .

So there we have it, homosexuality is resulting in a "deathmarch".  An impartial Supreme  Court is "dictatorial" when it  supports the rights of gays to basically engage in having relations with one another. And anything supporting basic rights of gay individuals is showing contempt for "society".

The article itself frequently makes claims which it cannot back up. Take this one for example:

In the U.S. and Canada, the North American Man-Boy Love Association marches proudly in many gay pride parades with the stated goal of removing the barriers to man-boy sex. Note the phrases "oppression towards pedophilia" and "liberation of pedophilia." It is clear that those who advocate the legalization of sex between adults and children intend to argue that such conduct is a "civil right," deserving of the same legal protections afforded to other minorities. A large proportion of Americans regard that argument as a mere pretext to giving "sexual predators" free reign to take advantage of vulnerable children.

So in other words NAMBLA represents the gay community, therefore all gays support sexual intercourse with minors? Clearly this is unfounded, the article gives no reference to where it gets this information. I can say for certain that if an organisation like that tried to march in a gay pride parade, they would be attacked by the gay community. NAMBLA does not represent the gay community, nor does it enjoy the support of the gay community.

Next, the article smugly concludes:

If 2% of the population is responsible for 20% to 40% of something as socially and personally troubling as child molestation, something must be desperately wrong with that 2%. Not every homosexual is a child molester. But enough gays do molest children so that the risk of a homosexual molesting a child is 10 to 20 times greater than that of a heterosexual.

What the narrow minded authors of this study fail to take into account is that sexuality is not something you can slot into nice, even, black and white categories. It exists on a continuum, where people may have varying levels of desire for members of one or both genders over the course of a lifetime. Having looked over the dubious sources in their reference list (which includes local newspapers, goes to show you they don't let scholarly concerns get in the way of pushing their agenda), I will refer to another source - the Kinsey reports. These reports found that 37% of males had had sex with another male after adolescence to the point of achieving orgasm, and this in a time when homosexual behaviour was often much more severely punished than today. Though Kinsey's findings were disputed for convenience sampling, later studies revealed his data gathering methods soundly produced results which applied to the population as a whole. So in other words, at least 37% of males show a voluntary capacity to have sex with other males - and this figure is probably much higher today when restrictions on homosexual activity have been relaxed.

So this corresponds to the 40% figure FRI gives for homosexual molestation rates. It measures up, doesn't it? Well the figure of 40% was taken from just one study, and upon looking at the article we can see it is not representative of the population in general - it focuses on molestation in just one area: teaching. Rather than having a solid figure of 40% like they claim, we are instead given a few case studies which don't tell us what the overall rate of homosexual molestation against children is. Given the obvious agenda of the authors, and the fact that these high figures are derived from a few very isolated studies, it is entirely reasonable to assume that the rate of homosexual predation is substantially lower than 40%, which would indeed be lower than expected figures for the numbers of males who will engage in voluntary adult homosexual activity in their lifetime.

Their entire article fails to produce reliable figures on what rate of sexual assault against minors is committed by homosexuals when looking at child molestation rates overall. Instead, they confine themselves to examining a few select cases in which the homosexual nature of the assault was especially high. But if you examine their sources, you can see how flawed they are.

In The Gay Report, 23% of the gays and 6% of the lesbians admitted to sexual interaction with youth less than 16 years of age.

Sounds pretty daming hey? But if you think about it, the average age for first sexual intercourse for most people in the developed world is 16. So the odds of someone who is gay having had sex with a minor while they themself were a minor is pretty high, and a large number of heterosexuals can be expected to have also had sexual intercourse with someone below 16 years of age while they were themself a similar age.

Let's take another figure cited by this article:

Of 400 consecutive Australian (25) cases of molestation, 7 boys and 4 girls were assaulted by male teachers. Thus 64% of those assaults were homosexual.

Here they are getting desperate. They don't have any figures covering large numbers of cases. So what do they do? They look at one article which only examines 11 case studies of children who were repeatedly assaulted (i.e. the child was examined because they were assaulted many times, they do not actually represent a quantitatively correct sample of a wider population). The authors from FRI then smugly conclude that 68% of assaults are homosexual in nature. They give us a statistic which represents no population but makes gays look predatory.

These are just a few of the errors I have picked out from what is a baised, agenda-laden article, formulated by a group whose central purpose is to suppress the most basic rights of homosexual individuals. The shoddy workmanship of this article is symptomatic of a desperate attempt by the authors from FRI to veil their hate campaign in some sort of scholarly garb. This is a totally unrealiable source for investigating the issue, as can be obviously seen if you take a look around their website with its evident bias and agenda. It tries to dispute the findings of the most respected scholarly journal of psychology in the USA, and perhaps the world, and it does so with dubious data whose sampling fails to represent the population that the authors claim it represents.

Originally posted by malizai_ ^It is something that is observed, usually in the form of early segregation of sexes. The control and authority asserted by the elder members of extended families, where children are usually subject to their watchfull eye. You need two hands to clap.

