$229 Million Settlement Is More Than 1/3 Of Santa Monica's Budget For Sex Offenses

The Richard Winton in the LA Times writes this week: (the link should be accessible) 

"This week, Santa Monica settled more lawsuits, bringing its total payout to $229.285 million — the most costly single-perpetrator sexual abuse disbursement for any municipality in the state."

Imagine what Santa Monica could have done for poor families, for the homeless, for schools, for health care, for $229 million.  That's more than 1/3 of the total Santa Monica budget for 2022-2023!

From the City of Santa Monica, 2022:

"The total adopted budget for the City for FY 2022-23 is $665.4 million."

There's a lot to untangle in this story.  I've got other posts in draft form lined up, but this one tugs at a number of issues I've been mulling over.  With good administration, this shouldn't happen. With good accountability mechanisms this shouldn't have happened for so long.  There are ways to, if not totally prevent such things, certainly to minimize their impact.   But there are also other societal issues that need to be addressed, particularly how we deal with pedophiles.  So let's look at some of the issues here.

1.  The Cost of poor oversight

One study said it was $3 billion over the last ten years.  That's just police!  That's an average of $300 million per year.  But I'm guessing with this single, one quarter of a billion dollar settlement, almost the average annual cost reported in this study, either that $3 billion figure is low, or awards are getting higher.  

But the cost isn't just in money.  The costs include:

• impacts on the lives of people who were harmed by the police and others.  In the Santa Monica case over 200 kids have reported the employee abused them.  Eighty were part of the settlement
• impacts on public safety since police were were spending time abusing citizens instead of protecting them, when people are wrongly convicted, the actual perpetrator isn't apprehended
• impacts on trust in government - among those abused and their families and among the general public when these crimes and settlements are publicized
• opportunity costs - the costs of things this money could have done (though one of the reports says most of this comes from insurance companies, which means all other organizations pay higher insurance rates, and I'd guess it spills over to the rest of us paying car, health, and other insurance

Here's another NPR piece looking at these issues.

2.  Why we don't see  

Most people see what they want to see.  

"The confirmation bias is a cognitive bias that causes people to search for, favor, interpret, and recall information in a way that confirms their preexisting beliefs. For example, if someone is presented with a lot of information on a certain topic, the confirmation bias can cause them to only remember the bits of information that confirm what they already thought."

We also have a truth bias.  Certainly honest people have a tendency to assume others are honest as well. (And there is evidence that most people are basically honest.)

So adding these two tendencies together, we tend to discount indicators of trouble and hold on to more positive interpretations of the behavior we see.  Especially of a person we've known and respected over the years.  "Nah, he couldn't have done that." 

And the people whose behavior is problematic are often (I'm guessing here) quite capable of giving us believable stories to explain away the problems.  This is why it's often a good idea to have outsiders, people who don't know the people involved,  come in to investigate problems.  

But we also have negative biases.  People who complain might be part of an out group - many of the kids in the Santa Monica case were from poor, immigrant families whose parents might fear deportation if they report and are less likely to be believed if they report.  

Most people, I would argue, take a long time before they realize that something is seriously wrong.  And then it takes a long time to report it.  How long did it take you to acknowledge that your (car, toilet, spouse) had a problem.   Then once you accepted it, how long to take action to fix it.

"But his biggest claim to fame was his work as a volunteer in the Police Activities League, where, beginning in the late 1980s, he worked with boys and girls in the nonprofit’s after-school program.

Uller was a familiar face at the PAL center that served Santa Monica’s Latino neighborhoods, often traveling in a police vehicle and befriending generations of youths.

It took decades to uncover that Uller was a sexual predator, the center of a stunning series of crimes that destroyed the lives of children and exposed grave questions as to why it took so long for authorities to uncover what he was doing."

3.  Why why don't act when we do see

Humans seem to have a basic loyalty built in to one's 'group.'  Betraying family, friends, and community (church, work group, etc.) are seen as moral violations and we have lots of negative names for people who do that - snitch, tattletale, traitor, stool-pigeon, etc.  Among law enforcement agencies, this is often known as "the blue wall of silence."

Competing against that loyalty, we have the Rule of Law - a set of moral expectations for people living in a community, in a society.  

When group loyalty comes in conflict with rule of law, individuals face a moral quandary.  Which set of rules should one follow?  We recognize this in the law with rules that allow spouses to not testify against each other, that ban nepotism and other forms of conflict of interest.  I'd argue that the group loyalty is built into our genes, our emotional make up.  The rule of law is something we learn logically.  And strong emotion generally beats out logic.  

“You have to understand in this liberal city, this is a Black and brown part of the city, and no one in the government was watching out for our kids. The Pico neighborhood was marginalized in that era,” said De la Torre, noting that Uller’s abuse occurred “under the shield of law enforcement” and “not one person lost a job” in response to the oversight.

