More Child Molestation Today?

Great Debates
1

It seems to me that sexual predation and child molestation are more prevalent today than ever before. At least I don’t recall hearing as many news stories about this 20 and 30 years ago as I do today.

So, which of these is actually the case:

a. The predation and molestation incidence rate is the same as before, and I’ve just forgotten that there were as many news stories then as now. (By incidence rate, I mean the number of occurrences per capita.)

b. The incidence rate is the same as before, but the media are reporting more of the stories.

c. The incidence rate has increased, and the number of stories reported has increased along with it.
If case a, I guess that’s all there is to it. Sorry to have bothered you.

If case b, what caused the media to change?

If case c, what are the root causes of this increase?

2

I would say that at this point in time, there’s no way to know whether the number of cases of child molestation has risen or shrunk.

Previous to the seventies, most likely it “was not talked about.” Certainly it did happen, and the police did catch people for it, but I don’t think that paperwork was submitted. People would be chased out of town for it, maybe murdered silently, but not jailed (speculation.)

Since just the time we’ve started accepting it as something that people can talk about, I’m not sure whether the overall number of cases has risen or shrunk. In general, though, the number is going to be representative principally of stress in society. So overall the last 20 or thirty years, most likely when the economy was down there was more, and when it was up, there was less. We won’t start seeing any radical change in the number of cases until another generation or so. Hopefully the acceptance that it happens and willingness to report it (even about someone in ones own family) will lead to a decrease.

But for it to decrease, you need to reduce the number of children who were molested. That I’ve read, all child molesters were themselves molested as children. So any molestations prevented today, won’t have any effect until twenty years down the line.

I can’t imagine that the number can do anything but shrink.

3

I’m going with B.

Back in the day, there were simply things that one Did Not Talk About. Being molested was one of them.

However, if you read enough books, fiction or non-you see all kinds of instances of the “town pervert”, that everyone had to watch out for. For example, in the book A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, set in the early 1900s, the protagonist encounters a serial molestor in her neighborhood in about oh, 1913, I think?

4

I have seen statistics on child abductions by strangers, and although your typical person on the street has the strong impression that the rate has gone way up, the rates have actually decreased significantly. The difference is that when it happens nowadays, anywhere in the country, the whole rest of the country hears about it. This didn’t happen 40 years ago.

5

An anecdote, if I may be allowed one: some 30 years ago, I reported to a counselor at my school that I was being molested by a man who lived in my house. She advised me to go home and talk to my parents about it. That’s all she did. Today, CPS and the police would be called, and I would likely be removed from my home until the situation was settled.

6

I haven’t seen stats, but that wouldn’t surpise me. The South Park episode “Child Abduction Is Not Funny” would be more or less how I’d expect it to be. Of course, with any episode of South Park there is also a theme of anyone in power being complete idiots, so there winds up being all the children sent out of town because the statistics say that a child is most likely to be abducted by someone in the family.

7

I would guess fewer just because it gets much more attention today, gets taken more seriously when reported, and kids themselves are coached to report it at the first sign that they are aware.

I am sure that there are new child pedophiles popping up all the time and that won’t change but aggressive pedophiles used to molest up to dozens of victims before they were caught if they ever were at all. The Catholic Church sex scandal centered in Boston had hundreds if not thousands of victims from the 1950’s on. I would like to think things wouldn’t become so rampant today because people would listen to the kids and others would be extremely hesitant to help shelter the molesters.

Child molesters are a huge boogie-man now and kids are trained to fear them as monsters and aggressively seek help. Sex offender registries help build some of the hysteria in good and bad ways.

Of course, these points don’t address molestation by relatives as much. I assume there is still a lot of that type of thing that goes unreported but I assume that kids are at least more informed about that type as well today.

8

I had a long post written out, but then it was time to go home.

To some extent, child molestation is an element of a moral panic that has been going on since at least the 1980s. It’s morphed from satanic cults to online predators lurking in every chatroom, but it’s the same basic thing. The media help to create an imaginary or nearly-imaginary bogeyman, and the next thing you know, everyone’s a little paranoid over a threat that barely exists.

