Bogus study panics public, parents and politicians—again.

This one story is an illustration of American politics writ large. And the Village Voice deserves credit for exposing it. The unfortunate thing is that they don’t seem to understand that the story is repeated over and over under the guise of dozens and dozens of other “urgent” issues.

The “crisis” begins with an advocacy group, the Women’s Funding Network, and similar local groups, such as the Atlanta’s Women’s Foundation. These groups were convinced, based on what remains unclear, that there was a crisis of child prostitutes. And they wanted government funding to address the crisis they discovered.

The Atlanta group had approached the state of Georgia with their begging bowl out. They only got 20% of the funds they wanted. Kaffie McCullough, from the group, admitted: “We had no research, no nothing.” Apparently with nothing to back up their assertions they still managed to get one-fifth of the funds they wanted. Now they approached an organization named the Schapiro Group to produce a study that would find the crisis they were looking to solve.

Deborah Richardson, from the WNF, announced the results: “An independent tracking study heard released today by the Women’s Funding Network shows that over the past six months, the number of underage girls trafficked online has rise exponentially in three diverse states.” They had dramatic numbers, as you knew they would. In Michigan they claimed it increased by 39.2%, up 20.7% in New York, and up 64.7% in Minnesota.

The media spread the story, and the result, according to USA Today was a “growing movement of women’s groups, celebrities, human rights activists ad state officials.” Of course the politicians, like vultures looking for rotten bodies, come swooping in to show they are concerned, to buy votes from identifiable political interest groups, and to scare taxpayers in funding some new project “to save the children.” Congresswoman Jackie Speier, D-CA, told Congress that these children “need specialized resources.” Richardson bragged, “We have more data and more momentum.”

And they had a new bogeyman—Craigslist and other on-line sites where individuals looking to “hook-up” with others would advertise. Loud-mouthed politicians like Richard Blumenthal, Attorney General for Connecticut, called these sites “online brothels” and began attacks to remove all adult ads.

As for the political interest groups, PIGs, promoting the “study,” they got oodles of cash taken from taxpayers, many of whom are having a hard time making ends meet. The Atlanta group was thrilled. They went to the legislature with the new "study" and came away with a bucket-load of greenbacks. McCullough said: “The research costs money, but we’ve been able to broker—I don’t know what it is now, I think it’s over $1.3, $1.6 million in funding that we never would have gotten.”

It wouldn’t be the first time, nor will it be the last, that a PIG has produced a bogus study in order to create a scare campaign in order to access millions of dollars in funding. Remember that the funds McCullough bragged about are only for her one group in Atlanta. It doesn’t reflect funding other groups got in other states using the same study.

The Schapiro Group came up with a unique method for determining the number of juvenile prostitutes, and it didn’t have anything to do with hard numbers, like arrests. Instead they looked at photos posted online of women who were seeking sexual partners. They then “guessed” the age of the women in the photos and noted that number, as if it were factual. This is the basis of the so-called study that set off a media sex frenzy, got Craigslist censored, had two-bit politicians fuming at the mouths and no doubt inspired many a sermon on the revival circuit.

To confirm their study, the Group did a back up “study.” Here is how Village Voice describes it:

Before conducting its full study, the Schapiro Group tested the accuracy of its method in a sample of 100 observers. At one point, the 100 observers are described as a "random sample." Elsewhere, they are described as "balanced by race and gender."

These 100 adults were shown pictures of teenagers and young adults whose ages were known, and were asked to guess whether they were younger than 18.

"The study showed that any given 'young' looking girl who is selling sex has a 38 percent likelihood of being under age 18," reads a crucial passage in the explanation of methodology. "Put another way, for every 100 'young' looking girls selling sex, 38 are under 18 years of age. We would compute this by assigning a value of .38 to each of the 100 'young' girls we encounter, then summing the values together to achieve a reliable count."

This is dense gibberish posing as statistical analysis.

When the team went on to conduct its full statewide study, it simply treated this 38 percent success rate as a constant. Six new observers were then turned loose to count "young-looking" sex ads on online classifieds sites like Craigslist and Backpage.

That total count was then multiplied by .38 to come up with a guesstimate of how many children were being trafficked.

None of the “investigators” that Schapiro Group used were experts in research. None had ever studied the issue of prostitution in general, or juvenile prostitution in particular. And no one bothered to verify if the guesses corresponded with reality, or if the photos they viewed were either current, or actually the woman running the ad. Of course no prostitute would try to use an old photo in order to attract customers. And you would never get one who would run a completely unrelated photograph in order to solicit business.

The methodology used actually indicates that there were no real children involved in these ads. That the hired guns for the Group had to "guess" if the person was above or below the magic line of 18 years of age indicates that very few, perhaps none. of the advertising women were clearly below the age of 18. You might have a 16-year-old who passes as 19, or vice versa, but it is much less likely that you would have an 11-year-old who looks 19. The methodology used indicates that all of the participants appeared to be over 18 years of ago, who proves that none of them appeared to be under the age of 18.

