Factoids and the Sex Abuse Panic

Jay Baskins

The religious right has been deliberately drumming up a moral panic about sex abuse for decades now. What political purposes does this moral panic serve? Three primary ones stand out:

1. By presenting the Internet as a place of great danger to children we are being prepared to accept censorship of the Internet. If this censorship is successful it will destroy the last place where one finds meaningful free speech.

2. By creating an atmosphere of hysteria about sex, the religions right has prevented the intelligent and nuanced discussion of the sexuality of children, adolescents and adults, and has put and end the few gains that were made with the sexual revolution of the 60s and early 70s.

3. By the creation of a radically disenfranchised group ("Pedophiles") the political right is able to dismantle due process and the machinery of a free society. The entrapment issue is a good example. Check out "Scapegoats and Shunning" at CounterPunch.

A factoid

is a statement of presumed fact that people believe to be true because they hear it repeated over and over. Here are a few examples of common factoids.

1. Factoid:

The "pedophile" is set apart from most men because he finds children or adolescents sexually attractive.

Fact:

A study of randomly selected "normal" men at Kent State University (Hall, G. N., Hirschman, R, and Oliver, L. 1995) discovered that "20% of the current subjects self-reported pedophilic interest and 26.25% exhibited penile arousal to pedophilic stimuli that equaled or exceeded arousal to adult stimuli."
< http://www.mhamic.org/sources/halletal.htm  > and
< http://www.ipce.info/ipceweb/Library/97-048_article.html >.

2. Factoid: 

The "pedophile" is a violent man who forces himself on children.

Fact: 

Baurmann in the largest study of child abuse ever carried out discovered that in 80% of all cases of reported illegal sexual contacts "the perpetrator had exhibited something other than threatening or violent behavior." (Baurmann, Michael. "Sexuality, Violence, and Psychological Sequalae." 1983, Wiesbaden: Federal German Police Bureau, pg. 291. )

3. Factoid: 

The activities of the "pedophile" are always traumatizing and cause great harm to the "victims".

Fact: 

In their study "A Meta-Analytic Review of Findings from National Samples on Psychological Correlates of Child Sexual Abuse," Rind and Tromovitch (1998) came to the following conclusion: "CSA [child sexual abuse ] is not associated with pervasive harm and that harm, when it occurs, is not typically intense." This peer reviewed article which appeared in the most prestigious psychological journal in the US was condemned by Congress. We object when Bush ignores science in things like global warming, but not when the issue has to do with sex sex. 
< http://www.ipce.info/ipceweb/Library/rbt_files.htm > and 
< http://www.ipce.info/library_3/rbt/metaana.htm >. 

4. Factoid: 

The "pedophile" is unable to control himself and will always "re-offend".

Fact: 

One of the more extensive studies on this issue is called "Recidivism of Sex Offenders Released from Prison in 1994" It is available from the US Department of Justice. (Langan, P, Schmitt, E., and Durose, M., 2003) According to this study, "Within the first three years following release from prison, 3.3% (141 of 4,296) of released child molesters were rearrested for another sex crime against a child. 

5. Factoid: 

The "pedophile" is a brutish, primitive, self centered person who in incapable of empathy. 

Fact: 

Who have been some well know pedophiles? (I will use this term to mean a person who is strongly attracted to children or young adolescents.) Here are a few: Thomas Mann, James Barrie, Lewis Carrol, Alan Ginsberg, Walt Whitman, T.E. White, W. H. Auden, and last but not least Shakespeare. Most people who know anything about these people would not see them as brutish and primitive. 

6. Factoid: 

Minors never feel positive about their relationships with older partners if there is a sexual component in that relationship. 

Fact: 

Heinz Kohut, the founder of "Self Psychology" and one of the most important psychological theorists of the 20th Century reported that "I had this private tutor, who was a very important person in my life. He would take me to museums and swimming and concerts and we had endless intellectual conversations and played complicated intellectual games and played chess together."

They also did sexual things together, which they both enjoyed, but Kohut felt the sex was more or less incidental. The important thing for him was the relationship. He said "I was an only child. So it was in some way psychologically life-saving for me. I was very fond of this fellow." Heinz was about 10 or 11 at the time. He describes his years with his tutor as being perhaps the happiest ones in his life. 
(Strozier, 2001. "Heinz Kohut: The making of a Psychoanalyst." PP. 95 and 96.)

If as person were interested in how relationships typically appear to the younger partner he or she could read "Boys and Their Contacts with Men" by Theo Sandfort. 
< http://www.ipce.info/host/sandfort_87/ >

7. Factoid: 

Every one convicted of sexually abusing a child was also abused as a child.

Fact: 

In "Self-Reported Sexual Interest in Children: Sex Differences and Psychosocial Correlates in a University Sample," Smiljanich and Briere report that no statistically significant relationship was found between childhood sexual abuse and adult attraction to children. A small correlation between childhood sexual experiences and adult sexual behavior toward children has been reported in studies using prison populations, but no responsible researcher has ever suggested that every child abuser was abused as a child. 
< http://www.mhamic.org/sources/smiljanich&briere.htm >

8. Factoid: 

Children are not able to consent to a sexual relationship with an older partner.

Fact: 

Before saying whether this is true or not it is first necessary to determine what the statement means. If it means that they are not legally permitted to make such decisions, the statement is true, providing the child falls within the age range of people who are not permitted to make their own decisions about their sexual lives. If it means that they cannot make an "informed decision" and by this use of the term it is meant that they cannot see all the possible ramifications of their decision, this is also true. But it is true of every important decision anyone of any age ever makes. So by itself it has only a very limited meaning. 

If it means that children are not able to express their disinclination to do something they don't want if they are in a relationship with an older person, it is untrue. Anyone who has ever tried to get a child to eat something he or she does not like, or do his or her homework when a special program was on TV or tried to get a child to go to bed when she or he did not want to knows this is not true. Children do in fact know what they want, and in a situation where they are permitted to say yes or no, they are quite capable of doing so in accordance with their real wishes. 

9. Factoid: 

There is a natural progression in the "career" of the typical sex offender from minor and non-violent offenses to acts of violence or even murder.

Fact: 

A person who has engaged in sexual activity with a child or young adolescent that is non-violent and consensual is no more likely to progress toward violent acts that is the heterosexual or homosexual person who is sexually active with adults. 

Baurmann, in the conclusion to the study cited above, gives great emphasis to the fact that exhibitionists, non-violent individuals who have disregarded social norms, and violent sexual offenders are three very distinct groups. He points out that "the uncritical conflation of these three groups, combined with anxious attitudes regarding sexuality, prevent the rational discussion of deviant sexual behavior that we so desperately need." He points out that people who have committed violent acts of any kind against people are more likely to commit violent sexual acts than are non-violent sexual offenders. (Pg. 468).