Schools as Sexual Playgrounds

By Kevin Ryan

If students attend schools which are run as sexual playgrounds, is it any wonder if they fail to learn?

Over the last three decades, social scientists, educational researchers, and pundits have probed for the reason why educationally the US on the fringe of being a Third World country. In particular, why does the academic achievement of American students begin to fall off during junior high and plummet during the high school years?

The “failure theories” are many: our schools are too big; our schools are too small; our school year is too short; our school day is too long; our teachers are too dumb or too lazy or under paid; our parents don’t care; we don’t give the schools enough money. Critics endlessly opine that our students don’t have enough arts, enough sports; enough science, enough math. They don’t have enough homework; they have too much homework. What is being missed from the analyses is the teenagers’ elephant in the room, their Kim Kardashian at the Sunday school picnic: sex.

Read it all here.

Related reading:  Sexual Abuse of Adolescent Boys; McCain Right on Illinois Sex Ed; Einstein Was Right About Education; Straight Talk on Public Education

Australia's Child Abuse Commission and the Stench of Hypocrisy

Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard has just announced the formation of a royal commission into “institutional responses to instances and allegations of child sexual abuse”.

The media spotlight has been on child abuse claims in the Catholic Church. But the Prime Minister is wise enough to realise that sex abuse is so widespread that it is not just a problem in one denomination. This inquiry extends beyond the highly-publicised failings of the Church to state-run institutions, government schools, non-profits like the Scouts and sporting groups, child service agencies and even the police.

It promises to be a deeply emotional affair which could last as long as five years. Two other inquiries into child sexual abuse, mostly targeting the Catholic Church, are already under way in the states of New South Wales and Victoria.

The senior Catholic prelate in Australia, Sydney’s Cardinal George Pell, has agreed to cooperate fully with the royal commission. He says that it will clear the air. "We are not interested in denying the extent of misdoing in the Catholic Church. We object to it being exaggerated," says Cardinal Pell. "We object to being described as the only cab on the rank. We acknowledge, with shame, the extent of the problem and I want to assure you that we have been serious in attempting to eradicate it and deal with it... This commission will enable those claims to be validated or found to be a significant exaggeration."

But the purpose of the royal commission is not merely to purge the collective psyche and bring hidden injustices into the light of day, but to strike at the root of the perversion.

“Child sexual abuse is a vile thing, it’s an evil thing, it’s done by evil people, but what we’ve seen too I think in recent revelations, it’s not just the evil of the people who do it,” said Ms Gillard. “There has been a systemic failure to respond to it and to better protect children and I particularly want to get the insights about what would stop that kind of systemic failure happening again.”

Unhappily, nailing and jailing sexual predators is the easy part. This is not a law and order crisis; it is a cultural crisis. Ensuring that it won’t happen again – in the Catholic Church and elsewhere -- could be all but impossible in a society which is awash with incitements to sexual activity.

Fortunately, the most frequent reason advanced for pessimism about change is no reason at all: that celibacy will remain mandatory for Catholic priests. Critics inside and outside the Church have claimed that celibacy is the cause of psychological disorders. This is complete nonsense. Married rabbis, scout masters, teachers and Protestant ministers have all been convicted of child sexual abuse. The causes of paedophilia are obscure, but many paedophiles are married men. Abolishing celibacy seems about as sensible as forcing bachelors to marry.

The second reason is institutional. Critics of the Church have accused it of secrecy, of turning a blind eye to abuse, and of deliberately evading the civil authorities by transferring priests to keep their crimes a secret. This has happened in the past, although protocols are in place now to ensure that offenders are brought to justice in a court, not shielded by other priests.

The recent turmoil at the BBC in Britain suggests that it takes great moral strength to resist the pressure to protect colleagues. It has emerged that Jimmy Savile, a vulgar entertainer whom the BBC lionised for decades, was a serial sexual abuser. A year after his death, at least 300 men and women have come forward to accuse him of molesting or even raping them. Incredibly, Savile used his status as a celebrity visitor to hospitals and orphanages to molest girls. This went on for decades. Some of the incidents may even have happened on BBC premises.

Did anyone know about this? Yes, they did. Or at least they had their suspicions. Did anyone at the BBC do anything about this? No, they didn’t. Instead, after his death, the BBC broadcast tributes to Savile’s memory.

Now articles are appearing which allege that a culture of abuse had existed for years at the BBC. Joan Bakewell, once called “the thinking man’s crumpet”, a well-known TV presenter who aggressively promoted liberal views on sexual taboos and was rewarded with a peerage, reminisced recently about Jimmy Savile and other ghastly figures from the 60s in the London Review of Books. Incredibly, she excused it:

“You can’t re-create the mood of an era. You just can’t get into the culture of what it was like, transfer our sensibilities backwards from today. It would be like asking Victorian factory owners to explain why they sent children up chimneys. It’s the same with the BBC that I first entered. It had habits and values that we just can’t understand from the point of view of where we are now. What we now find unacceptable was just accepted back then by many people.”

And what happened when the BBC higher-ups were confronted with Savile’s alleged crimes and evidence of cover-ups and wilful ignorance? They denied all knowledge of it. Mark Thompson, the former director-general of the BBC, and now president and CEO of the New York Times Company, is under a cloud. A columnist at the Times, Joe Nocera, was scathing: “Thompson winds up appearing willfully ignorant, and it makes you wonder what kind of an organization the BBC was when Thompson was running it — and what kind of leader he was." BBC journalists would have destroyed a bishop like that.

Institutions protect their own. They obstruct inquiries. They bluster. It takes a deep sense of justice to resist the temptation to be defensive and to accept responsibility for the failings of subordinates. If bishops are evasive, they deserve to be sanctioned, but let’s not think that the Catholic Church is the only club with dark secrets.

The third reason for pessimism is cultural. Most of the abuse which features in the headlines – even Jimmy Savile’s – is decades old. By all means bring the predators to justice, but the most urgent matter is to keep young people from becoming abusers.

In this regard, the stench of hypocrisy is unbearable. Everywhere young people are being encouraged to abuse their peers. They aren’t being told where to draw the line. In fact, they are being told that there are no lines. At the same time as Australian politicians are making indignant speeches about sexual abuse of children, the New South Wales teachers’ union is distributing sex information kits which teaches students to experiment creatively with their sexuality to see whether they are gay, straight, bisexual, lesbian, pansexual or omnisexual.