Then Schapiro Group would come back later and run the same bogus study a second time proving that the number of child prostitutes had escalated. Thus the crisis was proven, funding flowed and greedy PIGs increased their take to solve a crisis that no one can show actually exists. And no one connected to the study can verify how the photos were found, how they knew the ages of the test samples, or whether any of the photos of “prostitutes” actually represented the women advertising services.

McCullough defends the study saying “it is the same scientific methodology that science has been using for a long time to measure endangered species.” Calling something “science” twice, just two words apart, doesn’t actually make it science. And, if the same sort of bogus methodology is used by other PIGs for their causes, it doesn’t prove the methodology is scientific, or correct, just that it is politically expedient.

Actual arrest statistics do not exactly bolster the fear campaign that the PIGs need to rip off the taxpayer. According to the FBI about 75% of all jurisdictions report their arrests. The number of arrests per 100,000 juveniles—defined as between 10 and 17 years of age—was 5. The FBI says that arrests of juveniles for prostitution and “commercialized vice,” in 2007, amounted to 1,500 cases.

Not every juvenile prostitute is arrested, but then some are arrested multiple times. We don't have hard numbers but there is no indication that we are talking about some significant percentage of teens, let along actual children. Ask yourself if you are worried about teenage “forgery” rings or counterfeiters. Perhaps you should be since a teen is twice as likely to be arrested for that as for prostitution. They are four times more likely to be arsonists. No one thinks those crimes “are out of control” among teens yet they are far more likely for teens than prostitution but they don't get millions in funding to solve the crisis. But then it doesn't include something as racy as sex, to attract attention.

The other thing to keep in mind is that most of the arrests are not 12-year-olds in mesh stockings. Most are teens above the age of 16. And most these teens are legally allowed to consent to sex, just not for cash.

How does this compare to adult prostitution? In 2007 there were 76,100 adults arrested for the same offense. Teenaged prostitutes were 1,500. I believe that translates in less than 2% of all prostitutes arrested are under the age of 18 at the time of the arrest. And even then most of them are legally above the age of consent and not actually children.

PIGs use children constantly to stir up emotions. When the Left wanted to create a gun crisis they talked about the number of children killed by guns. They didn’t tell people that “children” included 17-year-old gang members killed in turf wars over drug sales. They wanted the public to think of wide-eyed tykes playing with their puppies who accidental stumble across a gun and kill themselves, along with the poor little puppy as well.

Some years ago I first came across this sort of bogus fear campaign about “child” prostitution when another PIG member claimed that millions of children were regularly being prostituted at truck stops and street corners around the country. I tried to find how this number was generated. The piece I wrote on the matter has been lost, but I will reconstruct what I can remember.

The woman who manufactured the factoid was a feminist ideologue convinced that girls were being terribly exploited. She found a rabid Los Angeles police officer who was equally convinced that it was boys being prostituted by homosexuals. He had a gut hunch that some 100,000 boys were involved in this massive trade that he was intent on exposing. The feminist in question then took the “hunch” of the police officer and concluded that if that were the case of boys being prostituted, then the number of girls in the same boat had to be at least twice as large. So she doubled the number and added it to the original hunch.

But she wasn’t finished. She then claimed that if this new number was the number of child prostitute “we know about” then there were at least ten times as many out that we didn’t know about. That lead to 3 million child prostitutes being used as the figure of the day.

At the time this claim was made there were around 29 million children 10-17 years old in the country. Apparently one out of ten of them was out there prostituting for a living. Absurd!

At about this time there was a national panic about “stranger danger” and child abductions. The papers spoke of 2.5 million missing children per year. They didn’t tell people that the term was so widely defined that any kid who was away from home for a few hours, without the parents knowing his or her location was “missing.” They left out that over 90% of actual “abductions” were custody disputes with one parent taking the child with them against the consent of the other parent. In the end the actual number of stranger abductions was miniscule.

There was also a bogus panic about satanic child-molesting day care centers. Thousands of people were arrested across the country and hundreds of people were prosecuted and convicted using very dubious “interviewing” methods created by PIGs to promote their agenda.

Out of these panics came entire government departments such as the Center for Missing and Exploited Children. Hundreds of millions of dollars were redistributed to the PIGs for their use to discover new problems and lobby for new laws. Out of those panics we also got the various sex offender registries and the laws to protect teens, laws that are now putting tens of thousands of teens on the offender registries for normal adolescent sexuality. We passed laws, based almost entirely on manufactured panics, which today are classifying teens, who take naughty pictures of themselves, as child pornographers.

Politics today relies upon manufactured panics. Take a problem, no matter how small, blow it out of proportion. Try to drag “children” into it anyway you can and then scream about protecting the children. Bolster your case with a bogus study, using dubious methods, and the media will beat a path to your door breathlessly telling paranoid parents of the newest threat to their children. Politicians will promise to solve the crisis provided they get more power and taxes are increased. The PIGs line up with their hands out, millions are doled out. In the end the PIGs are at the through happy and full, for the time being. The politicians are more powerful than ever. The parents feel parent, even though their children are no safer than before. Taxpayers have less money in their pockets and everyone is just a little less free than before the panic was created.

