Posted on 05/06/2002 5:00:48 PM PDT by scripter
Well, here we all are – we troglodytes – sitting around thinking that sex is harmful to minors. What is the matter with us! Don't we know that we should respect kids as sexual beings – that we shouldn't be too quick to deny children and teenagers the right to make their own sexual decisions?
Oh, boy, here we go again. Heinous and dangerous arguments all dressed up as respect for the rights of others. Americans are suckers for this argument. Just look at how the media, civil libertarians and university officials are jumping on the bandwagon in support of Judith Levine's "Harmful to Minors," a book that continues the argument launched two years ago in the American Psychological Bulletin that sex between children and adults is not always harmful. As a matter of fact it can be downright beneficial, according to Levine.
The book argues in favor of the policy in The Netherlands, where children from 12 to 16 are not considered minors for the purpose of consensual sex. If parents take exception to their children's decisions to have sex with an adult partner, they must argue their case before The Council for the Protection of Children and "persuade" the Council that the child's wishes should not be granted. In other words, the parents are considered guilty until proven innocent.
George Orwell must be churning in his grave. Have you ever heard more grievously deceptive language than a Council for the Protection of Children that protects children's rights to have sex with adults at the age of 12?
In articles about the controversy surrounding the Levine book, both the Boston Globe and The New York Times mention its predecessor – the infamous "Rind Report" – published in the American Psychological Bulletin in 1999, concluding that some sexual liaisons between adults and children are beneficial to the kids and should not be called "child abuse."
The stories mention that study and the "vitriol" it elicited from "talk show hosts." (And we all know how totally beyond the pale "talk show hosts" are!) What the articles fail to mention is that Congress, in condemning the study after yours truly ranted and raved about it nationwide non-stop, ordered a review of the meta-analysis and findings, and the Bulletin agreed to publish it.
You won't be surprised to learn that the review by The Leadership Council, published in the November 2001 issue of the American Psychological Bulletin, was totally ignored by the reporters for the Boston Globe, the New York Times and the Associated Press in their very recent stories about Levine's book.
So, let me tell you what that review discovered about the "science" of the Rind study, for which I had been patiently waiting throughout all the newspaper and television attacks on me and on the federal legislators, who had the guts to condemn the report.
Liberal columnists perceived the outcry over the "Rind Report" and the subsequent congressional action as politically motivated censorship. But, as I carefully explained on my radio show after consulting with various experts in the field of sexual abuse, the science underpinning the conclusions was junk. And political motivation drove the authors, not the critics.
Here is the conclusion of the independent review in the November Psychological Bulletin. "Rind's paper was a stacked deck of poor population and study selection, misreported data, and misrepresented findings that inevitably led to wrong conclusions," said Dr. David Spiegel, co-author of the review and associate chair of the Department of Psychiatry at Stanford University School of Medicine.
In writing about the Rind study in the Los Angeles Times in July 1999, USC social scientist Carole Tavris said, "the findings, reported with meticulous detail and caution [author's italics], are astonishing."
Indeed they might be if they were true. The Leadership Council's independent review points out sample bias, exclusion of relevant outcomes and relevant measures, and the lack of an operational definition of child sexual abuse in the report. So much for "meticulous details." In the recent New York Times article about Levine, the author accuses me of forgetting "the academic subtleties" of the "Rind Report" in condemning it. He seems to have forgotten, or ignored altogether, the not-so-subtle academic refutation of the junk science it, in fact, contained.
Why should anyone care about a research project published two years ago, or be concerned about some esoteric argument among social scientists? Because the bad science, sanctified by publication in the country's most prestigious psychological journal, has already been used in Arizona to argue for a reduced sentence for an elementary school teacher convicted of abusing numerous young boys. And you can bet there's a Roman Catholic priest's lawyer somewhere in America who is getting ready to call Bruce Rind as an expert witness! And, the Rind report is currently being uncritically used to legitimize the premise of "Harmful to Minors."
Pedophiles are, under the best of circumstances, extremely difficult to convict. Often members of revered professions in the community, accused pedophiles appear in court in three-piece suits, as well dressed and well spoken as the judges themselves, who can't bring themselves to believe that such upstanding citizens could be guilty of such heinous crimes. The terrified, violated children are no match for them.
Stephanie Dallam, another of the independent review authors, notes "… from a public health standpoint, it [the "Rind Report"] is potentially very dangerous, as pedophile websites and newsletters are using the erroneous claims to justify abusing children."
Carole Tavris asks the question, "Shouldn't it be good news … [that] the researchers found that two-thirds of males who, as children or teenagers, had had sexual experiences with adults, didn't react negatively?" The problem is, the researchers found no such thing. What they "found" were data they could manipulate to support a politically motivated conclusion that sex between boys and men was OK, as long as the boys were "consenting." However, their data did not include any information about whether or not the children in the samples had consented!
Further, in their attempt to minimize the potential harm done to children by sexual abuse they mixed samples of kids who were never touched (just exposed to "flashers") with kids who had had sexual contact with adults. They also failed to measure post-traumatic stress disorder, "one of the most commonly reported aftereffects associated with sexual abuse in children and adolescents," according to the current independent review.
Carol Tavris wrote that by succumbing to what I believe was a legitimate outcry over this thinly veiled apologia for pedophilia, the APA "missed its chance to educate the public and Congress about the absolute necessity of protecting the right of scientists to publish unpopular findings."
In publishing the devastating independent review of the "Rind Report," the APA acknowledged its responsibility to protect the public from propaganda masquerading as science.
Unfortunately, the media has not shown similar accountability. I wrote much of this piece at the time that the Leadership Council review was published. The Leadership Council, I need to tell you, is led by a past president of the American Psychiatric Association – not a right-wing fundamentalist. I sent it as an op-ed to the Los Angeles Times, refuting Carol Tavris' original defense of the "Rind Report" in their pages. The editors totally ignored it. They did not even have the courtesy to reject it with a phone call or an e-mail.
I don't believe there was any publicity at all about The Leadership Council's analysis of the "Rind Report." If there was, it was miniscule compared to the hue and cry that rose over its condemnation in Congress. But that's no excuse for reporters choosing to ignore it when writing about this latest advance in the well-orchestrated attempt to lower the age of consent and make our children more vulnerable to sexual predators.
Would you trust your children with strangers---gary condits--chandra levy's?
Kinsey recruited for his research people who were in jail for crimes such as the above. He himself liked to watch and participate in a lot of his own research.
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