Moral Panic: Changing Concepts of the Child Molester in Modern America

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Moral Panic: Changing Concepts of the Child Molester in Modern America
Author Philip Jenkins
Subject20th century American history, child protection
Published1998
Publisher Yale University Press
Pages302 pp
ISBN 0-300-07387-9

Moral Panic: Changing Concepts of the Child Molester in Modern America is a 1998 American history book by American historian Philip Jenkins. The book analyses public reactions to child sexual abuse throughout the 20th century, the influence of child molestation scandals on American law and culture, and the effects of such scandals on the shifting popular and scientific beliefs regarding child sexual abuse and child sexuality throughout the century. [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] The book employs Stanley Cohen's and Stuart Hall's concept of moral panic to analyze such events related to child molestation in the 1910s, 1940s and 1980s. [6]

Contents

Moral Panic investigates three moral panics related to child molestation in the United States, the first of which occurred from 1908 to 1916, the second from 1935 to 1955, and the third which started in 1976 and continued to the end of the century. In the book, Jenkins describes how mass media, law-enforcement agencies, legislators and other social groups repeatedly exaggerated the threat of child sexual abuse in several periods of the 20th century. He also analyses newspapers, films, fiction books and other media to assess popular attitudes and beliefs regarding the dynamics of child sexual abuse and child sexuality. [4]

The book also examines a period of American history, lasting from the 1950s to the 1960s, in which child sexual abuse received less attention from popular media. [4] Jenkins states in the book that, in the early 1930s and throughout the 1960s, social sciences began supporting the idea that deviant sexual behaviors were not harmful to minors and, in the second period, downplayed the effects of sexual interactions between adults and underage people. In the 1970s, an event which he called the "child sexual abuse revolution" brought the issue of child sexual abuse back into prominence. The book covers the social reactions to child abductions in the 1970s and 1980s, child pornography and "pedophile rings" in the mid-1980s, the day-care sex-abuse panic, the satanic panic, internet sex rings and the moral panic over sexual predators in the 1990s. [1] [4] [3]

The book further describes how child sexual abuse concerns were used by American Conservatives in the 1990s to censor the Internet, persecute homosexuals and increase social control over the youth. [4] Jenkins also argues that U.S. states have infringed against suspects' basic constitutional rights and engaged in practices including shock therapy, psychosurgery, and psychotropic drugs. [1] He also covers the development of Megan's Law and investigates how child sexual abuse concerns played a role in the overturning of the rehabilitative criminal justice system of the United States in the 1980s. [3]

Related Research Articles

The Satanic panic is a moral panic consisting of over 12,000 unsubstantiated cases of Satanic ritual abuse starting in the United States in the 1980s, spreading throughout many parts of the world by the late 1990s, and persisting today. The panic originated in 1980 with the publication of Michelle Remembers, a book co-written by Canadian psychiatrist Lawrence Pazder and his patient, Michelle Smith, which used the controversial and now discredited practice of recovered-memory therapy to make claims about satanic ritual abuse involving Smith. The allegations, which arose afterward throughout much of the United States, involved reports of physical and sexual abuse of people in the context of occult or Satanic rituals. Some allegations involve a conspiracy of a global Satanic cult that includes the wealthy and elite in which children are abducted or bred for human sacrifice, pornography, and prostitution.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Moral panic</span> Fear that some evil threatens society

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Paul Cameron</span> American psychologist and extremist (born 1939)

Paul Drummond Cameron is an American psychologist. While employed at various institutions, including the University of Nebraska, he conducted research on passive smoking, but he is best known today for his claims about homosexuality. After a successful 1982 campaign against a gay rights proposal in Lincoln, Nebraska, he established the Institute for the Scientific Investigation of Sexuality (ISIS), now known as the Family Research Institute (FRI). As FRI's chairman, Cameron has written contentious papers asserting unproven associations between homosexuality and the perpetration of child sexual abuse and reduced life expectancy. These have been heavily criticized and frequently discredited by others in the field.

<i>The Courage to Heal</i> 1988 book by Ellen Bass and Laura Davis

The Courage to Heal: A Guide for Women Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse is a self-help book by poet Ellen Bass and Laura Davis that focuses on recovery from child sexual abuse and has been called "controversial and polarizing".

Day-care sex-abuse hysteria was a moral panic that occurred primarily during the 1980s and early 1990s, and featured charges against day-care providers accused of committing several forms of child abuse, including Satanic ritual abuse. The collective cases are often considered a part of the Satanic panic. A 1982 case in Kern County, California, United States, first publicized the issue of day-care sexual abuse, and the issue figured prominently in news coverage for almost a decade. The Kern County case was followed by cases elsewhere in the United States, as well as Canada, New Zealand, Brazil, and various European countries.