A particularly loathsome creature

I am not fond of politicians in general. I have a natural aversion to anyone who feels they ought to be in a position of power over others. Anyone who wants power can't be trusted with it. Now and then a new life form emerges from the political cesspool, one so low and loathsome that it deserves special mention. One such entity is Martha Coakley who wants to be a Senator from Massachusetts, replacing Ted Kennedy.

Like Kennedy, Coakley is a Democrat. But don't assume she's soft on crime. No sir! Not Martha. She so hard on crime she doesn't mind incarcerating innocent people. No wonder the police chiefs in Massachusetts have endorsed her.

Coakley is one of those left-wing authoritarian types who "protects children" even if it means incarcerating innocent people for imaginary crimes. For purposes of this article let us ignore her odious role in fighting the abolition of the victimless crime of smoking pot and instead concentrate on her role in pushing the day care center scare of the 1980s. You may remember that large numbers of panicky parents were convinced by law enforcement that their little darlings were being attacked by Satanists in day care centers across the country. It was all bullshit, but bullshit makes good fertilizer and many a political career has been nurtured by scaremongering and lies. Coakley's career was one of them.

Coakley was involved in the bogus Fells Acre Day Care case where prosecutors "interrogated" children until they made absurd and impossible accusations. Then the prosecutors used those claims to convict the owners of the day care center of these impossible accusations. For instance, one accusation was that a wide butcher knife was plunged into a 4-year-old's anus, where it got stuck. But, call the Vatican on this because its a miracle, there were no cuts, no blood, no damage of any kind. Don't try that at home, the results won't be as miraculous.

Three innocent people were convicted in this panic-driven case and Coakley was up to her reptilian neck in it. She slithered about the case like a cobra seeking out a terrified rabbit for dinner. She hissed, struck and sank her fangs into the case with relish. It was great for her career—after all look at her now, running for the U.S. Senate. Two of the women who were convicted eventually got out of prison with "time served" when the evidence mounted that they were innocent. One woman had her conviction overturned while the other died waiting for justice.

But Gerald Amirault was not so lucky because he was man. Coakley argued that the women could be let out because women only "molest" (not that any such thing happened here) because of the presence of a male predator—imagine if someone said that about blacks and whites: "White criminals are only criminals because of the presence of black predators." The public would scream if such a claim was made on racial grounds, and rightfully so. But in Coakley's world of left-wing feminism such claims about men are perfectly acceptable.

The Massachusetts state's parole board was convinced that Amirault shouldn't be in prison. They unanimously voted for him to be released from prison. But that would put a question mark over Coakley's political career and hamper her ambitions. Like most real predators she is quite happy to advance herself over the bones of those she has destroyed along the way. So Coakley then lobbied acting Governor Jane Swift to deny the commutation of sentence. Coakley didn't want an innocent man walking the streets telling the world how she had destroyed his life.

Eventually Gerald Amirault finished his sentence for the imaginary crimes. Coakley had the option of trying to declare him "sexually dangerous" which would mean he remains incarcerated for the rest of his life, even though his sentence had been filled. (The state uses paid witnesses who declare anyone the state wants incarcerated as "sexually dangerous" allowing a life sentence to be imposed on the basis that the paid witness pretends to know that the convict is likely to reoffend.)

Coakley didn't do that, but not because she was getting soft. She was trying to avoid having the bogus evidence she used brought up in court again. She had ambitions and she didn't want that to happen. As the Wall Street Journal noted, if such a ruling were sought, "there would have to a virtual re-trial of the entire Amirault case. The DA had to have been deterred by the prospect of parading into a courtroom with the incredible fantasies extracted from Mr. Amirault's alleged victims--about secret rooms, magic drinks, animal butchery, assaults by a bad clown." The excuse used by Coakley and Swift, for denying release for Amirault was that he refused to admit his guilt.

It should be noted that these cases were prosecuted by left-wing ideologues not by right-wing Christians, like the case in Bakersfield. Coakley is a left-wing Democrat. She came into the Amirault case as prosecutor toward the end of the trial. The original prosecutor was Scott Harshbarger who now runs the left-wing lobby Common Cause. In the infamous McMartin Day Care Center case the prosecutor was Lael Rubin, Rubin is a left-wing Democrat as well and a supporter of Obama. Her husband, David Rosenzweig, another lefty, helped whipped up the hysteria over the case through his reporting for the LA Times. As Edgar Butler, in Anatomy of the McMartin Child Molestation Case wrote that Rosenzweig, was having a relationship with Rubin, that began before the McMartin trial so he published articles favorable to Rubin's case, while ignoring all the red flags.

Similarly another journalist from the left, Edward Lempinen, of the San Francisco Chronicle, published a series of breathless claims about Satanists attacking children in some concerted conspiracy. Lempinen basically acted as a hack for two obsessed police officers in that case. He has now gone on to promote global warming hysteria instead, not that this is a big improvement. At the time, the uncritical, very unscientific Lempinen, claimed that Satanists were involved in "scores" of child abuse cases—cases which fell apart due to lack of evidence. Apparently he hasn't changed his standards for his crisis d'jour.

While it is true that politically-driven conservatives may push hysteria as well, and have. We can't ignore that in the prosecution of innocent people as "child abusers" that many committed leftists were involved, aided by the uncritical journalism of biased journalists like Rosenzweig and Lempinen.

