Two reviews

by Mark McHarry

From Alternative Press Review (Arlington, Virginia), Spring 2000, Volume 5, Number 1, pp. 74-75

There are several books and articles by academicians exposing facets of the current child-sex panic but none that take on the whole smarmy show. These two do.

Pedophiles on Parade is probably the most in-depth look ever of adults who would have sex with children. It’s also the best. Sonenschein delves into the morass of U.S. culture for how it invents adult villains, child victims and heroic authority figures. His is a biting, at times savage, critique informed by an historical perspective that brooks no interference from the surrounding culture. The result is must reading for those who wonder why individuals may now be stigmatized for life as "sexual predators," given a life sentence for one or two instances of casual sex with a teenager.

Moral Panic charts a more conventional course, describing a cycle of reaction to the concept of the child molester alternating from liberal indifference to panic. Jenkins concludes groups that stand to gain in the war against molestation have been effective in targeting non-family outsiders, mainly gay men, to the detriment of children and everyone else.

The premise of both books is, in order to demonize adults who have sex with children, the image of the "molester" had to change. In much the same way, it's the same process that redefined witches as dangerous before hundreds of thousands of people could be murdered as such during the Renaissance.

Jenkins describes five periods this century: child-sex panics in the 1910s, the 1950s and 1980s through the present, and lack of concern in the late 1920s and early 1960s. Jenkins says the repeated reversals in how child sex is viewed mean society’s beliefs about child sex can not be considered advances in knowledge but are irrational reactions.

In recounting the three panics, Jenkins breaks no new ground in reporting how in each ill-informed legislation was hastily passed on the basis of a few highly publicized crimes or those with a vested interest—especially the FBI and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) —falsified statistics and made spurious assertions which the news media parroted and the courts cited as reason to uphold repressive new legislation. It’s the same process that brought about the draconian anti-drug sentences.

Of more interest is his account of repeated co-optation of feminist groups, first in the 1910s and then in the 1980s, as their concerns about patriarchal intra-family abuse gave way to stranger danger.

But instead of acknowledging the morally honest stance of radical women like Gayle Rubin or Pat Califia, who early on condemned the anti-child sex campaign both for what it was — a wedge to fragment early gay liberation groups -- as well as an incorrect assessment of children’s sexuality, Jenkins says it’s the feminists’ fault for getting in bed with the conservatives. He ignores the complicity of mainstream gays and lesbians, who with the advent of the new laws moved to purge those who love boys and teenagers. He doesn’t say the co-optation would have happened regardless given the hegemony the right enjoys in our country, especially in the news media.

About the latter, Jenkins follows his fellow academics down the road of how sociology’s claimsmakers use and are used by the media. His approach draws on Erich Goode and Nachman Ben-Yehuda’s explications of moral panics in their book of the same name and Joel Best’s denunciation in Threatened Children of the media’s complicity in the missing child "epidemic."

Unfortunately Jenkins doesn’t bother with some of the more salient points Goode and Ben-Yehuda raise about who benefits from a panic and why. Unconvincing is his conclusion demographic shifts are the reason for the differences in how adult-child sex has been viewed.

Sonenschein’s two volumes—especially the second--are a bold contrast. He rejects a mainstream approach: "Critics of the hysteria often made comments [about discrete periods of panics] displaying the usual American lack of historical consciousness …. Such neglect promotes a view of hysterias as historically isolated exceptions rather than as ordinary institutional and individual practice; as everyday American life."

The cover art depicts a molester-monster about to pounce, all the while being manipulated like a puppet by an unseen force. It’s a visual expression of his premise, which is we "base social relations upon imagery rather than interaction," using symbols "as seemingly solid images accompanied by standard, agreed upon and rigidly enforced texts that demand severe punishment for violation along with the elimination of criticism and refutations .... Symbols ... are most effective when they are mute .… These images, animated and dubbed by their makers, are represented as real, active, and vocal entities…."

His book is filled with examples of how these symbols -- the pedophile ^[1], the child victim and the authority figure -- are put together to become reality:

Lurid portrayals of child molesters, usually disheveled in orange jail jumpsuits, on pro-police TV shows such as "America’s Most Wanted," and the showcasing of criminality in, for example, Congressional hearings in order to impress the public with the gravity of the problem and demonstrate government control.

