This pisses me off too (though I agree that I would probably welcome the policy for practical personal reasons on a long flight). I have a stepdaughter who is almost 6, and since her mother works and I am off during the days, I’m frequently entrusted with her care. I’ve actually had strangers come up and ask her if I was her Daddy (as opposed to them asking me if she is my daughter), been stared at when I was sitting at the playground watching her play, and it’s made me paranoid to the point where I am somewhat uncomfortable being alone with her in public - now I feel like everyone suspects me of being a child molestor.
I’ve known plenty of women who have been guilty of inappropriate sexual behavior with minors, though in all but one case it’s been with boys in their teenage years, so it’s not exactly pedophilia. Most of this goes unreported, because teenage boys are very eager to have sex and because they don’t get knocked up. I felt lucky the first time I put my mouth on a woman’s breast, even though I was 14 and she was over 20 years older than me (this same woman had sex with my 13 year old friend) and if the genders were reversed this would be considered molestation by anyone. When I was 15 one of my neighbors paid me $20 to babysit her kids, but decided to stay home and try to seduce me. This kind of stuff happened to a lot of friends of mine.
Does anyone know the actual percentage of male child molesters in relation to other crimes/criminals?
I mean, according to the media, every block has a molester lurking somewhere, every male is suspect, men had better not stop to watch kids at a play ground and there seem to be more pervs than there are drug users! Less emphasis is placed on being wary of drug users than being wary of potential molesters. There are not even laws requiring public notice being given when a drug user/robber/rapist/murder moves into your neighborhood but there are for molesters.
Yet, I’ve never been able to find any statistics giving the actual percentages nation wide of molesters in comparison to other crimes.
Abel, 1997, according to that link. Unverifiable, not in the References page. Hansen & Slater, 1988 is also not listed. Awad, Saunders, & Levene, 1984; Davidson, 1983 and Finkelhor, 1979, 1984 are not listed in the references page.
Since Dr. Medlin, of the Medlin Training Institute, does refer to, and list, articles published in 1997, I can only conclude that those references are, at best, incorrect.
It does seems excedingly strange that all the references on that page do not appear on her reference page.
But then, that is a page that sells Sexual Deviation Conferences and Seminars.
Perhaps having correct cites would lower her income.
See, that’s part of the reason why the threat of male molestors is inflated in the public consciousness. If the sexes in my stories were reversed, I would be getting replies expressing sympathy for me, telling me how horrible that I was corrupted at such a young age, asking why I didn’t tell someone (well, I did brag some).
How did you miss out? Maybe you didn’t hang out with enough middle-aged alcoholic white trash sluts as a teenager.
One thing that I find interesting about this is how much hysteria is centered around protecting your kids from strangers who might molest them, when it has been shown time and time again that you are more likely to be raped/assaulted/molested by a family member or acquaintance than by a stranger. I know I’ll have to find a cite for this, so I’ll go looking, but this is something I’ve seen over and over again in my reading about child molestation and other sex crimes. The perpetrator is rarely a stranger.
I seem to remember as well that the overwhelming majority of molestations are perpetuated by friends and relatives. But this is likely only a product of the fact that friends and relatives are in far more situations that they have opportunity to molest. In any identical situation a stranger is more likely to be a molester. Would you entrust your kid to a stranger over a relative because most molestations are perpetuated by relatives? I don’t think so. The anxiety that people have about strangers manifests itself on occasions that strangers are in a position to abuse their children, e.g. alone on plane trips.
I don’t have any cites for this, but I would bet that the more extreme types of molestation including physical harm or death are mostly perpetuated by stranger (e.g. the Adam Walsh scenario). The relatives are mostly sexual abuse. Not a recommended practice, but not as severe.
Izzy I’m pleased that you remembered some of what we discussed on prior threads on the subject.
here’s some of the data requested:
this is a secondary source where the Boy Scouts of America refer to ‘studies’ show “Most child molesters are known by their victims; the vast majority are family members or have an authoritative relationship with the child, i.e., a teacher, coach, or youth group leader.”
this has information about the relative risk of reoffending for the various sub categories,
and this has info on female molesters.
The reason this sort of thing bothers me is that I firmly belive that people tend to become what they are expected to be. I think that the attitude that all men are perverts tends to encourage perversion. It sends the message that “all guys are really like this deep down inside” and could be used to justify someone’s pedophillic tendencies.
**Material obtained from Wring’s cited website.**Myths <RETURN>
In the mid to late 70’s, it was estimated that only 0.1 per cent of all child molesters were female. In 1983, David Finkelhor’s survey of child molestation indicated the percentage of female perpetrators to be nearly 40% of the molesters. This data was ignored because the surveys defined a child sexual offender as any person having knowledge of sexual abuse of a child and not stopping it. The female perpetrator data was arbitrarily refigured. Any case which included a male perpetrator, the female co-defendant(s) was deleted from the total. It is interesting that co-defendant males were not removed from survey. This still led to a bit under 10% of the molesters being female.
<RETURN> Interestingly, in an in-depth study of child abuse in day care, Mr. Finkelhor uncovers 40% of the day care abusers were female. Unlike the earlier study, an in-depth analysis of the abuse indicated that the majority of female abusers were involved with male abusers. Surprisingly, this study uncovered the fact that 36% of the abusers that initiated and perpetuated the abuse were female. Dispelling the idea, at least in the day care setting, that female perpetrators were dupes of the men leading the perpetration. In fact, just the opposite seemed to be the case. Where multiple perpetrators existed, the women were as much the initiators as the men. Of course, it was quickly pointed out that the majority of day-care workers are female which accounts for the high percentages of female abusers in this study.
It is important to recall the denial of child sexual abuse which our society has had to overcome through out the centuries. At one time, many believed Sigmund Freud’s analysis of women and girls’ dreams of sexual encounters with their fathers as being their unconscious desire to be sexual with their fathers. Incest, and the thought of incest, was swept under the carpet. Now that child sexual abuse is being brought to light and the incidents are becoming more numerous, more and more female abusers will be brought to account for their behaviors.
This is parallel to the point I was making earlier about friends and relatives vs. strangers. The people involved in situations that offer the most potential for child molestation are disproportionately women. This will skew the numbers in their direction. In any given circumstance the likelihood of molestation by women is likely not as high (compared to men) as those numbers would suggest.
An analogy would be comparing the number of people who die in car accidents to the number who die from complications relating to heart transplants. The former is a lot higher. But that doesn’t mean that a given car trip is riskier than a given heart transplant.
