The Abuse of Power

From UK Today (Date unknown)

TO JUDGE by much of the media you would think that paedophiles are the main and constant danger to children. They are not.
Each year about 80 children are murdered - 73 of them will be killed by their parents or close relatives. On average only seven children will die at the hands of strangers, and only a couple of these will be motivated by sex.
In fact the stereotype of the 'dirty old man' is far from the truth. 
 

Andriette, Bill, Consent and playing with marbles.

Found at a site that disappeared

Here I present some points about consent. I start with an example: a group of children are playing happily with some marbles. An unproblematic situation, no? But the marbles actually have deadly plutonium inside that will give them all cancer. There is clearly a moral problem here. 
 

Baker, Beth,  Helping boys become men; Author says an older male must coach, mentor and lend a hand

AARP Newsletter, March 2000

Boys need more personnel in their lives. There's kind of an emergency when boys don't get enough mentoring and enough direction." This is especially important for boys, Gurian argues, because they tend to be more impulsive than girls and less able to form close personal relationships. [...]
"If we had to look at the top three problems right now in our culture, the lack of fathers and other older males in the lives of young males would have to be at the top," he says. Fix that, he believes, and a host of problems would diminish. 
 

Barbach, Lonnie Garfield, Bringing up Children Sexually  

Children's sexual exploration is like all other areas of exploration. For the child it is a way of learning about her environment and how to make a place for herself within it. Exploration includes urinating while standing up like a boy, wearing make-up like mother, playing doctor with other boys and girls down the street, and exploring sexual feelings with a girlfriend. Physical and loving relationships between two or more girls or two or more boys is a very common and natural part of the growing up process. It does not mean that the child is heterosexual, homosexual, or bisexual. Each child will have the chance to choose a sexual orientation later on in life. This experimentation is a part of the development process for many children and not a cause for alarm or worry. One should try not to have the child feel abnormal or ashamed about the expression of budding sexual feelings. 
  

Birkett, Dea, Monsters with human faces

The Guardian, Weekend. September 17,1997

No one attracts more odium than paedophiles, nor more virulent campaigns against them. How can they imagine that they are justified in their desires? How does it feel to be accused of craving sex with children when you believe you are innocent? Dea Birkett talks to some of society's ultimate lowlifes to find out. Pictures by Jenny Matthews. 
 

Blackburn, R.,  "Family Values" do not include good sexual health

From allaboutsex.org

You might be thinking that this title sounds a little odd. You might be thinking that your family's values certainly include the health of your children. If you are thinking that something seems "amiss", that there must be a "catch" . Well, I'm sorry to say that there isn't. 
 

Califia, Pat, Feminism, Pedophilia, and Children's Rights 

The Culture of Radical Sex, 1994

Minors who are given the power to say “no” to being sexually used by an abusive parent or relative are also going to assume the right to say “yes” to other young people and adults whom they desire. You can't liberate children and adolescents without disrupting the entire hierarchy of adult power and coercion and challenging the hegemony of antisex fundamentalist religious values. 
 

Dear Dr Laura

An open letter to Dr. Laura penned by a US resident, which was posted on the Internet.

Thank you for doing so much to educate people regarding God's Law. I have learned a great deal from your show, and try to share that knowledge with as many people as I can. When someone tries to defend the homosexual lifestyle, for example, I simply remind them that Leviticus 18:22 clearly states it to be an abomination.
End of debate.
I do need some advice from you, however, regarding some of the other specific laws and how to follow them.
1. When I burn a bull on the altar as a sacrifice, I know it creates a pleasing odor for the Lord - Lev. 1:9. The problem is my neighbors. They claim the odor is not pleasing to them. Should I smite them? [...] 
 

Denizet-Lewis, Benoit, 'Boy Crazy: NAMBLA: The Story of a Lost Cause', 

Boston Magazine, May 2001

A fail media trial to write objectively about NAMBLA.
[...] Could NAMBLA's founders have had any idea that they would become America's symbol of organized depravity? That a group founded mostly by eccentric, boy-loving leftists would come to be considered Public Enemy Number One in the nation's battle against child sexual abuse? "Never mind the fact that NAMBLA has never been a very large or influential organization," says Philip Jenkins, a professor of history and religious studies at Pennsylvania State University and the author of Moral Panic: Changing Concepts of the Child Molester in Modern America. 
"But it fit our need then, and still does today, to think of child molesters as being part of an immense, vast, powerful conspiracy that moves in elite circles. NAMBLA has become the acceptable symbol to blame for a lot of what has gone wrong morally in America over the last 20 years." [..] 
 

Esser, Kevin, Baggy-pants thuggery & hip-hop burlesque: Clothing as sexual politics in America

Ipce Newsletter E15, March 2003 

Do gay guys wear tight pants so other guys can check out their butts? 
That’s what some teenaged boy wanted to know in a 1996 film documentary dealing with gay issues in the classroom.  How else could he think?  What else could he wonder given today’s dress code of Hetero Correctness?  His question has been answered by many dismal years of American males in oversized, baggy clothing—men and boys hidden from one another, hidden from themselves, hidden from the dangerous reality of their own bodies. 
 

Families for Freedom, Stranger Danger. 