Reporting people in our in-group for breaches of the rule of law  has real, immediate consequences on our families, our social circle, and even on our employment.  

This conflict keeps many from speaking up, even when they see wrong doing.  If you've ever lied to protect a friend, a family member, or someone else you have a close bond with, you understand what I'm talking about.  

3.  When Good Employees Also Do Bad

Seeing wrongdoing becomes particularly difficult when

• the employee is otherwise exemplary in their job performance

"In nearly three decades as a civilian employee with the Santa Monica Police Department and the city, Eric Uller was considered a standout public servant who won awards for his technological innovations."

• has work activities where they work independently, where supervision is not close - such as working with youth after school. (I should mention I was an after school playground director at an elementary school to help pay for college, and I was usually alone with the kids, without supervision. No, I didn't abuse that independence, and I suspect most people don't.)

4.  How the US deals with 'wrong' sex

 Right now in the US, there probably aren't many people considered lower than pedophiles. Gay sex used to have a similar stigma (which, given all the anti-trans laws were seeing introduced across the US now), isn't completely gone either.  Sex and marriage between people of different races was also illegal.  Despite a US Supreme Court ruling banning such laws, 

"As of February 3, 2021, seven states still required couples to declare their racial background when applying for a marriage license, without which they cannot marry. The states are Connecticut, Delaware, Kentucky, Louisiana, Minnesota (since 1977),[42] New Hampshire, and Alabama."

There are good reasons for our laws against adults having sex with children, though the lines get blurry as the age of the child gets higher and the age of the adult gets lower.  There's no question about why a 30 year old shouldn't have sex with a nine year old.  Yet according to NBC news in 2019:

"Idaho and California are not alone in not having a minimum marriage age. A majority of states, which issue marriage licenses, allow 16- and 17-year-olds to marry, a few allow 14-year-olds, and 13 states have no minimum marriage age as of September. Before 2016 — when Virginia became the first state to put its marriage age into law — more than half of the states had no minimum marriage age fixed by statute."

While it appears there are requirements for parental or court approval, it does appear that there are no minimum ages in these states.  I would guess that the proponents for allowing  young marriage often argue that pregnant girls should be allowed to marry the fathers - but I didn't look that up and could be wrong.  

My point in all this is that some sexual preferences are seen as evil while others are perfectly ok. (Though for many, still, sex outside of marriage is frowned on.)  

People don't choose at some point in their lives to be sexually stimulated by one type of sexual encounter or another.  Some argue some attractions are genetic.  Some argue that sexual preferences are based on early sexual encounters.  

People with heterosexual preferences would appear to be the luckiest.  These are what our society condones.  While some people frown on any sex out of marriage, heterosexual sex among the consenting, unmarried seems to be alive and well.   The kinkier the sex and the more people will disapprove.  As people's preferences stray from heterosexual, single partner sex, there is more disapproval.  

But imagine if a person were forbidden from having unmarried heterosexual sex and punished if they did.  Buzzweed lists a number of ways women have been punished in the US, some of which involved sexual acts.

For many people the sexual urge is very powerful, even irresistible.  I suspect that is probably the case of people who view child pornography and who engage in sex with children.  I would only request that people who have been in situations where they could not resist their sexual urges with another person, consider what it would have been like if that other person were legally a child.  Or for people who couldn't resist opening a porn site and watching porn that turned them on.  

I'm not defending pedophiles.  But simply labeling them monsters and locking them up forever is not a good way to reduce pedophilia.  I'm only suggesting that such urges can be hard to control.  And many such relationships that are considered taboo today, have in different periods of time been acceptable.  And sexual practices condoned today were in past times seen as evil.  

But we've evolved in our beliefs that sex should be consensual.  We've evolved in our beliefs that people in positions of authority have a power in the sexual relationship that makes consent, at best, a morally difficult determination.  

And we believe that adults having sex with young children is, without question, non consensual and also an example of an unbalanced power relationship.  

Child pornography is a problem because children have been exploited to produce the images.  Is viewing drawings of child sex as viewing photos and videos?

If AI could produce child pornography (I suspect it already can and does) without any actual children being involved, would that be ok?  Some will argue that such pornography would lead to actual sexual encounters.  But we really don't know how many viewers of child pornography actually go out and find victims.  

My goal here is to raise the question of whether there are ways to recognize some people's sexual attraction to children, even let them indulge in pornography that didn't exploit actual children, and also figure out ways to protect children from sexual predators?  

The person in this article excelled in some aspects of his job.  But he had a taboo sexual attraction to children.  What do you think his options were to seek help from a counselor?  In many situations people who professionally learn about child abuse are mandated to report that to the authorities.  

