S/O why is sexual molestation of children so common?

[Anonymous]

Here is the grand jury report:

http://cbschicago.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/sandusky-grand-jury-presentment.pdf

It's so disgusting for so many reasons. One thing I don't understand when reading this, and when the whole Michael Jackson thing came out, is why a parent would allow their child to spend the night with an adult male. Is the parent in awe of the "celebrity" status or enjoying all the gifts and opportunities the child receives?

[Anonymous]

A lot of paranoia on this board. People who won't let their children near any male, people who think porn is the problem, etc.

Statistically, these crimes are down compared to 20-30 years ago, for a variety of reasons: more vigilance, better psychiatric meds, etc.

The reason they appear so prevalent is the media coverage. Stories like this sell, the more gruesome the better.

[Anonymous]

The overwhelming majority of people on sexual offender registries did not abuse children at all. They are there for crimes against other adults, public urination, or something they did 20 years ago that may well fall under the "Romeo and Juliet laws" today.

Of the rest, most abused teenagers, not young children. Very few people are sexually attracted to prepubescent children. But by the time a child is 12, he or she is sexually attractive to the majority of the population. That is a biological fact. This means that sexual abuse of an older child is not the sign of a psychiatric disorder, but simply a violation of moral norms, norms that are a fairly recent invention and not even standard in most parts of the world today.

It is right and proper that these norms should exist in today's society. Personally I support an age of consent of at least 17 (with "Romeo and Juliet" exceptions.) But because teenagers develop at different rates, not just physically but mentally, and because these norms are recent and non-universal, there is a lot of grey area there. The law does not draw any distinctions between forcible and consensual, but most people on the street are hesitant to state that every time an adult engages in sexual behavior with someone under 18, it is rape. Movies and TV shows grapple with this all the time.

So even though, in an absolute majority of cases, a sexual relationship between a teenager and an adult is unhealthy and damaging to the teenager, and in some cases, it is every bit as abhorrent as the rape of a small child, I think the fact that gray areas do exist, and the fact that the media often treats this in a kind of "wink wink nudge nudge" fashion, might make it easier for abusers to justify their actions to themselves.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The overwhelming majority of people on sexual offender registries did not abuse children at all. They are there for crimes against other adults, public urination, or something they did 20 years ago that may well fall under the "Romeo and Juliet laws" today.

Of the rest, most abused teenagers, not young children. Very few people are sexually attracted to prepubescent children. But by the time a child is 12, he or she is sexually attractive to the majority of the population. That is a biological fact. This means that sexual abuse of an older child is not the sign of a psychiatric disorder, but simply a violation of moral norms, norms that are a fairly recent invention and not even standard in most parts of the world today.

It is right and proper that these norms should exist in today's society. Personally I support an age of consent of at least 17 (with "Romeo and Juliet" exceptions.) But because teenagers develop at different rates, not just physically but mentally, and because these norms are recent and non-universal, there is a lot of grey area there. The law does not draw any distinctions between forcible and consensual, but most people on the street are hesitant to state that every time an adult engages in sexual behavior with someone under 18, it is rape. Movies and TV shows grapple with this all the time.

So even though, in an absolute majority of cases, a sexual relationship between a teenager and an adult is unhealthy and damaging to the teenager, and in some cases, it is every bit as abhorrent as the rape of a small child, I think the fact that gray areas do exist, and the fact that the media often treats this in a kind of "wink wink nudge nudge" fashion, might make it easier for abusers to justify their actions to themselves.

I would love to see your fact that a majority of people are sexually attracted to 12 year olds. I disagree. You mean adult women are sexually attracted to 12 year old boys? Of course not. If you had said 16 I might agree.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The overwhelming majority of people on sexual offender registries did not abuse children at all. They are there for crimes against other adults, public urination, or something they did 20 years ago that may well fall under the "Romeo and Juliet laws" today.

Of the rest, most abused teenagers, not young children. Very few people are sexually attracted to prepubescent children. But by the time a child is 12, he or she is sexually attractive to the majority of the population. That is a biological fact. This means that sexual abuse of an older child is not the sign of a psychiatric disorder, but simply a violation of moral norms, norms that are a fairly recent invention and not even standard in most parts of the world today.