The photo in a 1983 issue of Time of a teen runaway in the hands of the cops, the caption unwittingly reflecting the magazine’s outlook: "…the systematic exploitation of the weak and immature by the powerful and disturbed."

Faces of missing children on milk cartons, placed there in the mid-1980s to frighten children into not running away. ^[2]

The tapestry from which he teases out the constructions is 1980s child sex politics, beginning with the right’s reaction to gay liberation heralded by Anita Bryant’s "Save Our Children" campaign. The first volume is a mostly contemporary account of the period; the second, and much more interesting volume, reaches into the past to elucidate the cultural antecedents of the so-called pedophile, their victims and the heroes. Alas, the focus is limited to Western culture but even so, the account is rich with thought-provoking observations.

Key areas in volume two include the early separation of sex and children, to where the happy sexual child is today scarcely more imaginable than a laughing Christ. From about the 17^th century, children were begun to be seen as angelic, innocent beings: "The child, like the idealized woman, became an idol and its power could not be questioned, for to do so was to question the entire complex of beliefs and relationships that surround the innocent."

This paved the way for the rise of the accusing moral child of the witch trials. With the increased use of children as a moral indicator, "children’s words and actions were taken to have a final imperative quality. Further, these values, because they were ‘natural’ and from God, were thought to be universal, with all people at all times subject to their strictures. In the context of the social and economic shifts of the 19^th century, this became a powerful anchor for ideological stability and a potent weapon against pluralism and competition. As such, the child as accuser became widespread …. ‘in times of social tension children seem [to adults] an excellent medium through which to attack evils—they are so innocent that they are able to detect evil and speak the truth about it.’"

Given the innocence of the child, there arose a panoply of child-threatening figures, the modern-day pedophile merely the latest. The first? The Jew, an enduring stereotype even now. ^[3] Jews may be a long-lived example of such cultural libel, but almost every minority group was or is seen as a menace to children, and not just in Europe or North America.

Pedophiles are monsters. Monsters must be slain and this involves spectacle: "monsters are constructed and paraded so as to evoke questions and contrasts of good and evil, of what is true and false … of beauty and ugliness ….Monsters may mark boundaries, but they are also constructed when there is uncertainty and dispute about the place or even necessity of boundaries."

In our day, the way child-sex scandals (monster slaying) unfold must be mediated by the news media. Accordingly, children’s secrets — which Sonenschein notes are one of the few sources of power left to the young — must be uncovered. ^[4] Adults’ confessions must be extracted and publicly aired, their use helping construct a consensus in line with the political ambitions of the dominant group (and along the way aiding the rise of phenomena such as the short-lived recovered-memory movement).

Sonenschein goes far beyond Jenkins in history—e.g., in his in-depth account of the "white slavery" panic in the late 19^th century—as well as in analysis. The process he describes is one of entertainment. Indeed it is in a sad sort of way as one considers the impact on the people affected.

The book is not without flaws. He succeeds brilliantly at delineating the strings connecting the pedophile-idea to the news media, police, politicians and child advocacy groups but doesn’t discuss how the news media which, as Hall put it, "faithfully and impartially … reproduce symbolically the existing structure of power" ^[5] are in turn beholden to their corporate sponsors.

His account of the misuse of missing-child statistics doesn’t give adequate weight to its impact, which included Supreme Court decisions citing these falsehoods as fact in upholding repressive legislation ^[6] and he overlooks some events that give the lie to the establishment’s view, including a little-noticed study from the Urban and Rural Systems Associates (mentioned in Jenkins) that documents how a significant number of male teens hustle for thrills instead of for economic necessity.

