One in Five...

I'm sick and tired of hearing the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children repeat the lie on radio, TV, the Internet, you name it, where the tagline you're expected to remember is "one in five children are sexually solicited online." This statistic is a giant lie, plain and simple! Why, you ask? The unspoken implication of this statement in the current social climate is that "one in five children is sexually solicited by an adult online." This is only implied, however, not explicitly stated, which is why NCMEC gets away with making the statement. They get to define what a "sexual solicitation" is. Are you read to dig into the truth behind the numbers?

Around 15% of the "children" surveyed for the study in question that fall into the "one in five" statistic were approached by adults in a more personal way, such as phone calls, sending gifts, or trying to set up a meeting. That leaves 85% of the "one in five" that were NOT PERSONALLY APPROACHED BY ADULTS. The majority of the "one in five" "sexual solicitations" came from other teens. OTHER TEENS.

Oh, you think that's all? No, it gets even dumber. The criteria required for "sexual solicitation" are outlined in the study exactly as follows: "[any] request to engage in sexual activities or sexual talk or give personal sexual information that were unwanted or, whether wanted or not, made by an adult." That's a pretty broad description, and talk between peers is not excluded at all. The question doesn't ask them if an adult requested a sexual encounter (or even just "a meeting") with them, it asked if they had received ANY sexual approaches from ANYONE over the Internet. Absolutely absurd.

You hear this "1 in 5" figure all over the place now, especially by those who wish to capitalize on your irrational fear of the Internet bogeyman. NCMEC cranks out "Each year, 1 in 5 children is sexually solicited online" like it's the Gospel. Manufacturers of parental control and security software hammer the figure as a component of their scare tactics to frighten you into buying their software instead of doing your job as a parent and supervising. Worst of all when it comes to exploitation of fear in this way has to be Computer Associates, whose ads run on non-stop loop in TigerDirect and CompUSA stores nationwide, featuring Ernie "registration is not about prevention, it's about regulation" Allen who runs the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, as well as John Walsh, whose son was never found and never determined to be the victim of a sexually motivated crime, but nevertheless has the Adam Walsh Act named after him, an act which is designed to make people feel good and make politicians look like they're doing something important, but not much that would actually lower sex crimes (and some aspects of the Adam Walsh Act actually increase the risk of convicted sex offenders recidivating).

More and more every day, I come to realize that the general public is being exploited far more than anyone else. False figures such as the infamous "one in five" are combined with anti-truths such as "sex offenders are at a high risk to reoffend" and "once a sex offender, always a sex offender." The unnamed, faceless "children" are the Universal Crowbar of the Stripping of Rights, by which any person can influence large numbers of people into agreeing wholeheartedly with things they never would have agreed to otherwise. Beyond sex crimes, the media at large is flooded with the most frigtening stories that can be found. If a brutal murder doesn't appear on the nightly news, they haven't done their job properly! Let's not even get started on the concept of a "War on Terror" or a "War on Drugs," the former being an abstract concept impossible to "fight" against and the latter being a war on Hispanic cultures more so than the drugs themselves (it's true: the prohibition of hemp and the name "marijuana" are products of anti-Hispanic racism in the early-to-mid-20th century. Look it up if you don't believe me!)

Many who read The Angry Offender are skeptical of what I say, because of these exact tactics being used to spread gross misinformation and misrepresentation of the sexual offense issues (and many others) in this country. Unfortunately, some peoples' heartstrings get the best of them, and rather than consider such facts as 600,000 sex offenders in a country of 306,000,000 people represents only 0.2% of the total population of the entire United States, they choose to lash out in fear at people like myself who would dare go against their feelings. If you are one of these people, I ask that you please set your emotions aside and at least consider the possibility that you feel the way you do because your feelings have been carefully exploited with surgical precision to get you into the frenzy you're in now, and the fact that approaching sex offense solutions on feelings and instincts alone only serves to INCREASE THE NUMBER OF SEX CRIMES. You are helping in your own indirect way to support the factors that cause precisely what you're so upset about: more sex crimes.

This "one in five" garbage is just the tip of the iceberg.

Questions? Comments? E-mail the Offender and let him know what you think!

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