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As a special case of the downward trend in homicide and forcible rape beginning in the early 1990s, from 1990 to 2004, sexual abuse of minors steadily declined by 49%, reversing an upward trend from the 15 years before 1990; and from 1993 to 2004, sexual assaults against 12 to 17 year-olds steadily declined by 67%. See Finkelhor & Jones (2006) (free PDF here) for a review of the data, why they are real declines, and some proposed explanations. Also see Wolak et al. (2008) (free PDF here) for a review of the fact and fiction about internet sexual predators — in particular, it appears that most sexual relationships involving teenage females that began with internet contact are voluntary (although still statutory rape if the female is under the age of consent), often repeated, and that the males rarely use deception. Unwholesome, but not what you see on To Catch a Predator.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but the recent panic that the mass media have been fueling about “sexual predators” is horseshit. For the same methodological reasons as in this post on the rape hysterias, I look at data on the popularity of the “sexual predator” theme in the New York Times. It is the opposite of the prediction from a “following the beat” view of journalistic practice, instead fitting a “spreading an unfounded rumor” view. I propose a simple model and estimate the annual growth rate of the rumor. First, let’s see how many articles were written in the NYT in a given year that contained “sexual predator,” “sex predator,” or the plural forms of these two terms.
Here is a graph:
Right away we observe that the coverage is completely outta whack with the crime statistics on the ground: the phrases first appear in 1966, but there is essentially no coverage up through 1980, a moderate increase until 1990, and an explosion of articles starting around 1990. Because the increase in coverage cannot be explained by a rational response to easily discovered crime statistics, we conclude that it is an irrational “moral panic” — if the sexual predator did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him.
Going further, let’s look at the data from 1981 to 2007. I start with 1981 because that is the first year when at least 2 articles appear — 1 article every 5 or 10 years you could write off as flukes — and I drop 2008 since the year is not done yet:
Of the typical curves used to fit data, here the exponential does the best: r^2 = 0.8772, and there is a theoretical reason to expect exponential growth. Actually, a quadratic curve improves r^2 by 0.0037, but that’s not very much, and it doesn’t illuminate what’s going on. By setting 1981 equal to t = 1, and calling the number of articles N, the curve above is:
N(t) = 0.8896*exp(0.1665*t) – 1
So, the estimated annual growth rate is 0.1665.
An exponential function solves a differential equation of the form:
dN/dt = r*N
In words, the rate of increase in the number of articles is directly proportional to the current number of articles, where r is the growth rate we just estimated above. This says that somehow each article begets more articles which beget more articles. This is how a rumor spreads, although “articles written” are technically not the same thing as “people who have heard the rumor.” Perhaps in the future the number of articles will saturate at some level, and we will have to re-model it using logistic growth. Or the meme could become unfashionable and the number will plummet to 0, in which case we’d use a boom-and-bust model. These two more realistic models are variations on the S-I-R model of the spread of contagious diseases, the only difference being whether the “infected” people can lose their infectivity or stay infected forever.
Clearly the unlimited exponential growth model is inadequate because the total number of articles in all of the NYT is bounded, so the articles written on “sexual predators” cannot increase without bound. But since their number has not saturated yet (logistic model) or crashed downward (boom-and-bust model), we can’t decide between the two more plausible models, let alone estimate the related parameters (like the steady-state number of articles in the logistic model). What is important here is that we have shown that the popularity of the “sexual predator” idea behaves like a rumor and takes on a life of its own or fuels its own growth.
To wrap up, the panic over “sexual predators” is a lot like the Early Modern witch-hunts, which could not have succeeded without mass communication to spread the rumors of well-to-do worry-warts. Because it’s easier to swallow rumors than to investigate them, there’s a clear incentive for most reporters to do just that. And most of the blogosphere too, for that matter. The desire to know is just not uniformly distributed among the population, even among the affluent sectors. That’s something to consider any time you find yourself parroting the hype — if it were based on good work, then it would pay to buy into it. But most journalists are too stupid, lazy, credulous, or moralistic to figure out what’s going on. And most of the blogosphere too, for that matter.
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Just an addendum. You can tell, but to be explicit, I shifted each point up by 1 when I fit the exponential curve, since Excel complains otherwise. This doesn’t affect the growth rate at all, and I corrected for this via the “minus 1” tacked onto the equation for N(t), to shift it back down.
I thing your thesis is right, the level of media ¨predator¨ panic is unrelated or inversely proportional to the frequency of actual predatory acts.
