Sex, Lies and Society Part VI

“It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.”  - Krishnamurti

Moral Panics and  Neural Circuits

There has been considerable controversy in the West as to what denotes a balanced and natural sexual expression for children. With our culture becoming increasingly “sexualised” on the one hand and made to feel “dirty” and “deviant” on the other, it is little wonder that children are becoming confused and disorientated.

There are factors relating to sexual abuse which are seldom discussed in the media. In any given case, the severity of the abuse, the relational context, the child’s reactions and cultural influences, whether the child comes from a largely loving home or if a past history of abuse plays its part, are some of the considerations to be addressed. Translating helpful new insights from psychology and social science and transforming them into practical tools for educational and treatment practices is proving nigh on impossible to implement.

The “anti-sexuality” and “sexualisation” issues are producing an almost irreversible tension directed towards children. Those that advocate the extreme curtailment of sexual freedom and a kind of “anti-sexuality” are offering children repression, conformity and a far too strict a definition of what is sexually “appropriate.” This fear-based and reflexive wish to white-wash the child into a perfect angelic purity serves to warp the natural growth of the child’s sensual curiosity and inquisitiveness. Conversely, there is the ambient saturation of sexual images and messages from media and entertainment industry that amounts to a normalising and mainstreaming of a kind of soft porn devoid of context and responsibility.

Young girls and boys have nothing but a diet of overt materialism and junk sensation to act as role models. It is not surprising that a narcissistic culture is the result with the overeliance on technology feeding into an already distorted expression of sex as an indicator of self-worth, the by-product of which is a profound  loss of meaning.

In the USA, the city of San Diego has the reputation for being a primary source of sexual abuse. However, it seems the cases where the authorities got it hopelessly wrong are much more common:

In 1992, a major grand jury investigation found the county’s child welfare agencies and juvenile courts to be ‘a system out of control,’ so keen on protecting children from predation that it took hundreds of them away from their parents on what turned out to be false charges. The report called for ‘profound change’ throughout the system. […] Teachers and social workers, undereducated in psychology and overtrained (often by law enforcers) in sexual abuse, tend to see sexual pathology and criminal exploitation in any situation that looks even remotely sexual.1

There is very big difference indeed between the psychopathology of teenagers and pre-school kids that enact serious abuse - often going hand in hand with the torture of animals as a tale-tale sign - and the kind of exploration that is borne from a natural curiosity. For example, the study of East European adoptees makes a strong case in favour of environmental factors producing and selecting for an effective psychopathy. Here, we can include a case that not only suggests psychopathy but also how such cases can lead to the labelling of child abuse when there is none.

A psychiatrist working with Attention deficit children recounted one experience where he was looking after a six-year old little girl “with curly blond hair and blue eyes”, who enthusiastically informed him she could:

“‘… make the new teacher change colors!’ I ask her to do so. We sit down with the teacher and the girl points to me and say ‘That ugly man put his hand down in my panties just now!’ Our new teacher turns pink/red, consuming this interesting piece of information. The girl smiles happily, then looks sternly at her and says ‘I know what you did yesterday to Tommy - I could tell the grown-ups all about it!’ The now quite pale woman had forgotten to pick up a child at the bus stop and had been too embarrassed to tell the other staff members. Thus the girl went on, and after a while she turned to me and triumphantly announced with innocent enthusiasm ‘You see - I can make her change colors any time!’ I told the girl to stop playing with the woman and go play with her bike instead, while I reassembled the teacher. This girl is aged six, and still cannot tell a person from a thing. To her a staff member is an advanced slot machine. A week later the girl hands me a dead pet rabbit which she has just sliced into four pieces with a pair of scissors and says unaffectedly, "It doesn't work any more, and it bleeds all the time - can't you put it together again?’ - So much for happy childhood...’” 2

Other cases appear to influence the child depending on the level of his exposure to sexual trauma which would indicate the need for counselling and psychotherapy rather than incarceration. But the passage above is telling in it’s implications of mis-diagnosis and potential for accusations of abuse from psychopathic  children.

This kind of intervention that blends the law courts, mental health and psychological evaluations are too close to the needs of lawyers which plays on the lucrative climate of sex-predator-paranoia. In many cases, the law is actually causing great harm to children for no other reasons than greed and material gain. If children begin to explore their sexuality together in ways that are “inappropriate” yet are not labelled “offences” it does give an interesting idea as to where the therapists and prosecutors are coming from regarding their own perceptions of sexuality.

