Foreword
1. These statistics appear in The Surgeon General's Call to Action to Promote Sexual Health and Responsible Sexual Behavior, a publication of the U.S. Public Health Service and the Department of Health and Human Services (Rockville, Md.: DHEW Publications, 2001).
2. Recent reports by the Kaiser Family Foundation state that in interviews 98 percent of parents thought sex education should include information about sexually transmitted diseases; 97 percent thought it should talk about abstinence; 90 percent said birth control should be discussed; and 85 percent said it should teach kids how to use condoms. The following two reports of the Kaiser Family Foundation provide this information: "The AIDS Epidemic at 20 Years: The View from America," A National Survey of Americans and HIV/AIDS (June 2001), and "Sex Education in America: A Series of National Surveys of Students, Parents, Teachers, and Principals" (September 2000).
3. Ralph J. Di Clemente, "Preventing Sexually Transmitted Infections among Adolescents: A Clash of Ideology and Science (Editorial)," Journal of the American Medical Association 279, no. 19 (20 May 1998): 1574-75.
4. Ira L. Reiss and Harriet M. Reiss, Solving America's Sexual Crisis (Amherst: Prometheus Books, 1997). My two immediate predecessors as Surgeon General, Antonia Novello and C. Everett Koop, had called for sex education and advocated the use of condoms. The call to action of our present Surgeon General, Dr. David Satcher, would also appear to be supportive.

Introduction
1. Whereas the assets of the richest 20 percent of Americans can keep them afloat for about two years without a paycheck (at the same level of spending) most of the middle class are able to last just over two months. The poorest 20 percent can't make it a day. Doug Henwood, "Wealth Report," Nation (April 9, 2001): 8.
2. Lauren Berlant, The Queen of America Goes to Washington City (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1997), 3.
3. Hillary Rodham Clinton, "Doing the Best for Our Kids," Newsweek, special issue, spring/summer 1997.
4. The average age at which girls show signs of puberty is just under nine for African American and just after ten for white American girls. Susan Gilbert, "Early Puberty Onset Seems Prevalent," New York Times, April 9, 1997. In 1990, the median age of first marriage for women was twenty-five; for men, it was twenty-seven. Sally C. Clarke, "National Center for Health Statistics Advance Report of Final Marriage Statistics, 1989 and 1990," Monthly Vital Statistics Report 43, no. 12 S1 (July 14, 1995).
5. This is true even when the groups are comparable in terms of family income, neighborhood, and so on. "Teen Sex and Pregnancy," Alan Guttmacher Institute report, September 1999; "Adolescent Sexual Behavior: I. Demographics" and "Adolescent Behavior: II. Socio-Psychological Factors," Advocates for Youth reports, Washington, D.C., 1997.
6. Kristin Luker, Dubious Conceptions: The Politics of Teenage Pregnancy (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1996), 89.
7. A more recent dip is being seen among boys but not among girls. "Trends in Sexual Risk Behaviors among High School Students—U.S. 1991-97," Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report 47 (September 18, 1998): 749-52.
8. "Teen Sex and Pregnancy," Alan Guttmacher Institute.
9. Luker, Dubious Conceptions, 9.
10. National Health and Social Life Survey of 1994. Freya L. Sonenstein et al., Involving Males in Preventing Teen Pregnancy (Washington, D.C.: Urban Institute, 1997), 16.
11. Lucinda Franks, "The Sex Lives of Your Children," Talk (February 2000): 104.
12. Diane di Mauro, Sexuality Research in the United States: An Assessment of the Social and Behavioral Sciences, pamphlet (New York: Social Science Research Council, 1995). Since Alfred Kinsey's research in the 1940s and 1950s, the only major comprehensive large-scale national behavioral study was conducted by Edward Laumann et al. at the University of Chicago and published as The Social Organization of Sexuality: Sexual Practices in the United States (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994). This study, initially planned to be much larger, was repeatedly stymied by conservative political interference in its funding.
13. "Research Critical to Protecting Young People from Disease Blocked by Congress," Advocates for Youth press release, December 19, 2000, www.advocatesforyouth.org/news/press/121900.htm.
14. "Most Adults in the United States Who Have Multiple Sexual Partners Do Not Use Condoms Consistently," Family Planning Perspectives 26 (January/February 1994): 42-43.
15. See, e.g., Sarah Blaffer Hrdy, Mother Nature: A History of Mothers, Infants, and Natural Selection (New York: Pantheon, 1999).
16. Philippe Ariès, Centuries of Childhood: A Social History of Family Life (New York: Vintage Books, 1962).
17. J. H. Plumb, "The New World of Children in 18th-Century England," Past and Present 67 (1975): 66.
18. Quoted in Alan Prout and Allison James, "A New Paradigm for the Sociology of Childhood?" in Constructing and Reconstructing Childhood, ed. Allison James and Alan Prout (London: Falmer, 1990), 17.
19. Karin Calvert, Children in the House: The Material Culture of Early Childhood, 1600-1900 (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1992).
20. Marina Warner, "Little Angels, Little Monsters," in her Six Myths of Our Time (New York: Vintage Books, 1994).
21. James R. Kincaid, Child-Loving: The Erotic Child and Victorian Culture (New York: Routledge, 1992).
22. Philip J. Greven, "Family Structure in Seventeenth-Century Andover, Massachusetts," William and Mary Quarterly, 3d series, 23 (1966): 234-56. In any period "the most sensitive register of maturity is the age at marriage," wrote Greven. It could be argued that this is no longer true. However, the legal age of marriage may be read as a register of ideologies that define immaturity. In America, though that age has ranged from as young as twelve, it was not until the late Progressive Era that policymakers perceived a "child marriage problem," and the legal marriage age crept into the midteens in a number of states. Kristie Lindenmeyer, "Adolescent Pregnancy in the 20th Century U.S.," paper delivered at the Carleton Conference on the History of the Family, Ottawa, May 15, 1997.
23. Deborah Gray White, Ar'n't I a Woman? Female Slaves in the Plantation South (New York: W. W. Norton and Co., 1985), 106.
24. John D'Emilio and Estelle B. Freedman, Intimate Matters: A History of Sexuality in America (New York: Harper and Row, 1988), 12-14, 43.
25. G. Stanley Hall, Adolescence: Its Psychology and Its Relations to Anthropology, Sociology, Sex, Crime, Religion and Education (New York: D. Appleton, 1904).
26. Kincaid, Child Loving, 126-27.
27. Warner, "Little Angels, Little Monsters," 55-56.
28. Susheela Singh and Jacqueline E. Darroch, "Adolescent Pregnancy and Childbearing: Levels and Trends in Developed Countries," Alan Guttmacher Institute report, February 2000.
29. A summary of many studies found an average prevalence for non-sexual dating violence of 22 percent among high school students and 32 percent among college students. D. B. Sugarman and G. T. Hotaling, "Dating Violence: Prevalence, Context, and Risk Markers," in M. A. Pirog-Good and J. E. Stets, eds., Violence in Dating Relationships (New York: Praeger, 1989), 3-32. One study showed that teenage girls were almost three times more likely to suffer a beating at the hands of a date than were teenage males. M. O'Keefe and C. Treister, "Victims of Dating Violence among High School Students," Violence against Women 4 (1998): 193-228.
30. SIECUS, SHOP (School Health Opportunities and Progress) Talk Bulletin 4, no. 1 (March 19, 1999).
31. Bill Alexander, "Adolescent HIV Rates Soar; Government Piddles," Youth Today (March/April 1997): 29.
32. They were down 44 percent in the first six months of 1997 compared with 1996. Lawrence K. Altman, "AIDS Deaths Drop 48% in New York," New York Times, February 3, 1998, A1.
33. These people probably contracted HIV in their teens. Philip J. Hilts, "AIDS Deaths Continue to Rise in 25-44 Age Group, U.S. Says," New York Times, January 16, 1996, A22.
34. Annie E. Casey Foundation Annual Report 1997 (Baltimore: Annie E. Casey Foundation, 1997).
35. "Facts about Adolescents and HIV/AIDS," Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report, Atlanta, Ga., March 1998.
36. Lawrence K. Altman, "Study in 6 Cities Finds HIV in 30% of Young Black Gays," New York Times, February 6, 2001.

1. Censorship
1. People for the American Way, Attacks on the Freedom to Learn (Washington, D.C.: People for the American Way, 1996).
2. Marc Silver, with Katherine T. Beddingfield and Kenan Pollack, "Sex, Violence and the Tube," U.S. News and World Report (September 1993): 76-79.
3. Susan N. Wilson, "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Word?" Censorship News, National Coalition Against Censorship (winter 1996): 5.
4. Jane D Brown, "Sexuality and the Mass Media: An Overview," SIECUS Reports 24, no. 10 (April/May 1996): 3-5.
5. I borrow this term from Agnes Repellier, "The Repeal of Reticence," Atlantic, March 1914, 207-304.
6. The term hypermediated was coined by Henry Jenkins, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
7. Quoted in Judith H. Dobrzynski, "A Popular Couple Charged into the Future of Art, but in Opposite Directions," New York Times, September 2, 1997.
8. "Child's Eye View," New York Times, December 31, 1997.
9. Sherry Turkle, Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1995), 26.
10. Roy Porter, "Forbidden Pleasures: Enlightenment Literature of Sexual Advice," in Solitary Pleasures: The Historical, Literary, and Artistic Discourses of Autoeroticism, ed. Paula Bennett and Vernon A. Rosario II (New York: Routledge, 1995), 81.
11. New York Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, Fifteenth Annual Report, Case 39,591 (New York: the society, 1890), 15-16.
12. Repellier, "The Repeal of Reticence."
13. Ira S. Wile, "The Sexual Problems of Adolescents," Journal of Social Hygiene 20, no. 9 (December 1934): 439-40.
14. Bernard Weintraub, "Fun for the Whole Family," New York Times, July 22, 1997.
15. Samuel S. Janus and Barbara E. Bess, "Latency: Fact or Fiction?" American Journal of Psychoanalysis 36, no. 4 (1976): 345-46.
