Moral Panics

[cactuspete]

Study on chance so sex abuse for students
This so-called "study" is anything but research. It's pure horse manure and can most accurately be identified as "politically motivated panic-mongering" as one critic of Shakeshaft has claimed. There does seem to be some evidence to support the assertion that something up to seven percent of students are subject to unwanted sexual comments and behavior from other people at school (mostly other students), but it's absurd to suggest that seven percent are the target of sexual misconduct perpetrated by a school employee. Simple logic is all that is necessary to deduce that the actual number of students who are victims of sexual misconduct by teachers would be something much closer to about one-hundredth of a percent. What Shakeshaft plays is a shell game in which she conflates ambiguous statements (or even looks) which may be misinterpreted as sexual with physical sexual abuse and in which she focuses on teachers while asking questions pertaining to students, school staff (not just teachers), and other adults who happen to be on campus.

Among the questions asked of students by the one AAUW study was, “during your whole school life, how often, if at all, has anyone (this includes students, teachers, other school employees, or anyone else) done the following things to you when you did not want them to? Made sexual comments, jokes, gestures or looks.” Thus, the 10 percent figure properly includes “sexual abuse” by fellow students and other non-school employees. That fact alone invalidates the AAUW study for Shakeshaft’s purposes. It also invalidates her conclusions.

LINK: http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=1331

[shadylady]

cactuspete: That seven percent figure is pretty peculiar. Obviously it's ridiculously inflated, but I could believe that seven percent of all child sexual abuse accusations are made against school employees (including public schools, private schools, church schools, etc.). Obviously between thirty and sixty percent of those accusations would be proven to be false. My guess is that what actually happened was that the "researcher" gave a questionnaire to people who CLAIMED that they had been abused as children and that of those people claiming to have been abused seven percent claimed that the abuser was a school employee. The "researcher" then fudged the numbers and failed to clarify the exact population that had been subjected to the questionnaire and then the news clip further distorted the "research" results and so what we wind up with is misinformation feeding the moral panic around childhood sexual abuse. It attracts attention and so from the point of view of the news media, it's a good business model.

[CactusHugger]

Fear, uncertainty and doubt
It's what moral panics are all about!

Fear, uncertainty, and doubt (often shortened to FUD) is a disinformation strategy used in sales, marketing, public relations, politics and propaganda. FUD is generally a strategy to influence perception by disseminating negative and dubious or false information and a manifestation of the appeal to fear.

LINK: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear,_uncertainty_and_doubt

[ergot]

Safe Space For Sex-Trafficked Boys Finds Resistance In Community
First of all, the claim that there are 100,000 "victims" of sex-trafficking in the USA is a dubious figure. Secondly, the number of children under the age of fourteen is estimated to be less than five percent of the total. So, if the estimated total is twice as many as the actual total, then the number of children under fourteen involved is at most 2500 across the entire country. There are about 320 million people in the USA. This would mean that fewer than one out of 128,000 people is a child involved in sex-trafficking. This is such a low number that it is fair to say that sex-trafficking of children barely even exists and therefore should not be something that special programs are created for. It's just something that law enforcement can deal with as they encounter it. Just business as usual, nothing to get all panicked about.
From WikiPedia:

Many critics of contemporary anti-prostitution activism argue that much of the current concern about human trafficking and its more general conflation with prostitution and other forms of sex work have all the hallmarks of a moral panic. They further argue that this moral panic shares much in common with the 'white slavery' panic of a century earlier as prompted passage of the Mann Act.

[mrfish]

ergot: Compared to the number of people who die in car accidents, drowning, poisoning, gunshot wounds, and just about anything you can think of, the number of children who are involved in human sex trafficking is ridiculously small. On top of that these kids don't even die and most are only mildly trauamatized as the result of their experience. Some authorities have even pointed out that the therapy given to these kids is often more traumatic than the actual experience of being sexually exploited. (This is mostly because many of the nutjobs who go into social work are more messed up than the people they are supposedly helping, but I digress.) The point being, that people overreact and obsess over these kinds of situations and make a big deal out of a small problem and usually wind up making the problem worse.

[ergot]

10 Urban Legends That Caused A Moral Panic
What do snuff films, rainbow parties, vodka-soaked tampons, stealing kidneys, jenkem, walmart gang initiations, pin prick attacks, sex bracelets, blue star tattoos, and poisoned halloween candy all have in common?

[cactuspete]

ergot: People can be so gullible and they believe all sorts of stuff that is obviously bullshit. It helps to be good at math, but most people aren't very good at math and so when they are confronted with stats that are complete nonsense they really have no way of performing any kind of reality test. At least once a week I hear fake stats on the news and it's almost always in connection with some kind of bogus claim about sex crimes which seems like a permanent moral panic here in the Scaredy-Cat States of Amerika!

[desertrat]

cactuspete: Scaredy-Cat States of Amerika is right. We have no problem killing tens of thousands of defenseless people in places like Iraq, but when it comes to imaginary crimes here at home we get all panicked. As long as the enemy is defenseless and we have weapons decades beyond what they have, we are brave and bold, but our own fears about make-believe social problems render us irrational.

[a2z]

Castration for Sex Offender Bill put Forward in Alabama
Cruel, unusual, and disproportionate punishment is something that is considered justifiable during moral panics. Nuff said...

[shadylady]

a2z: Barbaric forms of punishment are something we expect in Saudi Arabia. It turns my stomach to think that anyone would seriously consider a form of punishment so reprehensible. I'm more disgusted by people who would propose such punishments than I am by the criminals they wish to punish. The joke is that sex crimes are at the lowest point they've been in decades and yet these people are still resorting to more and more extreme measures to fight a problem that barely even exists. On top of that false accusations in the area of sex crime are quite common and you can't undo a punishment like this.