In the US today, being caught urinating behind a tree, mooning, (showing your bottom) skinny dipping, and passionate lovemaking, masturbating, and many other non-violent victimless offences can make individuals of all ages  sex criminals placing them on the sex register. A “doctor and nurse” game could now criminalize both US and UK children.  However, those that voice such concerns are either labelled reactionary liberals or paedophile apologists.

While offering some welcome amendments, the UK’s Sexual Offences Act 2003 3 nevertheless incorporates new and draconian provisions on child pornography and prostitution. Anyone asking a person under 18 to provide a “sexual service” for “payment” commits a crime and the child (under 18) is classed as a “prostitute.” However, if an individual asks a person under 18 for a nude-photograph this will automatically be considered a criminal offence or “inciting child pornography”. This means that anyone under 18 and engaged in a relationship is legal, but when expressed physically with the use of a web-cam, they become criminals. All those under 18 of course, are deemed “children” which, when applied to the law, is unfair and dangerous to civil rights. The law is therefore, high on rhetoric but low on the practical realities of such a law.

Compare this with the UK jailing of a man along with his female accomplice, who raped a 12 week old baby. 4 The subsequent sentence reflected a clear absence of justice where “life” meant that he was eligible for parole in only six to eight years.

We have to wonder why it is that the justice system seems to either favour the predator or to accuse and scapegoat the innocent and rarely find the median between those two poles. Should genuine sexual predators find themselves with a silver spoon in their mouths then the likelihood that they will face prosecution and punishment becomes even less probable.

Special treatment can also be seen in the from the British class system which saw a judge give undue leniency to the Queen’s former choirmaster for a series of child sex attacks in the 1970s and 80s. He received five years, meaning he would be out on good behaviour in a very short space of time, which indeed he was. 5 While this occurs in the UK, such disparities are far more extreme in the US.

When criminalisation has broad generalisations and poorly defined legislation contained within it, where essential definitions are needed to define one sexual crime from another the inevitable result is that all sexual activity is seen as criminal. When we understand, in the real world, that much sexual activity involving children under the age of consent is consensual and experimental, the involvement of the law should not be necessary. What the law does is to effectively criminalize young people under 16 who engage in sexual experimentation. Assumptions as to who forces who is also fraught with difficulty where coercion is so often assumed in many cases. If a fifteen year old girl “coerces” a 16 year old boy into having sexual relations, what then? What if these teens in their own eyes, “in love?” Is the boy to be prosecuted and placed on the sex offenders register? Apparently so. Christian fundamentalism and the phoney “war on terror” are behind much of these rulings.

An American mother who wrote an open letter on an internet blog to George W. Bush, illustrates the crassness of current legislation:

Dear George:

I am a mother of a sex offender, at least that is what they are calling it. My son did not rape, abuse, or force anyone. He had sex with a minor, who also wanted sex with him. I am not an educated female, but I do know the difference between forcing someone and consenting.

I DO Not Condone what my son did, it was wrong and he should be punished. My problem is this: he was sentenced to 30 yrs. to a violent prison. On his court papers it says it was a non-violent crime. So why is he in a violent prison? No one will give me the time of day. Also he has to register as a SO. […] I would like to be alive when my son gets out.6

One of the most recent examples of this dangerously simplistic view of prosecution concerns 17 year old Genarlow Wilson who was convicted of Aggravated Child Molestation for a voluntary act of oral sex with another teenager at a New Years Eve party.   He was 17 and she was 15.  Genarlow,  a good student, athlete and with no criminal record, not only received a sentence of eleven years but the disastrous label of “child molester” requiring him to be placed on the sex offender register for life. He was also black.

“ ‘Wilson maintained his innocence. ‘I know that it was consensual,’ he told ‘Primetime.’ ‘I wouldn't went on with the acts if it wasn't consensual. I'm not that kind of person. No means no.’”

“ ‘Five of the boys accepted plea deals, but Wilson — the only one without a police record — held out. ‘I knew Genarlow's state of mind,’ said his attorney, Michael Mann. ‘He wasn't going to prison willingly. He wasn't going to plea to something in his mind he didn't do.’ ” 7

Such is the law in the State of Georgia where two teens can have intercourse which is counted as a misdemeanour but where oral sex is a felony which mandates a minimum of 10 years in prison. If two teens are engaged in heavy petting, this could be felony of Child Molestation. Until 1998, oral sex between husband and wife was illegal, punishable by up to 20 years in prison. For Wilson, whether the fifteen year old was willing or not, and the fact that he was only two years her senior the law on child molestation had the last word. Was Wilson’s case yet another miscarriage of justice based on outdated laws favouring a religious Puritanism? As a result of this case Georgia law is being reconsidered, though any formal legislation has yet to materialize. 

