Child Molestation and Homosexuality

Dr. Cameron is Chairman of the Family Research Institute of Colorado Springs, Colorado USA. Click here for more information about this organization. You may contact him at: Family Research Institute, PO Box 62640, Colorado Springs, CO 80962 USA. Phone number: (303) 681-3113.

Ann Landers ⁽¹⁾ says the statement “Homosexuals are more inclined to molest children sexually than heterosexuals” is false. The American Psychological Association has sponsored a work that asserts: “Recognized researchers in the field on child abuse,… almost unanimously concur that homosexual people are actually less likely to approach children sexually.” ⁽²⁾

Why is it, then, that we read about sex between boys and men in every newspaper? Does it merely reflect sensationalist journalism? We know that heterosexual molestation also occurs. But since there are so many more heterosexuals than homosexuals, which kind of child molestation – homosexual or heterosexual – is proportionately more common?

The Scientific Evidence
Three kinds of scientific evidence point to the proportion of homosexual molestation: 1) survey reports of molestation in the general population, 2) surveys of those caught and convicted of molestation, and 3) what homosexuals themselves have reported. These three lines of evidence suggest that the 1%-to-3% of adults who practice homosexuality ⁽³⁾ account for between a fifth and a third of all child molestation.

Reports of Molestation by the General Population
In 1983, a probability survey of the sexual experiences of 4,340 adults in 5 U.S. cities found that about 3% of men and 7% of women reported sexual involvement with a man before the age of 13⁴ (i.e., 30% was homosexual).

In 1983- (4), a random survey of 3,132 adults in Los Angeles found that 3.8% of men and 6.8% of women said that they had been sexually assaulted in childhood. Since 93% of the assailants were male, and only 1% of girls had been assaulted by females, about 35% of the assaults were homosexual. ⁽⁵⁾

The Los Angeles Times ⁽⁶⁾ surveyed 2,628 adults across the U.S. in 1985. 27% of the women and 16% of the men claimed to have been sexually molested. Since 7% of the molestations of girls and 93% of the molestations of boys were by adults of the same sex, about 4 of every 10 molestations in this survey were homosexual.

In a random survey of British 15-to-19 yr olds, 35% of the boys and 9% of the girls claimed to have been approached for sex by adult homosexuals and 2% of the boys and 1% of the girls admitted to succumbing. ⁽⁷⁾

In science, a review of the professional literature published in a refereed scientific journal is considered to be an accurate summary of the current state of knowledge. The latest such review was published in 1985. ⁽⁸⁾ It concluded that homosexual acts were involved in 25% to 40% of the cases of child molestation recorded in the scientific and forensic literature.

Surveys of Those Convicted
Drs Freund and Heasman
(9) of the Clarke Institute of Psychiatry in Toronto reviewed two sizeable studies and calculated that 34% and 32% of the offenders against children were homosexual. In cases they had personally handled, homosexuals accounted for 36% of their 457 paedophiles.

Dr. Adrian Copeland, a psychiatrist who works with sexual offenders at the Peters Institute in Philadelphia, said (¹⁰⁾ that, from his experience, paedophiles tend to be homosexual and “40% to 45%” of child molesters have had “significant homosexual experiences.”

Dr. C. H. McGaghy ⁽¹¹⁾ estimated that “homosexual offenders probably constitute about half of molesters who work with children.” Other studies are similar:

– Of the approximately 100 child molesters in 1991 at the Massachusetts Treatment Centre for Sexually Dangerous Persons, a third were heterosexual, a third bisexual and a third homosexual in orientation. ⁽¹²⁾

– A state-wide survey of 161 Vermont adolescents who committed sex offences in 1984 found that 35 (22%) were homosexual. (¹³⁾

– Of the 91 molesters of non-related children at Canada’s Kingston Sexual Behaviour Clinic from 1978-1984, 38 (42%) engaged in homosexuality. ⁽¹⁴⁾