16. Right-wing fundamentalist Christians are today's firmest articulators of the view from Genesis, that philandering with worldly experience can lead to no good. One of their conspiracy narratives dates the fall of American civilization to the takeover of Harvard University by Unitarians, the country's preeminent educational institution hijacked by its preeminent doubters. Conservative opposition to sex education, similarly, is always connected with opposition to other forms of moral questioning and intellectual exploration at school, from values clarification to creative spelling.
17. See Roger Shattuck's Forbidden Knowledge: From Prometheus to Pornography (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1996) for an interesting exploration of this conflict.
18. Nicole Wise, "A Curious Time," Parenting, March 1994, 110.
19. Janice Irvine, "Cultural Differences and Adolescent Sexualities," in Sexual Cultures and the Construction of Adolescent Identities, ed. Janice Irvine (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1994), 21.
20. Interview with Leonore Tiefer, May 1996.
21. This is still true in many non-Western cultures and Western ethnic subcultures, which is why HIV/AIDS workers have coined the term "men who have sex with men," or MSM, to reach people who don't identify as gay but may still engage in so-called gay sex.
22. Anne C. Bernstein, Flight of the Stork: What Children Think (and When) about Sex and Family Building, rev. ed. (Indianapolis: Perspectives Press, 1994), 31.
23. Elizabeth Kolbert, "Americans Despair of Popular Culture," New York Times, August 20, 1995, 23.
24. Marjorie Heins, INDECENCY: The Great American Debate over Sex, Children, Free Speech, and Dirty Words, Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Monograph Paper #7, 1997, 4.
25. While the courts have often balked at censorship of books and films, because presumably a child could be kept from seeing them, they have upheld "safe-harbor" restrictions in numerous cases involving radio and television broadcasting. A landmark decision came in 1978, when the New York listener-supported Pacifica radio station WBAI aired the comedian George Carlin's baroque exegesis of the "Seven Filthy Words" that the Federal Communications Commission prohibited from the airwaves: shit, piss, fuck, cunt, cocksucker, motherfucker, and tits. The FCC imposed sanctions on Pacifica, which appealed the decision to the Supreme Court. There, the justices ruled that the FCC could punish Pacifica, not because the content was legally obscene, but because it broadcast the words at a time when minors were likely to be listening. Heins, INDECENCY, 11.
26. Barbara Miner, "Internet Filtering: Beware the Cybercensors," Rethinking Schools (summer 1998): 11.
27. Butler v. Michigan, 352 U.S. 383-84 (1957).
28. Janelle Brown, "Another Defeat for 'Kiddie Porn' Law," salon.com, June 23, 2000.
29. Report of the Commission on Obscenity and Pornography (Washington, D.C.: Lockhart commission, 1970), 23-27.
30. Mary R. Murrin and D. R. Laws, "The Influence of Pornography on Sexual Crimes," in Handbook of Sexual Assault, ed. W. L. Marshall, D. R. Laws, and H. E. Barbaree (New York: Plenum Press, 1990), 83-84.
31. David E. Nutter and Mary E. Kearns, "Patterns of Exposure to Sexually Explicit Material among Sex Offenders, Child Molesters, and Controls," Journal of Sex and Marital Therapy 19 (spring 1993): 73-85.
32. See John Money, Love Maps: Clinical Concepts of Sexual/Erotic Health and Pathology, Paraphilia and Gender Transposition, Childhood, Adolescence and Maturity (New York: Irving Publishers, 1986); Irene Diamond, "Pornography and Repression: A Reconsideration," Signs (summer 1989): 689; David Futrelle, "Shameful Pleasures," In These Times (March 7, 1994): 17.
33. Marjorie Heins, Sex, Sin, and Blasphemy: A Guide to America's Censorship Wars (New York: New Press, 1993).
34. Edward de Grazia, Girls Lean Back Everywhere: The Law of Obscenity and the Assault on Genius (New York: Vintage Books, 1993): 541n, 551-61.
35. U.S. Department of Justice, Report of the Surgeon General's Workshop on Pornography and Public Health (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1986), 344.
36. Sources in Massachusetts identify this "expert" as one who gave later-discredited testimony against day-care workers accused of "satanic ritual abuse."
37. Public Eye, CBS-TV, October 8, 1997.
38. Morning Edition, National Public Radio, September 12, 1997.
39. Declan McCullagh and Brock Meeks, "Keys to The Kingdom," Cyberwire Dispatch, cyberworks.com, July 3, 1996.
40. Steven Isaac, "Safe Cruising on the Info Highway," Focus on the Family (February 1998): 12.
41. Amy Harmon, "Parents Fear That Children Are One Click Ahead of Them," New York Times, May 3, 1999, A1.
42. Jon Katz, "The Rights of Kids in the Digital Age," Wired, July 1996. In the same spirit, Katz's cyber-news Web site, frequented by youngsters, has become journalists' main source for what kids think, and also a strong source of opposition to proposed harder Internet restrictions, following the student shootings at Columbine High in Littleton, Colorado. Two studies released in June 2001 found that most preteens and teens online can take unwanted or unsolicited online communications in their stride. Three-quarters of the youth questioned both by Crimes Against Children Research Center of the University of New Hampshire and by the Pew Internet and American Life Project said they weren't upset by posts from strangers asking to have sex or talk about it, and simply deleted or blocked them. Commented Donna Hoffman, a Vanderbilt University management professor specializing in online commerce, to the New York Times, it is "no surprise" that children might be approached by people looking for sex on the Net. "It's how children are educated to deal with these experiences that is important." Jon Schwartz, "Studies Detail Solicitation of Children for Sex Online," New York Times, June 20, 2001.
43. Report of the Surgeon General's Workshop, 36-38.
44. Penelope Leach, "Kids and Sex Talk," Redbook, October 1993, 178.
45. Neil Postman, The Disappearance of Childhood (New York: Vintage Books, 1994), 80.
46. Laura Megivern, "Net Controls Won't Block the Curious," Burlington Free Press, September 24, 1997, 2C.
47. See chapter 8 for more on good public sources of sex education.

2. Manhunt
1. This account was constructed from articles in the Boston Herald, Boston Globe, and Cambridge Chronicle between October 1997 and December 1998; also Yvonne Abraham, "Life after Death," Boston Phoenix, September 25, 1998, 23-30; and interviews with Boston and Cambridge residents.
2. In spite of the proliferating coverage of pedophilia and child abuse, the media frequently claim that we are inexcusably silent on the subject. "[The pedophile] is protected not only by our ignorance of his presence, but also by our unwillingness to confront the truth," Andrew Vachss, one of the more sensationalist writers on the subject, opined in 1989, for instance.
3. Paul Okami and Amy Goldberg, "Personality Correlates of Pedophilia: Are They Reliable Indicators?" Journal of Sex Research 29, no. 3 (August 1992): 297-328; author's review of state laws.
4. See, e.g., Andrew Vachss, "How We Can Fight Child Abuse," Parade Magazine, August 20, 1989, 14.
5. A pedophile is defined as a person who has "recurrent intense sexual urges and arousing sexual fantasies involving sexual activity with a prepubescent child or children." Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders III-R (Washington, D.C.: American Psychiatric Association, 1987).
6. Mike Smith, "Sex Offender Registry OK'd," Journal Gazette (Fort Wayne, Indiana), February 20, 1996.
7. Ann Landers, "There's One Cure for Child Molesters," syndicated column, August 2, 1995.
8. Debbie Nathan and Michael Snedeker, Satan's Silence: Ritual Abuse and the Making of a Modern American Witch Hunt (New York: Basic Books, 1996), 91.
9. Tim LaHaye and Beverly LaHaye, Against the Tide: How to Raise Sexually Pure Kids in an "Anything-Goes" World (Colorado Springs: Multnomah Books, 1993), 189.
10. "Improving Investigations and Protecting Victims," Boston Herald, May 4, 1994.
11. Richard Laliberte, "Missing Children: The Truth, the Hype, and What You Must Know," Redbook, February 1998, 77.
12. The death-penalty bill was defeated by one vote at the end of the 1997-98 legislative session, though the incoming Republican governor, Paul Cellucci, promised to pass it in the next term. Bob Curley, feeling used by his political handlers and used up by a life of rage, has retreated to crusade against child pornography and raise funds for child-abuse prevention programs. Abraham, "Life after Death," 30. In 2000, the Curleys brought a civil suit against the North American Man/Boy Love Association and several individuals allegedly associated with it, claiming that Jaynes was a heterosexual before reading the organization's propaganda and that his crimes were "a direct and proximate result of [its] urging, advocacy, and promoting of pedophile activity." Barbara Curley and Robert Curley v. North American Man Boy Love Association, Best Interest Communications Inc., Verio Inc. [and various individual defendants], U.S. District of Massachusetts (announced April 15, 2000). In April 2001, the family's lawyers filed additional charges against NAMBLA, seeking damages under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO), usually used to prosecute gangsters. The Massachusetts Chapter of the ACLU is representing NAMBLA on free-speech grounds; the Civil Liberties Union has asked the judge to dismiss the case. David Weber, "Family of Slain Cambridge Boy Wants NAMBLA Held Responsible," BostonHerald.com, April 11, 2001.
13. Laliberte, "Missing Children," 77.
14. J. M. Lawrence, "Molesters Hide Evil behind Image of the Normal Guy," Boston Herald, October 12, 1997, 30.
15. According to the FBI, "classic" abductions, in which a child is taken by a nonfamily member more than fifty miles from home, held overnight, and ransomed or murdered, number two hundred to three hundred annually, or 1 child in every 230,000 (as of 1997).