Encouraging adolescents to have casual sex has become so commonplace that it barely registers in the media – from popular sex columnists like Dan Savage to United Nations resolutions about reproductive health to Lena Dunham's suggestive commercial for President Obama's election campaign. Today we live in a sauna of sexuality. Does anyone really think that more experimentation will stop a new generation of sexual predators?

“We must do everything we can to make sure that what has happened in the past is never allowed to happen again.” Well said, Prime Minister. But until children and adolescents are taught that sex is a sacred power which should be reserved for a loving relationship within marriage, the cycle of abuse will happen again. And again. And again.

Michael Cook is editor of MercatorNet. 

US Secret Service Needs Attitude Adjustment

President Obama has called them “knuckleheads”. A CNN columnist says the actions of a dozen Secret Service agents in Colombia amounted to “stupidity”. United States Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said the episode, also involving military personnel, was a “huge disappointment”. The official message seems to be that consorting with prostitutes in Colombia while on an official mission is dumb, embarrassing, but not really bad.

To be sure, the moral character of the men’s behaviour depends on what standard of conduct is being applied, and when you look at this incident in context, it does seem hypocritical to be particularly scandalised by it, or even surprised.

From the beginning two weeks ago, commentaries on the affair have raised the question of “culture” in the service which is responsible for the safety of the US president. Ms Napolitano said a review of Secret Service records showed no similar episodes of misconduct that might have warned of problems brewing at the agency, but journalists have dug up evidence that trouble was brewing all the same.

The Washington Post cites a 2002 US News & World Report investigation which found an agency “rife with problems”, including “alcohol abuse, criminal offences and extramarital affairs between agents and White House employees. Male officers had viewed pornography on White House satellite channels… Supervisors in two field offices had authorised professional strippers at office parties.” (Two of the agents who misbehaved in Cartagena also were supervisors.) Former Post reporter Ronald Kessler wrote a book about the agency, In the President’s Secret Service (2009), which indicated a lax culture and poor leadership. It was Kessler who gave the Post its scoop about the recent incident. New reports allege a similar episodein El Salvador prior to the President’s visit their last year, and expose an incident involving marines and a prostitute in Brazil.

All this points to a view of sex as a recreational right -- particularly in places such as Cartagena where prostitution is legal -- regardless of any security risks or the effect of marital infidelity on families back home. The majority of agents are said to be married men, and the Post has characterised the attitude behind the current scandal as “wheels up, rings off”, despite the fact that an extra-marital affair jeopardises an agent’s security clearance. Not surprisingly, the divorce rate among agents is said to be high. Where did this culture, if that’s what it is, come from?

As others have pointed out, there is a long history linking war, armies abroad and the condoning of prostitution. It is only quite recently that prostitution itself, and the related issue of adultery, have been specifically addressed in military law and regulation. In 2006 the State Department banned engaging with prostitutes for all Foreign Service personnel and contractors, even where prostitution is legal, and penalties include up to a year in jail. Rules at the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees the Secret Service, are more vague. Employees are prohibited from engaging in any “criminal, infamous, dishonest, immoral, or notoriously disgraceful conduct, or other conduct prejudicial to the government,” an official told the Washington Post.

Needless to say the new rules for the military were not universally popular. When they were floated in 2004, reports the Christian Science Monitor, “many US troops reacted bitterly, calling such sanctions ‘harsh’” and a sergeant stationed in Germany, where prostitution is legal, complained that, “Next they’re going to be telling us we can’t drink, or only on the weekends.”

Indeed, given the signs that casual sex was (and is) regarded as an entitlement in these sectors and no big deal, and given that Western countries such as Germany were increasingly legalising prostitution and treating it as regular “work”, there might not have been any new rules, except for one important development: the growth of human trafficking and the part that prostitution plays in this modern form of slavery.

A United Nations protocol designed to control and stamp out trafficking came into force at the end of 2003 and was ratified by the US along with -- by 2010 -- 116 other countries. The State Department strictures of 2006 were part of the Bush administration’s effort to give effect to this commitment. The moral issues of casual and adulterous sex, whether with foreigners or other state employees, do not appear to have played any part in it.

Nor do they seem to feature in criticism of the posse of Secret Service agents and their military counterparts who disgraced themselves in Cartagena. (No-one, by the way, seems to have taken the security threat very seriously.) Columnist Kirsten Powers takes them to task for fuelling sex trafficking, indirectly at least, not for cheating on their wives. She quotes the US State Department which says that forced prostitution of women and children from rural areas in urban areas remains a problem in Colombia, which is “also a destination for foreign child sex tourists, particularly coastal cities such as Cartagena” -- the reason why Colombia is known as the “Thailand of Latin America”. Says Ms Powers:

Representatives of the U.S. government should be setting the standard for the world, not feeding the problem of sex trafficking. The chances that the women or girls the Secret Service agents procured for their pleasure were there by free will is very low. Most likely, they were sex slaves.

Most likely she is correct. It is hard to believe that there is much if any freedom in the sex industry, anywhere, but where there is poverty and social dislocation, as in developing countries like Colombia, so much the less. And Kirsten Powers is certainly right to say that Americans abroad should be setting a high standard -- of respect for women, protection of children -- for the world. Sex trafficking is a hateful crime and we must do all in our power to stop it.

But let’s not forget that the war on trafficking starts at home. A couple of years ago Hillary Clinton observed that drug trafficking from Mexico would not be stopped by measures at the border as long as there was an appetite for drugs in the United States. It’s the same with sex. If servicemen work in institutions that wink at the appetite for random sex, those institutions exist in a wider culture where practically any sexual activity that is not forced is permitted -- and in this thicket forced sex also finds shelter in which to grow.

Just one example: Nicholas Kristof wrote in the New York Times last month that America’s leading website for prostitution ads, Backpage.com, has been partly financed (by a 16 per cent stake in the owner, Village Voice Media) for more than six years by none other than Goldman Sachs. The leading financial firm, which had a representative on the board of Village Voice Media for four years, cannot have been unaware that the site is notorious for ties to sex trafficking.

