How often does child sexual abuse actually happen, and based on what data? (I have provided some child sexual abuse statistics and trends, which use our current broad definitions of child sexual abuse whose problems I discuss below, here: <http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/pipermail/lbo-talk/Week-of-Mon-20061016/020845.html> and <http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/pipermail/lbo-talk/Week-of-Mon-20061016/020865.html>.) And what is defined as child sexual abuse?
These are related questions, for crime incidences in part depend on definitions of crimes.
IMHO, America's definitions of child sexual abuse and other sex crimes are alarmingly broad, broadened in the interest of law and order politics in the name of "victims' rights," and nowadays even young children are labeled sexual predators and compelled to register as such on the sex offenders list, just like adult sex offenders.
<blockquote><http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05192/536069.stm> Experts say it's a mistake to label young sex offenders as 'deviants' Children able to change Monday, July 11, 2005 By Lillian Thomas, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Of 100 children who engage in sexual activities with other children in situations that involve some pressure or coercion, one or two might be charged.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
[Franklin] Zimring [an expert on juvenile justice who is a professor at the Boalt Hall School of Law at the University of California, Berkeley, who last year published _An American Travesty: Legal Responses to Adolescent Sexual Offending_] argues for a categorization of juvenile offenders into three groups. Of the 15,000 children and adolescents younger than 18 arrested for sex crimes each year, a small number are what he calls "sexual status offenders" -- teens involved in consensual sex whose behavior is unlawful because their partners are underage. Perhaps 1 percent to 4 percent are repeat offenders. And the rest -- somewhere between 70 percent and 95 percent, he said -- are first offenders involved in abusive conduct.</blockquote>
<blockquote>John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Adolescent Development and Juvenile Justice Adolescent Development and Legal Policy Monograph Series
An American Travesty: Legal Responses to Adolescent Sexual Offending Franklin E. Zimring
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
In New Jersey in 1995, a ten-year-old child known as J.G. pled guilty in juvenile court to the second-degree sexual assault of his cousin, an eight-year-old girl. The state apparently did not view J.G. as a threat: the prosecutor recommended a suspended sentence on the condition that J.G. attend a family counseling program and not be left alone with young children. The agreement seemed to be a success, and J.G. got into no further trouble. But sixteen months later J.G. was notified that he had been classified as a moderate-risk sex offender under New Jersey's "Megan's Law."1 He would have to register with the local police as a sex offender, and schools and day-care centers in his community would be notified so they could take protective measures against the danger he might present.
During the 1990s, all 50 states enacted new laws aimed largely at protecting children against sexual predators. Under many of these laws, adult sexual offenders are regarded as more dangerous—and controlled more severely—if their victims are very young. This seems rational when dealing with adults who prey on young children. But in enacting laws aimed at adult sexual predators, legislators, whether deliberately or thoughtlessly, often used language broad enough to encompass offenders in early adolescence. Should a child or young adolescent who commits a single act of sexual aggression against another child be treated the same way as a 30-year-old man who assaults an 8-year-old girl? Legal scholar Franklin Zimring calls it a travesty of justice—a policy that ignores the developmental stage of young sex offenders in determining their legal fate.
. . . . .
The adversarial approach grows out of a report issued in 1993 by the National Adolescent Perpetrator Network, a vocal and well-organized network that is part mental health treatment group, part victims' rights lobby. The report, published in Juvenile Judge's Journal, was the longest publication devoted to juvenile sex offenders in at least half a century. At its center are 387 unproven assumptions about adolescent behavior, dangerousness, appropriate justice system responses, and the impact of various interventions on long-term development and life opportunities. The Task Force behind the report included no physicians, no specialists in program evaluation and policy analysis, no experts in juvenile justice, and only one attorney, a former prosecutor. Yet the report has stood for more than a decade, virtually uncriticized and tremendously influential.
Who is the juvenile sex offender?
The NAPN's report draws a picture of the adolescent sex offender that often seems similar to the image of the adult offender described earlier: deviant, recidivist, and a continuing danger to the community. The report advises treating all juvenile sex offenders as though they fit this image. It calls for prosecution in all cases, maintaining that prosecution and conviction themselves have therapeutic value for the offender. It defines all illegal sexual behaviors as abusive, regardless of the age of the child or the circumstances of the behavior. And it would send most of the "abusers" into the kind of therapy described above.
But adolescents are not merely younger versions of adults. Adolescence is a period of transition, both sexually and behaviorally, and sexual misconduct among juveniles is both more varied and more complicated than among adults. Empirical evidence distinguishes three types of juvenile sex offenders:
• Status offenders. These are children and teens whose sexual behavior is consensual and with partners close to their age; it is unlawful only because they or their partners are under the age of consent. While this is illegal on the books, millions of teens violate such laws every year. They are seldom prosecuted except in institutional settings such as group homes—a double standard with potentially lifelong legal consequences.
• First offenders involved in abusive conduct. The majority of juveniles arrested for sex offenses are those who are much older than their partners or who have used force or coercion. The re-arrest rate for this group is quite low, however, and currently unpredictable: tests used by researchers to identify individuals at risk for recidivism have a false positive rate of more than 80 percent when used with adolescents.
• Repeat offenders. Perhaps 4 to 8 percent of juveniles arrested for sex crimes fall into this category. Some may become dangerous adult sexual predators, while others may outgrow the problem before they become adults. It's impossible to say who or how many fall into either group because no research exists on the number of repeat offenders or their later careers.
Clearly, the image of the adult sexual predator is a poor fit for the vast majority of adolescent sex offenders. These youths are, for the most part, neither sexually abnormal nor sexually dangerous to the community. And far from being focused exclusively on sex crimes, they are likely to be involved in the same mix of delinquent behaviors as other young offenders. In fact, studies comparing juvenile sex offenders with other juvenile offenders have found them to be very similar, suggesting it would make sense to deal with them similarly.</blockquote>
That's just one example of the problem of too broad a definition of child sexual abuse. Feminists ought to think very hard about whether their attempts to broaden definitions of sex crimes aren't unintentionally contributing to the efforts of America's law and order coalition for more and more incarceration and more and more punitive approaches to convicts and ex-convicts.
Women in general lose when the law and order coalition get into and stay in power, though law and order feminists long to punish all sex crimes in the name of girls' and women's welfare. We can't police society into a feminist society any more than we can police society into a socialist society, however.
It's much more sensible to define all sex crimes narrowly and precisely and treat sex offenders in a fashion befitting civilized society (i.e., seek their rehabilitation whenever possible) rather than try to broaden definitions of sex crimes, produce impressions of high incidences, and scare people into feminism. People won't turn to feminism when they fear sex criminals -- they turn to the police, pop psychology, the Republicans and the DLC Democrats, and so forth. -- Yoshie <http://montages.blogspot.com/> <http://mrzine.org> <http://monthlyreview.org/>