16. FBI statistics, phone interview, summer 1993.
17. Lieutenant Bill D'Heron points out that the case is still open. Phone interview with the lieutenant, of the Hollywood (Florida) Police Department detectives unit, December 15, 1998.
18. Laliberte, "Missing Children," 78.
19. Anna C. Salter, "Epidemiology of Child Sexual Abuse," in The Sexual Abuse of Children: Theory and Research, vol. 1, ed. William O'Donoghue and James H. Geer (Hillsdale, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1992), 129-130.
20. See Paul Okami, "'Slippage' in Research on Child Sexual Abuse: Science as Social Advocacy," in The Handbook of Forensic Sexology: Biomedical and Criminological Perspectives, ed. James J. Krivacska and John Money (Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 1994), 559-75.
21. Quoted in Bruce Selcraig, "Chasing Computer Perverts," Penthouse, February 1996, 51.
22. More than eight times more people were incarcerated for low-level sex offenses in 1992 than in 1980. Bureau of Justice Statistics, "Correctional Populations in the United States," report, Washington, D.C., 1992, 53.
23. Federal Bureau of Investigation, "Uniform Crime Reports: Crime in the U.S.," report, Washington, D.C., 1993, 217.
24. Okami and Goldberg, "Personality Correlates," 317-20. The article is an excellent review of the literature.
25. In one study, fewer than a fifth of pedophiles interviewed said they desired genital sex, whereas another fifth wanted "non-sexual, platonic friendships." Glenn D. Wilson and David N. Cox, The Child-Lovers: A Study of Paedophiles in Society (London: Peter Owen), 35.
26. Okami and Goldberg, "Personality Correlates," 297-328. A study of the members of a British pedophile organization found that "the majority [of subjects] showed no sign of clinically significant psychopathy or thought disorder." Wilson and Cox, The Child Lovers, 122-23. Even the commonly held belief that a molested child will grow up to be a molester is exaggerated: studies find that about a third do, which means that as many as two-thirds do not. Joan Kaufman and Edward Zigler, "Do Abused Children Become Abusive Parents?" American Journal of Orthopsychiatry 57, no. 2 (1987): 186-92. The degree of social anxiety that pedophiles exhibit may be a result, not a cause, of the intense hatred and ostracism they experience, say a number of observers, including psychologists Theo Sandfort and Larry Constantine.
27. Wilson and Cox (The Child-Lovers) add a caveat to Money's comment about erotophobia in the families of paraphilics. They note that just about everyone describes his or her parents as repressive about sex.
28. There was no proof of a sexual relationship between the two men. Nor was there any of a general propensity toward child molesting in the Sicari family, although police inferred one from the conviction of Salvi's sixteen-year-old brother in a sexual encounter with a ten-year-old boy. The gay historian Allan Bérubé suggested that the crime fit another stereotype and piqued another fear: that the child molester's prey is not only a boy but a white boy (author conversation with Bérubé).
29. Margaret A. Alexander, "Quasi-Meta-Analysis II, Oshkosh Correctional Institution," State of Wisconsin Department of Corrections/Oshkosh Correctional Institution report, Oshkosh, 1994; Lita Furby et al., "Sex Offender Recidivism: A Review," Psychological Bulletin 3 (1989); R. Karl Hanson and Monique T. Bussiere, "Predictors of Sexual Offender Recidivism: A Meta-Analysis," Department of Solicitor General of Canada, Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology 66, no. 2 (1996).
30. These numbers are inflated by reoffenses by adult rapists. In her metanalysis of seventy-nine studies encompassing almost eleven thousand subjects, Oshkosh (Wisconsin) Correctional Institution clinical director Margaret Alexander reconfirmed the fact that men who rape adult women are the most intransigent, with about a fifth striking again whether they undergo a treatment program in prison or not. But men arrested for having sex with children are usually overcome with shame and remorse; they want to stop. For them, good treatment has made a great difference: Since 1943, an average of 11 percent of "child molesters" who were treated in jails, hospitals, and outpatient clinics found their way back to prison, compared with 32 percent of those who took part in no treatment. Margaret A. Alexander, "Sexual Offender Treatment Efficacy Revisited," State of Wisconsin Department of Corrections/Oshkosh Correctional Institution report, Oshkosh, May 1998. There's also evidence that better treatment is increasingly successful. Before 1980, recidivism among treated sex offenders was almost 30 percent; after 1980, it dropped to 8.4 percent. Eric Lotke, "Sex Offenders: Does Treatment Work?" National Center for Institutions and Alternatives report, Washington, D.C., 1996, 5.
31. James R. Kincaid, Child-Loving: The Erotic Child and Victorian Culture (New York: Routledge, 1992); and James R. Kincaid, Erotic Innocence: The Culture of Child-Molesting (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1998).
32. Judith Lewis Herman, Father-Daughter Incest (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1981).
33. National Incidence Studies of Child Abuse and Neglect, vol. 2 (Washington, D.C.: Department of Health and Human Services, 1993).
34. Ellen Bass and Laura Davis, The Courage to Heal: A Guide for Women Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse (New York: Harper Perennial, 1988): 22.
35. Richard Ofshe and Ethan Watters, Making Monsters: False Memories, Psychotherapy, and Sexual Hysteria (New York: Scribner's, 1994), 65-67. In fact, any catalogue of symptoms is suspect. "Psychological evidence suggests that it is impossible to tease out a set of symptoms that are related to sexual abuse but are never seen in victims of other types of abuse." Elizabeth Wilson, "Not in This House: Incest, Denial, and Doubt in the Middle-Class Family," Yale Journal of Criticism 8 (1995): 51. Wilson's conclusion, drawn from examinations of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, is supported by a thorough review of the abuse literature by Bruce Rind at the University of Pennsylvania, as well as Paul Okami and others. Such careful work is in the minority. The complete confounding of data has led to huge inflations of the statistics, which are commonly repeated by journalists. In the 1980s, estimates of women abused as children ranged as high as 62 percent. S. D. Peters, G. E. Wyatt, and D. Finkelhor, "Prevalence," in A Source Book on Sexual Abuse, ed. David Finkelhor (Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage Publishers, 1986), 75-93.
36. This estimation is drawn from the hundreds of articles I've read in writing about child abuse.
37. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Third National Incidence Study of Child Abuse and Neglect (Washington, D.C., 1993); 3-3.
38. Judith Lewis Herman, D. Russell, and K. Trocki, "Long-Term Effects of Incestuous Abuse in Childhood," American Journal of Psychiatry 143, no. 10 (1986): 1293-96.
39. "By far the largest group of defendants [in child pornography cases] seems to be white males between 30 and 50 who are interested in teenage boys, usually between 14 and 17," concluded Bruce Selcraig, a government investigator of child pornography during the 1980s who went online in 1996 as a journalist to review the situation. Selcraig, "Chasing Computer Perverts," 53. The same is true of the majority of men in jail for consensual sex with girls or boys: their partners are teenagers. I conclude this from my own surveys over the past ten years of journalism, police sources, and defense attorneys.
40. Jennifer Allen, "The Danger Years," Life, July 1995, 48.
41. Lawrence, "Molesters Hide Evil," 31.
42. As quoted by Harry Hendrick, "Constructions and Reconstructions of British Childhood: An Interpretive Survey, 1800 to the Present," in Constructing and Reconstructing Childhood, ed. Allison James and Alan Prout (London: Falmer Press, 1990), 42.
43. Judith R. Walkowitz, City of Dreadful Delight: Narratives of Sexual Danger in Late-Victorian London (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992).
44. The reports of the New York Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, for instance, frequently described the alleged exploiters of children in vicious and often confused ethnic stereotypes. Italian "padrones" who traffic variously in child labor, entertainment, and flesh are ubiquitous. A "rabbi" who runs a beer-bottle and cigarette-strewn gambling den behind a bogus "bird store" is characterized, incongruously, by his "little Chinese ways of enticement." Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, Sixteenth Annual Report (New York, 1891), 23.
45. See, e.g., Walkowitz, City of Dreadful Delight; Ellen Carol DuBois and Linda Gordon, "Seeking Ecstasy on the Battlefield," in Pleasure and Danger: Exploring Female Sexuality, ed. Carole Vance (London: Pandora Press, 1989); Kathy Peiss, Cheap Amusements: Working Women and Leisure in Turn-of-the-Century New York (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1987); Christine Stansell, City of Women: Sex and Class in New York, 1789-1860 (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 1987); and Ruth C. Rosen, The Lost Sisterhood: Prostitution in America, 1900-1918 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983), for a fuller picture of turn-of-the-century urban prostitution.
46. Walkowitz, City of Dreadful Delight, 81-120.
47. Judith R. Walkowitz, Prostitution and Victorian Society: Women, Class, and the State (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980): 17.
48. DuBois and Gordon, "Seeking Ecstasy on the Battlefield," 33.
49. Walkowitz, City of Dreadful Delight, 82.
50. John D'Emilio and Estelle Freedman, Intimate Matters: A History of Sexuality in America (New York: Harper and Row, 1988), 153.
51. Estelle Freedman, "'Uncontrolled Desires': The Response to the Sexual Psychopath, 1920-1960," Journal of American History 71, no. 1 (1987): 83-106.
52. D'Emilio and Freedman, Intimate Matters, 260-61.
53. Allan Bérubé, Coming Out under Fire: The History of Gay Men and Women in World War II (New York: Macmillan, 1990).
54. As quoted by George Chauncey Jr., "The Postwar Sex Crime Panic," in True Stories from the American Past, ed. William Graebner (New York: McGraw Hill, 1993), 162.
