DA prosecutes mom who gave teen
son condoms, USA: 14th January 2001
You find out your teenage son is having sex. So what do you do? Do you try to
stop him? Do you protect him by buying him condoms? Do you talk to him about it?
Do you tell a priest? Guidance counselors? The police?
A 33-year-old Baraboo mother bought her son condoms, and could face up to 15
years in prison and a $10,000 fine because Sauk County prosecutors think she
made the wrong decision.
Because she told police she did not stop her 13-year-old son from having oral
sex and sexual intercourse with his 15-year-old girlfriend, prosecutors allege,
the mother failed to prevent her child from being sexually abused - and that's a
felony.
Daily Mail, How
the NSPCC faked child abuse stories to generate cash; Daily
Mail (UK),
11th
September 2007
Children's charity the NSPCC has become the latest high profile organisation to be involved in a faking scandal - this time with made-up examples of child abuse. In a letter sent out to generate donations, the society used a number of shocking examples of cruelty to young people. These featured a young girl who rang the service and talked of a
baby-sitter "doing things to her she didn't like". [...] But the NSPCC used made-up stories to get donations.
Daily Mail, Woman who falsely accused her father of rape reveals 'doctors hijacked
my mind'; 26th October 2007
Eleven years ago, Katrina, now 37, accused the father [ ... ...]
It would be several tortured months before it finally emerged that these unfolding memories were pure fantasy - the drug-induced ramblings of a
woman pushed to the brink of sanity by a controversial form of psychotherapy known as
recovered memory syndrome.
Davis, Nick, The end of digging;
As the Jersey case shows, the
modern media never lets the pursuit of fact get in the way of a good
story; The Guardian
08-11-14
When the Jersey police this week confessed that - contrary to so many
ghoulish news stories - they have, in truth, no evidence of children
being murdered and buried in an old children's home on the island, they
laid the blame at their own door. That tells only part of the story. [...]
The guilty party
who escaped unnamed from Warcup's account was the press. This should be
no secret. In May, in Media Guardian, I analysed three months of stories
about secret graves and torture chambers, all of which were provably
false. Any journalist with their brain engaged could see that the
stories were unsound. And yet everybody published them.
De Leon, Virginia &
Learning, Sara, A
Chilling effect; Spokesman Review, April 18, 2007
Changing times and a growing awareness of child abuse have led to greater
distrust of adults who work with children, prompting stricter rules in churches,
Boy Scouts and other organizations. That means less one-on-one contact between
children and adult mentors, so relationships that could steer at-risk kids away
from trouble take longer to build.
Denizet-Lewis, Benoit, 'Boy
Crazy: NAMBLA: The Story of a Lost Cause',
in: Boston Magazine, May 2001
A fail media trial to write objectively about NAMBLA.
[...] Could NAMBLA's founders have had any idea that they would become
America's symbol of organized depravity? That a group founded mostly by
eccentric, boy-loving leftists would come to be considered Public Enemy Number
One in the nation's battle against child sexual abuse? "Never mind the fact
that NAMBLA has never been a very large or influential organization," says Philip
Jenkins, a professor of history and religious studies at Pennsylvania State
University and the author of Moral Panic: Changing Concepts of the Child
Molester in Modern America. "But it fit our need then, and still does
today, to think of child molesters as being part of an immense, vast, powerful
conspiracy that moves in elite circles. NAMBLA has become the acceptable symbol
to blame for a lot of what has gone wrong morally in America over the last 20
years." [..]
Dexheimer, Eric, Teacher still marred by unproven sexual misconduct charges;
Woman accused of sex with students five years ago got license back but not her
job; The American Statesman, August 19, 2007
What the jury didn't know was that Sam already had confessed at a church
camp that he'd fabricated his story of sex with his teacher. According
to a deposition, he said he'd felt
pressured by school administrators, whom he estimated had interrogated
him between 10 and 20 times.
Dick, Sandra, Protection
risks doing more harm than good; Scotsman.com, 18 Jan 2005
Indeed, this is just the latest in a long line of directives issued by nervous
organisations the length and breadth of the country which have left adults
having to think twice about throwing their arms around a sobbing child, tending
to a scraped knee or even speaking to a youngster that doesn't happen to be
their own.
No wonder many parents and child-care experts are now questioning whether the
main reason for so many increasingly bizarre rules is to protect organisations
from today's "claims culture" - at the expense of children who are
increasingly become "untouchables".
Dickerson, Brian, Fearmongers still feed on sex offender anxiety;
Free Press, August 14, 2006
Michigan's online sex-offender registry is a grab bag of 39,000 residents prosecuted for everything from teenage promiscuity to
violent sexual assault. [...]
The newest outbreak occurred last week in Warren, where City Council members directed their staff to draft an ordinance barring anyone on
Michigan's sex-offender registry from the city's 20 public parks and two community recreation centers.
Dodson, Chuck, The spectacular achievements of media control
- A serious take-off of Noam Chomsky's vital "Media Control"
speech, now a book; 1994-'97; Nonsilent Press.
Update of this article: 2024.
When most Americans think about aggression in our society, our first
thoughts are apt to include children being abused and/or killed by sick
or outrightly criminal adults. We usually don't consider the somewhat
broader context of what is going on behind the use of these issues, or
the time periods in which they are most emphasized; in fact, in not
seeing this we miss out on a crucial issue that comes down to what kind
of society we want to live in.
Douglass, Frederick, "What to
the Slave is the Fourth of July?" 5 July 1852
While not intended so, a reading of this moving speech leads me to see many
similarities to the way the matter of 'paedophiles' is handled in many places
today -- including the condemnation of church leaders.... NJ.
DPA Member, The myths versus the facts
Pedophile sexuality is unlike that of adult
heterosexuality or homosexuality.
Drehle, David Von, The Myth About Boys;
The Time, July 26, 2007
Worrying about our boys -- reading and writing books about them, wringing our hands over dire trends and especially taking more time to parent
them -- is paying off. The next step is to let them really blossom, and
for that we have to trust them, give them room. The time for fearing our
sons, or fearing for their futures, is behind us. The challenge now is
to believe in them.
Dumay, Jean-Michel, "The
ambiguities in the campaign against paedophilia", in
Le Monde, Saturday 25 March 2000