While it is good to see the moral fervour going into the war on sex trafficking, one cannot help feeling that it is doomed to failure. If coercion is to be the only criterion for illegitimate and destructive sex, a huge source of sexual mayhem and human misery will go unchecked. Use of pornography, hooking up, marital infidelity -- these are symptoms of unruly appetites that lead to nights of debauchery in foreign cities and the destruction of families at home. Until the public voices of conscience start dealing with these broad cultural trends, Cartagena-type scandals will continue to embarrass and distract Western governments. Or worse.

From here. 

Carolyn Moynihan is deputy editor of MercatorNet.

Moldova: Chemical Castration for Sex Offenders

Chemical castration will be mandatory in Moldova for those convicted of violently abusing children under 15.

Under a new law, foreigners and Moldovans convicted of violent paedophile offences will be chemically castrated. Rapists will also face castration on a case-by-case basis. Many Moldovans believe their country has become a haven for sex tourism, AP reports, with 5 foreigners of the 9 men convicted of child sex offences over the past 2 years.

Chemical castration involves a man taking hormones which suppress the production of testosterone for 3 months, reducing his sex drive. Some MPs in Moldova’s parliament questioned the effectiveness of the measure, pointing out that it is reversible, and pressing legislators to explore other methods.

Moldovan legislator Valeriu Munteanu, of the Liberal Party, said the measure was necessary after the outrage sparked by a number of cases involving US and West European nationals. “The Republic of Moldova has been transformed in recent years into ‘a tourist destination’ for Western pedophiles and there have been cases where rapists have repeatedly offended even after they served prison time,” said Munteanu.

Amnesty International Moldova criticised the decision, saying it erodes fundamental rights to physical and mental integrity. Executive Director Cristina Pereteatcu described chemical castration as “incompatible with human rights, which are the foundation of any civilized democratic society”. The new law will become active on July 1. Legislation for mandatory chemical castration exists in Poland and Russia, and both Germany and the Czech Republic have used voluntary surgical castration to treat sex offenders. ~ AP, Mar 7; BBC, Mar 6

Sex with Animals Can be Deadly

For many people, bestiality is a bad joke, but for some it could be a matter of life or death, according to a new study finding that men who had sex with animals in their lifetimes were twice as likely to develop cancer of the penis as others.

The study of 492 men from rural Brazil found that 35 percent of study participants, who ranged from 18 to 80 years old and included both penile cancer patients and healthy men, reported having sex with animals (SWA) in their lifetimes. A team of urologists from centers around Brazil co-authored the paper, which looked at risk factors for penile cancer in men who had visited 16 urology and oncology centers in 12 Brazilian cities. In addition to SWA, three other risk factors for penile cancer were found: smoking, the presence of premalignant lesions on the penis and phimosis, a condition where the foreskin cannot be retracted over the penis.

Men who had sex with animals also reported a higher incidence of sexually transmitted diseases.

Read it all here.


Related reading:  Moral Disgust at Bestiality

Ireland: Labor Party Hypocrisy

The Irish government is understandably furious over a report on clerical sex abuse. But is it courageous enough to examine the scandals for which it is responsible?

Hopes that the Vatican’s recent response to attacks by Ireland’s politicians might relieve some of the tension in Irish Church-State relations seem over-optimistic. The Vatican was ostensibly commenting on an inquiry into how the Catholic diocese of Cloyne dealt with clerical sex abuse of children. But more significantly, it responded vigorously and rigorously to fierce criticism by politicians – including an extraordinary attack on the Holy See made in parliament by Prime Minister Enda Kenny.

Immediate reaction by Irish politicians in the last few days has been guarded but they were hardly conciliatory. Mr Kenny said he stood by his allegations. Foreign Minister Eamon Gilmore remained “unconvinced”. This was before either of them had studied the document. The omens are not good.

This is a great pity. If the interests and the welfare of children were really what the government was striving for –Mr Gilmore’s mantra – then the appeal of the Vatican would not be falling on deaf ears. The document calls for “the restoration of mutual confidence and collaboration between Church and State authorities, which is essential for the effective combating of the scourge of abuse. Naturally, the Holy See is well aware that the painful situation to which the episodes of abuse have given rise cannot be resolved swiftly or easily, and that although much progress has been made, much remains to be done.”

We can only hope, however, that when all the face-saving has been done – because politicians are very reluctant ever to say “I was wrong about that” -- Church and State will abandon the blame game, work together and get on with the job of making society a safer place for children.

In the long term, however, what is disturbing about this conflict is what it reveals about the character of contemporary Irish political life. There is a shameless populism in the politicians’ grandstanding. It is this populism that keeps them at loggerheads with the Holy See.

Government spokesmen have been riding on the crest of a wave of “public anger and frustration.” It was quite clear that their hope was that this anger might continue to prejudice the public’s view of Vatican’s response. Their hopes are being realised.

But this crisis in relations with the Holy See should prompt the public to question the Irish Government’s own record. Just last week a sociologist from Trinity College Dublin pointed out the dangers of exaggerating clerical child abuse. Dr Helen Buckley, a sociologist at Trinity College Dublin, said serious scandals such as that in the Catholic diocese of Cloyne attracted huge media focus which was disproportionate to the incidence of child sex abuse cases. Clerical sexual abuse needs to be reported on in correct proportion to the “tiny” minority of the population affected, she said.

“A lot of the [media] activity in the past few months concerns Cloyne, and while it is very serious, it’s quite tiny,” Dr Buckley said. “I feel there’s a danger because clerical sex abuse touches such a nerve in this country, and the [child protection] system could become skewed. It needs to be seen in proportion,” she said.

Recently appointed to the Irish Health Service Executive’s advisory committee on children and family services, Dr Buckley voiced concern at the proposed introduction of mandatory reporting of cases of child abuse. Ironically, the whole question of mandatory reporting – and the Church’s supposed reservations about it -- was a key one in the Irish government’s trenchant attack on the Vatican.

Will the Irish government act on the recommendations of people like Dr. Buckley with the same determination as it demanded from the Church authorities? In all the bluster there has been no mention of the shocking revelations last year that the Irish Health Service Executive (HSE) “believes that approximately 200 children have died in state care in the last ten years.”

“The figures are emerging”, the report went on, “as part of a nationwide probe and are ten times greater than the previously admitted number of deaths -- the HSE had said that 23 children had died in care.” This all came to light following an audit of HSE files following the controversy over a report into the tragic death of a teenager.