55. Freedman, "'Uncontrolled Desires.'"
56. Chauncey, "Postwar Sex Crimes," 160-78.
57. Freedman, "'Uncontrolled Desires,'" 92.
58. Freedman, '"Uncontrolled Desires,'" 84.
59. Chauncey, "Postwar Sex Crimes," 160-74.
60. Heidi Handman and Peter Brennan, Sex Handbook: Information and Help for Minors (New York: Putnam, 1974).
61. Lawrence Stanley, "The Child Porn Myth," Cardozo Arts and Entertainment Law Journal 7 (1989): 295-358.
62. U.S. House Committee on the Judiciary, Sexual Exploitation of Children: Hearings before the Subcommittee on Crime, 95th Congress, first session, 1977, 42-48. See also, Judianne Densen-Gerber and Stephen F. Hutchinson, "Sexual and Commercial Exploitation of Children: Legislative Responses and Treatment Challenges," Child Abuse and Neglect 3 (1979): 61-66.
63. "'Child Sex' Cop Transferred," Bay Area Reporter, March 18, 1982, 8.
64. U.S. House Judiciary Committee, Sexual Exploitation of Children, 48.
65. Stanley, "The Child Porn Myth," 313.
66. Joel Best, "Dark Figures and Child Victims: Statistical Claims about Missing Children," in Images of Issues: Typifying Contemporary Social Problems, ed. Joel Best (New York: Aldine de Gruyter, 1989), 21-37.
67. Stanley, "The Child Porn Myth," 313.
68. Lucy Komisar, "The Mysterious Mistress of Odyssey House," New York Magazine, November 1979, 43-50. The charges were not indictably substantiated, but they were enough to exile Densen-Gerber from Odyssey House and, for a time, social service altogether. In 1998, she was running Applied Resources Corporation in Bridgeport, Connecticut.
69. "'Child Sex' Cop Transferred."
70. See Nathan and Snedeker, Satan's Silence. Nathan was for a long time the only journalist in America who published skeptical investigations of "satanic ritual abuse." Later, she was joined by the documentarist Ofra Bikel and others, and by the early 1990s, their painstaking reporting began to turn some opinion around.
71. Daniel Goleman, "Proof Lacking in Ritual Abuse by Satanists," New York Times, October 31, 1994.
72. The charges were brought by the adopted daughter of a zealous police chief, and, as in Salem, the people who objected to what looked to them like a widening witch-hunt, found themselves accused. The defendants were disproportionately poor, uneducated, and in several cases mentally disabled, and no defendant without a private attorney was acquitted. Kathryn Lyons, Witch Hunt: A True Story of Social Hysteria and Abused Justice (New York: Avon, 1998).
73. Documented by the Justice Committee, San Diego, Calif.; Boston Coalition for Freedom of Expression, Boston, Mass.; Nathan and Snedeker (Satan's Silence); and others.
74. Selcraig, "Chasing Computer Perverts," 72.
75. Seminar conducted at the University of Southern California by R. P. Tyler (reported by James R. Kincaid, author interview).
76. Lawrence A. Stanley, "The Child-Porn Myth," Playboy, September 1988, 41.
77. The notion of predisposition informs all sting operations: police are not allowed to entice somebody into breaking the law (that would be entrapment) unless they have evidence indicating he is likely to do so on his own. Narcotics agents commonly buy from a known dealer; occasionally an undercover cop will put herself into a position to be assaulted by a rapist whose m.o. is known.
    However, the establishment of predisposition in child pornography enforcement is not so straightforward, because the enforcers' motives aren't. If the goal is to eradicate deviance and not necessarily to prevent actual crimes, as the ACLU's Marjorie Heins suggests, suspicion of deviance goes a long way toward legally establishing predisposition to criminality. The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children's manual for law enforcers suggests including in requests for search warrants a profile of what they call a "preferential child molester," accent on preferential, since he might want to do something he's never done.
    Since the person needs to have demonstrated no greater erotic interest in children than logging onto a site where they congregate (I, in researching this chapter, could be accused of such acts), the tactic resembles setting somebody up for a drug bust not because he's actually sold or bought drugs but because he has watched the doings of the dealer next door or because he has an "addictive personality."
    Once a "preference" for "child molestation" has been thus established, a search warrant stating this preference in the suspect alerts cops to the probability that a collection of illegal child pornography awaits their search. And the search fulfills their expectations: they find pictures and, whether they're pornographic or not, take them to be clues to molestation. "The photograph of a fully dressed child may not be evidence of an obscenity violation, but it could be evidence of an offender's sexual involvement with children," says the National Center's manual.
    In 1995 I asked Raymond Smith, who heads the Postal Inspection Service's child pornography investigations, about his estimation that PI agents find "evidence of child molestation" in 30 percent of their searches of the homes of suspected pedophiles:
    "We'll find pictures of kids—no sexual act; we don't know where these kids come from. But you get a gut feeling . . . you learn to identify it. . . . We're not finding a videotape of this guy having sex with the ten-year-old girl next door. We're not finding a picture. Just from what we see in the house and how they talk.
    "When we get into these cases, many of these individuals literally confess to committing horrible acts, before they're arrested. Sometimes that is fantasy, which is not against the law. But when you have the child pornography present, combined with the fantasy, in my opinion not only are they violating the law, they also pose a serious threat to children in the community where they live. If somebody told me this man never molested before, but, man, he loves kids and I knew he was a member of NAMBLA [the North American Man/Boy Love Association, a support group-propaganda organization], I would think that person was a threat to my child. But I have no, quote, evidence that he molested."
78. At this writing, in 2001, a constitutional challenge to the 1996 law is on the Supreme Court's docket.
79. "Cynthia Stewart's Ordeal," editorials, Nation (May 1, 2000).
80. James R. Kincaid, "Hunting Pedophiles on the Net," salon.com, August 24, 2000.
81. A particularly harrowing account of a year-long entrapment campaign resulting in the conviction of a man who seemed to have no preexisting sexual interest in children can be found in Laura Kipnis, Bound and Gagged: Pornography and the Politics of Fantasy in America (New York: Grove Press, 1996).
82. Christopher Marquis, "U.S. Says It Broke Pornography Ring Featuring Youths," New York Times, August 9, 2001.
83. Kincaid, "Hunting Pedophiles on the Net."
84. During the U.S. Postal Inspection Service's late-1980s Project Looking Glass investigations, 5 of the 160 people indicted saved the government the effort of seeking a plea bargain by promptly committing suicide.
85. Marquis, "U.S. Says It Broke Pornography Ring Featuring Youths."
86. Susan Lehman, "Larry Matthews' 18-Month Sentence for Receiving and Transmitting Kiddie Porn Raises Difficult First Amendment Issues," salon.com, March 11, 1999. The brazenness of the putative mother's post gives it the scent of a sting operation, in my view. Frequenters of such chat rooms, and surely criminals involved in child prostitution, are meticulously secretive, understanding that they are under constant surveillance. In the mid-1990s, lawyer Lawrence Stanley was also indicted (though not convicted) for receiving alleged child-pornographic images through the mail. He had received the pictures from a client for whom he was acting as defense counsel; they were the indictable items in the client's case, and Stanley was challenging the prosecutor's claims that the images were indeed legally pornographic.
87. Kimberly J. Mitchell, David Finkelhor, and Janis Wolak, "Risk Factors for and Impact of Online Sexual Solicitation of Youth," Journal of the American Medical Association 285 (June 20, 2001): 3011-14 (unpaginated online). Commenting on the study, Harrison M. Rainie, the director of a more comprehensive study called "Teenage Life Online," by the Pew Internet and American Life Project, said, "Virtually every kid we talked to knows there are some really bad things and bad people in the online world, and know that there are some good things and good people. When they get down to weighing the pluses and minuses, most kids will say the pluses pile up and the minuses are manageable." John Schwartz, "Studies Detail Solicitation of Children for Sex Online," New York Times, June 20, 2001.
88. Ron Martz, "Internet Spreading Child Porn, Investigators Say," Sunday Rutland Herald, June 28, 1998, A8.
89. "Bonfire of the Knuckleheads," Contemporary Sexuality 28 (April 1994): 1.
90. James Kincaid documented a dozen or so with newspaper articles, but my researches would suggest there are many more that don't make the papers. James Kincaid, "Is This Child Pornography?" salon.com, Janu-ary 31, 2000.
91. Katha Pollitt, "Subject to Debate," Nation (December 13, 1999); "Cynthia Stewart's Ordeal"; and Cynthia Stewart and David Perrotta, "Thank You, Nation Family," letters, Nation (May 1, 2000).
92. Matt Golec, "Bill Would Expand Sex Offender Notification Law," Burlington Free Press, January 30, 2000, A1.
93. Ross E. Milloy, "Texas Judge Orders Notices Warning of Sex Offenders," New York Times, May 29, 2001.
94. In 1997, the first subject of the Kansas law, who had no record of violence, but rather a rap sheet of exhibitionism and mild fondling, brought his case to the U.S. Supreme Court and lost. The law was upheld. By that year, Washington, Arizona, California, Minnesota, and Wisconsin had passed similar laws.
95. Bill Andriette, "America's Sex Gulags," Guide (August 1997) (re-print): 1-3.
96. A 1996 review of the data by the National Center for Institutions and Alternatives concluded that only 13 percent of former sex offenders are arrested for subsequent sex crimes. This compares with a recidivism rate of 74 percent for all criminal offenders. The NCIA estimated at this time that of 250,000 potential compliers with community registration statutes, 217,000 were "ex-offenders" or people who were not destined to commit additional crimes. National Center for Institutions and Alternatives, "Community Notification and Setting the Record Straight on Recidivism," Community Notification/NCIA/info@ncianet.org, November 8, 1996.
97. In Corpus Christi, several of the men who posted warning signs immediately had their property vandalized, two were evicted from their homes, and one attempted suicide. An intruder threatened the life of the father of one of the men, who had been arrested for indecency with a child in 1999 "after a night of drinking ended with an encounter with a fifteen-year-old girl." Milloy, "Texas Judge Orders Notices."