If this were not such a reviled and taboo attraction, would this employee have been able to seek and get counseling and treatment that would have helped him deal with his inappropriate attractions?  Psych Central says:

"Pedophilic disorder treatment options include medication, hormone, and psychosocial therapies. “Stigma often discourages people from seeking help, but resources are available."

Most mental health problems are stigmatized making it difficult for people to seek help.  Pedophilia  is probably one of the most stigmatized.  

That leads me to offer a few options for reducing sex between adults and children.

Some ways to lessen the incidence of work related pedophilia:

1. General education to let people know that there are treatments for people sexually attracted to children and reducing the stigma connected to it so people are more likely to seek such treatment  (I realize that this is a long term solution, since people with more common, more visible mental health problems also avoid getting help because of the stigma involved.)
2. Education in schools that teaches children how to recognize inappropriate touch, acts of grooming, and steps to take when they encounter such behavior.  Erin Merrin came to Alaska in 2015 and got such a program (Erin's Law) adopted, despite the obstacles set by then Senator Dunleavy, under the guise of 'parental rights.'  Now Governor Dunleavy is still using 'parents rights' as a cover for trying to weaken Erin's Law.  Erin's Law has been adopted in a number of states and seems like one of the more promising ways to reduce pedophilia, by educating the potential victims. 
3. Increased vigilance for situations where children are vulnerable to predatory adults - situations where adults work with children such as playgrounds, social services that care for children, recreational activities such as sports and Boy Scouts.  
4. Changing the laws that give public employees immunity for lapses at work.  There do need to be protections against lawsuits or people wouldn't become public servants.  I think the bulk of monetary punishment still needs to be born by the agency.  But individuals who make serious mistakes, who don't report abuse they know about (not just sex related) should also have some monetary consequences.  

That's a start.  I'm sure others can think of other ways to do this sort of work.  

Southern Baptist Convention In Nashville Next Week - Tension Over Exec Committee Handling Sexual Abuse Issues

[NOTE: This started with a Tweet I read.  As I wrote this post I kept looking for more background.  And things got out of hand.  But for those readers like me who don't pay close attention to the workings of the Southern Baptist Convention, this should be of interest, because it reminds us that like all labels, the Baptists are not all the same and do disagree on things.  I thought was something that would get little attention, but I suspect by tomorrow or Monday it will be more widely covered.]

Twitter calls my attention to events and issues I'd otherwise miss.  There's tension on the Southern Baptist Executive Board over how to handle sexual abuse issues within the church. 

The issue of sexual abuse was addressed at the 2019 Convention with SBC President J.D. Greear proclaiming:

“Victims have told us, words without follow-up actions are worse than no words at all,” Greear said in what is his latest update on the Sexual Abuse Advisory Study he and the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission initiated in 2018. Victims “want to see … that we care enough about this issue to do whatever it takes to make our churches safe for survivors and safe from abuse.”

Apparently the follow-up actions have fallen short.   

This Tweet from Philip Behancourt, the former Executive Vice President of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, contradicts the current president's statements.  The link offers a summary of the contradictions with links to audio.  

Southern Baptists deserve to know the truth by hearing leaders talk about sexual abuse in their own words.https://t.co/DBVdtvlY3J pic.twitter.com/Myoa1mdoFU

— Phillip Bethancourt (@pbethancourt) June 10, 2021

This is not especially surprising. Other religious organizations have grappled over the dilemma of airing dirty laundry or hiding it in fear of a financial hit. So have universities, especially in sports. Just the other day the son of a prominent coach said his father dismissed his own complaint about sexual abuse from the team doctor.  And even if it's not about sex, the urge to cover things up and protect the name and income of the organizations almost always makes it hard to acknowledge big problems.  

This is coming to light right before the SBC's annual meeting.

  The Tennessean offers this preview of next week's meeting in Nashville::

"...The largest Protestant denomination in the U.S., which is headquartered in Nashville, is grappling with how to handle sexual abuse, critical race theory and the role of women in ministry. 

All, along with the election of a new president, could come up as thousands of Southern Baptists gather in Music City.

Calls for a third-party investigation into the executive committee emerged after the two letters signed by Moore, the former head of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, were recently leaked to news organizations and a Baptist blog. 

In them, Moore leveled allegations related to sexual abuse against the executive committee, which acts on behalf of the convention when it is not in session. The letters detail the mistreatment of sexual abuse victims, the mishandling of abuse claims, intimidation and more. Moore's letters also mention racism expressed behind closed doors. . ."

Here's another view from Maina Mwaura and David Phillips published in the Southern Baptist Global yesterday (June 11, 2021)

"Russell Moore, former head of the SBC Ethics and Religion Liberty Commission, wrote in a recently publicized letter that SBC Executive Committee staff and others referred in his presence to victims of sexual abuse as “crazy” and as “worse than the sexual predators themselves.”