FBI rescues teens like GW liberated Iraqis.

When it comes to reports in the media, it is sometimes important to notice what they don’t tell you. This is especially true when the media is just acting as a PR firm for politicians or various government agencies. You normally can tell when a report is taken almost verbatim from a press release issued by the agency in the question. These reports always sound very impressive but typically lack hard information. Consider this story dutifully reported by CNN.

Law enforcement officials arrested more than 500 people, and took custody of 48 juveniles in a coordinated 29-city weekend sweep aimed at combating child prostitution, the FBI announced Monday. Task forces made up largely of state and local police officers arrested and booked what authorities said were 464 adult prostitutes, 55 pimps and 55 customers on state charges. While most faced local charges, a senior FBI official said he expected there were would be some federal charges as well. The FBI Monday said 19 searches were conducted, netting a total of $438,000 in cash, plus illegal drugs, cars and computers.

The four dozen juveniles were recovered in the third phase of Operation Cross Country, an initiative that seeks to help child prostitutes and crack down on people who control them and patronize them.

We have two terms used in this report. One is “juveniles” and the other is “child” or "children". Both cover a wide range of individuals. In legal terms a child can be 17-years-old or 5-years-old. Which you are referring to changes the story rather dramatically. The entire report is clearly based on an FBI press release. My suspicion was that the FBI intentionally, and perhaps dishonestly, used the term “children” and not juveniles in their release. So I went to check it. Here is how they wrote their release:

“During the past week, the FBI joined our law enforcement partners in three-day national enforcement action campaign …. [which] led to the recover of 48 children being prostituted domestically. Additionally, 571 criminals were arrested on a combination of state and federal charges for the domestic trafficking of children for prostitution and solicitation. “We continue to pursue those who exploit our nation’s children,” said FBI Director Robert S. Mueller, III…. To date, the 32 Innocence Lost Task Forces and Working Groups have recovered 670 children…..

As I assumed, the FBI referred only to children and never once said juvenile. I suspect CNN added juvenile to make the report reflect what I suspect are the facts – that very, very few of those “recovered” were actually children. The FBI's motivation was to sensationalize the information as much as possible.

To illustrate my point, let us turn to how the anti Second Amendment lobby twisted the facts about gun deaths, in a very similar way. You will remember that they had some relatively high number of “children” who were supposedly killed with a gun every day. They included accidental deaths and murders in the same category. First, many of the victims were actually older than 18. And a large percentage of the others were over 16-years-of-age and often involved in violent gang activity. But say “children” and the public thinks of a rosy-faced little girl playing in her front yard – not a violent, 6’1”, 200 lb gang member protecting drug turf. If you need to sell an agenda you want the public to think of the first image and must discourage them from thinking of the second. Sure, its dishonest, but it works.

I have previously discussed the inconsistency of how the politicians and police define child. A hulking 17-year-old can be defined as an “innocent child” when it pleases the government or as a “dangerous criminal who must be treated as an adult” when that works to their benefit.

Who were the “children” recovered by the FBI? They don’t say. They have not released actual numbers indicating how many of those “recovered” (which means arrested) were of the various ages. They could all have been 17 for what we know. In fact, I suggest that the neglect of the FBI to release hard numbers is probably due to the fact that none of the “children” they arrested were actually what any of us would normally call children. Instead they are sexually mature adolescents. I’m not saying I think such adolescents should be involved in prostitution but I am saying the FBI is not being fully candid. This is a PR exercise meant to kept the child exploitation panic fueled.

Here is one potential piece of evidence. This is film footage of some of the FBI raid in process. What is missing? From my look at the footage what I don’t see is anyone who appears to be a child. The women who are being arrested all appear rather mature.

Some years ago the U.S. was engaged in a panic about “millions of missing children” and part of that panic was that many of the missing had been abducted into prostitution. Of course the actual numbers of children kidnapped by strangers was extremely small – numbers fluctuated between 64 and 150 per year, not millions. To reach the millions, they had to include all children taken by one parent in a custody conflict, all kids who ran away from home and all those who disappeared for a short time. Out of that panic the government created the Center for Missing and Exploited Children, an agency which, of course, was heavily involved with this series of raids as part of a continuing campaign to justify their existence. This agency has to help fan the hysteria to stay employed.

At that time of that panic I read numerous reports claiming that there could be up to several million child prostitutes on the streets of America. I investigated all the hard data I could find. I used lots of different studies and government reports to attempt to discover the facts. One thing I discovered was that if you looked at the actual data of arrests for prostitution, around 90% of those arrested were of adults over the age of 18 and that almost all the remaining arrests were of teens above the age of 16. The numbers of actual children (prepubescents) involved appeared to be zero. Only a very small number of prostitutes were under 16. These same “children.” under different circumstances would be tried as adults by the same government that now brands them as children.

An Associated Press report gives us a little more information but then exhibits the second trick of the panic-mongers. First, they dropped the FBI's intentionally misleading label of “children” and spoke of “teenage prostitutes.” But they used the phrase “some as young as 13” to describe them. What does that mean?

