Re: Shawny’s concerns about Victorian and Australian Governments
Reply #574 –
I listened to an interesting if depressing discussion of child sex abuse on the wireless this morning. Some of the key points:
One in four children experience sexual abuse.
One in ten adult men admit to having sexual feelings about children.
While most abused children don’t go on to commit sex crimes, the rate of sex crime offending was 11% higher among confirmed abused children than a control group without sexual abuse.
Programs to raise awareness of child sexual abuse are being condemned as “woke” by some politicians.
Only a relatively small percentage of child sex abuse occurs in institutions; most is committed within families or by close friends. While working with children checks may help to reduce institutional child sex abuse, they do nothing to prevent the vast majority of cases.
That typifies the problem, and is relevant to other crime; there’s a limited bucket of money with competing demands, and governments often choose the more obvious but less effective options.
Obviously, the justice system can’t deal with one in ten adult males, so how do we ensure that they don’t go on to offend?