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NYT On The Internet And Child Molestation
prostoalex writes "In a long and disturbing story on child molesters, the New York Times Magazine among other issues researches the impact of the Internet on the child molesters. While officially the number of child molestations did not change significantly, Dr. Fred Berlin, associate professor of psychiatry at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, considers the Internet to be a new vehicle for child molestation: 'There are three areas of concern. First, the illusion of anonymity -- an illusion because Internet use can be easily tracked -- leads to disinhibition. Second, there's a blurring of fantasy and reality. There's someone at the other end of the Internet conversation, but it's not quite a real person; there's a feeling of playing a game that can lead to actually doing what one otherwise wouldn't. Third, the easy accessibility can facilitate moving over boundaries.'"
More demonisation of the Internet. More FUD. More people scared of new stuff.
Nothing new, it happens time and again, wanting to blame something apart from the criminal who perpetrates an act.
"oh the internet made me do it"
bah.
Certified 100% Karma whore free!
The Making of a Molester
January 23, 2005
By DANIEL BERGNER
Not long ago, Roy became a type of monster. The transformation took a year and a half, and now, one morning each week, he sits in a room of similar cases. The windowless room is plain, with a blue industrial carpet, a circle of brown cushioned office chairs, a blackboard, a pair of unused conference tables pushed to the rear wall and a faint hum from the air ducts. To reach it from the waiting area -- on the second floor of a probation building in Connecticut -- Roy and the other men walk down a series of corridors and around a series of turns that feel like a path through a maze. The room is wedged in a back corner. "No one," a probation officer said, "likes to think about what's back there."
Roy wonders constantly how he wound up in this place, in the circle of 10 or 12 chairs, a circle of child molesters. His story begins on the beach and ends on the Internet. It seems to him that he was, only recently, a normal man, about 40, running a crew of technicians, repairing elaborate, computerized telecommunications equipment for Wall Street trading firms and in his off hours leading a wedding band, singing Frank Sinatra and Barry White at the Plaza. For a hobby, he flew kites -- kites bigger than most living rooms, brilliantly striped, with rippling streamers and "space socks" trailing more than a hundred feet behind, kites that could perform ballets when he held the lines. He recalls no history of longing for young girls. He had no criminal record of any kind. But then one summer, on vacation, his second wife pointed out her 11-year-old daughter's body. Roy and his wife were standing on the sand; his stepdaughter and her best friend played several yards in front of them at the edge of the surf. "Look at those girls," Roy remembers his wife saying. "They're changing already. You can see their bodies changing."
Roy has a soft, smooth face and an easy, engaging smile. (At his request, I've shielded his identity by using a nickname some of his former band members gave him.) Now in his mid-40's, he's round in the middle and broad in the shoulders; there's something bearish about him, but in a way that's more pandalike and cheerful than threatening. Nearby along the circle sits an elderly man with a graceful wave of white hair combed back from his forehead. There's a well-scrubbed blue-eyed man in his mid-30's, wearing a button-down shirt with a pleasant check of pale blue. Like the rest, they're here by court mandate for group counseling as part of their probation. Most, including Roy, have served time in jail or prison, from a few weeks to several years. The man with the wave of white hair touched the vagina of his grandniece; he kissed her chest and had her hold his penis. This happened repeatedly when the girl was between 7 and 9 years old. As an adult, the man in the checked shirt performed oral sex on his 11-year-old brother and later took his 6-year-old daughter to a motel room along with his brother, who was by then 16. Living out a fantasy he'd had for months, he persuaded them both to undress and urged his brother to have sex with his daughter, only desisting, only waking from the trance of his desire -- "seconds away from something really, really bad happening," he has told me -- when his brother began to cry.
"What possessed me?" Roy asks in one form or another in the group sessions that I've been observing for close to a year, in conversation with me and, it is clear, alone with himself. It's a question that seems to churn through the thinking of most of the men. The one who longed to watch his brother and daughter, and who is a published poet, has talked to me about feeling like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. In group one morning, another convict made reference to "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Heinz."
How does a man enter the realm of the monstrous? How broad or thin is the border between the normal and that realm? "Could anybody end up getting into this
Child pron was legal in Japan, in fact it was only very recently that they brought down the hammer on it (1999 ood): Child pron @ wikipedia
... the data shows no increase, but we should be worried because some doctor wants some press by scarring the masses?!
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
While officially the number of child molestations did not change significantly
Then what's the problem? It made what they do easier? It makes much of what the rest of society does easier too. Stop criticizing the Internet for society's problems.