When a report says “some as young as 13,” that is telling you that out of the entire lot the youngest person arrested was 13. So we know that no actual children were involved and that all the arrests were of pubescent teens. But there is still important data missing. How many of those arrested, or “rescued” as the FBI calls it, were 13? No report I’ve seen comes close to telling us. If I had to guess I would suspect that one of the women was 13-years-old. I think it is tragedy that a 13-year-old is prostituting herself. And I would rather not have even one girl of this age working the streets. But can’t we give the public realistic and accurate numbers so they understand the real magnitude of this issue?

Of course the government doesn’t want to do that. Real numbers make the panic look far smaller than it really is.

What I found interesting is that the current numbers, as they appear in media reports, don’t differ much from those I found twenty years ago. (By the way: “panic” refers to an overly-emotional campaign designed to exaggerate the real magnitude of a problem.)

About 10% of the prostitutes arrested were under the age of 18. None of the prostitutes arrested were prepubescent. We don’t know how many were of what age, but I doubt that if they were mostly in their lower teens that the FBI wouldn't have made that very clear. That they didn’t mention this indicates that almost all of those arrested were 16 years of age or older.

Another thing to consider is what is going to happen to these teens. The FBI said: “The vast majority of these kids are what they term ‘throwaway kids,’ with no family support, no friends. They’re kids that nobody wants, they’re loners. Many are runaways.” This is true. And most runaways are not in their lower teens but are older teens who are more able to care for themselves.

These teens basically will face imprisonment as part of their “rescue.” The government won’t call it prison but it will be prison in every other sense of the word. “Most of the children are put into the custody of local child protection agencies.” What we are being told is that they will be warehoused by bureaucrats until they turn 18, at that time they will be turned out onto the streets. What they will have to show for this is an arrest record that will haunt them for the rest of their lives. These teens are being “rescued” with all the care and finesse that George Bush used to “liberate” the Iraqi people. Some of them may eventually be grateful for it – if they survive the experience.

Who is to blame because teenage runaways are turning to prostitution? Could the laws passed by our politicians, which make it difficult or impossible for teens to find full-time jobs, be involved? I suspect that is the case. When you close legal markets to people they have to turn to illegal markets. Government regulations encourage runaways to turn to prostitution or pushing drugs. Our caring politicians are the biggest pimps around if you consider the role they play in closing other options to these teens.

Many kids run away because they must. There are plenty of abusive homes out there with kids being victimized. With legal work closed off to them, with them on the streets, hungry and afraid, they turn to what will earn them the most money in the shortest period of time. If the government really wanted to “rescue” these teens why not reform the laws that restrict them from finding legal employment? Instead, they turn them into criminals as their only means of survival and then they “rescue” them and incarcerate them in what is nothing more than glorified prisons.

I am sure the FBI sees this operation as an example of good government. I see it differently. This is just another example of how government helps create tragic problems for people and then uses its heavy hand to smash those people for having the problems the government helped create. Many of these kids were victims before they went on the streets and they chose the streets as their “best” alternative. The government’s answer is prison for them instead.
Turning the practitioners of non-violent vices into criminals is unlikely to be very helpful to them. That these teens now have criminal records will hinder any attempt to avoid prostitution. When they are eventually released from the juvenile prisons, their arrest record will make it harder to find legitimate employment. That may force them back into the only profession they know; one where an arrest record is the norm. How that helps these kids, I don’t know.

The reality is that many kids have to leave home. This will remain true for the rest of human existence. Some families are too toxic and the kids who escape them are making the best choice they can. Our bureaucratic labor laws, however, have closed the escape portals for these kids. Legal work is almost impossible to find on a full-time basis and that means the teen, who must leave home, has little option but to seek illegal work. If we want to help these kids we should be giving them more options, not turning them into prisoners with arrest records.

Police officer humiliates girl in scare campaign.

There are sexual predators in the world. No one questions that. But, contrary to the hysterical clamor over the issue, the rate of such offenses has been declining for years. Even at its height the chances of being a victim to such a predator was relatively low. This, of course, doesn’t stop police officers from fanning the flames of fear. It is in their interests to do so. It’s good for the budgets and a wonderful way to convince politicians (who don’t need much convincing) to give them even more extreme powers.

One of these professional fear mongers is Police Officer John Gay of the Cheyenne (WY) police department. His tactic is to go into schools and humiliate, intimidate and embarrass young girls. Maybe it’s just me, but he sounds like something of a sexual predator himself -- one who gets off on humiliating women.

Recently Officer Gay went to the high school in nearby Windsor. His purpose was to stoke the fears of using the internet and promoting the idea that students using the internet were increasing their risks of being attacked by a predator. In truth, such a risk is so low as to be inconsequential. But some of the worst sort of state interventions have been built on such inconsequentials.

Office Gay does his job by ridiculing girls from the school. He snoops around, checking out the various web pages the students had on different social networks. Any photo that he thought proved his point was downloaded. This sounds like a stalker; he thinks it was police work.

Shaylay Nordic was one of Officer Gay’s victims. He trolled through her MySpace page and downloaded a photo of her. She was in a t-shirt and shorts and was bending over to point to pair of new shoes. On two different occasions at her school he blasted that picture across a screen for all the students in the assemblies to see.