It is right and proper that these norms should exist in today's society. Personally I support an age of consent of at least 17 (with "Romeo and Juliet" exceptions.) But because teenagers develop at different rates, not just physically but mentally, and because these norms are recent and non-universal, there is a lot of grey area there. The law does not draw any distinctions between forcible and consensual, but most people on the street are hesitant to state that every time an adult engages in sexual behavior with someone under 18, it is rape. Movies and TV shows grapple with this all the time.

So even though, in an absolute majority of cases, a sexual relationship between a teenager and an adult is unhealthy and damaging to the teenager, and in some cases, it is every bit as abhorrent as the rape of a small child, I think the fact that gray areas do exist, and the fact that the media often treats this in a kind of "wink wink nudge nudge" fashion, might make it easier for abusers to justify their actions to themselves.

I would love to see your fact that a majority of people are sexually attracted to 12 year olds. I disagree. You mean adult women are sexually attracted to 12 year old boys? Of course not. If you had said 16 I might agree.

I meant post-pubescent. This could mean as early as 10 for some girls, and as late as 16 for some kids.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The overwhelming majority of people on sexual offender registries did not abuse children at all. They are there for crimes against other adults, public urination, or something they did 20 years ago that may well fall under the "Romeo and Juliet laws" today.

Of the rest, most abused teenagers, not young children. Very few people are sexually attracted to prepubescent children. But by the time a child is 12, he or she is sexually attractive to the majority of the population. That is a biological fact. This means that sexual abuse of an older child is not the sign of a psychiatric disorder, but simply a violation of moral norms, norms that are a fairly recent invention and not even standard in most parts of the world today.

It is right and proper that these norms should exist in today's society. Personally I support an age of consent of at least 17 (with "Romeo and Juliet" exceptions.) But because teenagers develop at different rates, not just physically but mentally, and because these norms are recent and non-universal, there is a lot of grey area there. The law does not draw any distinctions between forcible and consensual, but most people on the street are hesitant to state that every time an adult engages in sexual behavior with someone under 18, it is rape. Movies and TV shows grapple with this all the time.

So even though, in an absolute majority of cases, a sexual relationship between a teenager and an adult is unhealthy and damaging to the teenager, and in some cases, it is every bit as abhorrent as the rape of a small child, I think the fact that gray areas do exist, and the fact that the media often treats this in a kind of "wink wink nudge nudge" fashion, might make it easier for abusers to justify their actions to themselves.

I would love to see your fact that a majority of people are sexually attracted to 12 year olds. I disagree. You mean adult women are sexually attracted to 12 year old boys? Of course not. If you had said 16 I might agree.

The fact that today's beauty standards favor a very slim built certainly don't help. When I look at my tall, athletic 10-year-old in a swimsuit, from a distance, she doesn't look that different from the images on the covers of magazines.

I meant post-pubescent. This could mean as early as 10 for some girls, and as late as 16 for some kids.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:PP, if they weren't arrested or prosecuted, how much could we learn about pedophiles from the past? The statistics and "facts" are inaccurate.

Exactly. It's not like pedophiles are leaving a geological record to study.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:To answer OP's question:

Pornography.

Molestation of children has always happened. But it has gotten much, much worse with internet pornography. My husband works with the FBI and has prosecuted many child abuse and rape cases. His training clearly shows internet pornography exacerbating the problem. Because it takes men who were not "born this way," molested as children themselves, in a state of arrested development, etc., and leads them gradually into child porn, then acting out child porn. It normalizes and desensitizes, and creates a "need" where there was none before. This widens the pool of perpetrators.

Research shows that access to pornography lowers rates of rape and other sexual assault. People are less likely to seek out physical gratification, especially violent, criminal sexual gratification, if they have a proxy for it. Furthermore, most attempts to limit access to child pornography on the web leads to MORE child pornography, not less. Most efforts involve putting digital watermarks on existing and known child pornography images/videos. When these are traded on the web, their transit can be tracked and the traders arrested. As a result, existing caches of child pornography are useless, so more must be created. This is not to say that we should allow it to be freely traded; only that efforts to stop it often have unintended consequences.