Psyche, Science, and Society

Is sexual abuse always the danger it is cranked up to be?

March 5th, 2006

A new CounterPunch article takes on one of those verities of our increasingly repressive society, our brutal treatment of sexual offenders, real and imagined [Sexual Fascism in Progressive America: Scapegoats and Shunning]. The topic is so loaded that the author writes anonymously for fear of having his opinions on this topic reflect negatively on his other progressive activities. I call attention because we cannot afford to allow any area to be beyond discussion, especially an area like sexuality which is both an essential component of human existence and a continuous source of shame and guilt. At present, anyone questioning the magnitude of sexual abuse as a major social threat is, as the anonymous author notes, shunned. Just ask psychologist Bruce Rind [see below] who dared to publish his research showing that not all so-called “childhood sexual abuse” has negative effects on the children when grown up.

[ADDED: I am not saying that serious sexual abuse is not a real problem. Indeed it is. In fact, many cases of severe abuse are never reported. However, at the same time, society's obsession with sexual threat has led to the lumping of many types of activities -- some serious, others often not -- into a catchall category of "sexual abuse" that obscures the distinctions between, say, consensual sexual activity between individuals a few years apart in age, and rape, incest, and other nonconsensual and oten violent acts. Further, the severity of abuse does not justify the brutality and inhumanity with which many "abusers" are treated once entered into the criminal justice system.]

Just to see the pernicious effects that sexual fears can have, consider that we live in a society where children are routinely told to beware of and fear strangers. As a father I know that we need accurate information on the actual risks posed to children in order to teach them to exercise a reasonable amount of caution without giving them the sense that every person they don’t know is a mortal danger to their existence. [ADDED: After all, most serious abuse of children occurs within families or by those well known to the child, not by these supposed predator-starngers.] What kind of a society are we creating here when Arabs, gays, black, and strangers are all sources of mortal fear? If we tolerate draconian approaches [e.g., lifelong monitoring and public shunning] for accused sexual abusers, can similar treatments for others deemed a threat [the hundreds of thousands on terrorist watch lists, for example] be far behind? In a world where our government openly proclaims its right to torture whomever it deems a threat, we had better learn to doubt and rationally examine all claims of potential danger. Surely, the danger of creeping American fascism trumps all other dangers.

I can’t vouch for every factual claim in this article.Neither do I agree with all the arguments. But the issues it raises need open debate if this countries rapid slide into authoritarianism in all aspects of life are to be reversed. Remember: “First they cam for the perverts….”

Excerpts:

Of course among these sex offenders are indeed some criminals who have caused extreme harm: violent rapists of adult women as well as children. A few of them have kidnapped, tortured or murdered their victims. Dr. Fred Berlin of the Johns Hopkins University Sex Disorders Clinic in Baltimore estimates that such crimes account for less than 1/10th of 1% of all sex offenses in America. His studies also show that fewer than 10% of child sex offenders re-offend–though recidivism is usually given as a reason for draconian measures against them. As child abuse experts point out, about 50 children are reported kidnapped and raped or murdered by strangers annually, compared to more than 3,000 children murdered by parents and other family members in non-sexual cases. Most sex offenders, says one therapist who works with sex offenders in a state prison system, are “Gentle grandfathers who made one mistake in judgment years ago and fondled their grandchild. Or lonely, geeky gay men–teenagers some of them–who sought mutual sexual release with adolescent boys. Or young female teachers who succumbed to the wiles of handsome adolescent boys or girls. Or young men who got drunk and pushed their girlfriends over a line that is now called date rape.” Yet the media, police, prosecutors and politicians continue to insist that children are in dire need of protection from serial rapists and murderers. Two-thirds of parents surveyed said they feared their children would be kidnapped and or murdered by strangers. Facts simply do not matter when hysteria is involved….

The key ingredients of this scapegoating campaign are of course sex and children. “Nowhere,” wrote Linda Williams in Children and Sex (1993), “is sexuality more feared in America than in the lives of children.” (Williams has spent her professional career assuring that these ingredients produce repression.) The core demon in the campaign is the recently created category of “pedophile” (which does not predate the 1960s as a so-called scientific construct). Although defined by the American Psychiatric Association as persons with a dominant sexual desire for pre-pubescent children, the pedophile tag now applies to any person who every entertained a sexual desire or had a sexual incident, however minor, with anyone under 18. In some circles, the term pedophile is now used to put down any older person who has an affair or shows interest in younger persons– 35-year-olds, for instance, who “prey on” 20-year olds. By the early 2000s, pedophile had become morphed with the still broader “sex offender,” with even mainstream media free to refer to the feared and hated class as “pervs” and “perps” and “deviants….”

Journalists and scientific researchers who challenge this construct–or who defend some relationships between adults and minors as not being abusive–face severe consequences. In the only instance of a U.S. Congressional resolution against a scientific paper, the House of Representatives, with only minimal opposition, denounced a study by Dr. Bruce Rind & others, published in the scholarly review, Psychological Bulletin, in 1998. This “meta-analysis” reviewed several research protocols about adult-child sexuality, and summarized them as showing that relationships in which force was not used did not appear to cause harm, and sometimes might be beneficial. Rind and his co-authors have been systematically ostracized and excluded from many scholarly journals. In 2005, a book by a major publisher, which contained another scholarly article by Rind, was withdrawn by that publisher (Hayworth) because of protests from fundamentalist Christians. Other gay writers like William Herdt and John DeCecco who researched sexual outlaw behavior in the U.S. (DeCecco) or intergenerational sexuality in non-western cultures (Herdt) simply moved on to other topics. This did not keep DeCecco from experiencing extreme persecution–while a Professor in San Francisco he had to hire bodyguards to protect him from right-wing attackers….

Even before Judith Levine’s Harmful to Minors: The Perils of Protecting Children from Sex was published in 2002, a massive campaign by fundamentalist Christian groups, including Concerned Women for America, attacked the publisher, the University of Minnesota Press. While the book was published, the Press created a new process for reviewing its books before publication. Levine spoke publicly about how she was humiliated time and again in public. She said the manuscript for her book had been turned down by many publishers, treated as if it were “radioactive.” Among other insights, Levine wrote that “obsession with pedophiles stems for the reluctance to confront incest and the rampant sexualization of children” in American culture. “Adults project the eroticized desire outwards, creating a monster to hate, hunt down and destroy.” Of the outcry against her book she added, “What happened to me is a perfect example of the hysteria my book is about.”

Entry Filed under: Culture, Psychology, Sexuality, Social Issues