Philip Jenkins is a professor of history at Baylor University in the United States, and co-director for Baylor's Program on Historical Studies of Religion in the Institute for Studies of Religion. He is also the Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of Humanities Emeritus at Pennsylvania State University (PSU). He was professor and a distinguished professor of history and religious studies at the same institution; and also assistant, associate and then full professor of criminal justice and American studies at PSU, 1980–93.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Anti-pedophile activism</span> Form of activism

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Kathleen 'Kee' MacFarlane is an American social worker known for involvement in the high-profile McMartin preschool trial in the 1980s. She was the Director of Children's Institute International. She developed the concept of the anatomically correct doll for children to use during interviews concerning abuse and played a significant role in the McMartin trial. MacFarlane has been criticized for her methods of interrogating small children. Charges against the defendants were eventually dropped.

Valerie Sinason is a British poet, writer, psychoanalyst and psychotherapist who is known for promoting the idea that people with a developmental disability can benefit from psychoanalysis and also that satanic ritual abuse is widely practiced in the UK. She ran the workshop dealing with intellectual disability at the Tavistock Clinic for twenty years and also worked for 16 years as a consultant research psychotherapist at St George's Hospital Medical School. She is a Trustee of the Institute for Psychotherapy and Disability.

Elizabeth Laura Mullinar is a London-born former film casting consultant. She is one of the founders of Advocates for Survivors of Child Abuse and is the Founder of the Heal For Life Foundation and created the TREE Model of Trauma Recovery. Mullinar is regarded as an expert in the field of trauma. In 2019, she presented the TREE model at the International Congress of Trauma and Attachment alongside other trauma experts including American Psychiatrist Daniel J. Siegel, and British Psychoanalyst Peter Fonagy OBE.

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Homosexual seduction is the pseudoscientific conspiracy theory which suggests homosexuality is spread through intergenerational sex, and that older homosexuals aim to change the sexual orientation of previously heterosexual youth by seducing them. It is related to the LGBT grooming conspiracy theory, the discredited acquired homosexuality theory, the gay agenda conspiracy theory, and the drag panic phenomenon.

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The missing children panic was a moral panic concerning child abduction and murder by strangers in the United States. The event was triggered after the abduction of Etan Patz in 1979 and the kidnapping and murder of Adam Walsh in 1981, with subsequent media reports exaggerating and misrepresenting child abduction statistics. The panic popularized the misleading claim that 1.5 million children per year disappeared or were abducted in the United States, introduced the stranger danger narrative into public discourse and intensified tropes relating to the sexual predation and murder of boys by homosexuals in American culture, especially after the publicization of gay serial killers Ottis Toole, John Wayne Gacy and Randy Kraft.

References

  1. 1 2 3 Ryan, P. J. (2001-12-01). "Moral Panic: Changing Concepts of the Child Molester in Modern America. By Philip Jenkins (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1998. xii plus 302pp.)". Journal of Social History. 35 (2): 511–513. doi:10.1353/jsh.2001.0138. ISSN   0022-4529.
  2. ↑ Jenness, V. (2001-03-01). "Moral Panic: Changing Concepts of the Child Molester in Modern America. By Philip Jenkins. Yale University Press, 1998. 302 pp. Cloth, $30.00". Social Forces. 79 (3): 1208–1211. doi:10.1353/sof.2001.0011. ISSN   0037-7732.
  3. 1 2 3 Fass, Paula (1999). "Philip Jenkins. Moral Panic: Changing Concepts of the Child Molester in Modern America. New Haven: Yale University Press. 1998. Pp. xii, 302. $30.00". The American Historical Review. doi:10.1086/ahr/104.4.1319. ISSN   1937-5239.
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 Meyerowitz, Joanne (1999). "Moral Panic: Changing Concepts of the Child Molester in Modern America". The Journal of American History. 86 (2): 814. doi:10.2307/2567140.
  5. ↑ Oberschall, Anthony (1999). "Book Reviews Moral Panic: Changing Concepts of the Child Molester in Modern America . By Philip Jenkins. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1998. Pp. xii+302. $30.00". American Journal of Sociology. 105 (1): 315–317. doi:10.1086/210312. ISSN   0002-9602.
  6. ↑ Angelides, Steven (2004-03-23). "Historicizing Affect, Psychoanalyzing History". Journal of Homosexuality. 46 (1–2): 79–109. doi:10.1300/J082v46n01_02. ISSN   0091-8369.
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