Officer Gay told the students that this photo would entice sexual predators --- perhaps, it certainly got his attention. He ridiculed Ms. Nordic and implied that she was inviting a rapist. That’s how the young woman saw it. Her father was furious and said, “He took a pretty innocent picture and made it look sleazy.” He said the police officer “belittled, embarrassed and humiliated” his daughter.

Worse, Officer Gay continued this treatment until the young girl ran from the school assembly in tears. He then moved on to doing the same to other young women at the school. During this humiliating experience school officials never tried to step in and stop it.

Office Gay repeated this treatment on six students. A Denver station reports that: “One female student [Nordic] was told by Gay that he shared her online personal info with a state inmate who said he gratified himself with her photo and would ‘tear her apart.’” This is shocking. If I read that correctly the police officer downloaded a girl’s photo, gave it it a criminal to masturbate over and then told the girl about this to scare her. If he did such a thing he is disgusting. If he didn’t do it, but only claimed he did, that is just a disgusting a thing to do to this girl.

A police officer should not be allowed to humiliate a young girl the way that Officer Gay did. Whether he should be in the schools inventing imaginary monsters, to terrify students, is questionable by itself. But even if his monsters were a real threat, his actions were not justified. Certainly when the consequences of his harassment are weighed against the minuscule risks the students faced I think it safe to say that the only predator these students need fear was this police officer. What Officer Gay did was sexual harassment and ought to be treated as such. It is one of the worst cases of sexual harassment I have heard about as he did it in front of hundreds of people with the intent of humiliating the girl. 

This sort of harassment, from another student, would bring about an immediate reaction. In this case, not only was the harassment sanctioned by the school. But the harasser was a police officer using his authority in an unacceptable manner.

Protect us from the Grannies!

The problem with politically-induced panics is that as fear spread more and more people act irrationally. Often the panics are about real problems but the panic is based on an exaggerated fear. There is loss of a reasonable sense of proportion when people are in a panic.

The child abuse panic has always lead to this kind of disproportional fear and that is one reason it is a tool which unscrupulous politicians can use for their own benefit. And while the politician may, may not, know that his panic-mongering is exaggerated lower functionaries in the bureaucracy take this sort of fear peddling seriously.

That is what caused problems for 82-year-old Betty Robinson. Betty, and her friend Brenda Bennett, 69, were walking through the local park recently taking photos. Betty thought that the empty pool in the park would make an interesting photo so she started snapping a few pictures. At this point a local government official berated her and ordered her to cease taking photos.

The reason for the orders was that she might be a pedophile putting children at risk. That there were no children in the pool, or anyone else for that matter, did not seem to matter to the official at all.

The local council has backed down slightly but not by much. They suggested employees use more discretion but say they are obligated to protect children from the pedophile threat. The council argues that since people are so concerned about threats to their children (the fear factor) that government officials have to be “aware of taking photos”.

Rob McCaffrey, 50, has a rather innocuous hobby. He’s a bus spotter. He loves buses and has collected thousands and thousands of photos of buses, that he has taken himself, of buses around the world. He says he’s giving up his hobby because of the fear among the general public. Twice in recent months he was subjected to police questioning because of taking photos of buses. He has been seen as a pedophile, if children are on the bus, or a potential terrorist. He says, “it seems everyone with a camera is a potential criminal. It’s very upsetting.”

Oddly McCaffrey says he doesn’t mind the terrorist accusation so much “but when they start saying you’re a pedophile it really hurts. We just want to enjoy our hobby without harassment.”

Dorothy Judd is a psychotherapist who works with children regularly. She is also a grandmother. When her young grandson came to visit her she took him to the local woods to play. Just as she was telling the boy that they had to return home for afternoon tea she was approached by “a large policeman in a flourescent jacket” who started asking her grandson if he was alright.

Apparently two different people reported them to the police saying it looked suspicious for an adult to be playing with a child. The police officer takes her details and those of her grandson and insists that he has to walk with them as they return home. She says her grandson became concerned and wanted to know if they were trouble and she simply tried to reassure him.

The officer told her: “Well, then I’d better see you on your way.You know, complete the inquiry. I’m sure it will be all right. I’ll just pass by the house. You said you were going back anyway.” Judd said she was in “a state of disbelieff and shock” and wondered if she had been stupid to allow her grandson to play in the local park. She tried to figure out why others would report her. “Did they think I was abusing him? Or that I had kidnapped him? Or perhaps that I was crazy?”

She admits that she is more cautious with her grandchildren then she was with her own children. But she thinks “society is losing, especially for our urban children, a sense of freedom, an unstructured and ‘safe-enough’ physical environement with dangers that can be tamed through play and imagination, where worlds -- even a kind o magic -- can be created.”

What she needs to realize is that one can’t play in the words with any joy if one constantly imagines monsters lurking behind every tree. One of the results of the politically-induced panics is that people lose their sense of joy. They become surrounded by a impending sense of doom.

But then the United Kingdom was the place where Yvette Cloete, a pediatrician, was driven from her home because locals didn't know the difference between a pediatrician and pedophile.

If the pedophiles don’t grab your children, then terrorists will blow you up. But then, why worry about that when global warming is going to kill us all? We're doomed I tell you, we're all doomed!

