Sorry Pelican but Warwick comes a cross to me, like a man on a crusade who is so obsessed with his own moral code he's lost the plot and sees everything in black or white. then again this is fine for a stump preacher but tends to be more of a hindrance to the practical day to day reality.

Much of what he says is emotive and perhaps true in one context but somewhat less than conducive to to common sense and rational behaviour by the public i.e. the hysteria surrounding Ferguson.

RobB worries me too in that his views are so strident as to call into question his objectivity. With such strident views I wonder how he manages objectivity when counseling.

I would want to see proof that what he reports isn't a higher desire to seek help than in the past (a change in Current mores).
I wonder if a similar head per capita ratio was there before but like spousal abuse simply not reported.

A bit like the pygmy blue tongue considered extinct for 60 years therefore not looked for.... they were simply looking in the wrong place, the species was alive and well.

The problem with causes is that one has to be sensational to bet attention but be careful not to over sell the threat less one causes greater fear than it solves. This can lead to vigilantism or being ignored. Sadly the author does both

I agree with Phanto, If we raise well balanced children these issues would not happen as often. Except 5 year olds playing with each. Back in my day that was called doctors and nurses and considered normal, though uncomfortable. You certainly did not encourage it but did not call the police for crying out loud.

Today we have kids living in cities, detached from nature, overweight and robotic. We are asking for increased problems in self esteem.

Then as any good nanny state does, blame someone else for our own deficiencies in parenting.

Warwick Marsh, I am the sort of person who is normally swayed by figures and the figures what you gave us were pretty remarkable. Novel too - I have never seen anything like them.

If your figures stacked up you might have a case. I was hoping for ABS stats or something. Remarkable figures require authoritative sources and all that.

The sites you gave me were pretty remarkable - but in all the wrong ways. In order to have a hope of convincing anyone you need to quote credible sources.

Let's get the bonfires going for all those naughty books.

Anyone got a flaming cross?

I think we need more light and less heat in here. Perhaps we should define our terms?

The problem I have with the author's take on things is that the Christian church must be the most sex-negative belief system in the history of the world. They literally think everything except monogamous marriage as virgins, faithful til death, is the model of human sexuality, and everything else is a distortion of it.

Of course, if you take that as your model, then you'll find lots of consensual sex by sexually mature people, and call it "abuse", "exploitation", "violence", "assault", "hyper-sexualisation", and so on.

If we take, say 18, as being the age of sexual maturity, the problem is, *in fact* development is a continuous process, and everyone in the population has by that age reached puberty, and has sexual feelings, thoughts and desire, and the majority have acted on them.

It is perverse, for purposes of a discussion of sexuality, to label everyone under 18 as a "child", and any sexual activity as "abuse" and "hypersexualisation".

And clearly the reason the author is doing it is because of an ulterior motive - to try to villify and ban as much sex as he can, and as the church has done over and over again in its long history.

But if 18, or 16, or any arbitrary age is not to be the cut-off point, how does one define "hyper-sexualisation" (ie over-sexualisation) without defining normal sexuality? And then a) the variability of normal sexuality is at odds with the author's Christian views, and
b) why should everyone be forced into compliance with non-normal but non-abusive sexuality?

But if the only criterion is that sexuality must be non-abusive, that leaves nothing of the author's original argument, which is based on age.

PartTime Parent
"When children live in households without BOTH NATURAL parents, the risk of child abuse and neglect increases by 2,600% ! ! ! "

That is very interesting and I have heard similar statistics before. Could you please link us to a source for that - not the email, but an original source or one that can lead to an original source?