Letters to the Editor
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@DonaQuixote:
I was a CASA last in 2005. I moved and have not revolunteered. It was an interesting and sometimes rewarding but sometimes frustrating experience.
Some time past, I was a victim advocate and used to give speeches on sexual abuse. However, the most recent stats I read was something like 2 out of 5 boys and 1 out of 3 girls. The book was call "Predators" by Anna Salter, and, like the ADD-addled fool that I am, I cannot find it. Maybe I loaned it out. I highly recommend it. Girls were overwhelmingly abused by men. Among boys, male abusers still had the edge, but a significant number were abused by women.
On the subject of sexual abuse of boys by women, this book acknowledged that while such abuse was rarer than sexual abuse of girls by men that there was now more reporting and it was being taken quite seriously. Sadly, when they examined the past histories of rapists -- especially violent rapists -- they found that there was quite a bit of sexual abuse in their childhood perpetrated by their mothers.
However, the biggest surprise in the book for me was that, while a large number of incarcerated sexual offenders claim to be victims of sexual abuse themselves, when they were given lie polygraph exams the test did not bear this out and under questioning by experienced polygraph examiners, many recanted their claims of having been sexually abused. It seems that one-third fewer offenders actually were victims of sexual abuse themselves.
(All the above stats are from memory, so if you actually buy the book and find some discrepancy, I apologize.)
BTW, if you haven't seen the movie "Notes on a Scandal," it's a must see.
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@DonaQuixote:
I just want to agree that I do find your take on the sexualization of children accurate as far as our culture having run amok with it. However, it can sometimes take peculiar and subtle turns. Look at a fashion magazine at the lastest Mark Jacob ads with Dakota Fanning. They are most unsettling. Look at the Burberry ads with Kate Moss and the very young looking men standing by as her entourage.
I keep hoping for some sort of cultural sanity to reassert itself. It seems like normal boundaries are becoming increasingly blurred.
Mothers who make sex objects of their little girls by use of clothes and makeup are fools and fashion victims and careless as well. Call me old-fashioned, but sometimes it seems to me as if many people have lost all common sense.
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the problem, especially for feminists trying to deal with this, is that for biological reasons you can't DE-sexualize boys as easily and for as long as you can girls.
Nobody wants to go back to rampant physical abuse directed only at males (well maybe some want to but there are obvious problems) to keep people in line and nobody wants to give boys any REAL outlet in lieu of sex (to work it would have to have some genuine social meaning) so where are you. One alternative might be a kind of cultural smothering from nursery school on where males become trained to be sexually passive and therefore don't assert anything on their own. Sweeden is maybe making some progress in this direction, appparently.
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Anonymous, I have not idea what you are talking about.
It does not seem to be about sexual abuse and it does not seem to be about clothing. It seems to be vaguely about feminism, but this thread is not about feminism. It is about the molestation of a 10 year old girl. Would you care to explain more clearly you point?
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people, especially boys, do not wait until they are 17 to have an interest in sex
you can intimidate girls into waiting a while but not boys if they have a choice after about age 12 without the use of very extreme measures. Obviously everyone could stick with their own age group, but this fantasy that if only we stop "sexualizing" children everyone will remain asexual for as long as middle aged adults find safe is a load of crap.
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Anonymous,
1. Parents have control over how they dress their children until children start making their own money. My daughter began to make her own clothing and makeup choices around age fourteen.
2. We are talking mainly about clothing for girls, but if you have thoughts about what constitutes sexy clothing for boys, feel free to elaborate.
3. I don't think anyone here -- except maybe for that foolish judge -- is alleging that the girl deserved sexual assault because of her clothing.
4. No one is saying that children do not have curiosity about their own bodies. Both lttle boys and little girls do. But this discussion is not about little boys and girls playing doctor with each other. It is about a fully adult man who molested a girl who was nowhere near his age.
So do we have a point of disagreement?
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not about whether it should be legal to have sex with a 10 year old but an age of consent above 14 for boys is purely about control
and has nothing to do with a realistic appraisal of development, so the question is do we impose arbitrary restraints on males in order to "train" them or to avoid treating girls differently, or do we say that girls that age can make decisions too.
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Actually, age of consent laws do not keep fourteen year old boys from having sex.
They only mean that adults cannot have sex with minors under the age of consent. Teens are rarely punished by law for having sex with people their own age.
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the problem is that most 12 or 13 or 14 year old boys can't find a girl their age to sleep with because the few girls that age who are looking are looking for someone older
it's tricky to acknowlege an ability to consent but strictly limit to whom consent can be given, do you have the right to decide or don't you? If it's a question of reduced culpability because the "abuser" is also young and therefore also the "abused" then the issue isn't really being addressed. You get into absurdities such as where someone wanted to prosecute a 13 year old boy for distributing kiddie porn when he posted pictures of himself on line in an effort to get laid.
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how f'ing stupid is Lynn Harris?
Did she even read the articles? Can any moron get paid to cut and paste for Salon?
"Keith Fenn, 24, is expected to serve only four months. " -Lynn Harris
"Fenn, 25, was given concurrent two-year and 18-month sentences, but could will be free in months after spending eight months in jail on remand." --Oxford Mail
"Keith Fenn, 24 ... The judge gave Fenn concurrent two-year and 18-month sentences, but he will be free in eight weeks after serving eight months in prison awaiting sentence. " --BBC
Apparently 5 minutes is too much work for Harris. What's really sick is that someone like Harris actually gets paid to write exaggerated stories about children being raped, because apparently cold facts about child rape just aren't "sexy" enough for Broadsheet.
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"They started chatting in the street and she told them she was 16. ...
... Lawyers for the defendants stressed that the sex had been consensual, and was only termed 'rape' because of the framework of law.
... They said the judge stated that doctors who examined the girl believed she was in her mid-teens and she was treated by most people as older than her actual age. ...
... "It is quite clear she is a very disturbed child and a very needy child and she is a sexually precocious child. She liked to dress provocatively." ...
... "Did she look like she was 10? Certainly not. She looked 16, that was a matter that was accepted." ...
After making their way to a recreation ground in Luke Avenue, the girl - who cannot be named for legal reasons - had oral and full sex with Fenn. ...