Such research is worth noting since it may point the way to a more moderate climate - -if you believe such inquiry is honest and possible. In a speech given to the Western Social Science Association after writing the book, Sonenschein criticizes sexology as "largely forensic" and "governed by an assumption of pathology and criminality … and the presumption of authority to initiate … punishment and elimination." ^[7]

But perhaps because of his background as a researcher with the famed sexologist Alfred Kinsey, in his talk Sonenschein holds hope for newer research involving gay and transgendered youth and for value-neutral studies of adult-child sex such as those from Rind, Tromovitch, et. al. Rind’s latest work merely echoes, albeit with more rigid methodology, previous literature reviews since at least the early ‘80s that show no intrinsic harm to children having sex with adults. ^[8]

It is not surprising Rind’s study has come under attack from the right determined to use children’s sexuality as a way to re-institute so-called family values, having failed to turn back the clock on the normalization of adult homosexuality.

The spear bearer at the moment seems to be fundamentalist Laura Schlessinger. This spring she began using her popular radio advice show to denounce Rind’s publisher, the American Psychological Association, as concealing a pedophile cabal within its ranks. Her attack reprised the more extremist statements from anti-gay psychiatrist Charles Socarides and researcher Judith Reisman, the latter who won attention for asserting Kinsey kidnapped and drugged ghetto boys for his work.

That the right believes it can air such bizarre views with impunity — views that haven’t changed since the ‘70s — shows how much success they have had at getting and keeping the child sexuality debate where they want it. This is no surprise. As Jenkins pointed out, "even in 1993-94, when the recovered memory movement was being denounced, the response was not to abandon the abuse threat but to redirect attention to the stranger predator. … Any movement that can survive a fiasco as total as the ritual abuse affair must be all but indestructible."

-- Mark McHarry

Footnotes

[1] Sonenschein complains of cultural inertia (“inertia” is too kind a word) behind the uncritical acceptance of pedophile, but adopts it nonetheless. In the speech referenced below in note 7, he says why it is wrong: pedophile and pedophilia are “not empirical terms that describe  stable, eternal, inherent and universal forms or contents. They are the names of culturally grounded Western 19^th century anxieties and aspirations for power and order….the concept remains specious." [Back]

 [2] I would note as the decade progressed, so too did the ages of those depicted on the cartons and other media, until 18- and 21-year-old “children” were featured. This was in line with the NCMEC’s redefinition of “missing” and “child” as its fabrications about the numbers of missing children and extent of sexual abuse began to be grudgingly acknowledged by the media. The milk cartons were taken seriously at the time: The New York Times said one dairy was distributing 2.5 million a month in the Chicago area alone. But by the mid-1990s, the milk cartons had become the target of occasional parody by the establishment, including even in product advertising. [Back]

 [3] Sonenschein mentions an Oprah Winfrey guest in 1989 who claimed she murdered infants in a Jewish blood ritual. [Back]

 [4] The state’s assault on the individual has reached a new height with the sexually violent predator (SVP) laws, which attack the core belief systems of young people and adults, either of which may be labeled an SVP. By necessity these laws and the states’ systems for implementing them are designed to detect and punish beliefs; belief is the only way the state has to determine whether one may be a pedophile and hence dangerous. According to Lieb et. al., SVP laws are in effect in 12 states and under consideration in 21 more. They mandate an indefinite civil commitment for individuals accused of a vague array of sexual behavior, including, in California, either a child or adult touching his or her genitals when with an underage person. Under most statutes, no conviction of a criminal act is necessary and incest is excluded. (Roxanne Lieb and Scott Matson, "Sexual Predator Commitment Laws in the United States: 1998 Update"; Olympia, WA:  Washington State Institute for Public Policy, September, 1998). [Back]

 [5] Hall, Stuart, et. al., Policing the Crisis, London: Macmillan, 1978, p.58. [Back]

 [6] New York v. Ferber (No.81-55, announced July 2, 1982), the first Supreme Court case to uphold the criminalization of images of sexual children absent a finding of obscenity, contained numerous untrue statistics, including one put out by the Los Angeles Police Department claiming 30,000 children were being exploited by the sex industry in Los Angeles. The first victim was the child sex education book Show Me, which was withdrawn by its publishers. [Back]

 [7] "Sex Research and Sex Law: A Return to Antagonism,” paper given at the Western Social Science Association, April 23, 1999. [Back]

 [8] "A Meta-analytic Examination of Assumed Properties of Child Sexual Abuse Using College Samples" Psychological Bulletin, 1998 (July), vol. 124 (1). [Back]