Newspaper columnist Sinead Ryan was scathing: “We have no cohesive child-welfare policy funded and run by a single entity. We are brilliant at writing reports on how to care for children and abysmal at actually caring for them. We are worse at holding anyone accountable when failures happen.”

The Vatican has spoken very candidly of its shame and sorrow “for the terrible sufferings which the victims of abuse and their families have had to endure within the Church of Jesus Christ, a place where this should never happen.” No such words as yet from the state in respect of the deaths of 200 children taken into its care. In fact, the bureaucracy has denied allegations, admitted the possibility of a higher tally only under extreme pressure and stonewalled inquiries even by the responsible minister. The chief executive of Barnardos, Fergus Finlay, said that the deaths were “deeply shocking, as is the fact that the review team has not been handed a single file."

"This is a scandal of enormous proportions for which some immediate answers are required in the public interest,” declared Alan Shatter, now the Minister for Justice, last year. “How could it be the case that so little value was attached to the lives of these children and that until now, no action was taken to identify and collate the numbers dying in care or to review the circumstances of their individual deaths?"

Some Irish people are beginning to see a double standard at work.


Michael Kirke is a freelance writer in Dublin. He blogs at Garvan Hill.

Those Vatican Conspirators!

A programme about clerical sexual abuse aired January 17 by Irish broadcaster RTE attempted to prove that the Vatican had a worldwide policy encouraging bishops to conceal sexual abuse by priests. Reliable reporters say that the programme, aired just ahead of a Vatican-sponsored Apostolic Visitation of the Irish church, failed to make its claim stick.

The doco, “Unspeakable Crimes”, was based on a January 1997 letter from the papal ambassador to Ireland, communicating the opinion of the Vatican’s Congregation for Clergy about a set of proposed Irish policies on priestly sexual abuse. It confirms, says John Allen of National Catholic Reporter, “that in the late 1990s the Vatican was ambivalent about requirements that bishops be required to report abuse to police and civil prosecutors.”

In it, Storero, who died in 2000, writes that the Congregation for the Clergy had concluded that a “mandatory reporting” policy, proposed by a draft 1996 set of policies considered by the Irish bishops, “gives rise to serious reservations of both a moral and a canonical nature.”

That line has fueled charges that the Vatican effectively tied the hands of bishops, preventing them from turning over abuse cases to civil authorities.

American attorney, Jeffrey Anderson (who, having run out of US clients for his lucrative line of suing the Catholic Church, has recently set up shop in Britain) claimed the letter was yet another “smoking gun” indicating a conspiracy to suppress evidence of sexual assaults by Catholic priests. But Allen, who prides himself on his objective view of the Church, says there are three reasons that claim won’t stick.

As usual, there is some background to understand, but in brief:

* The “main concern of the letter is to ensure that when a bishop takes action against an abuser, his edict should stick – suggesting a fairly tough line on abuse, rather than a drive to cover it up.”

* “Second, the letter does not directly forbid bishops from reporting abusers to police and prosecutors. Instead, it communicates the judgment of one Vatican office that mandatory reporting policies raise concerns. It’s not a policy directive, in other words, but an expression of opinion.”

* “Third, the Congregation for the Clergy at the time was under the direction of Colombian Cardinal Darío Castrillón Hoyos, whose reservations about bishops reporting their priests to civil authorities have been already well documented.” Some other Vatican officials at the time, including Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, disagreed with Castrillon Hoyos’ approach. Pope John Paul II put Cardinal Ratzinger in charge of the Vatican’s response to the sexual abuse crisis in 2001.

Vatican spokesperson, Jesuit Fr. Federico Lombardi, said the letter “correctly insists on the importance that canonical legislation be respected, precisely so that guilty parties not have a basis to appeal.” The “moral and canonical concerns” mentioned in the letter, Lombardi said, concern the sacrament of confession.


From here.

LGBT Teens Need Help

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Human Trafficking in East Africa

A new study into human trafficking trends in East Africa reveals that the capitals of Kenya and Tanzania are the region's main magnet for children and adults tricked into exploitative labour including prostitution.

The research found that - although people initially may have travelled across East African borders voluntarily in search of greener pastures - they were invariably deceived by a range of actors including family, religious acquaintances, business men and retired prostitutes, into working in exploitative situations.

The new research, done by the International Organisation of Migration (IOM), concluded that the main cities in Kenya and Tanzania are the main recipients of trafficked adults and children in East Africa. The main countries of origin are Rwanda, Uganda, Burundi and Congo Kinshasa (DRC).

In Kenya, the study found evidence of Rwandan, Tanzanian and Ugandan victims of trafficking, including children, working in Nairobi as domestic labourers, in the commercial sex and hospitality sectors, and in the agricultural sector in various locations around the country.

Victims were identified in the Kenyan-Ugandan border town of Busia, while Tanzanian children were found working as cattle herders and in motorbike repair shops in Oloitoktok on the Kenyan-Tanzanian border, as well as begging on the streets of Nairobi and Naivasha.

In Tanzania, the IOM researchers found evidence of child trafficking from Burundi, Rwanda and Uganda for sexual exploitation, fishing, domestic servitude and agricultural labour.

Adult victims of trafficking into Tanzania were mainly identified in the domestic sector, as well as the mining, agricultural and hospitality industries.

But while Ugandan children are trafficked to all the countries in the region, Uganda was also registered as a destination for trafficked victims from Kenya, Tanzania and Rwanda. In addition, instability in eastern Congo was found to be fuelling the influx of trafficked children to Uganda.

Although information on Rwanda was scant, the country was identified as a source for victims destined for Italy, Norway and the Netherlands as well as for child victims destined for Nairobi and the Kenyan coastal city of Mombasa as domestic workers and for sexual exploitation.

"The lack of referral mechanisms providing protection and support, especially for adult victims, is a major weakness in the counter-trafficking response in the region," the IOM researchers warned.

Indeed, Rwanda is the only country in the region where authorities have established shelter and hotline services to assist victims of gender violence, including victims of trafficking. However the lack of appropriate referral mechanisms across its border was hampering efforts to expedite the return and rehabilitation of cross-border victims, according to IOM.

The results of the study were presented at a Nairobi workshop to senior East African government officials, civil society groups and international experts. Participants called for the implementation of a region-wide 116 emergency number - an internationally recognised hotline number for trafficked children, which is currently in use in Kenya.