Stone issued a 15-minute video response to Moore’s leaked letter and declared, “I find the latest attack from Russell Moore to be absolutely slanderous, and it is as inflammatory as it is inaccurate.

Yet on June 10, Pastor Phillip Bethancourt released audio clips of meetings he attended with Ronnie Floyd, chairman of the SBC Executive Committee, and Stone. Those recordings verify what Moore stated in a second leaked letter that had more recently been written to SBC President J.D. Greear.

Someone is not telling the truth. But the audio makes it clear who was attempting to block effective denominational responses to the convention’s sexual abuse problems. In fact, in one clip, Stone even puts forward the idea that the SBC Executive Committee felt they were the victims. "

The two writers are described this way at the end of the article:

"Maina Mwaura is a freelance writer and communications consultant who lives in the metro Atlanta area. A native of Orlando, Fla., he earned a bachelor of science degree in communications from Liberty University and a master of divinity degree from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary. David Phillips lives in Georgia and previously was a pastor in Delaware. He earned a bachelor of science degree from Athens State College in Athens, Ala, a master of divinity degree from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, and a doctor of ministry degree from George Fox Seminary and now works with an educational software company." 

I did find this podcast in which Russell Moore (who wrote the original letter) and Bethancourt (who posted the Tweet and the links to audio) talk about college ministry which touchier issues such as online pornography. They talk about issues that have come up through their ethics work - same sex marriage, race, sexual abuse crises and our denomination's failure to address it. Death of a loved one, when college student learns his parents are getting a divorce. This sexual abuse discussion comes after about ten minutes of chit chat that shows the close relationship between these two.

https://signposts-with-russell-moore.simplecast.com/episodes/a-conversation-with-phillip-bethancourt 

Toward the end Bethancourt mentions his father who was an executive at Chevron, which suggests he comes from a financially very comfortable background, which may give him some self-confidence in taking on the leaders of the Southern Baptist Convention.

Bethancourt's Tweets also includes a link to this article below which he says helped him when responding to questions from his kids about Pride month.  (Approval of homosexuality doesn't seem to be a topic open for discussion with SBC.  I learned doing a previous post that there were only two reasons for a church to be summarily dropped from the Convention - accepting homosexuality and not paying dues.)  

"Third, we need to remember the priority and uniqueness of Christian love. Christian love is not one of pure reciprocity, where I affirm you if you affirm me. The mushy “you do you” and “live your truth” ethic is the product of expressive individualism, a weaponized form of relativism that rejects all forms of moral duty outside the person’s own felt needs. Christian love, in contrast, is ordered to the truth, rejoices in the truth, and is the very essence of truth itself (1 Corinthians 13:6). When Christians proclaim the truth and beauty of God’s design, we do it out of love for our neighbor and this world, knowing that sexual sin never leads to flourishing, and abandoning God’s design for the family only further compromises society’s foundation. It is for redeeming love of sexual sinners, both you and me, that Christ came to die for us (John 3:16)."

The bolded part of the quote above seems relevant to how the Convention deals with sexual abuse - truth.  But the truth about sex seems difficult for religions that make such a big deal about chastity except in marriage.  

You can look at the Southern Baptists Convention meeting website yourself.  The program is heavy on meetings of groups - Koreans, Hispanics, Native Americans, students, women, pastor's wives, Liberty University alumni, etc.  Don't see anything in the program about sexual abuse. There are no substantive policy papers that I can find.  

 

"Whatever you eat, a $200 lunch or a $2 hot dog, the results are the same, toilet-wise" and Other Thought-Provoking Quotes

Artist  Maurizio Catelan, in article about the Guggenheim museum declining President Trump's request for a Van Gogh for the White House, but offering instead Catelan's solid gold toilet,

“Whatever you eat, a $200 lunch or a $2 hot dog, the results are the same, toilet-wise,” he has said.

From a paper called "The Economic Roots of the Rise of Trumpism" from the German Center for Economic Studies in Munich (CESifo) we see that many US children don't even get the $2 hotdogs:

 "Six million children are reported for maltreatment to U.S. agencies annually,33 and five children die daily due to abuse or neglect.34"

If you follow the links on the two footnotes, the six million figure is lower than the source, though it apparently covers a wide range of issues reported.  The figure from the second footnote is 1670 deaths per year, which divided by 365 days equals 4.57 which they rounded up to 5.  But it's still a shocking number.  If these numbers are accurate, then more kids in the US die from neglect or abuse by their parents than in school shootings.

This is a purely economic look that offers lots of interesting statistics that they use to explain Trump's election.  It doesn't seem to consider other contributing factors.


