#WARONMEN: Boys in Custody and the Women Who Abuse Them.
The older authority figure wins the trust of the young target by cultivating a false friendship, having heart-to-heart conversations, giving gifts, offering protection. And then the sex ensues, sometimes forced, sometimes seemingly consensual.
It is a classic predatory tactic known as “grooming,” and no one familiar with it could have been terribly surprised when a new report from the U.S. Department of Justice declared that young people in the country’s juvenile detention facilities are being victimized in just this way. The youngsters in custody are often deeply troubled, lacking parents, looking for allies. And the people in charge of the facilities wield great power over the day-to-day lives of their charges.
What was a genuine shock to many was the finding that in the vast majority of instances, it was female staff members who were targeting and exploiting the male teens in their custody.
It’s a shock because modern views of gender are based on fantasy. More:
Drawing on their sample, Justice Department researchers estimate that 1,390 juveniles in the facilities they examined have experienced sex abuse at the hands of the staff supervising them, a rate of nearly 8 percent. Twenty percent who said they were victimized by staff said it happened on more than 10 occasions. Nine out of 10 victims were males abused by female staff.
Expect minimal outrage from the usually-outraged.
UPDATE: A reader emails:
Not only does shock at the idea of women abusing boys reveal a gender bias against men, I think it points out another potential factor in the War on men Dr. Helen writes so eloquently about.
As the father of 5 sons, the oldest of whom are big, strong, and well-spoken (we home school), I noticed something starting a few years ago-
Liberal women fear my sons. Not disapprove of, fear.
And it isn’t the size or the strength, it is the confidence.
Is part of the War on Men a fear of, well, grown men? Is there actually an increase in grown women preying on boys sexually because these women fear adult men?
Call it “Androphobia.” Helen talks about this a bit in her book, and there is some evidence for the fear, if not for its motivation toward abuse. Related item here. “When you approach me in public, you are Schrödinger’s Rapist. You may or may not be a man who would commit rape. I won’t know for sure unless you start sexually assaulting me. I can’t see inside your head, and I don’t know your intentions. If you expect me to trust you—to accept you at face value as a nice sort of guy—you are not only failing to respect my reasonable caution, you are being cavalier about my personal safety.”
Ever since Susan Browmiller and Catharine MacKinnon spread the idea that all men are rapists, women’s “liberation” seems to have produced an awful lot of pearl-clutching types. And it certainly doesn’t seem a big stretch to imagine that someone pathologically afraid of adult males might instead pursue underage boys over whom she possesses great power.
ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Michael Chaplin emails: “If only these prison guards were allowed to marry, not required to be celibate like Catholic priests. Then the boys wouldn’t fall prey to this institutionalized sexual abuse. Oh, they are allowed to marry? I guess being celibate has nothing to do with it, then.”