>> First, the illusion of anonymity -- an illusion because Internet use can be easily tracked
"Easily tracked" comes most often in conjunction with peer to peer and movie/audio sharing. The solution for this is encryption, and it's quite a popular Slashdot topic when it comes to peer to peer and sharing files. If the traffic would be encrypted, then there would be no more RIAA law-suits and debates because they couldn't figure out what does the traffic represent.
Sadly, the technology allowing anonymous traffic would also allow this kind of activities. If you ask me, the right to anonymity should be above all, but it kinda makes you sad when you think how encryption could be used by these molesters in order to avoid police, FBI and such.
"In a long and disturbing story on child molesters, the New York Times Magazine among other issues researches the impact of the horseless carriage on child molesters. While officially the number of child molestations did not change significantly, Dr. Bob Hamburger, associate shaman at Ye Olde Schoole Of Medickal Arts and Alckemy, considers the automobile to be a new horse for child molestation: 'There are three areas of concern. First, the molesters can use these 'cars' to travel to children, getting to them much faster than they could using just a horse or even a team of horses. Second, the automobile's interior can be used as an area for molestation. Third, the easy accessibility can facilitate moving over boundaries.'"
The Internet can potentially allow a person to move from simply having a desire, to acting upon that desire.
However, it can also allow someone to satisfy that desire through sheer fantasy (written stories, role-playing, artwork, etc.), removing the need to act upon the desire in real life.
I think this applies to every aspect of human behavior, from the benign (sports, hobbies, etc.) to the harmful (murder, child abuse, etc.). The question becomes: is the 'net any worse than allowing the average person access to a public library, the phone system, and so forth? Any of these can either encourage behavior or provide a controlled (and harmless) outlet... it's all a matter of what the individual chooses to do.
And I think that's what many people miss in discussions like this. It all comes down to self-control and individual responsibility. One argument is that the 'net, through its anonymity, encourages people to deny responsibility and lose their self-control. The other argument is that anyone who does so was simply looking for an excuse to avoid responsibility anyway.
It's like people who claim that an AC/DC song 'encouraged' them to kill their girlfriend, or that comic books 'made' them think they can fly. The 'net cannot influence a person unless they choose to act upon their desires anyway.
The real problem is that children don't understand leet speak, and so will often get drawn into encounters with child molesters and have no clue what is going on.
The point being that the media and bottomdwellers who live in it like to take a slow news day and turn it into yet another story about how the internet is going to murder you, your children, your way of life.
The internet is no more a haven for child molesters than your average group setting with children and the adults we willingly give proxy power to. Strangely though no one seems to want to do away with Christian youth camps, only some of the bad people who work in them. So maybe the issue is really about the fact that most people don't know the difference between a browser and the 'internets' and they basically fear what they don't understand so gory stories about lesbian communist heroin addicted al Qaeda child rapists is just the thing to play to their ignorant fears.
Of course, anyone can get a child of their own without any vetting at all by the state - assuming they can find a willing partner. I wonder if we will see articles worried that this provide an easy way for a paedophile to gain access to a child? NYT to call for licensing of parents?
Mind you, "internet enables child abuse" makes for a good scare story. I don't suppose the headline "Families enable child abuse" is going to sell so many newspapers.
True, that child molesters and purveyors of child porn exist in probably the same percentages as ever. No more, no less. And they will do whatever it is they do, with or without the Internet.
But.
The net does provide a new vehicle for them. A presumed layer of anonymity (and for those that are not entirely stupid, encryption and proxies makes it much harder to track). And a way to dissminate their crap in far wider circles than before.
Exactly like con artists. 419ers, phishers, and the like have been around forever. Fast online communications just make it easier to suck in a wider range of people.
Just because it existed before the net doesn't mean that the net's influence shouldn't be looked into.
My name is Austin and I am 14. this whole thing sort of freeks me out a bit. I was bored so i did some thinking on this, and this is the gereral direction my thoughts went. I'm 14, that means its normal for me to like girls around that age, find them atractive, ect. Now, we asume as people age, the mature mentaly as well, but this asumption can not always be entirely correct. As my 22 year old friend once said, "If at 16 I found a girl in my class hot, what has changed to make me NOT find a 16 year old hot?"
To break this down, simply, there was no major change in his atraction to girls between 16 and 22, but unlike when he was 16, it is no loger 'right' for him to find a 16 year old atractive, now, the youngest he 'should' find atractive is more like 20.
Im no shrink or anything, but i guess its sorta the same thing with the guy in the artical...
"child sexual molestation is committed against perhaps 20 percent of girls and 5 to 10 percent of boys under the age of consent in the United States."