Jeremy Corbyn, Labour Leader in UK (From BBC) on what would change if he becomes Prime Minister:

"A Labour government, he said, 'will take decisive action to make finance the servant of industry, not the masters of us all'". 

Rachel Crooks quoted in a Washington Post article about how the forced kiss she got (when she was a 22 year old office worker) from Trump affected her life:

“It was one of the first real failures or defeats of my life, where the world wasn’t what I hoped it was going to be, and I started to really doubt myself,” she said.

“Nobody would touch you, especially not Trump. You look like a boy. A gun to your head would be good for our nation.”  (Annonymous email to Crooks) 

This next quote from ImperfectCognitions seems a perfect response to all the Trump supporters who deny the truth of her story, including friends and relatives:

"You’re arguing with someone – about politics, or a policy at work, or about whose turn it is to do the dishes – and they keep finding all kinds of self-serving justifications for their view. When one of their arguments is defeated, rather than rethinking their position they just leap to another argument, then maybe another. They’re rationalizing –coming up with convenient defenses for what they want to believe, rather than responding even-handedly to the points you're making. You try to point it out, but they deny it, and dig in more."

The article is well worth reading.  It goes on to say that those who think they are more rational and wouldn't let their biases affect their judgment are possibly more susceptible because they think they aren't.

#metoo and #ihave - Redefining The Rules Of Sex And Power

There are the written rules - what people are supposed to do and not do - and there are the rules a scientist might write up after observing what really happens.  The first set is prescriptive and the second set is descriptive.  Humans strive to find ways to make the world work the way we think it should.  

I'm trying to find some way to make sense of what the sudden attention to sexual misconduct by powerful males means and how things might look in five years.  Will the power balance be radically different?  Or will all this just fade away and powerful people will continue to do what they want?

The media have been full of women's (and some men's) accounts of being abused by men in power.  #metoo has been well covered.  So when I heard about the hashtag #ihave - where men were supposedly confessing to their own abuse of power, I looked to see what was there.

Disappointing.  You can look yourself.  Maybe there are some serious confessions in there, but it's loaded with unrelated stuff, plus confessions of trivial stuff, plus mock confessions.  It did get me to Steve Locke's "I have led women on, I've cheated"  and "Benjamin Law: Five Things I Admit #IHave Done."  One could say, these are a good start toward self-awareness.

Let's see, here's Locke's list:

1. "I have led women on,"  
2. "I've cheated, and 
3. acted in ways that reflected a sense of entitlement towards the exploitation of women's bodies and behaviours. 
4. I've acted in ways that could be described as 'creepy,' both sober and under the influence. 
5. I've absolutely been overly defensive when called out for my actions, and 
6. have attacked things that certain women loved most about themselves because I felt intimidated by them. The list could go on." 

He also talks about punching a wall and feeling powerful when it frightened the woman he was with.

This is a pretty good list.  But I suspect that many women would also confess to these kinds of behaviors, at least 1, 2, 5, and 6.  Part of this is about growing up, learning how to negotiate the adult world, dealing with one's insecurities.

Locke says he went to therapy (and still goes) to understand and change his unhealthy relationships with women.  

Benjamin Law's list is softer. 

1. Told female friends, "Yeah I'm mates with him, but wouldn't be if I was a woman" – because I knew of his weird and predatory behaviour around women.  [I guess he's saying he shouldn't be mates with the guy.]
2. Laughed awkwardly at sexist remarks in professional situations, instead of pulling men up.
3. Almost gone on TV to discuss a book written by a famous Australian musician who has been violent against women I know.
4. Declined disclosing my wage to a female colleague who suspected she was being paid less than me (she was) for fear of reprisal from our male boss who'd told me to keep it quiet.
5. Suggested things were far worse in the past.

I'm not saying that this list doesn't help people become aware of little ways people can passively support systems of abuse.  But what women are #metoo-ing is far more egregious than what I'm seeing on #ihave.  (I checked to see if I should capitalize #IHave, but it got be back to #ihave.)

I even saw a tweet that compared #metoo and #ihave to the public denouncements and confessions of the Cultural Revolution in China.  I understand why someone might see a connection, but the differences are far more significant, starting with the fact that the Cultural Revolution denouncements were instigated by Mao.  Not by the people who were wronged.  

And while I recognize that men's careers might be ruined by false accusations, far, far more women's careers and lives have been ruined by actual sexual harassment and assault.  When the number of men's ruined careers starts approaching 25% of the number of women's ruined lives, then we can start worrying more about false accusation.  Not that we shouldn't call them out.  But it's no reason to dismiss such accusations altogether.