From here.

Amsterdam Discovered Prostitution is Rape

Women who prostitute have described it as “paid rape” and “voluntary slavery”. Prostitution is sexual harassment, sexual exploitation, often worse. His payment does not erase what we know about sexual violence, domestic violence and rape.

This understanding of the realities of prostitution by the john and the woman he buys is at odds with the notion of prostitution as slightly unpleasant labour that should be legalised. Whether or not it is legal, prostitution is extremely harmful for women. Women in prostitution have the highest rates of rape and homicide of any group of women ever studied. They are regularly physically assaulted and verbally abused, whether they prostitute on the street or in massage parlours, brothels or hotels.

Sexual violence and physical assault are the norm for women in legal prostitution. In one Dutch study, 60 per cent of women in legal prostitution were physically assaulted, 70 per cent were threatened with physical assault, 40 per cent experienced sexual violence and 40 per cent had been coerced into legal prostitution.

In nine countries, we found that 68 per cent of women, men and transgendered people in prostitution had post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), a prevalence that is comparable to that of battered or raped women seeking help, and survivors of state-sponsored torture. Across widely varying cultures on five continents the traumatic consequences of prostitution were similar whether prostitution was legal, tolerated, or illegal.

Yet some who may not be familiar with the sex industry believe that legalisation will decrease the harm of prostitution, like a bandage on a wound. They ask: “Wouldn’t it be at least a little bit better if it were legalised? Wouldn’t there be less stigma, and wouldn’t prostitutes somehow be protected?”

Underpinning laws that legalise prostitution is the belief that prostitution is inevitable. Public statements by pimps emphasise that prostitution is here to stay, with Dennis Hof in Reno and Heidi Fleiss in Sydney repeating the mantra that “boys will be boys”. Although false, these stereotypes about men mainstream prostitution and they are also good business strategy, relieving johns of ambivalence regarding the social acceptability of buying sex while at the same time inviting men to spend like suckers.

Pimps do not suddenly become nice guys because prostitution is legal. Legal Amsterdam brothels have up to three panic buttons in every room. Why? Because legal johns are not nice guys looking for a normal date. They regularly attempt to rape and strangle women.

As Amsterdam began shutting down its legal brothels a few years ago, Mayor Job Cohen acknowledged that the Dutch had been wrong about legal prostitution. It did not make prostitution safer. Instead, he said, legal prostitution increased organised crime. It functioned like a magnet for pimps and punters. Trafficking increased after legal prostitution—80 per cent of women in Dutch prostitution have been trafficked.

Do not believe what you see on Cathouse. They are acting. A colleague was telling the truth about her experience of prostitution on a TV talk show. During a break in filming, she was approached by a second woman who had been escorted in front of the cameras by her legal Nevada pimp. Whispering, the frightened woman begged for help, saying the pimp had coerced her to say on camera how much fun prostitution was. Leaving behind her purse and coat so the pimp would assume she was returning, they both ran and the woman was helped to escape.

The dilemma is not that there is no legal redress for coercion, physical assault and rape in illegal prostitution. There are laws against those forms of violence. The dilemma is that once in prostitution, there is no avoiding sexual harassment, sexual exploitation, rape and acts that are the equivalent of mental torture.


What do johns say about prostitution?

You get what you pay for without the "no," a sex buyer explained.

Non-prostituting women have the right to say “no.” We have legal protection from sexual harassment and sexual exploitation. But tolerating sexual abuse is the job description for prostitution.

It’s a myth that johns are harmless.

Research shows that a majority of johns refuse condoms, pay high prices to desperately poor women to not use condoms, or rape women without condoms.

Research compared frequent and infrequent sex buyers. The men who most frequently used women in prostitution were the most likely to have committed sexually aggressive acts against non-prostituting women.

Read the full article here.

UK Opts Out on EU's Sex Trafficking Directive

The Archbishop of York has joined critics of the government's opt-out from the EU's new directive on sex trafficking, describing the decision as "stunning".

John Sentamu accused ministers of "sitting on the sidelines" while other countries try to tackle a cross-border problem, which is thought to be growing but has seen fewer traffickers jailed this year than at any time since 2005.

The Archbishop said the "evil trade, which is nothing less than modern-day slavery", requires joint international action with Britain playing a full part. Estimates suggest that 2,500 foreign women have been pimped into prostitution by gangs.

Writing in today's Yorkshire Post, Dr Sentamu said: "I am no great supporter of European directives because of the supremacy of our parliament, but this one seems to be commonsense, designed to coordinate action against the trade in slaves. Britain should get involved now and be part of improving the situation – not sat on the sidelines offering wise words only when the match is over.

"Our government should be ensuring that Britain leads the way, as it did in the days of William Wilberforce."

His plea for a change of heart follows a similar appeal from the Labour party earlier this week, backed by the charity Anti-Slavery International. The Home Office says that caution over the directive protects damage to other national interests, but that the country is already "working constructively with EU partners" to fight sex trafficking.

Read more here.

Name and Shame Sex Merchants

When Melinda Tankard Reist’s latest book, Getting Real: Challenging the sexualisation of girls, was published last year, a reviewer described it as a “collective shout against the pornification of culture”. “I liked the phrase so much I decided to give it to a new grassroots campaign I’d been thinking about,” says the Australian advocate for women and girls. Here she talks to MercatorNet about the impact that campaign is having.


Mercatornet: What is your overall aim in confronting the pornification of culture?

Melinda Tankard Reist: The aim of Collective Shout: for a world free of sexploitation is to name, shame and expose advertisers, corporations and marketers who objectify women and sexualise girls to sell products and services. We are at the forefront of nation-wide action to pressure them to recognise their corporate social responsibility not to depict women and girls in ways that harm them.

Our overall aim in confronting various forms of objectification is to make them unacceptable. We want companies to think twice before using exploitative, hyper-sexualised imagery of women. We also want them to think twice before marketing inappropriate sexualised toys, games, clothes and other products to children. We want them to recognise what the research says about the connections between over-sexualised imagery and negative physical and mental health outcomes in young people and children especially.

We also oppose the ultimate outworking of repackaging little girls as sexually interesting, which is the global trade in their bodies. We challenge anything that treats the bodies of women and girls as appropriate elements of sexual commerce and fuels the global industries of pornography and prostitution.

