It is a legitimate defense strategy - and one that actually has valid points, at least for stuff like anime "CSAM". IMO, societies should focus more on preventing the creation of real-life CSAM:
- teach children from a young age in an appropriate way about sex including what the names of genitalia are, so that in a court examination you don't have to argue about what "down there" means, and consent. Children can only report abuse if they have a third party telling them that what they experience is not normal.
- provide infrastructure for potential pedophiles to get help. In Germany, we have the campaign "Kein Täter werden" since 2005 and oh boy, that was a mess to get started due to the (justified) public stigma against pedophiles, but it ended up preventing thousands of crimes [1].
- for the US: ban home-schooling and force all children through the public or accredited private school system so that (religious) cults can't go and indoctrinate young children into being breeding mares or abuse them with virtual impunity
- provide teachers with enough resources (time and training) that they can spot signs of abuse (and not just sexual, but also physical and emotional!) early on
- provide get-help infrastructure nationwide: anonymous phone help lines, "safe houses" for people of all genders and ages attempting to flee domestic violence and sexual abuse, easy and equitable access to restraining orders, provide CPS with enough financial and staff resources to do their job properly...
Unfortunately, the first three measures are highly politically charged and so won't pass, and the last one is expensive so it won't pass either, and as a result children all over the country end up being abused with no way of getting help or worse, not even knowing that they could get help.
Director of the one and only known insitute to make trans people in Germany going through TSG (80's law to allow for name change / gender marker change) take a visual pedophile test. (Why? I'm presuming he just likes to acrew more data, no other reason in particular)
I listened to a few public talks and... let's say I have some red flags I'd raise.
I think you'll find more pedophiles in the public school system than the home. Biological fathers have very low incidence rates of child molestation and households have limited numbers of people in them. On the other hand you have a building where it is known that lots of children attend daily and is full of people who self selected for whatever reason to be around someone elses kids all day.
My high school pulled two pedophiles out over the last three years alone. During my time there I witnessed a lot of behavior that went right up against the line of what is acceptable by people in adult hindsight probably shouldn't have had access to children.
Those types are common in K12 -- they're used to interacting with folks with less mobility (no car, no job and/or literally disabled) and exploiting that.
It's my understanding my alma mater (is that the right phrasing for your former high school?) still employs at least one, but the two people who told me about her behavior don't seem interested in having her removed from her position and I can't do anything with hearsay.
They often prey on kids victimized by the other set of abusers, the one's who don't abuse kids sexually, but are utter sadists who jump in with the bullies to victimize and other kids who are geeky, queer, or just plain shy they whine cries of false concern that those kids might not just commit suicide.
It was a different time before Columbine -- you had more freedom, but you also would get attacked physically -- nowadays the model seems to be that folks have some kind of cold war until the other side loses their temper, and then the true abuser gets to cry victim.
For context, I actually spotted one of the paraprofessionals from a school I attended in the crowd on Jan 6th -- it's been a perpetual thing for kids of a certain age when Columbine happened that folks are forever fearful of what weird hacker bois like me will do -- but never enough to lift us out of precarity that would allow us to get away from them and their terrible views, because let's be frank: having everyone who's not in the Christian right from my shitty ass township move to Portland or Brooklyn or whatever isn't a sustainable life strategy :-)
> I think you'll find more pedophiles in the public school system than the home. Biological fathers have very low incidence rates of child molestation and households have limited numbers of people in them.
At least in Germany, evidence proves otherwise - almost half the cases in Germany are made by fathers, ten percent mothers, and of the rest a lot of different other degrees of relatives [1].
Preventing sexual abuse must focus on families, because that is where most shit happens.
As for pedophiles in schools, church and sports clubs: yes, these do exist, but are rare in numbers, and the same logic from my first point above applies: When children don't know that what they experience is not normal and that they can report this behavior, they won't.
I don't read German but I used biological fathers for a reason, does your data include stepfathers? I am familiar with studies like these[0] that indicates a child's lowest risk of abuse is in a household with both biological mother and father, lower even than biological mother alone.
> I don't read German but I used biological fathers for a reason, does your data include stepfathers?
It does, yes, but it doesn't matter. Abuse incidence from teachers and caretakers is ridiculously low, the utter majority of abuse comes from family members and so that is where efforts should be focused.
Ok, in some cases it's because the parents are religious or over controlling nutcases, but in many cases home schooling is the final choice of parents whose kid is not able to learn in the traditional school environment for many reasons.
I'd suggest that in most of these cases the parents would far prefer that their child attend traditional schooling so they can get on with their lives, but the payoff of calmer home life and a kid who is actually getting an education.
Ok, case study of one, but in our experience we've gone from a family subject to daily arguments about getting to school and seeing absolutely no value achieved when actually getting the kid through the school gate, to a happy well adjusted (call it normal) kid who is achieving decent educational outcomes and having a rich social life.
home school does not always equal nutcase parents. Thanks you, rant off.
You're possibly right on some of those points, but it would be sad to ruin home schooling for everyone. There are a number of very legitimate cases where home schooling can help kids who are having a rough time at school.
> There are a number of very legitimate cases where home schooling can help kids who are having a rough time at school.
In almost all cases where kids end up homeschooled due to having a "rough time", it's because of bullying and teachers and parents not putting a stop to that crap, the rest is stuff like autistic or disabled children who don't get the resources and assistance they need.
I'd rather like to improve the conditions at school, so that all children, no matter their background and (dis)abilities, are well taken care of, and abusive behavior (outside of self-defense, obviously, which is the big problem with modern "zero tolerance" crap) is not tolerated. That is how equitable societies get created.
Well, that's certainly an ideal. In practice of course it's difficult to prevent certain kids from falling outside the system. Kids and circumstances are pretty variable.
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For reasons, in my own ideal world, the biggest experts on a particular child (their parents) would be more involved in their education to begin with. Long story I won't get into here.
But in that particular scenario, one would frankly still need (some) schools. This is for the same reason as before: some kids would end up falling outside that system too.
]
'Schulte referred to the child pornography he was accused of possessing as a "victimless crime"'.
Yeah, I'm not sure why you'd defend yourself like that in such a situation.