The ideal would be equal power between two people so that anything that might be construed as sexual is consensual.  Here's what it seems like we have to overcome:

Taking advantage of an unequal power relationship.    (I recognize that some might argue that our society, with an assist from nature,  gives extra power to men so this is always the case.  But ask any man who's been turned down for a date, if there are many individual women who have more more power than many individual men.)  Some of the key sources of power:

• Physical Strength - men are often stronger and larger than women and can force themselves on women
• Authority - laws or customs give someone the right to wield power over another - a teacher, a boss, a pastor, a parent, a police officer, a building permit official
• Social Power - society awards greater credibility for all sorts of reasons - persuasiveness, physical attractiveness, occupation, connections, charisma 
• Economic Power - those with money have power over those without

For each of these sources of power, except physical strength, there is an implied transaction.  One person trades sexual favors - from touching to intercourse - for something the other person has the power to give or take away - a grade, a job, a dinner, a passport, a better life, etc.  For men, physical strength can be the clincher if the other forms, in the end, don't get them what they want.  

Are all these equal? Or are some worse than others?  Here's my proposed hierarchy, recognizing that these actions often combine more than one aspect.

• Forcible rape - where there is not even a modicum of consent is the worst.  
• The threat to take away a woman's  job or to otherwise make her life more difficult if she doesn't consent to his overtures.   
• The offer of something she needs or wants in exchange for sex.  

The idea here of consent is conceptual.  Technically, if someone were forced to judge, there could be different levels of consent depending on how necessary or discretionary the given or taken 'item' is.  I think readers can imagine a continuum of scenarios from essentially forced to essentially consensual.  

Sex or Power?   Some argue that all rape is about power, not sex.  As a former young man, I can't help but be skeptical.  Sometimes a cigar is a cigar.  The alcohol, music, and body contact at a bar or party can easily lead a young man to take advantage of a woman, not to exert power, but to have sexual release. But, of course, much of Weinstein's inappropriate touching was a way of showing the world his power as a relatively unattractive man to have beautiful women around him who  allowed him to touch them inappropriately.  And for some (many?) men, power is an aphrodisiac, in which case the power and the sex are combined.  

But one doesn't have to be a powerful mogul to combine sex and power.  All the men for whom sex is the game of pursuing the prey until she submits and who then lose interest after the 'conquest' exhibit some variation of this combined sexual desire and power.  

If there is no other position of power involved, if the sex is not in exchange for something else, things get murkier.  How does one determine consent?  When I was coming of age, girls were supposed to save sex until marriage.  Consent was not socially acceptable.  They were supposed to say no and the boy was supposed to somehow know the difference between a real no and a face saving no that meant, keep going.  Hollywood still gives us countless role models that sex is a hunt - think, for example, of Barney Stinson in How I Met Your Mother.  Just go through this list of Barney quotes and think about how Marshall, Ted, Robin, and Lily love him despite his predatory behavior.

Is There Ever Equality?  Suppose we have two college students who meet and find each other attractive enough to go out on a date.  Neither has an official position of power over the other.  Yet one might be older, or more attractive, or richer, or more talented, or more socially inept, or more sexually experienced than the other.  They may each have qualities that makes one superior in some ways and inferior in other ways.  One may be more attracted to the other, than the other way around.  Each of these conditions gives a modicum of power to one or the other, though it may change from moment to moment, or month to month.   

It's in this situation that I think we have to give people more space to make mistakes, to experiment, to grow up without serious reprisals.  I'm not talking about men who lie and cheat to get sex.  But I am talking about people who don't yet know who they are or what they want;  who aren't that comfortable with themselves or with others.  I'm talking about people who have difficulty reading non-verbal cues from others.  These people are going to make sexual mistakes.  They need some room to learn how to be in a relationship.  But they also need to recognize that another person is involved and be respectful. [Hmmm, this sounds like an ad for sex education in schools.]  If they get into powerful positions, this pass no longer applies.  Besides, they ought to have enough money to get professional help.

OK, that's a first draft for ways to think about this.

And as I was writing this - I let it sit overnight and then made more changes - I came up with another interesting project:  Make a list of Weinstein brothers films, watch them, and rate them on how women are treated by the men.  (Actually, that's a good thing to do with all movies.  My daughter first suggested that to me long ago.)  To what extent do we as movie goers accept abusive treatment of women in films and thus encourage men to model that behavior?

[UPDATE January 27, 2018:  My daughter also brought the Bechdel test to my attention.  To pass this test a movie must have:
(1)  at least two women in it, who
(2) who talk to each other, about
(3) something besides a man.
Something to pay attention to when you watch movies.]

[We started watching How I Met Your Mother on Netflix.  I wanted to see why it was so popular.  It's well written, fast paced, funny, and the episodes are short.  It was a good way to take the edge off after heavy shows, like Vietnam.  But really, Barney's behavior toward women is manipulative, devious, and everything that is wrong with perpetual one night stands based on the idea of the hunt.  The show does give glimpses of his inherent loneliness and fear of commitment,  but it glorifies his relentless pursuit of the one night stand, through deceit and with absolutely no regard for the women he pursues.]