My comment refers to the methodology employed. Words become fashionable and then disappear. The word “Predator” applied to a human being was unknown two decades ago, and only recently became popular and frequent in the press. It is quite possible that the underlying phenomenon did exist before but there was no word to define it, or another word was used for it. The frequency of the word “predator” may have to do with the popularity of the word, a fashion, than public preoccupation with the real thing.
Also the figures should be corrected for population and so on.
BTW, I think that the “predator” panic in its various forms is fomented by old single childless man-hating women.
Well, that’s what I mean by the “sexual predator” myth — if it’s a vague concept under another name, it’s not this myth. I know what you’re getting at — like how “toilet” became “bathroom” and then “restroom” and then “the facilities.” The thing being referred to is exactly the same, but the name goes through fashion cycles.
I think it’s different with something vague, like a boogeyman, whereas everyone knows what a toilet is. It could be witches, devils, werewolves, etc. — kind of the same thing, but really separate myths.
You can try to correct for the “population” — the number of articles produced in a given year — to get a fraction, which is technically better, but that’s not really going to change much (and would be a bitch to found out the data). It’s not like they published no articles at all until 1990, and then their budget exploded. Rather, it was the number of articles on “sexual predators” that exploded.
Like how the articles about rape crisis centers declined during the 1990s — that wasn’t due to overall budget cuts that shrunk the size of the newspaper; it was due to less coverage.
BTW, I think that the “predator” panic in its various forms is fomented by old single childless man-hating women.
There are plenty of men on board too. Not just fathers — mostly busybodies. The same guys who crusade against violent video games, etc.
It’s a good point that the exponential growth might be in the use of the words “sexual predator” rather than the type of news article.
(You might expect that a new word will follow a logistic curve).
You could try looking at the frequencies of related words, to see if they all rise together.
It’s also worth noting that “secual predator” anxiety is often found together with Internet anxiety, and usage of the Internet has been rising rapidly.
I think I agree with the point you;re trying to make, but it might be worthwhile eliminating the obvious alternative explanations.
As one of many possibly hypotheses to explain the decline in child abuse, Finkelhor & Jones suggest the rise in prescribing rates of Prozac and other psychiatric drugs. Two possible mechanisms: (a) if depressed parents are more likely to abuse their children, reducing depression might reduce child abuse; (b) drugs with libido-reducing side-effects might reduce the number of sexual offenses.
“BTW, I think that the “predator” panic in its various forms is fomented by old single childless man-hating women.”
Really? Now that is an accusation that casts an improbably wide net. Almost as wide as the one of which you complain.
During my formative years, my favorite and most interesting adults were older, single (some anyway), childless women, but I don’t think they were man haters. Unplucked fruit indeed. Well–except for the nuns. However, any warnings they offered were best heeded indeed.
People most concerned about childrens’ internet use are people with children. There are older people who prey on children. The world should be grateful that yours truly was protected by a host of guardian angels, otherwise there might be another Dworkinite the world doesn’t need.
A little social history:
Parents and men in general have been warning boys about predatory females for eons of film noirs. Buggery has also cropped up quite a bit in various milieus hosting vulnerable boys.
Victorian popular culture was a hotbed for stories of defiled young–“The Maiden Sacrifice of Modern Babylon”, chronicalling child prostitution in London, ran as a series in major British newspapers in the 1870s. While I doubt this was really more common than at other times of history, we now can hardly think of Victorians without thinking hypocrite, in spite of the fact that they instituted more genuine humane reforms than any age prior.
Yet there was a superstition that intercourse with virgins would cure VD, something still believed in Africa where the rape of girls and very small children is horrifyingly common. One can only wish that this is an exaggeration but sadly it is not.
Ads in the Ladies Home Journal, circa 1925, warned of predatory — I think they did actually use that word, or one very similar — encounters resulting in pregnancy or VD. No different in essence from today. In a reasonably civil society, one maintains a sense of perspective on the matter. No-fun moral guides used to warn against being hypnotized by looks and allure, to search for the character behind the facade. We just can’t do that with an internet porn action figure, but you get the idea.
So–where was I–oh yes. j.
Now j. While you may have knowledge of statistical probability, get a grip on the stereotypes–someone just might think you’re a bitter old man.