– Of 52 child molesters in Ottawa from 1983 to 1985, 31 (60%) were homosexual. (¹⁵)

– In England for 1973, 802 persons (8 females) were convicted of indecent assault on a male, and 3,006 (6 of them female) were convicted of indecent assault on a female (i.e., 21% were homosexual). 88% of male and about 70% of female victims were under age sixteen. ⁽¹⁶⁾

Because of this pattern, Judge J. T. Rees concluded that “the male homosexual naturally seeks the company of the male adolescent, or of the young male adult, in preference to that of the fully-grown man. [In 1947] 986 persons were convicted of homosexual and unnatural offences. Of those, 257 were indictable offences involving 402 male victims…. The great majority of [whom]… were under the age of 16. Only 11%… were over 21.”

“[T]he problem of male homosexuality is in essence the problem of the corruption of youth by itself [i.e., by other boys] and by its elders. [And thereby]… the creation… of new addicts ready to corrupt a still further generation of young men and boys in the future.” ⁽¹⁷⁾

What Homosexuals Admit
The 1948 Kinsey survey found that 37% of the gays and 2% of the lesbians admitted to sexual relations with under-17-yr-olds, and 28% of the gays and 1% of the lesbians admitted to sexual relations with under-16-yr-olds while they themselves were aged 18 or older. ⁽¹⁸⁾

In 1970 the Kinsey Institute interviewed 565 white gays in San Francisco: 25% of them admitted to having had sex with boys aged 16 or younger while they themselves were at least 21. ⁽¹⁹⁾

In The Gay Report, 23% of the gays and 6% of the lesbians admitted to sexual interaction with youth less than 16 years of age. ⁽²⁰⁾

In France, 129 convicted gays (²¹⁾(average age 34 years) said they had had sexual contact with a total of 11,007 boys (an average of 85 different boys per man). Abel et al reported similarly that men who molested girls outside their family had averaged 20 victims each; those who molested boys averaged 150 victims each. (²²⁾

Summary
About a third of the reports of molestation by the populace have involved homosexuality. Likewise, between a fifth and a third of those who have been caught and/or convicted practiced homosexuality. Finally, a fifth to a third of surveyed gays admitted to child molestation. All-in-all, a rather consistent story.

Teacher-Pupil Sexual Interaction
Nowadays parents are labelled bigots for fearing that homosexual teachers might molest their children. But if homosexuals are more apt to molest children and are in a position to take advantage of them, this fear makes sense. Indeed, accounts of disproportionate homosexual teacher molestation appear throughout the scientific literature.

The original U.S. Kinsey study reported that 4% of the non-criminal white gays and 7% of the non-criminal white lesbians reported that they had their first homosexual experience with a ‘teacher or other caretaker.’ None of the heterosexuals were recorded as having a teacher as their first sex partner. ⁽¹⁸⁾

In England, Schofield reported that at least 2 of his 150 homosexuals had their first homosexual experience with a teacher and an additional 2 reported that their first homosexual contact with an adult was with a teacher. One of the 50 men in his comparison group had also been seduced by a homosexual teacher, while none of the men interviewed claimed involvement with a heterosexual teacher. ⁽²³⁾

In the 1978 McCall’s magazine study of 1,400 principals, ⁽²⁴⁾ 7% reported complaints about homosexual contact between teachers and pupils and 13% reported complaints about heterosexual contact between teachers and pupils (i.e., 35% of complaints were homosexual). 2% “knew of instances in which teachers discussed their homosexuality in class.”

Of 400 consecutive Australian ⁽²⁵⁾ cases of molestation, 7 boys and 4 girls were assaulted by male teachers. Thus 64% of those assaults were homosexual.

In 1987, Dr. Stephen Rubin, associate professor of psychology at Whitman College, conducted a 10 state survey ⁽²⁶⁾ and found 199 sexual abuse cases involving teachers. 122 male teachers had abused female pupils and 14 female teachers had abused male students. In 59 cases, however, male teachers had abused male pupils and in 4 cases female teachers had abused female students (overall 32% were homosexual).