There is also a phenomenon called the deviancy amplification spiral that sort of explains this. Essentially, what happens is that the media report on a story, which in turn, encourages more of the same behavior, which in turn, causes more reporting on that behavior, which then seems more “normal” or more prevalent than it really is. The end result is often more citizen involvement in “solving” problems that don’t really warrant that kind of attention. Witness the passage of laws like the Deleting Online Predators Act. Banning certain websites from school and library computers doesn’t really solve the problem of online predatory sexual behavior. But it makes people feel good knowing that their children are being “protected”. (FTR, only 13% of children in one study reported being sexually solicited online, with 4% each reporting either “distressing” or “aggressive” solicitations. Compare that to 34% of children reporting seeing sexual material they did not wish to see and 9% reporting harassment. In other words, kids are almost three times more likely to stumble on a porn website than they are to be sexually solicited. From this study done at the University of New Hampshire.)

What also doesn’t help are the “Megan’s Law” registries that don’t distinguish between offenders who are on them because they had sex with a not-quite-underage boyfriend or girlfriend and those people who are truly dangerous predators. It’s easy to feel paranoid when you know x identified “predators” live in your immediate neighborhood, whether they’re a real threat or not.

On the other hand, in some respects, the increased awareness has been good. Sexual crimes are now more openly discussed and more openly prosecuted. I just think that much of this is so much political chest-thumping with media egging them on.

If you’re truly interested in this, I heartily suggest Barry Glassner’s excellent book The Culture of Fear. He goes into this in a good bit of detail and gives a very clear-eyed analysis of media versus social problems.

And if you’re really really really interested in this, see Stanley Cohen’s Folk Devils and Moral Panics in which he lays out the deviancy amplification spiral. I’ve read it and to say it’s dense is an understatement. But he does go into the DAS in good detail.

Robin

9

Check [thread=396127]this thread[/thread] out and follow the link in OP.

10

There were two films I saw over the summer called Perversion for Profit. They were financed by Charles Keating (yes, that Charles Keating) as part of a moral crusade against porn.

The sad thing about one of those films was that it showed legitimate, serious gay magazines and labeled them the worst kind of porn.

(The films are here. I saw both but I don’t remember which film this was in.)

Robin

11

Sure, but isn’t the frequency of just about every antisocial act related to societal stress, and even in some cases isn’t population density even more strongly predictive? With six billion bodies and growing clogging up the livable landscape, it’s going to just keep getting more and more common I think.

That’s an extremely common belief, but it’s just plain false. There are new molesters born all the time who will never be molested themselves. (If nothing else, there had to be a first molester who wasn’t molested, so why not more?)

It’s natural (but please don’t imagine I think that’s some kind of “justification”). Having sex – even between adolescents and adults – is what our genes have programmed us to want to do, especially since adolescence is our prime child-bearing age. We have a remarkably long childhood as it is, and evolution is impatient. The modern cultural approbation towards this is maladaptive in the strict biological sense, even though in our modern industrialized societies it’s by far the wisest choice to wait, since these days supporting and raising children requires much more than what our forbears could get away with.

I can’t imagine that the number could do anything but grow as the population increases.

12

For those who want depressing statistics (US centric) visit the Bureau of Justice Statistics site, and knock yourself out:

I think reporting has gone up, but the incidence remains, statistically, about the same as it has always been. It’s kind of depressing to figure that even with all our technology, our awareness, and all that fun stuff, people still prey on children at the rate they do.

13

I am in my 70’s and I can tell you that child molestation has gone on for years,it was just kept secret ( even using the word sex or knwing the names of the body parts were not mentioned out loud).When I was in high school I was reprimanded because I said my mother had to have a hesterectomy.

As I speak to people of my age I am amazed at how many were molested as little children. A good part of it stems(I believe ) in our cultural attitude about human sexuality.
I saw a show on pbs that showed a tribe living in the jungle and they had a dance that even little children did,there was no molestation but if someone would offend another they were severly punished and according to the anthropologist there had never been any sexual crimes committed in the 10 years he studied them. They seemed to know their boundries and stuck to them.

Monavis

14

In the early 1960’s I lived in what could only be called a rural backwater in Kent (UK).