...Angela drove around the country meeting other 'Angela Sheltons', only to discover that a majority had been raped, beaten or molested just like herself as a child. In the film she confronts her child-molesting father and eventually goes thru a massive emotional breakdown.
If that is news to you, or you find it hard to understand true society-burdening effects of child sexual molestation, check out this award-winning film and its website:
Searching for Angela Shelton
Her story is pretty amazing, and seeing her film and how it touches survivors really helps non-survivors understand sexual traumas.
Not until I had spent lots of time around Angela did I finally realize that as I child I had been abused by a baby sitter who thought it was OK to let a 11-yr-old suckle on her breats...
Abe
Likewise, a psychologist friend of mine was pointing out recently that the Internet has made it easier than ever before to catch child molesters without making any significent increase in the numbers of them. In other words: the Internet is the single greatest anti-child-molestation system ever invented.
But that's not such an interesting story and needs a little tiny bit of lateral thought, so it's not going to be in the mainstream press any day soon.
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
Then I suggest you Google for 'Stefan Kiszko', he spent 16 years in prison for the sexual murder of Lesley Ann Molseed. He suffered from XYY syndrome, an extra Y chromosome, this results in infertility. The semen found on Lesly's body contained sperm. Ooops, it wasn't him. Still think the death penalty is the only option?
Exactly correct, and shows why, until we can have a system which never convicts an innocent person under any circumstances, we cannot even consider use of the death penalty. Ever. Since our system does (demonstrably) make mistakes, we must make sure that, at the very least, the mistake, if it turns out to be, is reversible. Letting someone out of prison with an apology (and a good-sized check, generally) if they are found to have been wrongfully convicted is possible. Pulling someone out of the ground and restoring them to life if it's found they were wrongfully executed is not.
While I am a father, and I certainly hate molesters as much as anyone, we can't let that cloud our judgment as to the proper way to operate a civilized society. Not using the state as an instrument of murder seems a good place to start, to me.
To fight the war on terror, stop being afraid.
I can speak with some authority on this, obviously I can't name names publically but I've knows some of the top people in this area and quite a few victims too. So this isn't my opinion I'm quoting, it's genuine expert practitioner fact.
Paedophilia means literally "Love of children"
Looking at a young woman with a womans body, eg hips, breasts, developed vagina, and seeing something sexually attractive does NOT make you sick, no matter how young she is or how old you are.
If you are a 70 year old man looking at a 16 year old bikini clad babe and thinking "phwooooargh" to yourself does not make you a paedophile.
pre-requisite #1 is the "target" of your lust must be pre-pubescent, eg sexually immature.
Paedophiles feel "threatened" for want of a better word, by things like developed breasts and pubic hair. (possibly its a power thing, you can have more power over a child, and sexual maturity is a sign of approaching adulthood, and much less power over them)
OK?, now lets move on.
You know that really pretty 10 year old girl neighbour / cousin / sister / daughter, you know the one who people say things like "she's gonna be a real heartbreaker when she grown up"
That's the ones you think the paedophile will be after, so that's the ones you try to protect, you couldn't be more wrong.
Paedophiles like androgynous kids (neither especially male or female to look at) and shy kids and quiet kids and lonely kids and neglected kids and overlooked kids, but most of all androgynous kids.
So, if you find pre-pubescent androgynous kids sexually attractive, you are a __potential__ paedophile. Do something about it and you are a paedophile.
If you see a sexually mature pretty and feminine 14 year old and think "phew, never like that when I was at school" then you're not a paedophile, and if you end up doing something about it and having consentual sex with her then you are a sick fuck and a pervert, but you're still not a paedophile.
HTH etc
http://slashdot.org/~GuyFawkes/journal
and if you end up doing something about it and having consentual sex with her then you are a sick fuck and a pervert, but you're still not a paedophile.
So, your great-great-grandparents were sick fucks when they got married at 14 and had kids a year later?
I was thinking along similar lines, but kind of backwards.
... and if that's what's creeping you out, I just don't think it's true.
If I was 13 years old, and somebody offered to show me a copy of Playboy magazine, I'd probably say hell yes. On the other hand, if somebody's 45 year old mom were to "accidentally" wander into the room stark naked, I'd probably go "Yuuuucccchh" and tell all my friends what happened, and we'd all laugh at what a wrinkled, saggy old lady she was. (Maybe some of you were more advanced than I was at that age, but that's the simple fact for me.)
