On Handcuffed and Felonious Children
FOX News, Florida, U.S.A., Thursday, February 10, 2005, By Wendy McElroy
What should have been a minor incident at an Ocala, Fla., elementary school has attracted national attention because of the school's response.
Two boys, aged 9 and 10, were charged with second-degree felonies and taken away in handcuffs by the police because they drew stick figures depicting violence against a third student.
There was no act of violence, no weaponry. According to news reports, the arrested children had no prior history of threatening the student depicted in the drawing. The parents were not advised or consulted. The school's immediate response was to call the police and level charges "of making a written threat to kill or harm another person."
The incident was not an aberration but one of three similar occurrences in the Florida school system during the same week. In another case, a 6-year-old was led away in handcuffs by police. And those three incidents are only the ones that managed to attract media attention.
Another indication that the incident is not an aberration: The police have adamantly and repeatedly defended the slapping of cuffs and felony charges onto the 9 and 10-year-olds.
Arresting young children for a crayon drawing, not unlike the games of hangman we once all played, is the ultimate meaning and logic of Zero Tolerance.
Zero tolerance involves the application of law in an extreme and uncompromising manner to any activity violent or not that is deemed to be anti-social.
It applies to everyone, regardless of circumstances such as age, intent or prior history.
Zero tolerance has spread through society largely due to the reasonable fear with which people have responded to the school shootings at Columbine (search) and the still-stunning tragedy of Sept. 11. The fear is reasonable. But the ongoing response is not.
No one not the police, not the government, no school official has the right to brutalize a child for using crayons. And the people who reasonably supported zero tolerance as a way to make schools safer never envisioned a police state in which 6-year-olds are handcuffed.
Parents are finally saying "NO!"
The battle against zero tolerance is being waged on the local and state level. One such local battlefield is in Katy, Texas. One such parent is Derek Hoggett. His 13-year-old daughter Gabrielle was suspended from school due to a butter knife packed in her lunch. Because of braces, Gabrielle needed the knife a legal item to cut an apple. No violence nor threat occurred.
Hoggett explained, "She was given the harshest punishment for a first offense even though school officials admitted in a letter that she was a student with exemplary behavior and high academic standing."
Gabrielle's school district has reportedly investigated "2,149 criminal incidents, issued 779 citations and made 108 arrests" in the past several months.
Because of the avalanche of investigations, Fred Hink a spokesman for the
Hurting the cradle: women seducing boys
Jamaica Gleaner
Kingston, Jamaica
March 4, 2007
Health professionals worry that the reported incidents of women raping young boys are few, the actual occurrence is believed to be higher and is causing long-term psychological damage to victims.
"In terms of the most current statistics on child abuse, this is not reflected as a large problem. But it is my sense that it is even more grossly under-reported and under-recognised than the typical child abuse scenario involving an older male perpetrator and younger female victim," says Dr. Judith Leiba, head of the Child Guidance Clinic at the Bustamante Hospital for Children in Kingston. "We have seen a few examples where the helper was involved, and in another situation, it was an older female cousin.
Usually these boys were in the age group of five to eight years old," Dr. Leiba reports.
Our Most Popular Web Page
Sex Offenders
Female Sexual Predators
Hundreds of them.... female teachers who sexually assaulted 12 year old boys. Read about a lesbian tennis coach who sexually assaulted her 13 year old female student.
Read how a 40 year old female sexual predator blamed a 7 year old boy whom she claimed was "coming on to me" and whom she "hoped to marry someday." Read More ..
3 in 4 B.C. boys on street sexually exploited by women
VANCOUVER - Canada's largest study into the sexual exploitation of street kids and runaways has shattered some myths about who the abusers might be - with the most surprising finding being that many are women seeking sex with young males.
"Some youth in each gender were exploited by women with more than three out of four (79 per cent) sexually exploited males reporting exchanging sex for money or goods with a female," said Elizabeth Saewyc, associate professor of nursing at the University of British Columbia and principal investigator for the study conducted by Vancouver's McCreary Centre Society.
"I must admit it wasn't something we were expecting."
Up to 64,000 women in UK 'are child-sex offenders'
After Plymouth case shocked the nation, police say number of women abusing children
The Guardian UK and The Observer
4 October 2009
Researchers from the Lucy Faithfull Foundation (LFF), a child protection charity that deals with British female sex offenders, said its studies confirmed that a "fair proportion" of child abusers were women. Donald Findlater, director of research and development, said results indicated that up to 20% of a conservative estimate of 320,000 suspected UK paedophiles were women.
