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> 1 in 5 teens have been sexually solicited by an adult predator.
This
<http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2009/12/sexual-predators-200912?printable=true>
article states that the much touted 1-in-5 statistic is complete bunk,
stating:
(snip)
The most widely cited statistic is “one in five,” as in the number of
children who have supposedly been approached by a sexual predator on the
Internet. The origin of this figure is the Department of Justice’s National
Center for Missing & Exploited Children, which first reported it in 2001.
Five years later the center amended the result to one in seven, but by
either measure the figure suggests nothing less than an epidemic.
Until you look closer. The actual question posed in the department’s “Youth
Internet Safety” survey asked teenagers under 17 if they had received
an “unwanted sexual solicitation,” which was defined as follows: “a
request
to engage in sexual activities or sexual talk or give personal sexual
information that was unwanted or, whether wanted or not, made by an adult.”
Since “adult” in this case was defined as anyone 17 or older, the
definition included many would-be high-school Romeos, predators of a highly
conventional and not particularly dangerous sort, and also took in a strain
of intimate gossip familiar to all teenage girls. As the study’s authors
themselves noted, half the solicitations came from other teenagers. Not a
single solicitation led to actual sexual contact. Violent sexual predators
hunting children are out there, as they have always been, yet they remain
blessedly rare, and most young people flee such strangeness instinctively.
Only 3 percent of the contacts reported in the survey resembled the one
most feared by parents, the adult stranger attempting to seduce a child.
(end snip)
Regards,
.
Randy
--
"Anyone wanting to commit American ground forces to the mainland of Asia
should have his head examined." -- US Gen. Douglas McArthur.
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