Photo: That is the dangerous granny and her camera.

Politics of fear harms us all.

Pandering to paranoia is an old fashioned trait of the political classes. Terrorize people with monsters and threats and they will give you the “power” to protect them. Such fear-mongering, I dare say, is the dominant trait of politics the world over.

Some right-wing group called the Children’s Educational Network was passing out the “Freedom Internet Browser”. The entire purpose of the “Freedom” browser is to restrict the use of the internet. In conservative jargon “freedom” almost always means control.

The whole purpose of this group is to spread fear concerning predators on-line attacking children. On the cover of the free software is a bizarre picture of what one assumes to be the ideal American family.

It shows a father, mother and daughter with an American flag waving behind them. Like most American dads the father is a member of the military wearing his combat gear while being photographed with his family. To the left there is a massive bald eagle, the symbol of American patriotism and to the far Right (and the whole thing is far Right) is the statue of liberty. Conservatives love the statue but aren’t so keen on the liberty.

Of course, there is more. In the background is a black military helicopter flying. No doubt it out there to snuff out some “evildoers”.

The CEO of these panic mongers tells terrified conservatives that the reason he is spreading this browser is because he’s “scared stiff” that his five children “might get lured by an online predator.” The really funny part is that these children include a 28-year-old, 26-year-old, and a 20-year-old. When someone starts writing about fearing that his 28-year-old daughter might “get lured by an online predator” then we are talking about a major case of delusional paranoia.

Among the false claims made by this group is that “1 in 5 kids are solicited for sex by predators online over the Internet”.

Thorough studies of teens who meet people online for sexual purposes shows they are not seduced but willing participants. A study published in American Psychologist showed that “most victims who meet offenders face to face go to such meetings expecting to engage in sexual activity” and “73% of victims who had face-to-face sexual encounters with offenders did so more than once.” This hardly sounds like seduction.

In 2005 there were a grand total of 500 arrest “for Internet--initiated sex crimes, 95% o which were nonforcible.” The reality is that the relatively small number of teens who are “seduced” online were seeking out the experience. Otherwise very, very few “children” are being lured by predators. The report in American Psychologist says, “cases of pedophiles using the Internet to meet prepubescent victims directly are quite rare.”

One fact ignored by the panic-mongers is that while Internet use has exploded the rate of sexual crimes against children has actually decreased during the same period. The report notes, “that several sex crimes and abuse indicators have shown marked declines during the same period that Internet use has been expanding. rom 1990 to 2005 the number of sex abuse cases substantiated by child protective authorities declined 51%, along with other related indicators.” They noted: “To claim, as one headline from Newsweek did, that the Internet has fostered a ‘shocking increase in the sexual exploitation of children”, one has to explain why this epidemic has not been more apparent in aggregate indicators of juvenile sexual victimization.”

The image of young children being violently seduced online by predators is fundamentally a lie. The American Psychologist report says that while it “may be more compelling in sex crime advocacy and prevention to typify victims as ‘innocent young children’, but this will not promote effective public policy or preventative behaviors among those most at risk.”

What this report shows is that the purveyors of sexual panic are actually doing harm. As the study showed, it is adolescents seeking out sex online who are the main “victims” of this activity. If the goal is prevent such activity then focusing on the non problem of children being seduced online doesn’t help. It focuses efforts where there is no issue while primarily ignoring the area where some concern might be legitimate. Parents who are paranoid about their young kids being seduced might just ignore the hormone-flooded teenager using the Internet to seek out sex.

In every matter of public policy there is always a limited amount of resources available at one time. Resources expanded on one issue can’t be spent on other issues. If politically-induced fear-mongering allocates resources to non-issues it invariably redistributes them from real issues.

This is true regardless of the issues involved. When special interest groups, with their own agendas, spread fear and panic with exaggerated claims and lies they invariably distort the allocation of resources, both private and public, from real problems to their imaginary monsters. In that sense their actions harm all of us.

For the lighter side of prudery.

The last few days have been depressing as we watch the lunacy of the justice system put two kids into the pillory. For a lighter moment here is an old film from Citizens for Decent Literature. Have a good chuckle.

Sex panic laws create more victims.

When the populace is in panic mode bad laws are made. The panic may be created by a real incident but that doesn’t matter. Panic stricken voters coupled with moronic politicians are a dangerous combination. Certainly the reaction to 9/11 proves that. The net result is that often the “solutions” are worse than the problem they set out to cure.

There are adults who sexually abuse minors. That is a fact. But in a moral panic politicians pass asinine laws which have the unintended effect of harming innocent people. Often the victims are the very people such laws purport to protect.

We have covered numerous such cases on this site. There was Matt Bandy, a 16-year-old who was hounded by the fanatical Andrew Thomas, prosecutor in Phoenix. Thomas tried to force the boy to register as a sex offender for showing Playboy to some classmates. (For the record: Thomas is an ass. But I insult asses everywhere so perhaps I should retract it.) Two minors in Utah who had sex were arrested for molesting each other. A young boy was thrown out of school for telling a teacher she is sexy (he thought the word meant pretty). Another child is expelled for asking for a hug.