Read it all here.

Brit Urges Homosex at Age 14

A high profile British homosexual activist wants the age of sexual consent lowered to 14, on the basis that currently underage sex “is mostly consenting, safe and fun”.

Peter Tatchell plugged for this change in America in one of a series of articles on “dangerous ideas” on the website Big Think recently.
Dangerous, certainly, but also just a little bit surprising in view of this year of paedophilia scandals and his campaign against Pope Benedict’s visit to the UK -- one of the reasons being the Pope’s alleged “cover up” of clerical sexual abuse of children?

By a tortured logic Tatchell claims that a lower age of consent is “the best way” to protect young people from abuse. His arguments boil down to three:
* The kids are doing it anyway.
* Current laws criminalise teenagers.
* Young people under 16 have the right to decide when to have sex.
Actually, in making the last claim Tatchell puts no lower age limit. This fits with his recipe for protecting kids from peer pressure and paedophiles: “giving them frank, high quality sex and relationship education from an early age”. As we have noted elsewhere on this site recently, for some people that means nursery school.
In the end, his case seems to rest on a view of sex as the driving force and highest achievement of human life -- from “an early age”. It is a view that some adults may find convenient but which common sense rejects as contrary to the good of children and society. Thus the editors of Big Think conclude:
Why We Should Reject This

Of course there will always be underage people who have sex, but that doesn’t mean the law should condone it. Sex is a very complicated part of human behavior that is too nuanced for young people to understand. In fact, studies have shown that people, especially girls, who have sex at a young age often regret it. One study in New Zealand found that 70% of girls who had sex before the age of 16 wished they hadn’t done so. In a column for Telegraph, writer David Lindsay argues, “sex is for people who can cope with the consequences, physical and otherwise. In a word, adults.”

From here.

Child Protection Agencies Target Home Schooled

WASHINGTON — The latest federal data indicate child-protection agencies nationwide continue to target Christian families, according to Christian legal experts and advocates for reforming aggressive child-welfare agencies.

The Fourth National Incidence Study of Child Abuse and Neglect (NIS-4), released earlier this year, indicated a dramatic nationwide drop in the incidence of suspected child abuse and neglect. The report, mandated by Congress and issued once a decade by the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) in the Department of Health and Human Services, is considered the gold standard in estimating abuse and neglect rates nationwide and providing a point of comparison from previous years.

The study, which is based on reports between 2005 and 2006 from more than 10,000 “sentinels” who are connected in various ways to child protection, found that the estimated rate of all forms of maltreatment is down 26% since the last study in the mid-1990s. Drops included a 47% decrease in the rate of sexual abuse and a 29% decrease in physical abuse.

The recent national study was released with no public notice or press release, which contrasted with the Clinton administration’s highly touted release in 1996 of the previous NIS that had found large increases in child abuse and neglect.


The report confirmed the anecdotal concerns of some critics of child-protection agencies because it singled out as “endangered” children not enrolled in school — including home-schooled children, children from large families and children whose mother is abused.

For instance, the report found that sentinels were most likely to file abuse or neglect allegations against families with four or more children.

“The real epidemic is in false reports,” said Stephen Krason, professor of political science and legal studies at the Franciscan University of Steubenville in Ohio. “Some people will think large families must have neglect because parents couldn’t possibly look after all of these kids.”

Krason, who has overviewed the existing research on child-protection overreach, said the data reflect a focus by the agencies and other “mandated reporters” on families that they disfavor for personal reasons, including anti-Christian bias. Such mandated reporters are uniquely exempt from civil liability claims and are not required to provide actual evidence of abuse or neglect to submit families to lengthy and invasive investigations.

“These people are notorious for inserting many things under the label of ‘abuse’ that no commonsense person would think of as abuse,” Krason said.

Home-Schooled Children
Another trend among sentinels is higher rates of reported sexual assault by allegations involving children who are not enrolled in schools. Included among these children are the roughly 2 million home-schooled students, who have faced frequent aggressive investigations by suspicious agencies around the country. Importantly, the report found sentinels were much more likely to suspect abuse and neglect in these children overall, but they also were much less likely to find any actual evidence of abuse among these children than among kids enrolled in schools.

“All of this is really dependent on what your definitions of abuse and neglect are,” said Michael Farris, chairman of the Home School Legal Defense Association, about the notoriously ill-defined terms that can become simply an extension of the biases of the officials involved.

Examples of such bias-based investigations include a recent case in which Farris defended a family from allegations that their children were in danger of abuse because the social workers involved “believe being serious about your religion is a risk factor for abuse.”

Read it all here.

Portland Top Porn City

Portland, Ore., is widely featured as a young, green, hip city; it also has gained a reputation as a national hub for child sex trafficking.

State police report encountering three to five trafficking victims a week. Although the Sexual Assault Resource Center, an advocacy group that offers services to Portland-area victims, estimates that it handled 75 cases in 2009, it also says that for every girl in its system 10 more are still being exploited.

"I just believe with my whole heart that people across the community would be appalled if they knew what was going on," said Sgt. Mike Geiger, who heads Portland's sexual assault detail.

Portland's legal commercial sex industry is the biggest per capita in the country, according to a report by researchers at Willamette Law School's International Human Rights Clinic. Former CBS News anchor Dan Rather once called the city "Pornland." The city has more strip clubs per capita than glittery Las Vegas, and a tolerant attitude toward sex, both legal and illegal.

Read it all here.

Obama Admin Weakens Anti-Sex Slave Regulation

WASHINGTON — A new regulatory rule that went into effect May 13 modified a policy of President George W. Bush that barred U.S. international aid for organizations that supported either prostitution or sex trafficking.

The new rule does not drop the funding restrictions, which are required by federal law, but the change allows “affiliated entities” — including a separate part of the organization receiving federal funds — to conduct actions in support of prostitution or sex trafficking.

Anti-human trafficking leaders in Congress and some feminists are concerned about the new Obama administration rule.

“Prostitution and sex trafficking are degrading to women and minors, and we should not be in the business of funding organizations that support it,” said Rep. Joe Pitts, R-Pa., at a Capitol Hill press conference on the day the new rule became effective.