It has not helped a 26-year-old college student on federal disability, who has been on the sex offender’s registry for a decade after a being charged over a 10th-grade fellatio. Despite the fact that it is no longer a crime in Georgia she and her husband have been moved on by Harlem police under sex offences law that prohibits “offenders from living within 1,000 feet of a school, playground or other place where children congregate.” This woman had to leave her legally bought home or face arrest:

Before she and her husband of six years bought the house, she says, they made sure the property was far enough away from a public park down the street. What the Whitakers didn't realize was that a nearby church was operating a small day-care center. As a result, they've had to move into a trailer park across the county line. They're sharing a two-bedroom single-wide with Whitaker's brother-in-law and his teenage daughter.

‘We're paying a mortgage for my cat to live here,’ she says of the house she and her husband have had to leave behind. When she stops by to check on the property or do laundry, she says, her neighbors routinely call the cops, who drop by to make sure she isn't trying to move back in.

Now, Georgia’s strict new sex-offender law -- signed by Gov. Sonny Perdue in April but delayed in federal court before it could take effect July 1 -- could force Whitaker out of the trailer park as well, leaving her with few options for living anywhere in the state. Under a nebulous loitering provision in the new law, she might not even be allowed to go to church. 8

Judgments concerning adult sex offenders which are then applied to children can represent a dangerous misunderstanding of the nature of child sexuality. While mimicking and simulation of T.V. and magazine images could be seen as premature sexual induction and exploration that may lead to unwarranted behaviour towards other children, it should not immediately be confused with abuse. Yet this is exactly what is happening in many instances. This is rather an indication of an adult prurience projected onto the child which can only do harm for his or her future which may actually ensure that such explorations do become neurotic, obsessive or worse. At the same time, psychopathic children are also a reality and who will respond to socio-cultural exposure to sexuality in any number of pathological ways and where – so far –  no amount of rehabilitation is ever going to work.

The very real indications that conviction rates of child molesters in the UK for example, are frighteningly low, the extreme difficulties in detecting the abuse of under-fives and the general underreporting of incidences, all suggest that we are still operating between two extremes.

Notes

1 Ibid. Sara Scott Ritual Abuse (2001)

2 Severe Attachment Disorder in Childhood - A Guide to Practical Therapy by Dr. Niels Peter Rygaard authorized by D.P.A., Aarhus C, Denmark Translated from N. P. Rygaard, L'enfant abandonn6. Guide de traitement des troubles de I'attachement. 2005; Printed in Austria SpringerWienNewYork; ISBN-10 3-211-29705-7.

3 Sexual Offences Act 2003 Elizabeth II. Chapter 42, Great Britain – “An Act to make new provision about sexual offences, their prevention and the protection of children from harm from other sexual acts Royal assent, 20th November 2003. Explanatory notes have been produced to assist in the understanding of this Act and are available separately (ISBN 0105642037) Reprinted incorporating corrections, January 2004; reprinted May 2004.” TSO The Stationary Office: http://www.tso.co.uk/

4 ‘Babysitter raped 12-week-old as girlfriend took photographs,’ The Times, January 11, 2006.

5 Child abuse sentence ‘disgusting’ BBC News, 27 August, 2004.

6 ‘Mother of Sex Offender’ by “Dianne,” Age 57, Columbia, SC. www.deargeorgeletters.blogspot.com/
7  ‘Outrage After Teen Gets 10 Years for Oral Sex With Girl’ ABC News February 7^th 2006, To find out more about Genarlow Wilson's appeal, visit www.wilsonappeal.com.

8  ‘Life in the shadows’ - Now facing a legal challenge, Georgia's war on sex offenders could punish minor violators while failing to focus on the worst ones By Scott Henry, July 19, 2006. 

 

• Sex, Lies and Society Part I
• Sex, Lies and Society Part II
• Sex, Lies and Society Part III
• Sex, Lies and Society Part IV
• Sex, Lies and Society Part IX
• Sex, Lies and Society Part V
• Sex, Lies and Society Part VII
• Sex, Lies and Society Part VIII