Because sex can be used as a weapon to harm individuals we have these anti sex Puritans running amuck. The issue is really quite similar to guns. A firearm can harm or protect. Which depends entirely on the person holding the weapon not on the weapon itself. Sex can be harmful or pleasurable and again it depends entirely on the individuals involved.

The prohibitionist simply sees the thing itself as bad and not the use to which it is put. So the loony Left wants to ban guns and the Theopublican Right wants to ban sex. (I should note in fairness that many extreme feminist types are allies of the Theopublicans on sex issues.)

And this brings us to what, at first, appeared to be a case of sanity after some years of insanity.

Genarlow Wilson was put in prison in the Theocratic Republic of Georgia because the high school student had oral sex with a girl two years younger than himself. It was considered a felony. Remember Georgia was the location where Michael Hardwick was arrested for having gay sex some years ago and the state fought all the way to the Supreme Court for the right to incarcerate gay people. (The law, which was upheld in that case, was later overturned by the Supreme Court.)

Now many states have provisions that recognize that adolescents have sex with one another and that the situation is different than an adult doing so. And Georgia has something similar. If Wilson had intercourse with the girl it would have only been a misdemeanor. But oral sex remained punishable as a felony. Allegedly no one thought of excluding it.

I don’t believe that myself. I think the exclusion was intentional. Georgia is filled with fundamentalist nutters who think oral sex is contrary to God, Country and the American Way. Certainly the zeal with which the state of Georgia defended its sodomy laws proves that. And when you get to the end of this account you’ll have further proof of this. Only lots of negative publicity from the Wilson case pushed the legislature to change the regulations.

Wilson was sentenced to 10 years in prison. An outrage to say the least.

Yesterday the Wilson case was brought up in court again. And a judge, another one of those evil activist judges who protect us from insane government, threw out the mandatory sentence. He said it was cruel and unusual punishment for what had happened. He said the “crime” was a misdemeanor and that Wilson had served more than enough time and should be released. He said: “If this court, or any court, cannot recognize the injustice of what has occurred here then our court system has lost sight of the goal.”

Wilson’s mother, and his attorney, were ecstatic. They thought the honor student would be coming home. Attorney General Thurbert Baker immediately dashed the hopes of those pushing for justice for Wilson. He filed an appeal to keep Wilson in prison for another seven years. By the way folks, Baker is a Democrat. But Democrats, like Republicans, will pander to religious fanaticism if that is what keeps them in power.

Everyone knows that what was done to Wilson was wrong. The state legislature was even able to figure it out. They changed the law and closed the loophole that incarcerated Wilson. But politicians never make mistakes so they refused to make the law retroactive.

The prosecutors know they did wrong. They offered Wilson a plea bargain to get him out of prison. Of course their plea bargains are always used to indicate that they are right. In this case Wilson would be required to register as a sex offender for life. Wilson had no choice but to turn down that requirement. Being labelled a sex offender in the US is like being labeled a witch in 1692 Salem.

The law, meant to register dangerous predators, has been inflated to such an extent that tens of thousands of people who shouldn’t be there at all are mixed in with true criminals. It is used to restrict where people can live. It is used to deny them jobs. It is used to force them to report to the police regularly and with any sex crime in the area they get hassled by the police. (Perhaps that is good when they are real predators but an increasing percentage of “sex offenders” are not predators but were arrested on consenting morals charges of one type or another.) And these sex offender lists have been used to harass and even kill people found on them.

State agencies around the US routinely list all “sex offenders” on the internet. They tell local vigilantes the name and address of the individual. They usually include a photograph just in case the vigilante is confused as to who to harass. This encourages violence and harassment. And remember that many of these people are people no more dangerous than Wilson or Matt Bandy.

At some point it will eventually seep into the thick skulls of the public that the “sex offender” status is often a political tool used by cruel politicians like Andrew Thomas. Perhaps it will take a few more tragedies. William Elliot was a young man who had sex with his girlfriend. Had he waited a couple of days it would have been legal. Young love, or lust, sometimes can’t wait. He was arrested for it and had to register as a sex offender. The state of Maine put Elliot’s name, photo and address on the internet and branded him a “sex offender”. Stephen Marshall saw this web site. He noted down the address and went to Elliot’s home and knocked on the door. When Elliot answered he was shot to death. Marshal then went to another address also gleaned from the “sex offenders” list and killed that man as well. And this isn’t the only such case.

It should be noted that numerous states now report that these laws actually make it harder to track sex offenders. Previously the police knew who such people were but the information wasn’t made public. With publication of the information harassment and threats rose to such levels that many offenders simply leave and don’t let police know where they are. The number of offenders who police can’t find has actually increased because the publication of their home address is so frightening that many go into hiding.

Wilson had no choice but to turn down the plea bargain offered. Registering as a sex offender, for consenting sex with a girl from his own high school, would lead to a life of harassment and possibly murder. We have to recognize that the over-application of these laws, passed by politicians wanting to cash in on a public moral panic, is not helping the situation. We are making matters worse and we are harming people who are not criminals. Yes, some offenders are real criminals, perhaps many of them. But once again this is a case of government killing flies with sledgehammers. It works! But the damage done in the process is frightening.