As one of many possibly hypotheses to explain the decline in child abuse, Finkelhor & Jones suggest the rise in prescribing rates of Prozac and other psychiatric drugs. Two possible mechanisms: (a) if depressed parents are more likely to abuse their children, reducing depression might reduce child abuse; (b) drugs with libido-reducing side-effects might reduce the number of sexual offenses.i>
This is really interesting. According to Finkelhor and Jones, incidences of sexual abuse declined by 53% beginning in 1992. According to the Third National Incidence Study of Child Abuse and Neglect there was a 357% rise in the incidence rate of sexual abuse between 1980 and 1993. So it looks at first glance like rates surged in the 80s, peaked in the early 90s and have declined moderately since. I wonder what drove the increase in the 80s?
Whoops, sorry about the italics… first paragraph in previous post is a quote, second is mine.
Probably something general — forcible rape rates (from the Bureau of Justice Stats) increased during the 1980s, homicide increased or plateaued at a high level, etc. And they were already increasing by 1980 — starting in the late ’50s or early ’60s.
Also, there doesn’t have to be some triggering event. It’s possible that the model describing what’s going on will have periodic solutions, like predatory-prey or host-parasitoid models. So the internal workings of the criminal-victim or criminal-copper dynamics will bring about rises and falls in the crime rate, regardless of exogenous events.
Two possible mechanisms: (a) if depressed parents are more likely to abuse their children, reducing depression might reduce child abuse; (b) drugs with libido-reducing side-effects might reduce the number of sexual offenses.
Prozac and similar drugs are also used to reduce the intensity of compulsions for people with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. I think a significant subset of the more moderate forms of child sexual abuse (i.e. fondling) might be due to a Tourette’s-style compulsion, not a real attempt at sexual gratification. One of my immediate, adult relatives molested me on several occassions when I was a child (don’t worry, this isn’t going to turn into an Oprah-style sob story) and from what I remember, he was acting compulsively when he did so and seemed to get a psychological release, but no sexual satisfaction, from the act. Tourette’s and Obsessive Compulsive Disorder run in that side of my family. From what I understand about Tourette’s, in its most severe form it compels people to do things they feel are wrong or taboo, like scream profanities in public. So maybe in some people it expresses itself in a compulsion to touch a child in a way they know is wrong and taboo. Of course, having said that I should add that none of this anecdotally based speculation is meant to excuse the perpetrator of such acts or gloss over the consequences of sexual abuse to a child. But it would be interesting and potentially beneficial to study what disorders, if any, are found at higher-than-normal frequenices in families where one member has been found guilty of seuxally abusing a child.
Agnostic, I thought you were going to disprove the myth that ‘an average child molestor has N victims. X% of molested children grow up to be molestors themselves.’ Of course, that can’t be true independent of a strong causal relationship between being the kind of person who will later become a child molestor and being molested. Which is a direction of causality we can’t dismiss automatically, but is not consistent with the blank slate.
If molesting children created future molestors, we would see an exponential rise in both molestors and victims. As far as I know, that doesn’t actually happen.
Maybe there is a basic background anxiety in the population, which is channeled by the media into ¨fashionable¨ hysteries. In the fifties there were many stories of young females being kidnapped by aliens and bodily explored. These stories vaned and new ones took their places. A few years ago it was internet predators, then we dont hear about that. Next will be Muslim occultists forcibly circumcizing Christian girls. Or something the public will find ¨sexy¨ & believable.
It is always powerful males attacking defenseless innocent females. That is why I wrote that I suspect that these hysteries find their vectors in bitter childless females. However, it could be that in addition to my being a bitter old man, I am also am wrong.
Agnostic. A little off topic here, but do you think the evidence indicates that the mean number of sexual partners (per American) has been on a down swing over the past decade and a half? It seems like a lot of the evidence you’ve brought in previous posts (decling STDs, less teen pregnancy, etc.) would point in that direction for the present day youth cohort.
do you think the evidence indicates that the mean number of sexual partners (per American) has been on a down swing over the past decade and a half?
Yeah, search our archives for “your generation was sluttier” — there’s a link to data from the CDC, or maybe they just reported on it, showing that the percent of teenagers with more than 4 (or 5?) partners has been declining since around 1990.
That suggests the mean # of partners is decreasing for teens, although I don’t know about for older people.
Well then I guess the “hooking up” epidemic is probably something that hit its peak at least a couple of decades ago, but has since subsided. Based on the data, the mothers of present day teenagers/early 20 somethings probably did more hooking up than their kids. So perhaps that explains why so many parents are ready to believe the media hysteria.
On a related note, most of the studies I’ve seen put the median lifetime # of sexual partners in the 2-4 range (more like ~2) and the mode at 1. So apparently even in the post-1960s sexual revolution era, monogamy is still alive and well (though traditional Western Christian norms on marriage and family have lost much of their influence).