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Pedophilia advocates, unfazed by national outrage over a 1998 expose', continue to push to normalize the sexual abuse of boys.
It’s easy to imagine what pedophilia advocates were thinking in 1998 when they published a study suggesting that the sexual abuse of children wasn’t all that harmful. After all, they’d seen the vast cultural and legal gains the pro-gay movement had won since 1973, when homosexuality was removed from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual — the psychiatric profession’s blue book of mental disorders. Why not try to normalize molestation the same way?
So Bruce Rind of Temple University, along with co-authors Robert Bauserman and Phillip Tromovitch, made a case in the American Psychological Association’s Psychological Bulletin for doing away with the term “child sexual abuse” in favor of “value-neutral” phrases like “adult-child sex” or “age-discrepant sexual relationships.” They even went so far as to say some boys benefit from having sex with men. But the strategy didn’t work as well for them as it did for the gay lobby.
The resulting national hue and cry, led by radio’s Dr. Laura Schlessinger, prompted the U.S. House of Representatives in 1999 to condemn a scientific paper for the first time — by a vote of 355-0. The APA later sent an apology to House Majority Whip Tom DeLay, R-Texas, promising to tighten editorial security and prevent convicted pedophiles from using research like Rind’s to reduce their prison sentences.
You’d think that would have been a lesson scientists would take to heart. You’d think it would send a message to pedophiles that the public isn’t going to let them have their way with boys. You’d think, at the very least, it would make child molesters reconsider their tactics.
You’d think.
Late last year, though, the pedophilia propaganda machine was steaming along as aggressively as ever. Rind and his colleagues published another pro-pedophilia study, this time in the Archives of Sexual Behavior — the official publication of the International Academy for Sex Research — saying boys molested between 12 and 17 had as much self-esteem and positive sexual identity as boys who were not molested.
And the APA’s penitence proved short-lived. Its president, Norine Johnson, defended the right of researchers like Rind to have “controversial and unpopular” work published (though the organization has routinely turned away research on changing homosexual orientation).
These efforts illustrate how pedophiles are once again pushing their goal of sexually “liberating” children on two fronts: the children’s rights movement — which says children should be able to freely express and indulge their sexuality; and homosexuals’ efforts to lower the age of sexual consent.
“It’s sad to say, but I think [pedophilia advocates] have a better chance of influencing people through the [scientific] journals than any other way,” said Stephanie Dallam, M.S., R.N., a researcher for the Pennsylvania-based Leadership Council for Mental Health Justice and the Media. Dallam spent two years analyzing Rind’s work, which she critiqued in the December 2001 issue of the Psychological Bulletin. Another critique will appear in the Journal of Child Sexual Abuse this spring.
“They can kind of wow other psychologists with their data, whereas the public may not understand it but can see what they’re getting at and doesn’t like it,” Dallam said. “Scientists can’t see the forest for the data sometimes.”
Rind and co-author Bauserman have been published in Paidika: The Journal of Paedophilia. Paidika’s statement of purpose, published in the inaugural issue, reads in part: “We intend to demonstrate that paedophilia has been, and remains, a legitimate and productive part of the totality of human experience.”
Research with a Twist
Not everyone in the scientific community has ignored problems with Rind’s research. Critics have called his work sloppy and said it crosses the line between scientific inquiry and advocacy.
Rind & Co. “used scientific data to stake out an advocacy position (in their APA article) . . . that went well beyond the data and could lead to it being misused by people for their own purposes,” said Mark Chaffin, editor of the journal Child Maltreatment.
“The pedophilia organizations jumped all over this and said, ‘See?’ ”
When asked how the 1998 Psychological Bulletin article slipped under the radar, APA spokeswoman Rhea Farberman said, “What APA publishes in its scholarly journals is based on a peer-review process — and that’s about its methodology, not its conclusions.”
But Dallam found seven flaws in Rind’s analysis of 59 previous studies on child sexual abuse — flaws that didn’t support the authors’ conclusions.
“Either the results were directly opposite what they reported, or equivocal and subject to interpretation, but none of them were as strong as they made them out to be,” Dallam said.
In one study Rind cited, abused males rated themselves highly on a subjective assessment of sexual adjustment. However, an objective measure of sexual dysfunction showed these same men to be less well adjusted than nonabused men in every area assessed. In another study referenced by Rind, abused males reported mainly neutral reactions to their abuse, which he and his colleagues suggested was evidence that they weren’t really harmed. Nonetheless, compared to their nonabused peers, more than twice as many abused men reported using illegal drugs, three times as many had sought therapy for emotional problems and five times as many had attempted suicide — data Rind failed to mention.
The Rind study also neglected to report the frequency with which adult survivors of child molestation become molesters themselves. According to Dale O’Leary, author of The Gender Agenda: “Adult homosexual men often do have fond memories of the men who sexually abused them. There is evidence that boys who long for male love can become accustomed to giving sex in order to get this attention. However, this does not ‘prove’ that adult/adolescent or adult/child sex is healthy. ”
Added Linda Nicolosi, co-author of Preventing Homosexuality: A Parent’s Guide, to be released this spring:
“Let’s say molested boys don’t — on average — grow up to be more anxious or depressed. Many may even have good self-esteem in adulthood, so they’re judged by these studies not to have been negatively impacted.
