A new book that says child molesters are not a
major peril to children is part of a larger movement within academia to promote
"free sexual expression of children."
The
movement to legitimize sex between adults and children is "gathering steam,"
warns Stephanie Dallam, researcher for the Leadership Council for Mental Health,
Justice and the Media in Philadelphia, an organization that deals with
prevention and treatment of child abuse.
"Some
people view children as the next sexual frontier," Ms. Dallam
says.
Feminist writer Judith Levine's book "Not
Harmful to Minors: The Perils of Protecting Kids from Sex" has been condemned by
those who say she excuses sexual abuse of children — a charge she strongly
denies.
Ms. Levine says she was "misunderstood"
after a news article last month quoted her saying a boy's sexual experience with
a priest "conceivably" could be positive.
"Do I
advocate priests having sex with their child parishioners? No, absolutely no,"
she said in a telephone interview. However, she said, "The research shows us
that in some minority of cases, young — even quite young — people can have a
positive [sexual] experience with an adult. That's what the research
shows."
Featuring a foreword by Clinton
administration Surgeon General Dr. Joycelyn Elders, Ms. Levine's book endorses a
Dutch law, passed in 1990, that effectively lowered the age of consent to
12.
Ms. Levine cites research about "happy
consensual sex among kids under 12," and writes: "America's drive to protect
kids from sex is protecting them from nothing. Instead, often it is harming
them."
The book has sparked a political
backlash against her publisher, the University of Minnesota
Press.
The speaker of the Minnesota House of
Representatives condemned the book and called for the university to halt its
publication. Instead, the university press last week ordered a second printing
of 10,000 copies after media attention helped drive Ms. Levine's book as high as
No. 26 on the Amazon.com best-seller list.
But
researchers and activists say the book is only the most recent in a series of
academic arguments for "consensual" sex involving
children:
• In 2000, the Institute for Advanced
Study of Human Sexuality in San Francisco published an article, "Sexual Rights
of Children," saying there is "considerable evidence" that there is no "inherent
harm in sexual expression in childhood."
• San
Francisco State University professor Gilbert Herdt, co-author of the 1996 book
"Children of Horizons: How Gay and Lesbian Teens Are Leading a New Way Out of
the Closet," said in an interview with the Dutch pedophilia journal Paidika that
"the category 'child' is a rhetorical device for inflaming what is really an
irrational set of attitudes" against sex with
children.
• John Money, professor emeritus of
psychology at Johns Hopkins University, gave an interview to Paidika about
"genuinely, totally mutual" sex between boys and men. In the introduction to a
Dutch professor's 1987 book called, "Boys on their Contacts with Men: A Study of
Sexually Expressed Friendships," Mr. Money wrote that opponents of pedophilia
are motivated by "self-imposed, moralistic
ignorance."
• Harris Mirkin, a professor at the
University of Missouri-Kansas City, published a 1999 article in the Journal of
Homosexuality complaining that boys who have sex with men "are never considered
willing participants, even if they are hustlers." He has also written that
"children are the last bastion of the old sexual
morality."
• A 1998 "meta-analytic" study in an
American Psychological Association (APA) journal argued, among other things,
that "value-neutral" language such as "adult-child sex" should be used to
describe child molestation if it was a "willing
encounter."
Radio host Laura Schlessinger led a
campaign against that study by Temple University psychology professor Bruce Rind
and two other academics. Congress eventually voted unanimously to condemn the
Rind study — which has already been used as evidence to defend accused child
molesters in at least three court cases.
Ms.
Levine's book favorably cites the Rind study and, in a telephone interview, she
defended the study as "methodologically meticulous." But Baltimore psychologist
Joy Silberg, whose clinical practice involves treating child-abuse victims, says
the study is "horribly flawed."
"I can't call
it science," she said.
One co-author of the
1998 study was Robert Bauserman, now employed by the Maryland Department of
Health and Mental Hygiene. As early as 1989, Mr. Bauserman had written about
"man-boy sexual relationships" in Paidika. He also co-authored a 1993 article
with Mr. Rind about "adult-nonadult
sex."
Academic defenses of sex between adults
and children are not new. Indiana University professor Alfred Kinsey claimed in
his famous 1948 and 1952 reports on human sexuality that "children are sexual
from birth" and included charts of "data" gathered by pedophiles about the
children they molested.
As early as 1977,
author Judith A. Reisman says she learned of the existence of an "international
academic pedophile movement" influenced by Kinsey's
teachings.
Ms. Silberg, the Baltimore
psychologist, agrees that the "whole academic movement" to legitimize sex with
children "is growing."
Many academics defended
the 1998 Rind study, saying its authors were victims of a "McCarthyesque witch
hunt," and a number of groups, including the American Library Association,
issued a statement saying they "strongly support" the University of Minnesota
Press for its "courageous" decision to publish the Levine
book.
Such reactions show that "the efforts of
people who would like to legitimize relationships between adults and children
are actually being successful," Ms. Silberg
said.
Critics say that pro-pedophilia activism
cannot be dismissed as an irrelevant fringe movement, because it has real-life
consequences.
One connection between advocacy
and action was revealed last week when court documents showed that a Catholic
priest accused of repeatedly raping a boy was present at the founding of the
North American Man-Boy Love Association
(NAMBLA).
At a 1979 conference in Boston,
documents show that the Rev. Paul Shanley claimed that a child had been "helped
by a boy-lover" who had sex with
him.
Intellectual defenses of pedophila are "a
huge concern" because they can function as "a green light" to would-be child
molesters, says Claire Reeves, president and founder of Mothers Against Sexual
Abuse (MASA).
"Adults who might have a
propensity to hurt a child might say, 'See, it's not harmful, these people are
Ph.D.s, they must know,'" Mrs. Reeves said, adding that she began warning about
the pedophilia movement in 1995.
"I started
saying seven years ago that there was a movement to make pedophilia an
alternative lifestyle, and my colleagues looked at me like I was crazy," said
Mrs. Reeves, who founded MASA after discovering that a relative had been
sexually abused. "Here we are seven years later and that is exactly what's
happening."