Children and Rape
This is one of my many unpublished cranky Letters to the Editor of the New York Times. There had been a horrible rape in a Harlem public middle school committed by preteen boys against a little girl. Michael Garber wrote in to point out that the rape was not an isolated incident, but part of a huge pattern of sexual violence by youth throughout the country. That’s certainly true, but I found his reasoning about why this pattern exists to be less satisfactory.
To the editor:
Re Michael Garber’s letter to the editor on 20 April 2000: I am glad that someone has written to point out that the horrific school rape in Harlem was not just an isolated incident, but rather part of a much larger social pattern of sexual violence.
I am less glad about his notion that some of the primary causes of this
sexual violence are exposure to sexualized behavior from television,
movies, ads
and from seeing adults having sex, and equating their effects
along the way to the effects of rape of children by adults.
Garber seems to believe that any portrayal of sexual behavior seen by pre-adolescents somehow corrupts innocent little minds into bestial rapists. In fact, what enables such crimes to happen is the systematic regime of degradation of and violence towards women, which unfortunately is often played out in television, movies, and ads. Rape committed by adults is the most extreme and violent end of this spectrum.
Working towrads helping aggressors is an important part of a solution. But the problem itself will never be cured until sex is no longer portrayed as a weapon used by men against women.
Charles W. Johnson
Kalamazoo, Michigan, 20 April 2000
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