Like other trafficking opponents, Chris Smith, R-N.J., co-chairman of the Congressional Human Trafficking Caucus, said the new rules would allow “loopholes” in the congressionally mandated funding ban by allowing overseas groups that receive federal taxpayer funds to share facilities, for instance, with organizations that support trafficking and prostitution.

Smith, who authored a sweeping anti-trafficking law in 2000, wrote the Obama administration opposing the rule and is considering legal action to reverse it.

“The Obama administration is enabling sex trafficking and prostitution by this action,” Smith said.

The new rule has raised concerns among some feminist groups, such as Equality Now, which does not oppose it but has urged careful monitoring of its implementation.

“It is critical that the U.S. government monitor the groups [that receive funding] and make sure they don’t enter into any activity that advocates for the legalization of prostitution or trafficking,” said Taina Bien-Aime, executive director of Equality Now.


Catholic leaders, including members of the Coalition of Catholic Organizations Against Human Trafficking, which is led by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, generally declined to comment on the new regulatory rules but emphasized that more efforts are needed to combat trafficking in America and overseas.

“This is a problem that is very significant but is largely unseen,” said Todd Scribner, education outreach coordinator for the Migration and Refugee Services at the bishops’ conference. “Because human trafficking is a direct affront to human dignity, it is important that we work to eliminate it.”

The conference has provided a nationwide network of support services to about 2,000 women and girls who have escaped trafficking over the last two years. The State Department estimates that 600,000 to 800,000 men, women and children are trafficked across international borders each year, and approximately 14,500 to 17,500 of them are trafficked into the U.S. annually.

Additionally, more than 300,000 U.S. children are in danger of becoming trafficking victims because of vulnerable circumstances, according to the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000.

Read it all here.

Earl Bradley: Worst Child Sex Abuse

DOVER: A Delaware grand jury returned a sweeping indictment on Monday against a paediatrician accused of serial molestation in what could be one of the worst child sex abuse cases in U.S. history.

The 160-page indictment returned by a grand jury charges Dr. Earl Bradley of Lewes with 471 counts of sexual crimes against 103 children.

Attorney-General Beau Biden said all of the alleged victims, including one boy, were caught on more than 13 hours of video recordings, some dating to 1998, that were seized from Bradley's office and home.

“The charges in this indictment are unique in the history of the state of Delaware, as far as I can tell,” he said.

“These were crimes committed against the most vulnerable among us — those without voices,” said Mr. Biden as tears welled in his eyes and he paused to collect himself.

Mr. Biden said that while there have been other cases around the country involving multiple victims, “I know of no other that has this many victims.”

The charges against Bradley include rape, sexual exploitation of a child, unlawful sexual contact, continuous sexual abuse of a child, assault and reckless endangering. Bradley, who was arrested in December and initially charged with 29 felony counts for allegedly abusing nine children, is being held with bail set at $2.9 million. His medical license was permanently revoked by the state Board of Medical Practice last week.

Read it all here.

Geoffrey Robinson: Try the Pope in Court

A prominent Australian-British human rights lawyer and United Nations jurist has suggested that the Pope be put on trial for crimes against humanity. I think that this is a brilliant idea.

Geoffrey Robertson outlined his scheme in The Guardian and a number of Australian newspapers. Although he feels strongly that the Vatican is fraudulently representing itself as an independent country, the Pope should be brought to account for systematic abuse of human rights during his pontificate. Since 2002, he points out, heads of state are no longer immune from prosecution before the International Criminal Court. For instance, a warrant has been issued for the arrest of the president of the Sudan, Omar al-Bashir, for crimes against humanity and war crimes.

In Pope Benedict’s case, Robertson argues that this includes sexual abuse of minors:

The ICC Statute definition of a crime against humanity includes rape and sexual slavery and other similarly inhumane acts causing harm to mental or physical health, committed against civilians on a widespread or systematic scale, if condoned by a government or a de facto authority. It has been held to cover the recruitment of children as soldiers or sex slaves. If acts of sexual abuse by priests are not isolated or sporadic, but part of a wide practice both known to and unpunished by their de facto authority then they fall within the temporal jurisdiction of the ICC – if that practice continued after July 2002, when the court was established.

But why stop at the Pope? Surely equity demands that others should stand in the dock along with Benedict if sex abuse happened on their watch and they failed to act energetically to stop it.

Read it all here.
 
But why stop at the Pope? Surely equity demands that others should stand in the dock along with Benedict if sex abuse happened on their watch and they failed to act energetically to stop it.
 
I agree.  Go for the hierarchs of the Episcopal Church who condon sexual deviants and even ordain them!

Sexual Harassment a Crime in Pakistan

ISLAMABAD, March 9: President Asif Ali Zardari signed on Tuesday the Protection Against Harassment of Women at Workplace Bill, 2010, aimed at providing a safe working environment.

The president signed the bill at a ceremony attended by some 100 women activists, parliamentarians and members of civil society organisations in the presidency.

He reiterated the government’s commitment to ensuring equal rights for men and women in accordance with the Constitution.

“We have to create a Pakistan where the coming generations, my daughters, can be proud of the fact that they live as equals. We will make sure that those who wish to harm the ideology of the Quaid-i-Azam, which was for equality for men and women, shall not succeed,” he said.

The president, invoking the name of Benazir Bhutto, said: “We shall do our utmost by the end of this tenure. All the rights that we enjoy as men shall be enjoyed by women as well.”He recalled the commitment made by Ms Bhutto at the Beijing Conference and in the CEDAW (Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, adopted in 1979 by the UN General Assembly) document, and urged the government to seek guidance from her vision to achieve gender equality.Mr Zardari recalled the struggle and sacrifices of Benazir Bhutto and said she was a symbol of strength, bravery and courage. “My wife was much stronger than me. She left a legacy for us to follow even she is guiding us from her grave.”

He said she coined the slogan “democracy is the best revenge” and said the whole philosophy of the Pakistan People’s Party revolved around that phrase - that not revenge, but freedom is the revenge.

He mentioned how Ms Bhutto would have felt when she walked into Sukkur jail at the age of 21 as she tried to fight for her imprisoned father.

“Fighting like no other person I have ever seen. And throughout her life she made sure that the legacy which her father gave life for stayed alive.”

He said history might remember him as a person who was “living a woman’s dream”. It was her dream that a woman in power would bring in the soft touch that the world needed amidst too much horror and said “what we need to emulate is gentleness, perseverance and the quality to bear pain”.