Nowadays I'm 32, and I've dated at least one woman in her 40s. Moreover, this particular woman I'm thinking of seemed cute to me -- not "attractive" in a sort of "she's a warm body and she's basically good-looking enough" way, but actually in an "I'd rather date her than anybody else in this room" kind of way. And when I talked to her and went out to do things with her, she didn't seem like an old lady at all. So something about my mind has changed there, as I've gotten older.
On the other hand, I doubt I'll ever date a 19 year old again. Those chicks are nuts!! Give 'em some time to sort their brains out, I say.
So something's definitely changed. When I was in high school, I was definitely attracted to 16 year old girls. Nowadays I just see them as little girls. When I see them dressing sexy, or making sexual comments or performing sexualized behaviors, body language etc., I think it looks like they're posing, imitating things they learned in the movies or something. To my mind, they're just not very good at it, and as a result it's not particularly flattering on them.
That's just me. I have other friends who see a young girl and go, "Hey hey heyy!" But part of the way this article was written seemed to have an undercurrent of, "any one of us could be a child molester, we're only steps away"
If you showed me a sexy photograph of a 16 year old girl, could I be turned on by that? It's possible -- but that's a posed photograph, designed by a photographer who knows how to manipulate an image to get the desired result. Am I attracted to real-life, living and moving 16 year old girls? No sir, I believe I am telling you the god's honest truth when I say that I am just not. I somehow doubt you or your friend are two steps away from being child molesters either.
Breakfast served all day!
The article refers to these people as monsters.
I can see how someone who hurts children is a monster.
But, I wonder. What about those that are in the initial phase of this "monstrosity". Does that are feeling sexually attracted to children, who have thoughts about acting on those feelings, but haven't harmed anyone yet.
What can they do?
The thoughts they have makes them monster to 99% of people. They're not gonna get help, they're gonna repress those feelings, let these frustrated impulses fester, until it overruns their reason and they finally go ahead and find themselves a small defenseless child to make their victim.
I think that making this a thought crime to be hidden is making the real crime, the one with victims, more common. The article mentions judgement, and a treatment to learn to controll their evil impulses. Wouldn't it be better if they learned to controll themselves before they did things that they can't take back?
I wonder how many people we know have these feelings... just waiting to find themselves in a situation where it'll come out... scary.
You can't take the sky from me...
I read the article before seeing the link, and never in its many pages did being "anti-internet" seem like a salient point of the story. It was a fascinating exploration of a sexual predator who doesn't fit the common dehumanized stereotype, who wasn't himself abused as a child, who gets along very well with his coworkers (who still hang out with him), who suddenly awakens to this destructive fetish well into his 40's.
The author reports on a number of perspectives: the offender, the leaders of support groups (discussing their design decisions), the offender's coworkers, and his wife's. I found two points particularly interesting from a policy perspective. One was that recidivism rates for child abuse are actually lower than 20% (still pretty high, but not as high as other crimes, and not as high as made seem in popular depictions). Second, a few very gossamer layers of denial are all it takes to seed the fields for future transgressions, and how that denial can be so hard to catch, even under the seemingly very close scrutiny of a wife and support group.
What I DIDN'T take away from the story was how dangerous the internet in general is, and how everybody needs to worry about scary relatives over the internet any more than in person. I especially didn't take the article, as some post patronizingly suggested, as a befuddled and clumsy strike by Old Media against New Media. Seriously guys, can't you get your heads out of the Slashdot talking-point framework for an issue as important and undiscussed as the sexual ause of children?
I imagine that this will be one of the next big awkward social issues that U.S. society has to deal with, as was the Kinsey Report fallout (e.g. widespread infidelity), domestic abuse, drug abuse, etc were in decades past. A possible artifact of this starting trend of reckoning (if it is one) is that recent Kevin Bacon movie which got pretty good reviews; I plan on seeing it.
What worries me most about this whole debate is that far too often, people argue for restriction, punishment, whatever by casting the molester as some sort of sub-human creature -- which is exactly the same line of thinking that has led to all sorts of discrimination, persecution, and unthinkable atrocities of the sort which would lead to Godwin's law being invoked, as well as many more recent ones.
It seems very fashionable for the media to demonise particular people or groups -- recently it's mostly been child molesters and illegal immigrants here, and presumably Muslims and 'terrorists' where you are, but many others have suffered it in the past. But it's not fair. It's not fair to the people concerned, but it's not fair to the debate either -- you can't consider something rationally when you're thinking of crude stereotypes and foaming at the mouth...
I'm not saying that child molestation isn't a terrible crime -- it is, and I think that jail sentences are probably appropriate in many cases. But demonising the molesters isn't good for them or for the issues -- or for us, in the long run.