98. Todd Purdum, "Registry Laws Tar Sex-Crimes Convicts with Broad Brush," New York Times, July 1, 1997. Later that year, California excised the names of men convicted of consensual homosexuality from the list. "Gay Exception Made to Registration Law," New York Times, November 11, 1997.
99. U.S. Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs, Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, "Child Pornography and Pedophilia," Report 99-537, October 6, 1986, 3.
100. Evidence suggests that statutory rape, or sex with minors, did occur at Waco. David Koresh did so with the parents' consent, because his followers believed it "was his religious duty to father 24 children by virgin mothers." Because the parents cooperated, the state did not bring charges. Dick J. Reavis, The Ashes of Waco: An Investigation (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1998).
101. The number of fatalities, including the number of children among them, is hard to pin down. On James Tabor and Eugene Gallagher's "Why Waco?" Web site, a list of Branch Davidians counts seventy-two dead, including twenty-three children. The New York Times, reporting on the FBI's belated admission that it had fired pyrotechnic gas canisters at the compound, noted on August 26, 1999, that "about 80 people, including 24 children, were found dead after the fire." The following day, a subsequent story said "about 80 people, including 25 children." David Stout, "FBI Backs Away from Flat Denial in Waco Cult Fire," New York Times, August 26, 1999, A1; Stephen Labaton "Reno Admits Credibility Hurt in Waco Case," New York Times, August 27, 1999, A1. The Justice Department's report directly following the events said "the medical examiner found the remains of 75 individuals" but did not specify how many were children. Edward S. G. Dennis Jr., "Evaluation of the Handling of the Branch Davidian Stand-Off in Waco, Texas, February 28 to April 19 1993," U.S. Department of Justice report, Washington, D.C., October 8 1993.

3. Therapy
1. The story of the Diamonds was drawn from interviews and time spent with the participants, including the family, their therapist, Philip Kaushall, and various social-service professionals, lawyers, and others involved in their case, as well as from several thousand pages of Child Protective Services case files kept between December 1994 and late 1996, when I visited. I have changed the names of the family members, as well as the social workers and foster parents whose names appear in the case records.
2. Brian's story was constructed from interviews with the family and from San Diego police, court, and psychologists' records.
3. Shirley Leung and Stacy Milbauer, "New Hampshire Boy, 10, Charged in Rape of 2 Playmates," Boston Globe, August 22, 1996, A1.
4. Andy Newman, "New Jersey Court Says 12-Year-Old Must Register as a Sexual Offender," New York Times, April 12, 1996.
5. "Police Uncover Child Sex Ring in Small Pa. Town," Associated Press, Burlington Free Press, July 5, 1999.
6. See Paul Okami, "'Child Perpetrators of Sexual Abuse': The Emergence of a Problematic Deviant Category," Journal of Sex Research 29, no. 1 (February 1992): 109-30; and Okami, "'Slippage' in Research of Child Sexual Abuse."
7. Leonore Tiefer, "'Am I Normal?' The Question of Sex," in Sex Is Not a Natural Act and Other Essays (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1995), 10-16.
8. San Diego County Grand Jury, Report No. 2: Families in Crisis, February 6, 1992, 4-6.
9. Mark Sauer, "Believe the Children?" Times Union, August 29, 1993.
10. Toni Cavanagh Johnson, "Child Perpetrators—Children Who Molest Other Children: Preliminary Findings," Child Abuse and Neglect 12 (1988): 219-29.
11. Carolyn Cunningham and Kee MacFarlane, When Children Abuse (Brandon, Vt.: Safer Society Program, 1996), viii-ix.
12. David Gardetta, "Facing the Monster: Teenage Sex Offenders in Treatment," LA Weekly, January 13-19, 1995, 17.
13. Jeffrey Butts, "Offenders in Juvenile Court, 1994," Juvenile Justice Bulletin, U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, Washington, D.C., October 1996.
14. See, for instance, the literature of the Safer Society Program in Vermont.
15. Claudia Morain, "When Children Molest Children," American Medical Association News, January 3, 1994.
16. William N. Friedrich, "Normative Sexual Behavior in Children," Pediatrics 88, no. 3 (September 1991): 456-64.
17. Okami, "'Child Perpetrators of Sexual Abuse.'"
18. Okami, "'Slippage' in Research of Child Sexual Abuse," 565.
19. Toni Cavanagh Johnson, "Behaviors Related to Sex and Sexuality in Preschool Children," photocopied typescript, undated, S. Pasadena, Calif.
20. Johnson, "Child Perpetrators," 221.
21. National Clearinghouse on Child Abuse and Neglect, NCCAN Discretionary Grants FY 1991, award number 90CA1469.
22. A group of clinicians distributed the proposal at the Fourteenth Annual Conference of the Association for the Treatment of Sexual Abusers (October 11-14, 1995), trying to win additional support.
23. The Third National Incidence Study of Child Abuse and Neglect (NIS-3) (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 1997), 2-14.
24. See, e.g., Cunningham and MacFarlane, When Children Abuse, ix.
25. See, e.g., David Finkelhor, Child Sexual Abuse: New Theory and Research (New York: Free Press, 1984); L. M. Williams and David Finkelhor, "The Characteristics of Incestuous Fathers," in ed. W. Marshall, D. R. Laws, and H. Barbaree, The Handbook of Sexual Assault: Issues, Theories, and Treatment of the Offender (New York: Plenum Publishing, 1989).
26. Friedrich's 1992 comparison between sexually abused and non-abused children found that abused kids act out sexually with greater frequency than other kids do, but both groups do all the same sexual things. William N. Friedrich and Patricia Grambsch, "Child Sexual Behavior Inventory: Normative and Clinical Comparison," Psychological Assessment 4 (1992): 303-11; Robert D. Wells et al., "Emotional, Behavioral, and Physical Symptoms Reported by Parents of Sexually Abused, Nonabused, and Allegedly Abused Prepubescent Females," Child Abuse and Neglect 19 (1995): 155-62. J. A. Cohen and A. P. Mannarino, "Psychological Symptoms in Sexually Abused Girls," Child Abuse and Neglect 12 (1988): 571-77; R. J. Weinstein et al., "Sexual and Aggressive Behavior in Girls Experiencing Child Abuse and Precocious Puberty," paper presented at the annual convention of the American Psychological Association, New Orleans, 1989.
27. Many researchers have decried the lack of systematic collection of data and their paucity on this subject. Nevertheless, all the data there are support my statement, and none contradict it. See, e.g., Friedrich, "Normative Sexual Behavior in Children"; William N. Friedrich et al., "Normative Sexual Behavior in Children: A Contemporary Sample," Pediatrics 101, no. 4 (April 1998), e9; William N. Friedrich, Theo G. M. Sandfort, Jacqueline Osstveen, and Peggy T. Cohen-Kettensis, "Cultural Differences in Sexual Behavior: 2-6 Year Old Dutch and American Children," Journal of Psychology and Human Sexuality 12, nos. 1-2 (2000): 117-29; Allie C. Kilpatrick, Long-Range Effects of Child and Adolescent Sexual Experiences: Myths, Mores, Menaces (Hillsdale, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1992); Sharon Lamb and Mary Coakley, "'Normal' Childhood Sexual Play and Games: Differentiating Play from Abuse," Child Abuse and Neglect 17 (1993): 515-26; Floyd M. Martinson, The Sexual Life of Children (Westport, Conn.: Bergin and Garvey, 1994); Paul Okami, Richard Olmstead, and Paul R. Abramson, "Sexual Experiences in Early Childhood: 18-Year Longitudinal Data for the UCLA Family Lifestyles Project," Journal of Sex Research 34, no. 4 (1997): 339-47; Jany Rademakers, Marjoke Laan, and Cees J. Straver, "Studying Children's Sexuality from the Child's Perspective," Journal of Psychology and Human Sexuality 12, nos. 1-2 (2000): 49-60; and sources at note 32.
28. Friedrich et al., "Normative Sexual Behavior in Children" (1998).
29. Johnson, "Behaviors Related to Sex and Sexuality in Preschool Children."
30. J. Attenberry-Bennett, "Child Sexual Abuse: Definitions and Interventions of Parents and Professionals," Ph.D. dissertation, Department of Education, University of Virginia, 1987.
31. Okami, Olmstead, and Abramson, "Sexual Experiences in Early Childhood."
32. Evan Greenwald and Harold Leitenberg, "Long-Term Effects of Sexual Experiences with Siblings and Nonsiblings during Childhood," Archives of Sexual Behavior 18, no. 5 (1989): 389. Similar results were reported in Harold Leitenberg, Evan Greenwald, and Matthew J. Tarran, "The Relation between Sexual Activity among Children during Preadolescence and/or Early Adolescence and Sexual Behavior and Sexual Adjustment in Young Adulthood," Archives of Sexual Behavior 18, no. 4 (1989): 299 ff.
33. Martinson's informants related stories of intercourse, fellatio, and anal intercourse, as well as more "childish" practices of looking and mutual masturbation.
34. Clellan S. Ford and Frank A. Beach, Patterns of Sexual Behavior (New York: Harper and Row, 1951), 197, 188.
35. Cunningham and MacFarlane, When Children Abuse, 28.
36. Theo Sandfort and Peggy Cohen-Kettensis, "Parents' Reports about Children's Sexual Behaviors," paper presented at the Twenty-first Annual Meeting of the International Academy of Sex Research, September 1995.
37. Friedrich et al., "Normative Sexual Behavior in Children" (1998).
38. Okami, "'Slippage' in Research in Child Sexual Abuse."
39. Lamb and Coakley, "'Normal' Childhood Sexual Play and Games." This finding, it should be noted, troubled the authors.
40. Martha Shirk, "Emotional Growth Programs 'Save' Teens, Stir Fears," Youth Today 8 (May 1999); Martha Shirk, "Kid Help or Kidnapping?" Youth Today 8 (June 1999).