As a woman who can compare living in other countries I can say that I think the u.s. has a very sick society that fosters disequilibrated perverts. I do not feel unsafe walking at night in brasil, maybe scared to be robbed, but not becUSE just of my sex. I never feel unsafe in brasil becuase of my sex. Yes, rapes and molestations happen to be sure but they are dealt with differently and the society is different. NUmber one we have community and a strong sense of what is right as far as family. Family is number one, you do not abandon your children for drugs, you do not abandon your parents to an old people home simply because they are making poop in the pants or are too much a bother to take care of. You do what is right, so, if someone is molested and others find out about it there is a good chance it will be taken care of meaning that there will be a mob violence that will beat you senseless before you get to the police, (where they will beat you again) and if you are lucky you will be alive to make it to the police. It is the police who will save your ass from the mob. But then of course in jail you will be very popular forever...so...which is worse? ANyway, I really think it is the culture, the media, what is accepted by peoples, allowed, and for me at least  this society (u.s.) is very strange as far as sexuality. Everyone seems to think brasil is so hot, the women etc..like everyone is a whore...yes, there are prostitutes and child sex, ( for the german tourists and other foreigners) but women are not viewed in an attitude of menace sexually. It is hard to explain the society. A 50 year old devout christian woman can wear a see through blouse to work with a pretty bra under and noone blinks an eye, it is normal, but here oh my god..it becomes something filthy, somwthing strange... Sex here in the u.s. is very scary. The film,s are full of violence and violence escpecially against women. We don't have that ands never will. It is not in the brasilian soul, but seems to be in the u.s. I think this isi va veyr important thing to look at. It seems free here sexually, but the people are very hung up about it, and it is not a thinkg of beauty of romance, it is vulgar and hard, like a fight between man and woman, weird. People growing up in this environment see all these images of sick violence, some of the things I see on the television are unbeleivable sick...just t.v. I cannot imagine otherwise how bad. I just think the u.s. is going down the toilt, no community, no sense of family, home, people are alienated and this society gives nothing for feeling of fulfillment so you get people who feel powerless, they want to hurt and control others...a scary place here. I never was scared to walk here or there in brasil thinking I might get grabbed but here I look all the time going to and from the car etc., many people are sick here and very unhappy. That is my opinion...u.s.  fosters and gives fertile ground for perverts by its culture norms and media.

Originally posted by Mayra As a woman who can compare living in other countries I can say that I think the u.s. has a very sick society that fosters disequilibrated perverts. I do not feel unsafe walking at night in brasil, maybe scared to be robbed, but not becUSE just of my sex. I never feel unsafe in brasil becuase of my sex. Yes, rapes and molestations happen to be sure but they are dealt with differently and the society is different. NUmber one we have community and a strong sense of what is right as far as family. Family is number one, you do not abandon your children for drugs, you do not abandon your parents to an old people home simply because they are making poop in the pants or are too much a bother to take care of. You do what is right, so, if someone is molested and others find out about it there is a good chance it will be taken care of meaning that there will be a mob violence that will beat you senseless before you get to the police, (where they will beat you again) and if you are lucky you will be alive to make it to the police. It is the police who will save your ass from the mob. But then of course in jail you will be very popular forever...so...which is worse? ANyway, I really think it is the culture, the media, what is accepted by peoples, allowed, and for me at least  this society (u.s.) is very strange as far as sexuality. Everyone seems to think brasil is so hot, the women etc..like everyone is a whore...yes, there are prostitutes and child sex, ( for the german tourists and other foreigners) but women are not viewed in an attitude of menace sexually. It is hard to explain the society. A 50 year old devout christian woman can wear a see through blouse to work with a pretty bra under and noone blinks an eye, it is normal, but here oh my god..it becomes something filthy, somwthing strange... Sex here in the u.s. is very scary. The film,s are full of violence and violence escpecially against women. We don't have that ands never will. It is not in the brasilian soul, but seems to be in the u.s. I think this isi va veyr important thing to look at. It seems free here sexually, but the people are very hung up about it, and it is not a thinkg of beauty of romance, it is vulgar and hard, like a fight between man and woman, weird. People growing up in this environment see all these images of sick violence, some of the things I see on the television are unbeleivable sick...just t.v. I cannot imagine otherwise how bad. I just think the u.s. is going down the toilt, no community, no sense of family, home, people are alienated and this society gives nothing for feeling of fulfillment so you get people who feel powerless, they want to hurt and control others...a scary place here. I never was scared to walk here or there in brasil thinking I might get grabbed but here I look all the time going to and from the car etc., many people are sick here and very unhappy. That is my opinion...u.s.  fosters and gives fertile ground for perverts by its culture norms and media.

However, this is how the laws created by society try to balance resisting sexual predation and also allowing those with sufficient maturity the freedom to enjoy consensual sex

I would agree with you except under most laws two 15 year olds can have sex with each other and no repercussions can be taken. Are those 15 year olds sufficiently mature? How about a 17 year old the day before their birthday and a girl who just turned 16? Does he gain that much more maturity the next day?

By the way (I know this is hijacking the point of the thread but...) I feel that the philosophy behind age of consent is more important than the laws created. And that age of consent should be up to the individuals participating whether than society as a whole.

Back on topic, how about this scenario a 15 year old boy molests his 11 year old cousin. Now under your definition the 15 year old isn't mature enough to make decisions based on sex so how should that situation be treated? Is he to be punished or is he not guilty by reason of immaturity? If he's to be punished than he obviously knew enough to do the act, so therefore 15 year olds can make informed decisions on sex (just not good ones).

Also if child molestation is defined as anyone under 18 I'd say a lot of high school girls that make poor decisions fall under that umbrella, for example.*

*And no I'm not using the idiotic "Well she shouldn't have been there in the first place" excuse that people throw on rape victims all the time. But at the same time I mean come on, parents need to be more responsible.