(And in this example, we probably wouldn't be demonising the right people anyway! IIRC, and as Roy's case shows, the majority of child molesters are family or friends, not strangers, whether over the Internet or not. So the original story makes little sense!)
Ceterum censeo subscriptionem esse delendam.
Those are some very important sentiments. Some people are pedophiles, just like some people are gay and (more often) straight. It's not a choice, and it's not decidedly a result of childhood traumas (some who have traumas turn out pedophile, some who have traumas turn out "normal", some who were not traumatized turn out pedophile).
So these people simply exist. They are not inherently evil or monstrous, they simply are, like some people simply are gay. What they (and everyone else) can choose, is how they act. Resisting your primary sexual urges for the duration of your life takes some (often considerable) effort. Such an effort needs support from those near you, from people you believe in. As you can imagine, if nobody nowhere believes in you, it takes considerable character to believe in yourself. A pedophile will meet universal condemnation and rejection, from everywhere he can turn -- newspapers and TV, but also his closest family and most dear friends will call him the most gruesome things, without knowing it's him they speak of. In case you lack in empathy, let me help you: That's harsh, that wounds.
That is the birth of the child molester. A uniform society which tells you day after day, every day, that you are a monster, that you are one of the last things on earth society allows to be universally hated. As far as height goes, you're the lowest. Oh, you may not have "done anything" yet, since you're only 17 (and hey, we hate you), but you can't hold out forever. Just you wait, you will molest. And we'll be here to spit in your face 'till you do.
Unfortunately for society's expectations, the internet has done wonders for pedophiles everywhere. We suddenly have support fora -- I can tell you most of us really did think we were the only one of our kind (feeling love for children but appalled at the thought of molestation). Now we are united, and we are many. And weekly, places like boychat.org sees new, amazed users who are just finding out they're not alone. Here, we can speak openly without the usual fear that haunts us everywhere else. We can share joys and regrets, frustration and philosophies. Thanks to the internet, I have learnt to live with what I am and not hate myself, and not be afraid of what I am. And most importantly, I was able to start from a confused teenager and build a firm set of ethics which I believe in strongly, and which guide my decicions for what I do.
And my hope remains, that we may one day be judged for our actions, not our attractions.
(Posted anonymously, for obvious reasons)
[This is slightly edited version of the post made in reply to you at BoyChat.]
I agree with you: "disease" is a woefully inappropriate term for a sexual preference. Of course, if you've been scanning our index, you're probably already aware that even that seemingly obvious point comes under discussion on our board.
I also agree with you about one crucial point on your analysis of a "mental problem." While I do not believe that boylove is, in and of itself, a mental problem, nonetheless I concede that a boylover who does not wish to be a boylover is setting himself up for some serious mental difficulty. Not just because of the disconnect in itself (something he would share with, for example, a homosexual who does not wish to be a homosexual), but also because unlike a homosexual, a boylover has no safe quarter in which he can even address this issue. Mandatory reporting laws means that a boylover who confides in his therapist that he finds boys attractive might very well find himself under police investigation. So the boylovers least likely to be able to come to terms with their desires are also the ones most likely to spiral into an increasingly dark psychological quagmire. Hardly a recipe for healthy development, regardless of your attraction.
I would say that perhaps Slashdot and BoyChat are not so different, in the abstract. You say, "Liking science and technology doesn't involve a decision," but I wonder how true that really is. Many at BoyChat, for example, would say, "Liking boys doesn't involve a decision. It's just who we are." I might even say, "Liking the song Shadowdance doesn't involve a decision. I just heard it, and liked it. See me shrug; what can I do?" The fact is, every taste, every like, every desire every person has is shaped by a million things that only may or may not involve decisions.
And we discuss the same issues, in the abstract. Is what we do good or bad? Sure, you guys discuss, "Is encryption protecting my privacy or endangering my children?" whereas we discuss, "Is loving this boy making his life better or complicating it?" but it's the same issue: is what I like (be it technology or boylove) a good thing or a bad thing?
And we are like Slashdot in that we have to some degree decided on BoyChat that what we like is, in fact, a good thing, on the whole. A "community of like-minded people": we are a forum of people who mostly believe in the fundamental positivity of who we are and what we do (and don't read more into "what we do" than is there; I realize that statement leaves itself wide open to disaster fantasies).
So, who cares if they've developed a way to "control" sexual orientation: more importantly, have they developed a way to "control" who I want to be? And if so... would that be a good thing, or instead a bad thing of Huxleyan proportions?
Much Love,
Dylan Thomas
What he wants is more important that what I want. What he wants is also more important that what you want.