41. Contract between offenders and parents and Sexual Treatment & Education Program and Services (STEPS), 2555 Camino Del Rio South, Ste. 101, San Diego, Calif. (last revised September 19, 1994).
42. Practices at STEPS may have changed, but, considering the literature on children who molest that has come out since, I have no reason to believe it has.
43. U.S. District Court (Vermont), Civil Action No. 2: 93-CV-383: Robert Goldstein et al. v. Howard Dean et al.
44. Testimony of Dr. Fred Berlin in Goldstein et al. v. Dean et al.
45. NCCAN Discretionary Grants, FY 1991, award no. 90CA1470.
46. Other research also strongly interrogates, and condemns, sex-specific treatment for young violent sex offenders as well. One study compared boys who had committed exceedingly brutal sex crimes with other young violent offenders and found that both groups had survived childhoods afflicted by severe violence but not by sexual abuse and that the two groups exhibited identical psychiatric and neurological disorders, including depression, auditory hallucinations, paranoia, and often "grossly abnormal EEGs" or epilepsy. "The assumption that sexually assaultive offenders differ neuropsychiatrically from other kinds of violent offenders, which has led to the establishment of specific programs for sex offenders," the researchers concluded, "must ... be questioned in the light of our data." Dorothy Otnow Lewis, Shelley S. Shankok, and Jonathan H. Pincus, "Juvenile Male Sexual Assaulters," American journal of Psychiatry 136, no. 9 (September 1979): 1194-96.
47. Gisela Bleibtreu-Ehrenberg, "Pederasty among Primitives: Institutionalized Initiation and Cultic Prostitution," in Male Intergenerational Intimacy, ed. Theo Sandfort, Edward Brongersma, and Alex van Naerssen (New York: Hawthorn Press, 1991), 13-30; William H. Davenport, "Adult-Child Sexual Relations in Cross-Cultural Perspective," in The Sexual Abuse of Children: Theory and Research, vol. 1, ed. William O'Donohue and James H. Geer (Hillsdale, N.J.: Lawrence Ehrlbaum Associates, 1992), 73-80.
48. Susan Brownmiller, Against Our Will: Men, Women, and Rape (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1975). In 2001, the conviction by a United Nations war-crimes tribunal of three Bosnian Serbs for the rapes of captive Muslim women and girls marked the first time in history that "sexual slavery" has been designated a crime against humanity, deemed one of the most heinous crimes. Marlise Simons, "3 Serbs Convicted in Wartime Rapes," New York Times, February 23, 2001.

4. Crimes of Passion
1. Although these events received considerable press attention at the time they occurred, the people involved have returned to private life. Therefore, the names of the members of the two families and their personal acquaintances have been changed, along with their cities and state of residence. The following names are fictitious: Dylan Healy; Heather, Robert, Pauline, and Jason Kowalski; Laura and Tom Barton; June Smith; Jennifer Bordeaux; and Patrick. Of public figures, only the names of "Dylan Healy's" lawyer and the sentencing judge have been deleted. Press and court sources are in the author's possession, but notes corresponding to these sources have been omitted to prevent identification of the subjects.
2. Bob Trebilcock, "Child Molesters on the Internet: Are They in Your Home?" Redbook, April 1997.
3. Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger: An Analysis of the Concepts of Pollution and Taboo (London: Ark Paperbacks, 1984), 96.
4. Brownmiller, Against Our Will, 29.
5. Historically U.S. law has denied the right of certain people, such as slaves and married women, to say no, and others, such as the mentally disabled, to say yes to sex, marriage, or procreation. But our ideas of what sorts of people can't say yes or no to sex often compound each other. So a teenager who got pregnant in the 1920s, for instance, was often also dubbed feeble-minded, and a disproportionate number of the adolescents forcibly sterilized under eugenic policies were also black. Kristie Lindenmeyer, "Making Adolescence," paper presented at the International Conference on the History of Childhood, Ottawa, 1997.
6. Michael M. v. Superior Court of Sonoma County, 450 U.S. 464 (1981).
7. The volume of publicity and punishment given Mary Kay Letourneau, thirty-five, for her relationship with a thirteen-year-old student, whose baby she bore, is an indication of the rarity of such relationships and of statutory rape prosecutions in which the adult is female and the minor male. Letourneau lost her job and her children and went to jail. But the boy insisted he still loved her and was adamant that he was not a victim. "It hurts me, it makes me more angry when people give me their pity, because I don't need it," he told the local television station. "I'm fine." The two saw each other illicitly while she was on a leave from prison, and she became pregnant again. "Boy Says He and Teacher Planned Her Pregnancy," Seattle Post-Intelligencer, August 22, 1997, C1; "Schoolteacher Jailed for Rape Gives Birth to Another Child," New York Times, October 18, 1998.
8. While there are no hard facts about the sexual orientation of perpetrator or victim, anecdotal evidence suggests that these laws are being used more aggressively to prosecute consensual sex between men and teenage boys, taking over the role of antisodomy statutes, which by 1998 had been repealed in thirty states. Legislation prohibiting sex with minors, moreover, is often written more harshly against gay sex than straight. For instance, a 1996 California law compelling chemical or surgical castration for the second offense of engaging in sex with anyone under thirteen most severely penalizes the two acts commonly associated with homosexuality—anal intercourse and oral sex—but fails to mention heterosexual vaginal intercourse with girls. The prohibition against homosexual marriage affects gay teenage boys and girls as well, since youngsters can marry in most states at an earlier age than they are legally allowed to have unmarried sex. Bill Andriette, "Life Sentences," NAMBLA Bulletin, June 1994, 94-95; Carey Goldberg, "Rhode Island Moves to End Sodomy Ban," New York Times, May 10, 1998, 12; "RE: Sexual Relations with Minor," memo from Silverstein Langer Newburgh & Brady to Lambda Legal Defense Fund, February 4, 1998; Bill Andriette, "Barbarism California Style," Guide, October 1996, 9-10.
9. Kristin Anderson Moore, Anne K. Driscoll, and Laura Duberstein Lindberg, A Statistical Portrait of Adolescent Sex, Contraception, and Childbearing, pamphlet (Washington, D.C.: National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy, 1998), 11, 13.
10. The characterizations of Dylan's condition come from his lawyer, Laura Barton, and Dylan himself.
11. Sharon G. Elstein and Noy Davis, "Sexual Relations between Adult Males and Young Teen Girls: Exploring the Legal and Social Responses," American Bar Association report, Washington, D.C., 1997, 26.
12. Elstein and Davis, "Sexual Relations between Adult Males and Young Teen Girls," 5.
13. Elstein and Davis, "Sexual Relations between Adult Males and Young Teen Girls," 26.
14. Lynn M. Phillips, "Recasting Consent: Agency and Victimization in Adult-Teen Relationships," in New Versions of Victims: Feminists Struggle with the Concept, ed. Sharon Lamb (New York: New York University Press, 1999), 93. A local Planned Parenthood chapter funded the study.
15. Mike A. Males, Scapegoat Generation: America's War on Adolescents (Monroe, Me.: Common Courage Press, 1996), 45-76.
16. Patricia Donovan, "Can Statutory Rape Laws Be Effective in Preventing Adolescent Pregnancy?" Family Planning Perspectives (January/February 1997).
17. Elizabeth Gleick, "Putting the Jail in Jailbait," Time, January 29, 1996, 33.
18. Mireya Navarro, "Teen-Age Mothers Viewed as Abused Prey of Older Men," New York Times, May 19, 1996.
19. Phillips, "Recasting Consent," 84.
20. Donovan, "Can Statutory Rape Laws Be Effective?" See also: "Issues in Brief: and the Welfare Reform, Marriage, and Sexual Behavior," Alan Guttmacher Institute report, 2000; Kristin Luker, Dubious Conceptions: The Politics of Teenage Pregnancy (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1996).
21. Although teen pregnancy rates have declined to their lowest levels since the 1970s, experts attribute the change not to any crackdown on adult-teen sex but to increased contraception use, particularly condoms and long-lasting implants, by teenage women. Ayesha Rook, "Teen Pregnancy Down to 1970s Levels," Youth Today, November 1998, 7. Mike Males, original discoverer of the connection between adult-teen sex and teen pregnancy, has reviewed California's records and expressed regrets to me that the data have been used so punitively. He also admits that any implication of a direct causal relationship might have been ill-advised on his part. Interviews 1998 and 1999.
22. Elstein and Davis, "Sexual Relations between Adult Males and Young Teen Girls," 11.
23. Matt Lait, "Orange County Teen Wedding Policy Raises Stir," Los Angeles Times, Orange County Edition, September 2, 1996, A1. Public-health researcher Laura Lindberg found that such liaisons are not as unstable as some may think. When she checked in with fifteen- to seventeen-year-old mothers with older partners thirty months after their babies' births, she found the couples were still close and still together. Laura Duberstein Lindberg et al., "Age Differences between Minors Who Give Birth and Their Adult Partners," Family Planning Perspectives 20 (March/April 1997): 20.
24. Brandon Bailey, "Teen Moms Question Governor's Proposal," San Jose Mercury News, January 14, 1996, 1B.
25. James Brooke, "An Old Law Chastises Pregnant Teen-Agers," New York Times, October 28, 1996, A10.
26. Mary E. Odem, Delinquent Daughters: Protecting and Policing Adolescent Female Sexuality in the United States, 1885-1920 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995), 5.
27. Like today, boys were afforded much greater license to play as they wished, especially if they were employed (though they also had to deliver their wages to the family cookie jar). Also like today, when a family did bring a son before the authorities on sex charges, it was usually for molesting younger sisters or stepsisters or, in a few cases, for suspected homosexuality. Odem, Delinquent Daughters, 178. Historian Ruth Alexander found similarly unsatisfactory outcomes for families in the cases she tracked from New York State in the 1930s and 1940s. When accusing parents found out that the mandatory sentence for sexual misconduct was three years, most were shocked. So while their girls were locked away in Bedford Hills, several hours' trip north of New York City, mothers inundated the wardens with letters pleading for reduced sentences and more humane treatment of their daughters. Interview with Alexander, July 1998.