How Many Alaska Legislators Are Child Molesters?

I realize that's a pretty inflammatory title, but bear with me.

I was listening yesterday online to David Holthouse's testimony to the Senate Education Committee about SB 31, a law to enact Erin's Law in Alaska, mandating schools teach teachers and children to detect signs of sexual abuse and to learn what actions they can take. [You can hear, for now at least, the full hearing here.] Sen. Gardner's (who is the sponsor) aide emphasized that lessons must be age appropriate and that the schools themselves would be given the power to choose the materials they wanted to use.

Below I have Holthouse's full testimony, my transcript, and audio from the legislature's website.  But first, here's the part that triggered the question above:

"And then when I was sixteen, a remarkable thing happened.  I was in a humanities course in East High School in Anchorage and the teacher was lecturing on something to do with denial on a societal level, and she mentioned, almost as an aside, how high the rate of sexual abuse of children was in Alaska. She looked out at the class and she said there’s about 25, 30 of you here, statistics say two to three of you have already been sexually assaulted and you haven’t told a soul."

 The teacher used statistics.  Gardner's aide said that nationally

1 in 4 girls   and
1 in 6 boys

are sexually abused before the age of 18.   And only 1 in 10 will say anything about it. 

She used the numbers to figure out how many students in her class, statistically, would have been abused.  And there was, in fact, at least one student who had been sexually abused in that class.  Maybe there was another.   Holthouse's response was:

And I was riveted in my seat and I felt a great sense of relief, because it had been acknowledged in public, in a school, by a teacher what had happened to me.  And it gave me tremendous comfort, even though I didn’t say anything.

 So using statistics and looking at the Alaska legislature, if one in six boys and one in four girls are sexually abused before they are 18, there must be a fair number of abusers out there in our population. How many are there?  I'll get to that shortly. 

So let's get some help from the Child Molestation Research and Prevention Institute.(CMRPI)

First, definitions:

A child molester is any older child or adult who touches a child for his or her own sexual gratification.

Child molestation is the act of sexually touching a child.

A child is a girl or boy who is 13 years of age or younger.

What's the age difference between a molester and a child? It is five years, so a 14-year-old "older child" sexually touching a nine-year-old is an example. This is the accepted medical definition.

It appears that some statistics vary because researchers use different definitions.  Just take that into account.  I'll be using these, fairly broad, definitions.

How many child molesters are there?  CMRPI writes:

In fact, approximately one out of 20 men, and approximately one out of 3,300 women are sexual abusers of children.

There are 60 legislators - 20 senators and 40 representatives.  There are 43 men and 17 women. Just as Holthouse's teacher used statistics to estimate the number of students in her class who had been molested, we can do the same for the legislature.  We know that there was at least one child who'd been molested in that class.   One out of 20 men statistically would suggest there are two child molesters in the Alaska legislature.  The odds of a woman molester in the legislature is statistically low.

But, legislators are upstanding, church-going respectable people, you say. 

Again, according to the CMRPI, child molesters mirror the population.   Here's a chart they posted comparing characteristics of male child molesters to the general male population   

	Admitted Child Molesters	American Men
Married and formerly Married	77%	73%
Some College	45%	49%
High School only	30%	32%
Working	69%	64%
Religious	93%	93%

Source: The Abel and Harlow Child Molestation Prevention Study and the 
1999 U.S. Census Statistical Abstract
Note: All people in both groups were at least 25 years old.

They have another chart with ethnicity, which matches fairly closely with ethnicity in the general American male population.  A little higher for Caucasian (79% molesters v. 72% in the population), a little lower for Hispanics, African-Americans, and Asian, and a little higher for Native American (3%  v. 1%). 

There's no reason to think that members of the legislature are less likely to be child molesters than anyone else.  In fact, the position of respect and power gives them a certain cover.  We're only talking about child molesters here, not men who abuse adults.

This question came to mind, as I said, because of Holthouse's testimony about his teacher's use of statistics.  But I was also concerned a little about the fact that they tended not to ask questions of people who urged them to pass the bill.  They did ask questions of people who raised concerns.

Concerns they had were:

1.  Would this be another unfunded mandate?
2.  What's preventing the schools from adopting this on their own?
3.  Would schools have time for yet another mandated subject?
4.  Who would pay for this?
5.  What would the curriculum be like.

OK, it is their job to craft legislation that will work.  They should ask questions.  But their statements of the seriousness of this problem sounded so perfunctory, like something they had to say.  They seemed  much more interested in talking about the reasons it might not be a good idea.  Some of this is because they just don't understand the huge impact this has, not just on the kids, but on society as a whole.  And some of this may be due to the fact that a couple of legislators are actually child molesters,  The statistics would suggest that. 

