Interesting article, absolutely appalling situation.

Why do men want sex with children? Why are the numbers of men who want sex with children increasing?

Very good questions lillian.
I cannot fathom the motivations of pedophiles. I could never see a child in a sexual way. But then I cant figure why people seem to get so much enjoyment out of other peoples pain. Why they can watch funniest home videos or extreme fighting for fun and enjoyment.

Im sure fools like runner will come in and say it is our heathenism and decadence and turning away from god that has caused it. To them I say it is interesting how many priests and clergy are pederasts and it begs the question about what the extreme godbothering these guys do has done to their souls. If they have one. Why is it so often churchmen who do such heinous crimes?

"Abstinence makes the church grow fondlers".

Our western habit of lauding and celebrating youth also play a part as would the constant sexualisation of children that has been talked about here recently. I wonder if this is the (sort of hidden) consequences no one is noticing from advertisers and marketers desire to capture and exploit children and using sex and sexy images to sell to them. While it is still an abhorrent crime the fact that we are surrounded by ever younger and younger children dressed like whores may be effecting some men to think it is somehow ok to abuse children.

There are a number of problems with discussing human sexuality on the basis that someone who is biologically sexually mature is a “child” for no other reason than that they are under an arbitrary age set by government that bears no relation to biological development.

We need to recognize that it is normal human behaviour for people to have sexual feelings, thoughts and activities, and so long as they are over the age of sexual maturity, and their sexual relations are consensual, no issue of abuse arises as a matter of fact, but only as a legal fiction.

The age of consent was made law over a hundred years ago, during which time the age of puberty in women has dropped three years – an unprecedented change in human physical development. Consequently, there has opened up a gap between the age when people start to be sexually active in fact, and the age of consent in law.

The official view is entirely circular: if the age of consent were 21, then there would be a big social problem of “child sex abuse” – all the consensual sexual relations between sexually mature people who are over the age of puberty but under 21. I first had sex when I was 15, and my girlfriend was 15 too – a double case of “child sex abuse”, “sex attacks”, “sexual slavery” etc. This is hype and puritan nonsense. I know a young woman who reached puberty about age 11 and when 14 after making love with her lover had a baby. From the official point of view, every time they have sex, it’s a case of child sex abuse, rape, attack, etc. But we need to recognize that what is consensual and involves people over the age of puberty, involves neither children nor abuse. What is happening is ordinary human behaviour, not criminal perversion.

Parents or potential rivals may strongly resent their offspring or competition having sex. And that may make it a matter of sexual morality, or of sexual jealousy. But it’s not a matter of child protection.

Peter, there is a reason for the age of consent and sometimes it is to protect the child from themselves and those who want to exploit them. To argue that an 11 year old has the maturity to accept the consequenses of se* is an abomination.

To the other posters, I am also disturbed by the role some women have in the exploitation of children. A recent news article told how a Tasmanian woman 'sold' her 12 year old to peadophiles.

A NSW woman was jailed recently for having child pornography. This is pretty sick.

I notice by the different acounts of peodophiles hacking into the websites of the 2 children who were killed recently, a boy stabbed at school and a child murdered in Bundaberg, that the wierdos and creeps try to dominate the internet too.

I would like to see anyone using electronic means to carry on this madness, totally barred from having an internet connection or mobile phones. Monitor these creeps, take away their opportunity to share thier disease.

It is time the richer nations started taking responsiblity for their own filth. We need to open up conversation about how these deviates work, show that as a society we have the right to say that the legal age for consent is 16, not those who want to change the law to suit their own gratification.

If the age of consent were 12, you might have an argument.

Spurious passionate hateful emotive drivel about paedophilia and psychopaths and rape and murder of little children, only proves my point: you are only confounding the categories and issues.

You have not given any *reason* why the age of consent should be 16. The question underlying a criminal law, should not be whether you approve of the act, any more than it should be whether you approve of homosexuality. Why 16? (And spare us your flimsy red herring about people murdering babies.) Why not 15? Why not 17? Why not 18? Why not 21? All of these are or have been ages of consent. Does the biological development of people change at the border does it?

The fact is, there is nothing magical about the age of 16, it is completely arbitrary, it has nothing to do with whether the person involved is a "child" for purposes of a discussion of sexuality, and is nothing but a front for a censorious moral horror over young sexually mature women having consensual sex, falsely parading as concern for child protection.

To say the age of consent should be 16 to avoid exploitation is to assume that something is exploitative for no other reason than that it is sexual. But that is what is in issue. If your assumption were valid, age would be irrelevant. It would justify banning sex at any age.

The criterion should be whether the sex in question involves an immature person, or is abusive *in fact*. The age of consent laws in effect charge that sex below a certain *age* is intrinsically abusive. But when questioned, there is no reason, but only passionate irrational irrelevant nonsense about the murder and rape of little children, which is not in issue.

If the purpose of the age of consent is to stipulate a particular stage of biological development, then why not specify that stage of biological development? What is it?