28. Steven Schlossman and Stephanie Wallach, "The Crime of Precocious Sexuality: Female Juvenile Delinquency in the Progressive Era," Harvard Educational Review 48 (1978): 65-95.
29. Luker, Dubious Conceptions, 30, 212.
30. Interviews with Ricki Solinger and Ruth Alexander, July 1998.
31. Odem, Delinquent Daughters, 188.
32. The 1995 National Survey of Family Growth found that 43.1 percent of girls lost their virginity with a partner one to two years older, 26.8 percent with someone three to four years older, and 11.8 percent with a person five or more years older. The average teen girl's male lover is three years older than she. Moore, Driscoll, and Lindberg, "A Statistical Portrait of Adolescent Sex," 13. See also: Sharon Thompson, Going All the Way (New York: Hill and Wang, 1995), 217, 322.
33. Security classifications are in many cases similar to mandatory sentencing laws, which designate certain categories of crime (sex offenses and drug offenses among them) as more "dangerous," even if they are not more violent, than other crimes.
34. Divorce filings in author's possession. Not identified here to protect privacy.
35. National Center on Child Abuse and Neglect, Federal Register, part 2 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, January 23, 1978), 3244.
36. Frank Bruni, "In an Age of Consent, Defining Abuse by Adults," New York Times, November 9, 1997, "Week in Review," 3.
37. Allie C. Kilpatrick, Long-Range Effects of Child and Adolescent Sexual Experiences: Myths, Mores, Menaces (Hillsdale, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1992).
38. Kilpatrick, Long-Range Effects of Child and Adolescent Sexual Experiences, 58, 90.
39. Letter, NAMBLA Bulletin, June 1994.
40. William E. Prendergast, Sexual Abuse of Children and Adolescents (New York: Continuum Publishing Co., 1996), 26.
41. Bruce Rind and Philip Tromovitch, "A Meta-analytic review of findings from national samples on Psychological Correlates of Child Sexual Abuse," Journal of Sex Research (1997): 237-55.
42. Author interview with Lynn Phillips, January 1998.
43. Thompson, Going All the Way, 215-44.
44. I also asked the prominent sexologist and therapist Leonore Tiefer about these relationships. She said: "You have to take into account the subjectivity and the realm of experience of each individual young person. You can't explain this stuff with universals—with sociobiology or sociology. The power issues are not wiped out" by individual explanations, however; "they are complicated." Tiefer gave the example of Monica Lewinsky. "On one hand, you could say she's powerful: she got the leader of the free world to desire her. On the other, there is a certain powerlessness and displacement of ambition" onto the sexual conquest.
45. Phillips, "Recasting Consent," 87.
46. Martin J. Costello, Hating the Sin, Loving the Sinner: The Minneapolis Children's Theatre Company Adolescent Sexual Abuse Prosecutions (New York: Garland, 1991), 8-13.
47. Elstein and Davis, "Sexual Relations between Adult Men and Young Teen Girls," 19.
48. Most states allow youngsters to drive, and even to marry, before they may have unmarried sexual intercourse. In Massachusetts at this writing, a person can marry at twelve, but if someone who is not her husband inserts his finger into her vagina when she is fifteen, even with her express consent, he can be charged with statutory rape. Under a section of the state's legal code entitled "Crimes against Chastity, etc.," taking a picture of her naked seventeen-year-old buttocks will earn the photographer up to twenty years in prison. Massachusetts Family Law, Section 354 (1990); Massachusetts Criminal Law, Section 12: 16 (1992); Massachusetts General Laws, Section 373: 29A.
49. In 1993 in New Mexico it was thirteen; by 1998, it was seventeen; in Maine it went from fourteen to eighteen in the same years. "The Geography of Desire," Details (June 1993). See also Elstein and Davis, "Sexual Relations between Adult Males and Young Teen Girls." For a continual update of age of consent throughout the world, consult www.ageofconsent.com.
50. Males, Scapegoat Generation, 71.
51. David T. Evans, Sexual Citizenship: The Material Construction of Sexualities (London: Routledge, 1993), 215.

5. No-Sex Education
1. Joyce Purnick, "Where Chastity Is Not Virtuous," New York Times, May 25, 1981, A14.
2. My suspicion is the word abstinence migrated into sex ed from the hugely popular movement of twelve-step anti-"addiction" programs based on the model of Alcoholics Anonymous, which preached that only complete renunciation and daily recommitment could bring a bad habit under control.
3. Guidelines for Comprehensive Sexuality Education (New York: Sex Information and Education Council of the U.S., 1994), 1.
4. Social Security Act, Title V, Section 510 (1997), Maternal and Child Health Bureau, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
5. David J. Landry, Lisa Kaeser, and Cory L. Richards, "Abstinence Promotion and the Provision of Information about Contraception in Public School District Sexuality Education Policies," Family Planning Perspectives 31, no. 6 (November/December 1999): 280-86; Kaiser Family Foundation, "Most Secondary Schools Take a More Comprehensive Approach to Sex Education," press release, December 14, 1999.
6. "Changes in Sexuality Education from 1988-1999," SEICUS, SHOP Talk Bulletin 5, no. 16 (October 13, 2000).
7. Diana Jean Schemo, "Survey Finds Parents Favor More Detailed Sex Education," New York Times, October 4, 2000, A1.
8. Joyce Purnick, "Welfare Bill: Legislating Morality?" New York Times, August 19, 1996, "Metro Matters," B1.
9. Patricia Campbell, Sex Education Books for Young Adults 1892-1979 (New York: R. R. Bowker Co., 1979), viii.
10. F. Valentine, "Education in Sexual Subjects," New York Medical Journal 83 (1906): 276-78.
11. Benjamin C. Gruenberg, High Schools and Sex Education: A Manual of Suggestions of Education Related to Sex (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Public Health Service and U.S. Bureau of Education, 1922), 95.
12. Evelyn Duvall, Facts of Life and Love for Teenagers, as quoted in Campbell, Sex Education Books for Young Adults, 87.
13. Mary S. Calderone, "A Distinguished Doctor Talks to Vassar College Freshmen about Love and Sex," Redbook, February 1964 (reprint).
14. Sex Education: Conditioning for Immorality, filmstrip, John Birch Society, released around 1969 (n.d.).
15. Handman and Brennan, Sex Handbook, 170.
16. Sol Gordon, You: The Psychology of Surviving and Enhancing Your Social Life, Love Life, Sex Life, School Life, Home Life, Work Life, Emotional Life, Creative Life, Spiritual Life, Style of Life Life (New York: Times Books, 1975).
17. In 1972, worried that young single women's kids would end up on the dole, Congress required all welfare departments to offer birth control services to minors. The Supreme Court ruled in Carey v. Population Services International (1977) that teens had a privacy right to purchase contraception; in 1977 and 1979, when Congress reauthorized Title X of the Public Health Services Act of 1970, providing health care to the poor, it singled out adolescents as a specific group in need of contraceptive services. In 1978, partly in reaction to the Guttmacher Report, Senator Edward Kennedy's Adolescent Health Services and Pregnancy Prevention and Care Act set up the Office of Adolescent Pregnancy Programs at the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (later Health and Human Services). Its mandate was to administer "comprehensive [reproductive] services" to teens (Luker, Dubious Conceptions, 69). On the books, the government seemed to care about the reproductive and social health of teenagers, but the budget belied real commitment. No new funds were slated for the younger Title X clients, who would number as many as half the visitors to some birth control clinics in coming years. The Kennedy program, proposed at fifty million dollars in the first year, got only one million dollars; in its third and final year, it reached just ten million dollars and extended grants to fewer than three dozen programs nationwide.
18. Guttmacher Report, quoted in Constance A. Nathanson, Dangerous Passages: The Social Control of Sexuality in Women's Adolescence (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1991), 47.
19. The history of family planning and concomitant legislation before the Adolescent Family Life Act draws from Nathanson, Dangerous Passages; Rosalind Pollack Petchesky, Abortion and Women's Choice: The State, Sexuality, and Reproductive Freedom, rev. ed. (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1990); and Luker, Dubious Conceptions, as well as interviews with birth control professionals, lawyers, and women's movement activists from the 1970s and 1980s.
20. Alan Guttmacher Institute, Sex and America's Teenagers (New York: the institute, 1994), 58. Luker notes that many are also discouraged at school or already dropouts and that motherhood does not diminish such a young woman's standard of living: they are poor when they have children, and they stay poor (Luker, Dubious Conceptions, 106-8). Sociologist Arline Geronimus had argued that for some young women early childbearing is a rational choice, the best of several not-so-great options. A girl can stay in school and take advantage of school-based day care; families more readily help young mothers with babysitting and financial support than older ones; and, when Junior heads off to kindergarten, a younger mom has plenty of years to recover missed opportunities. Besides, for the young women "at risk," babies add love, meaning, and structure to otherwise fairly stripped-down lives. Arline T. Geronimus and Sanders Korenman, "The Socioeconomic Consequences of Teen Childbearing Reconsidered," Quarterly Journal of Economics (November 1992): 1187-214. Teenage men, especially those who are alienated from school and pessimistic about their work prospects, feel just as affirmed by fatherhood as their girlfriends do by motherhood. William Marsigho and Constance L. Shehan, "Adolescent Males' Abortion Attitudes: Data from a National Survey," Family Planning Perspectives 25 (July/August 1993): 163.
21. This number represented about 50 percent of the fifteen- to nineteen-year-olds, the same percentage who are now sexually active. Alan Guttmacher Institute, Eleven Million Teenagers: What Can Be Done about the Epidemic of Adolescent Pregnancies in the United States (New York: Planned Parenthood Federation on America, 1976), 9-11.
