‘Ready for the Next Wave of Sex Abuse Hysteria?’ by Carey Roberts

In 1994 a Child Protective Services official instructed his employees to dig up child sex abuse cases to justify the agency’s budget. Before long 43 parents and Sunday school teachers in Wenatchee, Wash. had been arrested and charged with nearly 30,000 cases of sex abuse involving 60 children. It wasn’t until four years and many ruined lives later that the Wenatchee witch hunt was exposed as a fraud.

A decade later, we seem to be on the verge of another moral panic involving sex abuse, but this time with a new wrinkle: its perpetrators are as young as four years old.

Last year a pre-schooler in Waco, Tex. hugged a female aide as he boarded the school bus. The four-year-old’s embrace lingered a bit long, and soon the boy was required to defend himself from a charge of sexual harassment. The scarlet letter of “inappropriate physical contact” is now stamped on the child’s school records.

‘Ready for the Next Wave of Sex Abuse Hysteria?’ ...

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