“But what about other important factors that were ignored by these studies? Isn’t the molested boy more likely to think of himself as homosexual after the abuse? As an adult, isn’t he more likely to be sexually focused and promiscuous? Worse yet, will he, too, find himself erotically attracted to boys? None of these factors have been considered in these studies.”
The Pedophile Agenda
In the summer of 2000, the International Academy for Sex Research, which published Rind’s most recent study, invited another pedophilia advocate, Tom O’Carroll, to speak at its annual convention. Calling it a “breakthrough in a modest way for our cause,” O’Carroll wrote later that “it was the first time to my knowledge that a major academic body had expressed an interest in hearing about paedophilia from a paedophile’s point of view.”
O’Carroll’s address provides a glimpse of the strategy used by pedophiles to try to gain public approval of their behavior.
“We should not try to educate the public, but the educators. Among these scientists, there are many therapists,” he said. “The problem is that even among scientists and therapists, the basic assumption is that paedophilia is by definition a kind of violence. It is an attitude, difficult to change. An approach from the human’s rights [sic] for privacy and from general experience will maybe work.”
Dallam’s Journal of Child Sexual Abuse article provides additional detail on how pedophiles plan to sway attitudes:
Adopt value-neutral terminology in describing pedophilic relationships, such as “adult-child sex” in place of “child molestation” and “child abuse.”
Redefine the term “child sexual abuse.” Gerald Jones, a gender-issues scholar at the University of Southern California, wrote in 1990 that pedophilia cannot be classified as “child sexual abuse” because studies do not always show that “intergenerational intimacy” produces negative results. “Intergenerational attraction on the part of some adults could constitute a lifestyle ‘orientation’ rather than a pathological maladjustment,” Jones argued.
Promote the idea that children can consent to sex with adults. David Riegel, who in 2000 published Understanding Loved Boys and Boylovers, suggested that a child’s ability to form preferences is sufficient evidence he can give informed consent to sex. By that definition, a 5-year-old who prefers one pair of shoes over another could consent to sex with an adult.
Question the assumption of harm. Riegel goes on to write, “The acts themselves harm no one, the emotional and psychological harm comes from the ‘after the fact’ interference, counseling, therapy, etc., that attempt to artificially create a ‘victim’ and a ‘perpetrator’ where neither exist.” SafeHaven Foundation, a pedophile group, says “many of the supposed traumas elicited by psychotherapy turn out to be nothing more than the results of False Memory Syndrome.”
Promote the idea that boys are better able to handle sex with adults (than girls). Paidika board member Edward Brongersma wrote in 1986 that “a boy is mature for lust, for hedonistic sex, from his birth on; sex as an expression of love becomes a possibility from about 5.”
Promote “objective” research to counteract the “distorted cultural bias” against sex between children and adults.
Rind, Bauserman and Tromovitch aren’t the only researchers to publish studies that cater to the pedophiles’ agenda, but they are among the more frequently cited groups on the North American Man-Boy Love Association (NAMBLA) Web site. In a section called “Positive and Beneficial Experiences,” NAMBLA points readers to 24 studies that indicate “consensual intergenerational sex” isn’t harmful; Rind and Bauserman wrote four of them.
Given the real-life harm such “research” can cause, Dallam says the APA should do more than apologize to Congress: She called for the association to retract the 1998 study and launch an investigation to determine if the authors are guilty of scientific misconduct.
“There are public-policy implications that could lead people to think it’s OK to hurt a child,” she said. “Because of that, there is a higher threshold of responsibility the publisher owes the public.”
What’s a parent to do?
Aided by a growing cache of pedophilia advocacy disguised as research, child molesters may be on their way to breaking down traditional social values and gaining the same special rights afforded homosexual activists.
And that’s what they’re aiming for.
“The game plan is to create a body of studies that indicate adult-child sex is harmless or its danger has been overstated,” said Robert H. Knight, director of Concerned Women for America’s Culture and Family Institute. “They’re using the idea of objectivity itself to batter moral concerns. They are following the script of homosexual activists.
“The overall campaign for moral relativism is greatly aiding the campaign to validate pedophilia. If right and wrong are relative, who’s to say children can’t engage in sexual acts? Particularly when you see so-called academic studies making the case that children aren’t all that harmed anyway.”
Though concerned citizens may feel they can’t present arguments to the scientific community unless they have a Ph.D. after their names, there are still things parents can do to protect their children and society from predators.
“Challenge the mental-health establishment at every turn,” Nicolosi said. “Does your child’s school counselor respect cultural and religious diversity, or does he impose, even subtly, a relativistic and sexual-liberationist worldview on counselees?”
Bob Van Domelen, a former pedophile who now runs Broken Yoke Ministries, a Christian outreach group to homosexuals, said child molesters target lonely and alienated kids, so the best protection begins with a healthy marriage and strong family environment.
However brazen the pedophilia movement might be, families still have the upper hand, said Knight.
“I think we’ve got them on the run right now because of the exposure over the Psychological Bulletin article,” added Knight. “There’s no telling what impact that had in waking up America to this academic threat. People have seen the shark fin and know there’s something amiss, whereas before, the shark stayed under the waves.
“Thank God they were dumb enough to overreach like this.”
This article appeared in Citizen Magazine. Copyright © 2002 Focus on the Family. All rights reserved. International copyright secured.