A 1983 survey asked 4,340 adults to report on any sexual advances and any physical sexual contact by elementary and secondary teachers (4% of those who were teachers in the survey claimed to be bisexual or homosexual).⁴ 29% of the advances by elementary and 16% of the advances by secondary school teachers were homosexual. In addition, 1 of 4 (25%) reports of actual sexual contact with an elementary school teacher were homosexual. In high school, 8 (22%) of 37 contacts between teacher and pupil were homosexual. 18% reported having had a homosexual teacher (8% of those over the age of 55 vs. 25% of those under 26). Of those reporting a homosexual teacher, 6% said that the teacher influenced them to try homosexuality and 13% of the men and 4% of the women said that the teacher made sexual advances toward them.

Summary
Whether examining surveys of the general populace or counts of those caught, homosexual teachers are disproportionately apt to become sexually involved with children.

Proportionality: The Key
Study after nationwide study (³⁾ has yielded estimates of male homosexuality that range between 1% and 3%. The proportion of lesbians in these studies is almost always lower, usually about half that of gays. So, overall, perhaps 2% of adults regularly indulge in homosexuality. Yet they account for between 20% to 40% of all molestations of children.

Child molestation is not to be taken lightly. Officials at a facility which serves about 1,500 runaway youngsters each year estimate that about half of the boys have been homosexually abused and 90% of the girls heterosexually assaulted. ⁽²⁷⁾ Investigation of those suffering severe chronic mental illness implicates child molestation as a primary cause (45% of Bigras et al’s ⁽²⁸⁾ patients were homosexually abused).

If 2% of the population is responsible for 20% to 40% of something as socially and personally troubling as child molestation, something must be desperately wrong with that 2%. Not every homosexual is a child molester. But enough gays do molest children so that the risk of a homosexual molesting a child is 10 to 20 times greater than that of a heterosexual.

Goals of the Gay Movement
The gay movement is forthright about seeking to legitimize child-adult homosexual sex. In 1987, The Journal of Homosexuality – the scholarly organ of the gay rights movement – published “Pedophilia and the Gay Movement.” ⁽²⁹⁾ Author Theo Sandfort detailed homosexual efforts to end “oppression towards paedophilia.” In 1980 the largest Dutch gay organization (the COC) “adopted the position that the liberation of paedophilia must be viewed as a gay issue… [and that] ages of consent should therefore be abolished… by acknowledging the affinity between homosexuality and paedophilia, the COC has quite possibly made it easier for homosexual adults to become more sensitive to erotic desires of younger members of their sex, thereby broadening gay identity.”

In 1990 COC achieved a significant victory: lowering of the age of consent for homosexual sex in Holland to 12 (unless the parents object, in which case it goes up to 15). ⁽³⁰⁾ In the U.S. and Canada, the North American Man-Boy Love Association marches proudly in many gay pride parades with the stated goal of removing the barriers to man-boy sex. Note the phrases “oppression towards paedophilia” and “liberation of paedophilia.” It is clear that those who advocate the legalization of sex between adults and children intend to argue that such conduct is a “civil right,” deserving of the same legal protections afforded to other minorities. A large proportion of Americans regard that argument as a mere pretext to giving “sexual predators” free reign to take advantage of vulnerable children.

Conclusion
Not only is the gay rights movement upfront in its desire to legitimize sex with children, but whether indexed by population reports of molestation, paedophile convictions, or teacher-pupil assaults, there is a strong, disproportionate association between child molestation and homosexuality. Ann Landers’ claim that homosexuals molest children at no higher a rate than heterosexuals do is untrue. The assertion by gay leaders and the American Psychological Association that a homosexual is less likely than a heterosexual to molest children is patently false

 

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