Pedophiles are men whose sexual wishes and desires for relationship bonds and love are focused either primarily or exclusively on children who have not reached puberty, whereby the relative importance of each of these three areas—sexuality, relationship, and love— may vary, as it does with other people as well. (Schmidt 473)
Sexuality is defined in many ways, for the sake of this papers clarity sexuality will be defined as, sexual feelings and interactions that are defining features of romantic intimacy. (Fering 2009) Child sexual abuse (CSA) is defined in the International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences as "any [sexual] action that is inflicted upon or must be tolerated by a child against their own will or any [sexual] action about which the child cannot make a decision due to their physical, emotional, mental, and verbal inferiority." Statistics for the prevalence of CSA range from anywhere from 15 to 25 percent of women to 5 to 10 percent of men according to Deegener. (2002)
On June 28, 1990, Mark E. Jones, a public school teacher from California, was charged with twenty-eight counts of lewd (lustful) conduct with four boys under the age of fourteen. Two of those boys, Sammy and Bobby, were his adopted sons and the other two boys, Andrew and Kenny, resided in the same neighborhood as him. Jones had oral intercourses with these children for two years before being arrested. In his trial, Jones denied the allegations and said that his two sons and Andrew were trying to accuse him of the molestation because he caught them performing the acts on each other (Jones). At the end of the trial, Jones was found guilty on twelve counts of lewd conduct, found not guilty of twelve counts, hung jury on three counts, and one count was dismissed before the trial. Jones was sentenced to 15 years in prison.
Fast, Elizabeth D. "Pedophilia and Sexual Offending against Children: Theory, Assessment and Intervention by Michael C. Seto, PhD, 2007, ISBN: 1-4338-0114-0." Children and Youth Services Review (2009). Print.
Child sexual abuse is forced, tricked, or coerced sexual behavior between a young person and an older person. Sexual abuse may consist of any one of the following acts: nudity, disrobing, genial exposer, observation of the child, kissing, fondling, masturbation, oral genital contact, child pornography, and vaginal or anal intercourse.
As reported in Child Maltreatment 2013, out of the estimated 905,000 victims of child abuse and neglect reported in the United States in 2013, 8.8% were victims of sexual abuse. 1 This means that in that year over 79,600 children were sexually abused in the United States. “There is general agreement among mental health and child protection professionals that child sexual abuse is not uncommon and is a serious problem in the United States.” 2
I believe all of this to be true, based on the simple fact that this is a subject that hits very close to home, and is very personal to me. I have been through this with someone very near and dear to my heart just recently, and the offender got to carry on with his life, just as nothing had ever happened. He attended after school activities, clubs, sporting events, dances, and even was allowed by his parents to continue dating and being alone with his girlfriends. I, as a parent, would like to be made aware that my child could very well be in serious danger.
Three quarters of all these criminals keep getting out and committing even more crimes. This cycle repeats itself over and over. You might ask yourself where the justice is for these victims. For some of them even death will not erase the pain and suffering they have been exposed to. I sincerely believe that some crimes are not punished enough. For instance, in the case of pedophiles, how is a lengthy prison sentence a just punishment? These monsters have stolen the innocence away from these kids. No matter how much counseling and love they receive, nothing will erase the horror of what they have endured. The pedophile is not suffering in the least sitting in prison. They are usually segregated from the rest of the prison population due to the fact that even the most hardened criminals hate pedophiles. (This in itself speaks volumes.) These monsters spend their time reading, listening to music, exercising, watching TV, getting and education. They get medical care, meals and clothing. All courtesy of the taxpayer. All the while the victim is living with the memory of the horror of what they have experienced. This kind of crime is one I believe should be a death penalty
All in all, juveniles should be punished and held accountable for their heinous crimes because they have enough knowledge of the common moral values, have the mental capacity to know what they are doing, and to bring some peace of mind to the loved ones of those lost by their hand. This rapidly growing outburst of juvenile crime rates needs to be accounted for and confronted in order to be put to an end. These heinous crimes they commit used to be taken by adults only; apparently, children now have become the people we only imagine in our worst nightmares that pertain to those in future charge of this world we live in. The country needs to take action and responsibility for these actions instead of neglecting the fact that someone needs to be accounted for the outburst that happen.
The kids know there situation. They know people are disrespect them. They are the subjects that police looking for. They want to escape, but they cannot. The pimps do not allow them to contract with any person. They cannot contract their parent to get back home. They cannot contract to society to get help. One girl says she wants to run away, but if she leaves, she has no place to go. Even they have to do sex industry for the pimps; the girls still think there are their homes. If they do not go with the pimps, they have no place to go. They want to be better, but there are no options.