Female Teacher Charged With Sex Assault on Seventh-Grade Boy
Associated Press / Fox News
MORRISTOWN, N.J. — A 35-year-old seventh-grade teacher was charged with having sex with one of her students at least 20 times at the teacher's home.
Jodi Thorp, 35, surrendered to authorities Monday on charges of aggravated sexual assault, aggravated sexual contact and endangering the welfare of a child. Prosecutors claim she had sex with the boy at her Mendham home between June 2001 and September 2002. The boy is now 15.
Mother confesses to sex with sons
Had intercourse with 2 teenagers
Pleads guilty to incest charges
A Kitchener woman has pleaded guilty to having sexual intercourse with her two teenage sons on separate occasions.
BBC, UK TV
Programme - 1997
The sexual abuse by women of children and teenager
A surprising 86% of survivors of sexual abuse were not believed when they said the abuser was a woman.
Many myths were exposed, such as the one that women only sexually abused when coerced by men - they in fact played the lead part. Also the myth that women are incapable of cruelty - what was shown was beyond belief.
Women commit 25% of all child sexual abuse
250,000 children in UK have been sexually abused by women
Women in our society have been portrayed as victims, but somewhere within their victimisation they have learned that to abuse children gave them a sense of power, control, agency, and therefore they use the abuse of children to gain those things.
Jacqui Saradjiam: (clinical psychologist)
I think people find it so difficult to see that women sexually abuse children
because the whole view of women is of nurturers, carers, protectors - people
who do anything to look after children - and they see the women as victims
rather than enemies or perpetrators of any abuse.
Michelle Elliott: (Director - children's charity Kidscape)
I think the issue strikes at the core of what we perceive ourselves as women
to be. I think that it's easier to think that it's men - men the enemy,
somehow - but it can't be women - it's one thing women can't do. Women can
be equal, we can be free, we can be in charge of companies, but we can't
sexually abuse children - That's a load of rubbish.
Female Teacher jailed for sex with boy
The Guardian, UK
August 16, 2005
A married primary schoolteacher was jailed for 15 months yesterday after admitting having sex with an underage teenage boy.
Hannah Grice, 32, pleaded guilty at an earlier hearing to two counts of indecent assault on the boy, who was aged 14 and 15 at the time of the offences.
Sentencing her at Stafford crown court, Judge John Shand told Grice, from Cannock, Staffordshire, she had abused her position of trust.
"Cases such as this are, of course, made worse by the fact that you were a member of the teaching profession," he told her. "You should have been very sensitive indeed to child welfare issues." Grice was also ordered to register as a sex offender for 10 years. Read More ..
Health Canada Publication
The Invisible Boy: Revisioning the Victimization of Male Children and Teens
"... the existence of a double standard in the care and treatment of male victims, and the invisibility and normalization of violence and abuse toward boys and young men in our society.
Despite the fact that over 300 books and articles on male victims have been published in the last 25 to 30 years, boys and teen males remain on the periphery of the discourse on child abuse.
Few workshops about males can be found at most child abuse conferences and there are no specialized training programs for clinicians. Male-centred assessment is all but non-existent and treatment programs are rare. If we are talking about adult males, the problem is even greater. A sad example of this was witnessed recently in Toronto. After a broadcast of The Boys of St. Vincent, a film about the abuse of boys in a church-run orphanage, the Kids' Help Phone received over 1,000 calls from distraught adult male survivors of childhood sexual abuse. It is tragic in a way no words can capture that these men had no place to turn to other than a children's crisis line."
The Men's Project
"Men
of Courage"
1st Ontario Provincial Conference on Male Sexual Victimizations.
It was held March 17-18, 2008
Sheraton Centre Hotel
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
The Men's Project, an Ottawa / Cornwall registered charitable service provider with the assistance of a grant from the Ministry of the Attorney General, hosted this conference.
About The Men's Project
From what was initially a volunteer run initiative, The Men's Project has
grown to become one of Canada's leading counselling and educational agencies
for men and their families, and in particular for all male survivors of
sexual abuse committed by males and females.
The Men's Project has witnessed incredible expansion of their funded services, their fee-for-service programs, and their training and consultation services.
Their mandate is "helping men and their families build better lives". Read More ..