Erin  Merryn, the woman now, that this law has been named after, testified by phone.  She said that 19 states have adopted this law and 18 more are introducing it this year. 

Looking at those questions, I have to ask, "What is in the school curriculum that is more important than this?" 

The CMRPI estimates that there are 3 million US kids who have been molested.  Compared to that, all other threats to kids pale.  Accidents are the biggest killer of kids.   While over 30,000 people a year (the number has been falling steadily) are killed in car crashes, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration,  the CDC's figures shown at the Incidental Economist, show that a very small number of those deaths are kids - less than 1400 1-14 year olds.  The odds of getting sexually molested are way, way greater than the odds of getting killed in a car crash.  I realize that death is different from molestation, but the long term pain and subsequent dysfunction of being molested is lasts, for many, for a lifetime.  And for many leads to suicide.  [I know, using the Incidental Economist instead of the CDC numbers is a bit lazy, but he highlights the key numbers.]

Yet parents and schools don't give kids the basics they need to know to prevent child abuse in the first place and to overcome the threats of predators to report it if they do get molested.

Listen (or read) Holthouse's testimony.  It's short and very compelling.  The legislators all acknowledge it's a serious problem, but . . . There shouldn't be any buts here.  They should be finding a way to make this law work.  Every year they delay, means kids are going to be molested who wouldn't be if the law were in effect.  And the molesters aren't reported and keep on molesting more kids. 


[UPDATE Feb 15: No one mentioned that the audio wasn't here. I'm adding it again, let's see if it works this time.] Here's a recording of David Holthouse's testimony (and the beginning of Jeff Jessie's):


[The transcript below isn't exact, but it's pretty close]

Holthouse:  Here’s what I remember about being taught to keep myself safe in grade school growing up in Anchorage.  I remember what to do in an earthquake, I R  what to do if I caught on fire - stop, drop, and roll - and  IR to watch out for strangers bearing candy or toys.  But what I didn’t learn was that a vastly greater danger to me than catching fire or being crushed by falling light fixtures in an earthquake, or even being lured into a car, far greater than one of those dangers was that someone I knew and trusted would hurt me and terrify me in ways that I did not understand and did not have the words for.   And that happened in 1978  when I was seven years old.  I was raped by a family friend at a dinner party in an upper middle class household in Eagle River.

When it was over the rapist told me three things.  He told me , one, that I’d done a bad thing and that my dad would spank me if I told anybody.  And he said if I told, that he’d say I was lying and no one would believe me.  And he said furthermore if I told anybody, he would come into my house in the middle of the night and gut me like a salmon and do the same to my parents.  I know now that this is typical predator behavior.  So for 25 years I didn’t tell I kept it a secret and I did so at signifiant cost to my own well being.

Here’s how Erin’s Law would have made a difference for me.  First,
there’s a chance it would have protected me from being raped in the first place.  These types of predators depend our collective shame, denial, and silence about this issue.  Even though we all know what the rates are in Alaska.  They depend on it.  They thrive on it.  I think it’s quite possible that  having know I was being taught at school about people like him, and how to tell on people like him, and what language to use to tell on people like him, he would not have committed the crime in the first place.  There’s no way to know that for sure. 

I also think that had I been taught about safe touch, unsafe touch, none of this language needs to be graphic for 2nd graders.  All I needed to know was a word like “a bad secret” or just the very concept that someone who was a family friend might do something wrong to me and then tell me “You must keep this a secret” and if that happened, it was ok to tell a cop or my parents, or teachers, and that someone would step in and protect me. If I had been armed with that information, I think I would have told.  There’s no way to know that for sure either.

What I am certain of, is that had the public school system acknowledged the prevalence of this issue in our culture, and had I been taught that in school, I would have felt not so alone.  The loneliness was the worst part of it, feeling I had been affected by a freak occurrence and that made me some kind of freak.

And then when I was sixteen, a remarkable thing happened.  I was in a humanities course in East High School in Anchorage and the teacher was lecturing on something to do with denial on a societal level, and she mentioned, almost as an aside, how high the rate of sexual abuse of children were in Alaska. She looked out at the class and she said there’s about 25, 30 of you here, statistics say two to three of you have already been sexually assaulted and you haven’t told a soul.

And I was riveted in my seat and I felt a great sense of relief, because it had been acknowledged in public, in a school, by a teacher what had happened to me.  And it gave me tremendous comfort, even though I didn’t say anything.

So, I think that  it is important that it be mandated.  It sends a message to predators that it’s time for them to be afraid and it sends a message to kids that is of top priority to protect them.  And so, thank you for hearing me out. 

Chair:  Thank you.  Questions?  Thank you very much.