I recently did research for a support group I am trying to build for teenage girls, what I found, upset me so badly that I was physically ill. According to nearly a dozen websites about pedophilia and sexual abuse in Western society  nearly 36% of the sex offenders are CHILDREN. “The number of youth coming to the attention of police for sex offenses increases sharply at age 12 and plateaus after age 14. Early adolescence is the peak age for offenses against younger children. Offenses against teenagers surge during mid to late adolescence, while offenses against victims under age 12 decline.” (US Dept of Justice, 2009) 

     Why are our children becoming so sexually violent? A lot of  offenders have been proven to been victims themselves. Today’s society is very over sexed, but now that I am aware of the effect this is having on our youth, I am terrified beyond belief. Most of us may still be a little skeptical of that number, but I can assure you the number is accurate. If anything it might be growing. For most people the definition of a pedophile can depend on perception. In a lot of cultures it is not against the law to have relations with a young child as long as they have gone through puberty. All of that is fact, however, here in the US it is considered to be wrong to have sexual relations with a child. Did you know that the average age of the models on most of the ads are between the ages of 12 and 16? Or that some modeling agencies may consider a young girl of 19 to be too old? That’s not that bad right? Unless….. Consider the fact that the featuring of nudity from a child model is considered art. Sooo images of a 12-year-old dressed very sexually and posed, is not child porn so long as she is doing it for a magazine but if you take a pic of your daughter in a bikini and post it on Facebook it can be seen as suggestive.

     Over the course of the last few years more and more teen and young adolescents are being labeled as sex offenders. In Maryland just last year a 15-year-old was on trial for 12 counts of child porn after sending pictures of himself to another teen. This means parents, that gone were the days when we could say ‘kids will be kids’. We can no longer justify our young girls and men as experimenting and simply being kids. This is real. It is becoming an epidemic. A 18 year old in Arizona was convicted as a serial rapist for attacking nearly 18 young girls.  This young man wasn’t just your typical looking Jeffrey Dahmer type.  It is not just the creepy guy in the van, that we have to be aware of anymore. I would like to think that this young man was actually a fluke but he isn’t. All we have to do is look around us and we can find examples. Recently the web exploded with images of Jeremy Meeks the sexy felon that went viral. Young girls were so enamored by his face that they were willing to overlook the danger of his deeds. The responses and number of women boasting about wanting to help pay bail or be his girl, made me want to throttle them. Imagine if he were a rapist….. Does his looks excuse his behavior then?  In our minds the obvious answer may be no but to teen girls, they may not view rape as unforgivable as we did.

     I posted an article on here about the dangers of seeing our young girls as sexual beings. I even took time away from blogging to try to reach young teens due to the marked growth in domestic violence among them.We have to take action now before thinks go any further.  As parents let’s first turn off the sexual images that we see on TV, social media or even the radio. Simply be a parent, teacher or friend in that moment. Talk to your teens and children. Ask them if they have had any situations where they have been made to feel uncomfortable. Make sure our daughters and sons are not so busy looking for the man with horns that they miss the woman with the tail. Or the peer from class that was abused and now seeks to abuse. Understand that things are not like it was when we were kids. We have always had problems with sex offenders and teen sexuality, we did not have the level of indifference to personal accountability and safety that we do now.  Talk to your daughters BEFORE letting them go out, about the dangers of date rape and let her know that if it happens she can talk about it. Talk to your sons about the dangers of the supposed cougar or older woman who just wants to make him a man.

The other night I was trying to find something to take my mind off of this horror when while perusing Netflix I came upon this movie. “Are All Men Pedophiles“. I had a lump in my throat already from the different websites that talked about child sexuality, but after watching that video I was literally in tears. I had to disprove it. I went on a full search that led into to the early in the morning. I wanted to find evidence to debunk these preposterous claims. I cried because I could not find anything. We have allowed our society to become over sexed and as a result we as a society can not distinguish whom among us are the real predators.

     In the documentary above one of the doctors above actually postulated that in the not so distant future pedophilia may actually be considered as an orientation much like homosexuality was. The difference as she stated was that the person must not act on the urges. I thought about that all night and morning. It just would not leave my mind. Because in the video there were a few pedophiles that were married and openly admitted to having sexual fantasies about children. Does being open about it make it OK? The documentary did not say so but it seemed to me that the people who appeared on camera thought so.  So should they be listed as sex offenders still if they have not technically committed a crime?

     We are going after children for posting pictures yet we (adults),  continue to glorify sexuality in everything they see. Reality TV shows, movies, games, music, internet, social media all of these things are all pretty much dominated by sex. Even some of our supposed Disney and kid friendly programming are still have the hint of sex. To be honest the way that we are going are we not making it easy for the true pedophile to be more tempted to be an offending pedophile? He/she can simply turn on the TV or go outside and we are literally handing our children up as sacrificial lambs.  Our children see us doing the same things that we tell them not to. We have become hypocrites in our own homes and then we wonder why they no longer listen to us. Are they becoming so violent because we are violent?

What can we do? How can we stop this epidemic? This nightmare has to end….. It’s time to WAKE UP!