Incidents of abuse lasting for long periods of time, usually across families of siblings as they each enter and leave the abuser’s preferred age-range, are a different stat than recidivism of convicts who were charged with child sexual abuse.

Unfortunately numbers for how often long-term child sexual abuse occurs in the population are not being easily found for me, so I’d have to research more than I’m willing to do at the moment. I doubt it’s epidemic.

Obviously long term abuse is a problem when it happens, though I’m pretty sure that the solution is not to treat every CSA perpetrator as the wicked stepfather who victimized all his step-daughters one by one. Or, for that matter, as someone like Jimmy Saville

In the case of Jimmy Saville, or, for that matter the Roman Catholic Church, or Woody Allen, or Jerry Sandusky, or whoever… these are people with resources and reputation who were active during an era in which the testimonies of children (or of adult child-victims) was often not believed when weighed against the words of the famous person they were accusing. And these famous people typically also had fortune enough to launch a legal counterattack. Bill Cosby’s transgressions (as a non-child-abuse example) were able to remain suppressed for a good part of a century, and they’re still not entirely believed.

Note the pedo-witch-hunts were sparked off by the whole McMartin preschool affair in 1983 and 1984 which depended on testimonies from children that were conducted by folks who didn’t realize children that young are highly suggestible, which is why their testimonies featured underground tunnels, Satanic Ritual Abuse, flying witches on broomsticks, hot-air balloon rides and Chuck Norris as one of the abusers. It resulted in acquittal. There may have been abuse, but whatever there was, it was obfuscated by the general desire for the allegations to be valid. One of the kids made a statement in 2005 denying any incidents of abuse. This also was pretty much the first time the public ever considered that diddling children might not actually be good for them. It was a rough start all around.

Famous people are pretty rare, let alone famous people who victimize children. So looking at the scandals of famous people is not a very good source from which to derive statistics for the general population.

Also, part of the problem is how child sexual abuse is defined, which is often for the convenience of the one talking about it, and whether you want to put someone away, or exonerate them.

Romeo and Juliet laws have been established nation wide in order to rule-out specific scenarios from being regarded as statutory rape (which is often a subcategory of CSA). It’s indicative that teens being prosecuted for sexting themselves maybe should not be regarded as CSA or the production / distribution of child-porn. That we’ve seen other manipulations of the law, for instance giving the same person child status for sake of determining that their photos are child-porn, then adult status for sake of eligibility to be tried, indicates that use of CSA is often in bad faith, just to ruin lives.

In the meantime, throughout the twentieth century, it was perfectly legal to marry a nine-year-old girl in many states with parental consent (which they often gave, if the groom was an upstanding figure in the local religious community), after which the child would be expected to engage in marital duties at nine. Only in the nineties have all fifty of state laws regarding early-age marriages have been adjusted at least to requiring the assessment of a family judge in the interests of all parties (including the child bride). But still, having sex with a child is not considered CSA if she’s married to you. (We also can’t say that child marriages have ceased, since we have counties in which other extralegal marriages occur, such as polygyny.).

Then there’s the case of Representative Mark Foley who was accused by his colleagues of child sexual abuse in 2006 for propositioning sixteen-year-old (male) pages. Inappropriate, yes, but not CSA. It was plenty enough to turn into a scandal. Maybe if he tried to coerce them, but I don’t believe he did.

But we have strong instincts to protect our urchins, especially from the kind of monsters that we think Bruce Willis should shoots in the face at the end of a movie. If an author puts an infant in Godzilla’s path, the whole universe will warp to assure that he doesn’t step on li’l miss pink-toes. But all that goes out the window when the children are the uncounted faceless that got lost on Alderaan. So really it sucks to be a kid in the US. We have ridiculous numbers homeless and starving. Most children only see their parent(s) exhausted after a full day’s work. Our schools have become militarized zero-tolerance penitentiaries. Foster care is a poorly-regulated nightmare. The bar for satisfactory childcare in the home has dropped to the ground, since the only alternative is to rehome kids to foster care or juvie. Child beauty pageants are still a thing. We still portray our children as sexual objects in our mainstream media. Our education system still doesn’t include consent or limits and boundaries, even though both of these concepts are useful not just in sexual negotiation, but day-to-day interaction, and would probably vastly reduce the rape problem. And then child rape victims are still regarded as used goods after the fact.

This list goes on and on, and this is just America (on the global scale, the human trafficking trade makes our local CSA issues look like a hoodlum stealing apples from the local produce. When your parents threatened to sell you to the gypsies, it was into this market. A white virginal American girl is particularly coveted and can fetch $25k). In the meantime, yeah, in this incident above, we’ll just convict the ones we can try as adults for distributing child porn and tag them like all other CSA perps as a sex offender. Do you think they deserve it? Do you think their scarlet letters will help them rehabilitate? And in the meantime, there are so many other ways in which we could be trying to make life better for kids, but aren’t.

Attacking pedophiles is easy so we do it a lot without a wit of interest in actual child-welfare issues. Making the United States a not-terrible place to be when you’re a kid involves actually dealing with children. And who wants to do that?