Hmm. Well, I don't know about all this child sex abuse stuff.

Goodness me, some common sense needs to prevail here. Let's take a look. Searching Google for this 1 in 6 statistic revealed 49 such references -

Google search
http://www.google.com.au/search?hl=en&q=%221+in+6+girls%22+sexual+abuse&btnG=Google+Search&meta=

I investigated the first one. It revealed even more startling statistics than 1 in 6! Absolutely amazing!

Illinois Coalition Against Sexual Assault
CHILD SEXUAL ABUSE (.pdf)
http://www.icasa.org/uploads/child_sexual_abuse.pdf

According to this shocking document, the 1 in 6 statistic pales into insignificance. These people claim that "one in three girls and one in six boys are sexually abused before the age of 18"!

That's 33% of the girl population!

That's 17% of the boy population!

This is very alarming indeed. It is also, most probably, what is known as advocacy research. But assuming it is correct, then we'd see that sex with minors (paedophilia) and family members (incest) was a very ordinary and everyday experience for a whopping 25% of the population of children. There would be nothing unusual about it. Ordinary people would be lobbying to have the age of consent lowered or abolished altogethered and incest laws overthrown because everybody did it and there was nothing unusual or salacious about it. These figures should indicate that incest and paedophilia are normal human behaviours.

About the highest figure I have ever seen claimed for homosexuality is about 17%, and we have seen, living in a liberal democracy, that even this small percentage of the population has been enormously vocal and successful at eliminating laws prohibiting it. So where are the lobby groups for peadophiles? At the percentages quoted for paedophilia, it would seem that they would have a somewhat larger platform upon which to stand. It would appear to be a very wide spread and normal human behaviour. So how come society has laws against it?

Frankly, I don't believe the statistics and I don't believe the problem is wide spread either. And I do believe teenage girls play with sensuality naturally.

Wouldn't it be great if we could all spend a little time being the other gender, we'd see the world so differently, I suspect. I have had my eyes opened to the male response to young girls by watching the remarkable transformation of my oldest daughter. At 13, she suddenly shot up in height and turned from a skinny little girl into someone who looked like a spectacularly beautiful woman. This happened exclusively on the outside, however, inside - to herself- she remained the skinny little girl she had been a few months before. But the way the world reacted to her, Boy, was that a revelation. Both men and women changed utterly in how they behaved to her. Suddenly women were suspicious of her, condemnatory, female teachers were particularly purse lipped about her and men not only stared at her (all men, from 13 to 80), some of them yelled things at her, hung out of car windows at her and impinged on her life in a myriad of ways. Bewidered at first she quickly developed a pugnacious and fake sophisticated veneer, partly to keep herself safe and partly to live up to what the world now seemed to expect. I wanted to get her a t-shirt that quoted Jessica Rabbit (from the animated film Who Killed Roger Rabbit) which said "I'm not really bad, I'm just drawn that way." I'm sure lots of men (and women) thought she was a little tart and asking for it. On the contrary, she is now 17 and still a virgin. I think we project a great deal onto young girls, and they struggle and almost drown trying to deal with it. Beauty is as much a curse as a gift.

3.

Redneck, regarding your "Judy" example in Queensland this is a crime punishable by a maximum 14 years imprisonment. So yes, I would consider Judy’s former ex boyfriend a pedophile. I personally don’t think he should be jailed for 5 years though but I’d leave it up to the judge (going on contemporary Qld sentences he’d be looking at a suspended sentence of 6 months). So no jail for him but it would stop him from ever working with children.

Importantly - ticking the “Maximus” box ;-) I’d say the same for a female who had sex with a 15 year old "Joe". From a practical perspective, if Judy/Joe did not report it to the police then the boy/girl friend would not be charged because nobody would know about it.

I still think it's wrong for Judy's boyfriend to break the law by having sex with her before she was 16. We can't all go around breaking laws if we feel like it! Then we also get the situation where pedophiles say "but look - some girls love it when they're 15 - Judy loved it - I shouldn't be charged for having sex with 15 year old Sharon - she wanted it like Judy wanted it". That's the complaint about Lolita - pedophiles parade examples of children who allegedly "want it" (even though it may be a case of grooming) in a pathetic attempt to excuse their despicable crimes.

Checkout http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_consent it is very interesting - especially re the Netherlands which is one of the most sexually tolerant countries in the world (you would be amazed at the type of porn you can buy, prostitution is legal, homosexuality is legal including civil unions for heterosexual/homosexual with the same rights as marriage, I’ve seen an article on how the government pays prostitutes to have sex with people with a disability although I don’t know if it still happens) however it has a consent age of 16 (18 for prostitutes/pornography) applying to its citizens anywhere in the world.

Maximus I agree that all laws should be equal and fair for everyone. As you can see, I’ve been spending quite some time arguing with Redneck that female pedophiles should have the law applying the same as male pedophiles. I agree with the first four paragraphs of your post “posted by Maximus, Wednesday, 7 December 2005 9:07:12 PM” but I think your suggestion that laws have made life “almost unbearable” might be an exaggeration and I don’t think children under 16 who are abused have to pay child support to an adult abuser who gets pregnant (and certainly one wonders about the wisdom of a woman pedophile bringing up children).

Maximus, regarding the statistics issue I don’t have a view apart from that it would be good to have some statistics and as accurate as possible. I got this from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_sexual_abuse
“Goldman (2000) notes that "the absolute number of children being sexually abused each year has been almost impossible to ascertain" and that "there does not seem to be agreement on the rate of children being sexually abused". A meta-analytic study by Rind, Tromovitch, and Bauserman (1998) found that reported prevalence of abuse for males ranged from 3% to 37%, and for females from 8% to 71% with mean rates of 17% and 28% respectively. A study by Fromuth and Burkhart (1987) found that depending upon the definition of CSA used, prevalence among men varied from 4% to 24%.”
But those statistics are not very helpful!
However (while I can see that you are saying it in an ironic fashion) even if incest and pedophilia were running at 25% I don’t think they should be considered “normal human behaviours”. If rape and murder were running at 25% I think they would still be wrong. There are lobby groups for pedophiles http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Childlove_movement

Ashley that is a scary statement no wonder you were petrified – the one I’ve heard is “old enough to bleed old enough to breed” [yucky].

Great post Enaj

It's interesting to see a thread on such a difficult subject stay so civil and on topic. There have been some really interesting posts throughout this discussion.

Absolutely in agreement that honest statistics would be a big help in understanding the issue, what I'm not sure of is how you get them. So many of those who I would expect are in a position to do so have vested interests in the outcomes.

Another aspect of this issue which has long perplexed me is the proportion of the damage done from the act vs the impact from the way this issue is portrayed. I have no answers to that particular quandry, I think we need to maintain the strong social sanctions against child molesters but at the same time minimise the spill over to children if they happen to be abused. Whilst the kind of person who molests kids is amongst the lowest or the low I'd like for kids not to be left feeling like it was a big issue. Thoughts?

R0bert

Thank you to all posters. You have all given me something to think about.

Yes, I find it hard to believe that the 1:6 figure is correct. In common with most people, I don't want to believe that figure.

Cheers
Kay