Some notes on this, specifically about "Reported cases of child sexual abuse reached epidemic proportions, with a reported 322 percent increase from 1980 to 1990." It was in the 80s that they started to get *a lot* of cases of claimed abuse by uncles, grandparents, etc., and in which the methods used, since no physical evidence existed in most cases, was precisely the sort of, "Here is a dolly, what did uncle Buck do to the dolly? Did he do this?", type stuff. Much of the 322 percent increase was false positives and innocent people being sent to jail, based on questionable testimony from psychologists that where 10-20 years *behind* the curve with respect to cognitive development models and what that said about the viability of *asking* a small child, especially one you just told to "pretend" as part of the interrogation, what if anything someone did to them. There are not *huge* waves running through the system now, as the validity of those tests, the court cases and even the statistics derived from them are called into universal question.
Then you get things like the 1 in 3. Sure, everyone knows they heard it or read it some place, but the fact that you can't has to make you seriously question what the source was. It sounds **very** similar to the statistic used in the TV commercials, referring to child solicitation online. The problem with such statistics is that they are usually traceable to one of those "family values" groups that like to fudge numbers. In the case of the TV commercial, the real statistics where not bad enough when *limited* to solicitation from adults, so they hacked up the study, in order to present a number that, more truthfully, should have said, "One in five children are solicited by other children, or asked if they have had sex yet with their boy friend, or talked to about if they are still virgins, by other kids, while a much smaller number where *actually* approached by an adult playing an being their age." But you know, that just wouldn't create the necessary unrealistic panic they where looking for. lol
"(A "sexual solicitation" is defined as a "request to engage in sexual activities or sexual talk or give personal sexual information that were unwanted or, whether wanted or not, made by an adult."
Using this definition, one teen asking another teen if her or she is a virgin—or got lucky with a recent date—could be considered "sexual solicitation.") Not a single one of the reported solicitations led to any actual sexual contact or assault. Furthermore, almost half of the "sexual solicitations" came not from "predators" or adults but from other teens."
However, given who is currently in charge of "policy" about the sort of information (you know, the guy that ordered the national health organizations to *remove* info on condoms and safe sex, and instead push abstinence on their online websites...), false or not, that we get, its not surprising that finding the real data is far harder than finding an endless run of pages that insist that the made up, exaggerated, out of context or just plain intentionally misinterpreted claims are all accurate. And the news media... When in the last 50 years have they ***ever*** checked their facts beyond determining "if" someone said it, rather than, you know, if the people saying it are telling the truth or not.
Yeah. We have a serious problem, but instead of dealing with the "real" predators, and using all our resources to deal with them, we are wasting time and money going after everyone from uncle Fred, whose niece just got ****ed off at him that week because he forgot to buy her a birthday gift, to some harmless guy doing physical studies for art, who had the bad taste of picking someone under 18 to take pictures of, to people *gasp* drawing pictures that, if these people where right, would make 99% of the anime artist and buyers of manga in Japan and the US pedophiles (which would probably be 80% of the entire population of Japan and 50-60% of the nerds in the US). Mean while, the nice guy down the street, who doesn't let his kids go to normal school, and never seems to date much, despite being single, and what ever other warning signs no one is paying attention to, because they are more worried that some 30 year old might put "panties" in the same sentence with "13 year old" on a web page some place, while writing a story or designing a mud, etc.
Yeah, we are going to get *real* far in reversing the trend, when all the real predators need to do is keep their heads down and go unnoticed, while the "family values" people are dunking the rest of us in the local river, to see if we will float like a duck, or sink and drown like an innocent.