Moral Panic - Changing Concepts of the Child Molester in Modern America

In the present work, Jenkins relates this to the twentieth century American experience with child molesters most clearly in the final sentences:

Predators, psychopaths, and paedophiles represent a very minor component of the real sexual issues faced by children, while even sexual threats must be considered alongside many other dangers arising from physical violence, environmental damage, and the myriad effects of pervasive poverty. During the twentieth century, however, such dangerous outsiders have attracted a vastly disproportionate share of official attention, precisely because they represent the easiest targets for anyone wishing, however sincerely, to protect children.

While not calling into question the sincerity of children’s advocates, he does note that many of these protectors have agendas of their own: child welfare societies and social workers have increased in prominence and tapped into greatly increased financial resources; feminists, by publicizing threats to children, have been able to draw attention to “pervasive male violence and exploitation…”; for psychiatrists and therapists, the issue of child molestation showcased their therapeutic expertise and continued to “medicalize social problems”; law-enforcement officials and politicians have gained visibility in promoting law and order concerns; the legal profession has developed a new specialty centering on “victims’ rights” and engaged in litigation against schools and churches; meanwhile, religious and “moralistic groups” have used child-protection rhetoric to promote a barely-concealed anti-homosexual agenda.

Jenkins begins the book by suggesting that “all concepts of sex offenders and sex offences are socially constructed realities: all are equally subject to social, political, and ideological influences, and no particular framing of offenders represents a pristine objective reality.” Indeed, he points out that “the modern category of sex crime is little more than one hundred years old” and that the public’s awareness of, and interest in, sex crimes has waxed and waned many times over the past hundred years or so.

In the chapter entitled, “Constructing Sex Crime, 1890-1934”, Jenkins argues that child abuse, in the modern sense of the term, came into being between about 1908 and 1922 and that the terms ‘pervert’ and ‘sex fiend’ were then introduced to the American public. In “The Age of the Sex Psychopath, 1935-1957”, Jenkins shows how sex murders in New York and California in 1937 led to a nationwide panic as newspapers and radio spread the news. He points out that most of the estimates about the number of sex offences made no distinction between violent attacks and consensual sexual encounters – all were subsumed into the single and menacing category of “sex crimes” because it was believed that even minor offenders would escalate their wrongdoing until they turned to violent attacks and even murder. Despite widely-published allegations by the FBI and others that sex crimes were rampant in these years, Jenkins points out that by the late 1940s there was considerable quantitative evidence to dispute these claims. Not only were many of the offences relatively minor, but the perpetrators were found to have very low rates of recidivism. These findings, however, did not stop the passage of “sex psychopath statutes founded on exactly the principles that the medico-legal experts derided. The simplest explanation for this paradox was that social and demographic trends created constituencies with a powerful interest in demanding official protection from the perceived menace.”

After a chapter dealing with the sex psychopath statutes, Jenkins turns to a fascinating examination of “The Liberal Era, 1958-1976”. In reaction to the perceived hysteria of the previous decades and at a time when decriminalization, decarceration and deinstitutionalization were being heralded, many psychiatrists and scholars argued that “sex offences were symptoms of troubled personalities, but they dismissed the stereotype of the lethal sex criminal as a product of a sensationalistic press aided and abetted by cynical law-enforcement bureaucrats.” The term “molester” was invented in this period and suggests “minor sexual interference rather than acts of force or violence.” Thanks to studies by Kinsey and others, the former “escalation theory” was steadily undermined; one incident of sexual deviance did not necessarily lead to lifelong paedophilia and the possibilities for the successful treatment of offenders were emphasized. Perceptions of the victim of sexual abuse were also changing – to the point that the word often appeared in quotation marks. One standard textbook of the time went so far as to claim that “early sexual contacts do not appear to have harmful effects on many children unless the family, legal authorities or society reacts negatively.” The cinema never offered a completely sympathetic view of child molesters, but they were often portrayed as scapegoats who could be rehabilitated wherever they had not been “derailed by the malice of an ill-informed public goaded by a sensationalist press.” In fact, during the liberal era, press reports of sex crimes diminished considerably and what coverage there was tended to stress themes of official overreaction and injustice. By the early 1970s activist courts, working on the theory that many charges, if not fabricated, were often motivated by racial bias, were undermining the bases for sex psychopath statutes to the point where “it was the legislation concerning sex offenders that was portrayed as the pressing social problem, not the offenders themselves.”

Jenkins describes the backlash against the period of liberalization in a chapter on “The Child Abuse Revolution, 1976-1986”. In the mid-1970s, feminists undertook a national campaign to raise awareness about the frequent incidence of rape while, at the same time, social workers and medical professionals called attention to the problem of child battering. Within a few years these concerns coalesced into “a perception that all American children were sexually at risk.” The author argues that child protection became “a national social orthodoxy” and that newly emerging “attitudes towards child abuse constituted a revolutionary and perhaps irrevocable change in American culture.” Soon millions of people were reporting unwanted sexual experiences during their early years and this led to “a process of inflation accompanied by the familiar mid-century device of expansive definition and of assimilating all minor forms of deviancy with the most threatening acts of sexual predation. In 1984 as in 1950, a “minor molestation” was considered an oxymoron, a despicable trivialization of a national crisis.