There was one old guy that we were told to be really wary of, he had tales of a huge model railway that he used, to try to entice us in, however parental (and probably other) warning made us be polite but walk by.

There was another guy who was reckoned to be perfectly Ok, and he was great fun, messing around with a sword and reciting old verses.

The ringer was a guy who was a handyman cum gardener, he was supposed to have been shell shocked from WWI (note one) but was regarded as pretty trustworthy. He exhibited a great deal of forensic interest in my and brother1’s male tackle, we did not think much of it, but the sh/t hit the fan when my youngest brother hit him over a head with a plank.

It turned out that brother2, who cannot have been over the age of four, and was probably closer to two, took serious objection to having his genitalia examined.

I’m talking about a pre-1964 hamlet of fewer than 100 people, and there were two perverts.

Although, statistically I can only vouch for one.

Fortunately my interests are confined to females, preferably over that 28 - 35 year old age when they have the procreation bells ringing.

15

You forgot the last choice:

d. There is less child molestation occurring today than in the past.

This is true due to a much higher awareness of the problem, and the willingness of people to talk about it and actively try to prevent it. Increased reporting is simply a byproduct of the increased awareness and prosecution. Everyone with any access to children, be they teachers, clergy, scout leaders, etc. are all now under the microscope much more than in the past, which produces the illusion that it problem is increasing. It is not; we are only becoming more aware of it.

16

While it hasn’t been so long since many “sex crimes” where either unmentionable (date rape, although there’s at least one example in the Bible; child molestation) or considered perfectly normal if a tad exxagerated behavior (“I killed her 'cos she was mine”), we still need to advance a lot.

For example: many people say “aaah, and most child molesters are relatives or something, you know” nodding sagely and in the tone of voice with which they used to say “aaah, and you know how those actresses are”. But they go several shades of pale and suddenly change the conversation if someone says “definitely, I got through molestation attempts by a teacher and by my grandfather”. It’s still something that happens to others; something that can not really be spoken about except in general terms.

Heck, the first time Grandpa grabbed my ass, he managed to do it and escape unscathed because I was shocked - I’d thought that only happened to others.

Grandpa is still at it. The teacher got cut short, has been teaching at the same school for the last 25 years and students from the last 24 would never believe those of us who had him that first year because “he’s the sweetest guy ever!” I don’t really know whether it’s happening more or not, but as we understand it better and as/if you can report it without getting stuck with a “victim” label, we’ll be able to do what was done with that teacher: chop the abuse in the bud and get the abuser to be… a sweet old guy.

17

I’d say, just as much, but just better reported. However, I do think that 1/3 all females; 1/4 all males stat is really exagerrated.

What makes me believe b to be most likely- when a problem arose in our church (adult-teen) and a specialist was brought in to help, she asked if anyone needed prayer & counseling for dealing with past abuse- it was shocking to me how many older ladies went forward.

18

Yeah, the cum gardener would definitely be one to watch out for.

By the way, just in case you meant the latin cum, to avoid confusion, it’s normally separated from the other words with hyphens: handyman-cum-gardener.

19

No, certainly it is possible for spontaneous molestations of children. But, interview any molester and he’ll admit to having been molested as a child.

Most molesters appear to share the common traits that:

  1. Were molested as a child
  2. Are unsuccessful with relationships, so often marry multiple times.
  3. Often flirt with gay sex and trying to get into the gay community.
  4. Will most often have sex with their own or their step children, rather than some random child. They don’t seem to prefer step children over their biological children, nor the reverse–just that they tend to get remarried often.
  5. Began molesting when they lost their job, a family member died, got a divorce, etc. Essentially, they do so when stressed.
  6. Will usually say that they knew, “I’m not supposed to do it”, but not in terms of a, “It’s a bad thing to do, like I go to jail stuff.” Again, usually basing this on it having been done to them, without the person who did it getting in trouble.

But yes indeed, people who are “attracted” to sex with children seem to all, or sufficiently predominately, have been molested as children. I don’t doubt that there are cases of child sex that has more to do with simple sociopathy and such (i.e. someone wants to screw something, and that’s all that’s around)–which may have been the primordial originator–but that’s really an outlying case.

20

Sage Rat, do you have a cite for any of that?