Families for Freedom

Families for Freedom warn against too much anxiety for strangers. 
 

Gieles, F., "I didn’t know how to deal with it"

Ipce newsletter E3, Sept. 1998

Young people speak about their sexual contacts with adults 
 

Gieles, F.E.J., Ethics and human rights in intergenerational relationships; ‘First, do no harm’

 Ipce Newsletter E 14, October 2002

Since the mid-1990s, Ipce members have held discussions about ethics. I have listened to the members. In this article, I will summarize the salient points of several opinions I have heard.  
 

Guardian, The, 'I cannot admit what I am to myself' - Interview

January 23, 2003 The Guardian

[...] My experience suggests that men become dangerous when they become obsessional: when they live alone, and their minds are filled with little else but thoughts of what they want but cannot have. [...]
So, yes, I fear that some of these men may ultimately pose a risk to society. Not now, but once they have been through the justice system, been labelled as perverts and deviants, and introduced to much more dangerous men in specialist sex-offender units; then, some of them may become obsessional paedophiles, justifying the label that society has already given them. 

Heidi, interview with -,

Paidika, 1991

Heidi is an attractive Danish woman of 24, a mixture of shyness and tomboyish behavior; slim, blond, with an intense interest in the world. The interview took place in her house in Copenhagen, in the fall of 1990.
Heidi: When I was thirteen I wasn't particularly interested in school, just going there like everybody else. I was a bit fast, a tomboy. I liked to party and have fun.
One day our teacher was sick and we got a new substitute teacher. She was cute and very charming; rather young too, at least in my mind. I think she was 28. She had a strong personality. The whole class talked about her; the boys were madly in love with her, and I fell in love with her too 
 

How Our Paranoia About Paedophilia Is Compromising Bonds Of Trust, Obsession that now blights every man's love for a child

7th December 2000 [Author & source unknown]

I see men holding back when they might have picked a child up, rejecting hugs, making excuses.
I see parents, too, reining their children in, over nannying them, shutting them away. This generation of children will go through their teenage years without their parents bringing out bath-time pictures to embarrass them in front of their girlfriends and boyfriends, they're too scared to take bath-time pictures in case people (the developers? the police?) misconstrue them.
The reason for this caution is our obsession with paedophilia and it is an obsession, make no mistake.
We have no evidence of a higher incidence of paedophilia now than there ever was yet we are more frightened than we have ever been. We 'see' paedophiles at every street corner, by every school gate. 
 

Kevin - Male - 14 - 16, My father and I made love for years - he is now in jail...

United States - 07/10/2001

Hello. I put this story in this section because I guess it's considered abuse.
My father molested me from the time I was two till I was 15. We would lie naked and he would play [...] What my father did to me was not rape, at all. He never hurt me. In fact, I looked forward to spending the time with him but my mother and the police don't seem to listen.
My father does not belong in jail for what they say he did. He does not belong in among the murderers, rapists and theives. [...] 
 

Kincaid, James R. Four questions & answers

From the Web

Are children inherently sexual beings? 
 

Lipman, Lisa, UMASS professor advocates pederasty,

Associated Press November 26, 2000

William Armstrong Percy III says that when he was 14, he seduced a male soldier while traveling on a train.
"I never got enough sex with an older man. I don't see that I was harmed at all, except being deprived of not having more," said Percy. "I was already the aggressor."
Percy, now 66 and a history professor at the University of Massachusetts-Boston, is known for his disarming bluntness on gay issues. His own sexual experiences - which he estimates number more than 10,000 - contributed to his belief that the age of consent between men and boys should be lowered to 14. 
 

Phillips, Angela, Boy's self-esteem depends on 'Highly Involved Men'

The Guardian, 17 March 1999

 The Highly Involved Man is a key factor in building the self-esteem and success of boys, according to a report published on Tuesday. It is the quality of his relationship with the man in his life which marks out the supremely confident boy from his peers. The man doesn't have to live with him, he doesn't even have to be Dad, but he does have to take an interest 
 

Ree, Frank van, Intimate relationships between young people and adults

Koinos #24 (1999/4)

Are there criteria for a positive experience? 

Ree, Frank van, Abuse by Definition? The Taboo as Excuse

Koinos # 25, (2000/1)

One hopes that an end will be put to the current one-sided negative presentation of these matters. Above all, we should not let ourselves be dragged along any further by the witch-hunt which has developed in America and which has now infected European countries as well. 
 

Sampson, Ovetta, These friends bridge the gap between young and old,

The (Colorado Springs) Gazette

 Michael Atwell arid Bill Brockelman are best buds. The next-door neighbors do everything together. They fish. They fix up old rods and reels. They tell stories. They cruise the flea markets. And after Michael gets out of school, he usually makes a beeline to his Fountain home just to hang out with Brockelman. The two have been friends for four years.
They view their friendship as ordinary But many people might see it as unusual, because Michael is 12 and Bill is 71. 
 

Walker, Kirsty, A cuddle a day can keep a life of crime at bay

Express Newspapers, 18.01.2000

CHILDREN who are not cuddled when they are young are in danger of turning into violent adults.
New research has shown parents who starve their children of physical affection are damaging them emotionally and physically