Just as an increased awareness of domestic violence was taking hold, there was also a resurgence of political conservatism culminating in the election of Ronald Reagan), which was determined “to reaffirm traditional values and discipline, through law if necessary, and to stigmatize immoral behaviours.” Strange bedfellows, feminists and conservatives united in a desire to protect children. Politicians and various media outlets gave warnings to the public about the frequency and seriousness of child sexual abuse, giving figures suggesting that as many as 30 or 40% of American children were abused. Federal hearings allowed inflated figures to gain credence and Jenkins notes that charges were “self-feeding: the parade of witnesses provided frequent good copy for the media, which raised public awareness of the problem and in turn enhanced political and bureaucratic rewards for individuals and agencies making the claims.” As in previous periods of “moral panic,” intellectuals began to question the statistics but their challenges were largely ignored. The professional literature was focusing its concern also on family members as sources of abuse, while conservative activists, law-enforcement agencies and the media seemed preoccupied by strangers, such as abductors and molesters, sex killers and paedophile rings.

Victims of sex crimes got fresh respect “as the new view asserted the devastating and lifelong consequences of even brief or isolated sexual impropriety committed against minors…” Jenkins points out that the emergence of the term “survivor” implies that victims have passed through a life-threatening experience and others had not been so fortunate to escape with their lives. These changes in social attitudes brought with them important legal consequences – child abuse experts and advocates who elicited evidence and prepared children for testimony believed that children’s testimony was almost universally truthful and accurate. Defendants were often presumed guilty rather than innocent by the media, if not by the judicial system. A flurry of new legislation of dubious constitutionality was passed by Congress as politicians learned that “no policy would be seen as too severe in combating a vast and unqualified evil like child abuse… while no political benefit was to be found in opposing or questioning such measures.”

Jenkins continues his examination of the “moral panic” with a chapter on “Child Pornography and Paedophile Rings” in which he points out that, despite a widespread fear and fury among the public about child pornography and paedophile rings, there has never been much credible evidence as to the existence of large-scale networks. He suggests, however, that “the twin dangers of paedophilia and child pornography provided powerful ammunition for conservative interests” The subsequent chapter, “The Road to Hell: Ritual Abuse and Recovered Memory” examines a subset of claims about paedophile rings. He asserts that by “about 1989, the idea that ritual abuse was quite common had almost acquired the status of social fact…” Here Jenkins evokes the Salem Witch Trials of 1692 for the first time and makes it clear that he blames therapists and over-eager prosecutors for giving credence to wild and implausible tales. Therapists take the blame, too, for validating “recovered memories.” Initially, the mass media often reported claims of “recovered memories” quite respectfully and gave enormous coverage to celebrities like Roseanne Barr and Oprah Winfrey who announced that such memories made them incest survivors. It was the same media, however, that began the reaction against this phenomenon so that their attacks on ritual abuse and recovered memory became commonplace.

Jenkins’ penultimate chapter, “Full Circle: The Return of the Sexual Predator in the 1990s”, argues that the concept of the sexual predator, whether as an individual lurking in the shadows of the playground or sitting at a computer monitor enticing youngsters, has become a standard fixture of the American national psyche. This eruption of fear, fuelled in large measure by extensive media coverage of a couple of abductions and subsequent murders of young girls, led to new federal legislation in the mid 1990s which requires “sex offenders” to register with the police and for their neighbours to be notified. Exaggerated claims about the amount of internet traffic devoted to pornography also led to rapid and unwise legislation. It is Jenkins’ contention, of course, that paedophiles and sexual predators are, despite common belief, a rare threat to the safety and security of America’s children.

In his concluding chapter, “A Cycle of Panic”, the author notes that the twentieth century cycles of “moral panic” may imply a regular cycle of elevated concern followed by relative inattention. Citing globalization of news and “the institutionalization of the child-protection idea in many aspects of social life,” however, Jenkins believes that the cycle has now been permanently broken and that “child abuse has become part of our enduring cultural landscape, a meta-narrative with the potential for explaining all social and personal ills.”

This work is not for the faint of heart. The book goes into considerable detail in presenting its hypothesis and, unless the reader relishes learning in detail about the history and development of sex offences in the United States, it will prove distinctly challenging. It should, however, be required reading for politicians, journalists, members of the legal profession, the police and social workers who all need the capacity to reflect upon how “moral panic” can colour their perceptions of reality.

Paul Brian Campbell, S.J., teaches mass communication at Le Moyne College, Syracuse, New York.