The president said both his sisters were members of parliament, while her two daughters would be back after completing their studies to serve the nation, along with their brother.

He paid rich tribute to the women who over the generations had strived for their rights since long and described them as “really a tribute to God’s divine creation.”

He also lauded the role of women which they played in history and said all religions accord them due regard, dignity and honour.

“Let us mobilise the collective power of women to help make our country, the region and the world more tolerant and secure for all,” he said.

The bill aimed at creating a working environment for women free from harassment, abuse and intimidation, he added.

He thanked all those who supported the bill in both houses.

Mr Zardari said the struggle for the rights of women in Pakistan had been long and difficult.

“We believe in equal rights and equal opportunities for men and women,” he added.

“On this occasion I urge all ministries to get going and adopt the code of conduct within a month, as laid down in this act,” the president directed.

“I also urge the private sector to cooperate in the implementation of this act, in letter and spirit,” he said.

The bill was unanimously passed by the National Assembly on Jan 21 and by the Senate on Feb 26.

Shahnaz Wazir Ali, Adviser to the Prime Minister on Social Welfare, recalled the process of drafting the legislation.

The Alliance Against Sexual Harassment (Aasha), a civil society organisation, which has been working on the issue, has described the signing of the bill a milestone for women.

Aqsa Khan of Aasha said: “This is a true partnership of citizens and the government. We want the government to ensure its implementation.”

She said: “Pakistan now stands as a leading country in South Asia for having a specific legislation against sexual harassment at workplace.”

Dr Fouzia Saeed, a woman activist who remained engaged with the process for two years, said: “The government has honoured its commitment for a progressive social legislation. This is a breakthrough and we expect continued support to other such laws to make society more civilised and accountable.”

She said in a statement that women activists were thankful to Shahnaz Wazir Ali, Sherry Rehman, Raza Rabbani, Senate Chairman Farooq H. Naek and senior leadership of the PPP. She said they were also very proud of members of the Awami National Party, the Muttahida Qaumi Movement and many progressive parliamentarians of the Pakistan Muslim League-Q and the PML-N.

Overcoming years of conservative opposition, the National Assembly passed the bill to punish harassment of women at workplaces, though last-minute amendments extended the protection to men as an apparent compromise.

Punishment for the guilty, or violators of a code of conduct, will range from a censure to dismissal to an unspecified fine under the law.

The law defines harassment as “any unwelcome sexual advance, request for sexual favours or other verbal and written communication or physical conduct of a sexual nature or sexually demeaning attitudes, causing interference with the work performance or creating an intimidating, hostile or offensive work environment, or the attempt to punish the complainant for refusal to comply to such a request or is made condition for employment.”

All organisations, including federal and provincial government ministries, departments, corporations, educational institutions, private commercial organisations and registered civil society associations, will be required to constitute inquiry committees of at least three members each – one of them a woman – to probe complaints and give their findings within 30 days to the competent authority concerned that will award recommended penalties.

Minor penalties will be: censure, withholding for specified periods of promotion or increment and stoppage at an efficiency bar in the time-scale, other than fitness to cross such bar, and recovery of compensation payable to a complainant from pay or any other source of the accused.

Major penalties are: demotion to a lower post or time-scale or to a lower stage in a time-scale, compulsory retirement, removal from service, dismissal from service, and fine, a part of which can be used as compensation for the complainant. “In case of owner (found guilty), the fine shall be payable to the complainant.”

An inquiry committee may recommend to an ombudsperson for appropriate action against a complainant whose allegations are found to be false and made with mala fide intentions while a party aggrieved by the decision of the competent authority may prefer appeal to the ombudsperson to be appointed by the federal or a provincial government.

Appeals against the decisions of an ombudsperson at the federal level can be made to the president and at provincial level to the governor concerned.

The statement of objects and reasons, accompanying the law, “is to create a safe working environment for workers which is free of sexual harassment, abuse and intimidation” with a view to enabling higher productivity and better quality of life at work.

“Sexual harassment is one of the biggest hurdles faced by working men and women, preventing many from working to get themselves and their families out of poverty,” the law says.

From here.

Child Trafficking in Haiti

Children, the most vulnerable members of Haiti’s population, are suffering terribly as a result of the disastrous earthquake, many losing parents, homes and health. As if that was not bad enough, they are now more likely than ever to be captured by traffickers who buy and sell children for sex and cheap labour, says an expert on the subject.

From her base in India, which has seen the same thing happen after natural disasters, Nicolette Grams of the International Justice Mission predicts that trafficking gangs will be moving in to seize their prey. She says human trafficking is a problem in Haiti at the best of times, affecting a quarter-million Haitian children each year.

These slaves, known as restavecs, are typically sold or given away to new families by their own impoverished parents. Physical and sexual abuse is common for restavecs. Many owners use the girls as in-house prostitutes, sending them to live on the street if they become pregnant.

Not all of these trafficked children end up as domestic slaves within Haiti—plenty of others are promised work in the Dominican Republic but are instead sold to work in agricultural fields or brothels across the border. Poor children who escape a life in bondage most often end up in street gangs; if they are fortunate, they may be accepted into overcrowded orphanages.

Given the life and death needs facing the authorities and aid workers, watching out for traffickers is most unlikely to be on their list of priorities. Some voices have been raised against whisking children overseas with a view to adoption, but at least those children are being cared for well and can always be reunited with relations if that seems best for them.

Better adoption than enslavement.

Meanwhile, an international organisation whose solution to the social problems of Haiti is to prevent children being born, also continues to ply its trade there. International Planned Parenthood is appealing for funds for “basic first aid, as well as obstetric care and family planning” in Haiti, where its two largest clinics have been destroyed.

Before the earthquake each of these clinics was dishing out condoms, chemical contraceptives and abortions to 200 Haitians a day through the local IPPF affiliate, Profamilia (sic), and has been doing that sort of thing since 1984. Despite that, or perhaps because of it, Haiti has one of the highest rates of maternal mortality in the world, and the highest in the Western hemisphere.

One hoped these people would keep quiet about birth control, for once, as they deal with women who have lost children or other family members. Basic first aid and obstetric care could easily consume all the funds they raise.

One organisation that you can be sure is focused on helping mothers is MaterCare International, which is also appealing for funds for its emergency effort in Haiti.

From here.