22. Nathanson, Dangerous Passages, 60.
23. Luker, Dubious Conceptions, 8.
24. For surgeon general, Reagan nominated Everett Koop, who had appeared in an anti-abortion propaganda video standing in a field of dead fetuses. But Koop turned out not to be the antichoice puppet the Right to Life had hoped for. Keeping his views on abortion to himself, he became a tireless crusader for frank AIDS education. Richard Schweiker, also staunchly antichoice and not too hot for a federal role in education or welfare either, was appointed secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare. To run that department's three-year-old Office of Adolescent Pregnancy Programs, the administration recruited Marjory Mecklenberg, a Minnesota Right to Life activist widely regarded as an unqualified hard-liner for "family values" and against nonmarital sex, which seemed to be a prerequisite for top positions in that office. It would later be occupied by Jo Ann Gasper, whose column in Conservative Digest attacked "homosexuals and other perverts" and "antifamily forces"; by Nabers Cabaniss, a favorite of far-right senators Denton, Jesse Helms, and Henry Hyde who at thirty boasted that she was the oldest virgin in Washington, D.C.; and by Cabaniss's erstwhile boyfriend William Reynolds "Ren" Archer III, who as a bachelor confided to a reporter that he had had sex once but didn't much like it.
25. "Block-granting" Title X into the Maternal and Child Health Bureau had been proposed during the Nixon administration too but failed.
26. African American communities had always kept such babies close to home. And by 1981, as birth mothers began to come forward and express the pain and coercion of their decisions and adopted children started looking for those birth mothers, white girls were also thinking twice about relinquishing maternal rights. Ricki Solinger, Wake Up Little Susie (New York: Routledge, 1992).
27. Kendrick v. Bowen (Civil A. No. 83-3175), "Federal Supplement," 1548. Patricia Donovan, "The Adolescent Family Life Act and the Promotion of Religious Doctrine," Family Planning Perspectives 4, no. 4 (September/October 1984): 222.
28. The anti-ERA Illinois Committee on the Status of Women received grants of over $600,000 to develop and evaluate the workbook Sex Respect (ACLU "Kendrick I," List of Grantees), authored by former Catholic schoolteacher and anti-abortion activist Colleen Kelly Mast, and another $350,000 for Facing Reality, the workbook of its companion curriculum (Teaching Fear: The Religious Right's Campaign against Sexuality Education [Washington, D.C.: People for the American Way, June 1994], 10). Sex Respect was denounced for its inaccuracies and omissions, ridiculed for its sloganeering ("Pet Your Dog, Not Your Date"), and scorned for its antisexual moralism ("There's no way to have premarital sex without hurting someone"). Yet in 1988 the U.S. Department of Education put the curriculum on its list of recommended AIDS education videos, replacing one by the Red Cross. The next year, after former committee vice-president, then state representative Penny Pullen sponsored legislation requiring abstinence education in Illinois public schools, Sex Respect was awarded state contracts worth more than $700,000 (Teaching Fear, 10).
29. This figure has also been cited for the number of school districts employing any abstinence-only curriculum. "States Slow to Take U.S. Aid to Teach Sexual Abstinence," New York Times, May 8, 1997, 22.
30. During that time, the average grant for other organizations the size of Teen-Aid or Respect Inc. was less than half of Teen-Aid's and less than a third of Respect's. Department of Health and Human Services, Public Health Service, "Adolescent Family Life Demonstration Grants Amounts Awarded 1982-1996," Office of Adolescent Pregnancy Prevention document, Washington, D.C., 1996. Teen-Aid did not use the free startup money to reduce its prices to future customers. In Duval County, Florida, one of the people who sued in the mid-1990s to stop the schools from teaching Teen-Aid's "Me, My World, My Future" because of its inaccuracies and its biases against abortion, women and girls, gays, and "any kind of family that isn't mommy, daddy, and children" said, "The new curriculum [is] going to save the school system huge amounts of money. [With Teen-Aid], we had to buy $100,000 worth of supplies a year." "In Duval County, Florida: Reflecting on a Legal Battle for Comprehensive Sexuality Education," SIECUS Reports 24, no. 6, (August/September 1996), 5.
31. Teaching Fear, 11.
32. The statistics available at the time from the institute were that about 780,000, or 39 percent, of 2 million then-fourteen-year-old girls would have at least one pregnancy in their teen years; 420,000 would give birth; 300,000 would have abortions.
33. U.S. Senate, Jeremiah Denton, Adolescent Family Life, S. Rept. 97-161, July 8, 1981, 2; emphasis added.
34. "To Attack the Problems of Adolescent Sexuality," New York Times, June 15, 1981, A22.
35. "To Attack the Problems of Adolescent Sexuality."
36. A few years earlier, the Family Protection Act (H.R. 7955), a blueprint of the Right's agenda to come and also cosponsored by Hatch, proposed defunding all state protections of children and women independent of their fathers and husbands, including child-abuse and domestic-abuse programs. It did not pass.
37. Bernard Weinraub, "Reagan Aide Backs Birth-Aid Education," New York Times, June 24, 1981, C12.
38. A SIECUS-Advocates for Children Survey in 1999 found that 70 percent opposed the federal abstinence-only standards and thought they were unrealistic in light of kids' actual sexual behavior. SIECUS, SHOP Talk Bulletin 4 (June 11, 1999).
39. "State Sexuality and HIV/STD Education Regulations," National Abortion Rights Action League fact sheet, February 1997.
40. "Sex Education That Teaches Abstinence "Wins Support," Associated Press, New York Times, July 23, 1997.
41. "Between the Lines: States' Implementation of the Federal Government's Section 510(b) Abstinence Education Program in Fiscal Year 1998," SIECUS report, Washington, D.C., 1999.
42. Six in ten believe that sexual intercourse in the teen years was always wrong, and nine out of ten wanted their kids to be taught about abstinence at school. Yet eight in ten also wanted them to learn about contraception and preventing sexually transmitted diseases. SIECUS, SHOP Talk Bulletin 4 (June 11, 1999).
43. "Adolescent Sexual Health in Europe & the U.S.—Why the Difference?" 2d ed., Advocates for Youth report, Washington, D.C., 2000.
44. Douglas Kirby, "No Easy Answers: Research Findings on Programs to Reduce Teen Pregnancy," National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy report, Washington, D.C., 1997.
45. Marl W. Roosa and F. Scott Christopher, "An Evaluation of an Abstinence-Only Adolescent Pregnancy Prevention Program: Is 'Just Say No' Enough?" Family Relations 39 (January 1990): 68-72.
46. John B. Jemmott III, Loretta Sweet Jemmott, and Geoffrey T. Fong, "Abstinence and Safer Sex: HIV Risk-Reduction Interventions for African American Adolescents," Journal of the American Medical Association 279, no. 19 (May 20, 1998): 1529-36.
47. Ralph J. DiClemente, Editorial: "Preventing Sexually Transmitted Infections among Adolescents," Journal of the American Medical Association 279, no. 19 (May 20, 1998).
48. National Institutes of Health Consensus Development Conference Statement, Interventions to Prevent HIV Risk Behaviors, February 11-13, 1997 (Bethesda, Md.: NIH), 15.
49. Ron Haskins and Carol Statuto Bevan, "Implementing the Abstinence Education Provision of the Welfare Reform Legislation," U.S. House of Representatives memo, November 8, 1996, 1.
50. Haskins and Bevan, "Implementing the Abstinence Education Provision," 8-9.
51. "Changes in Sexuality Education from 1988-1999."
52. Victor Strasburger, Getting Your Kids to Say "No" in the '90s When You Said "Yes" in the '60s (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1993), 87-88.
53. Sol Gordon and Judith Gordon, Raising a Child Conservatively in a Sexually Permissive World (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1989), 101.
54. Peter C. Scales and Martha R. Roper, "Challenges to Sexuality Education in the Schools," in The Sexuality Education Challenge: Promoting Healthy Sexuality in Young People, ed. Judy C. Drolet and Kay Clark (Santa Cruz, Calif.: ETR Associates, 1994), 79.
55. Colleen Kelly Mast, Sex Respect: Parent-Teacher Guide (Bradley, 111.: Respect Inc., n.d.), 45.
56. Other educators have pointed out the implicit inaccuracy of the impression these slides leave: unfortunately, one of the most common STDs, chlamydia, is asymptomatic.
57. Teaching Fear, 8.
58. Medical Institute for Sexual Health, National Guidelines for Sexuality and Character Education (Austin, Tex.: Medical Institute for Sexual Health, 1996), 82.
59. Saint Augustine, Confessions (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), 24-25.
60. Medical Institute for Sexual Health, "National Guidelines," 89.
61. "HIV: You Can Live without It!" (Spokane, Wash.: Teen-Aid, Inc., 1998), 33.
62. Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid's Tale (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1986), 24.
63. Scales and Roper, "Challenges to Sexuality Education," 70.
64. Irving R. Dickman, Winning the Battle for Sex Education, pamphlet (New York: SIECUS, 1982); Debra Haffner and Diane de Mauro, Winning the Battle: Developing Support for Sexuality and HIV/AIDS Education, pamphlet (New York: SIECUS, 1991); Teaching Fear.
65. The ad ran in the New York Times, April 22, 1997, the Los Angeles Times, April 28, 1997, as well as the West Coast editions of Time, Newsweek, and People during that month.
66. "Trends in Sexual Risk Behaviors among High School Students—U.S. 1991-97," Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report 47 (September 18, 1998): 749-52. Teens may be doing better than adults. "Most Adults in the United States Who Have Multiple Sexual Partners Do Not Use Condoms Consistently," Family Planning Perspectives 26 (January/February 1994): 42-43.
67. Susheela Singh and Jacqueline E. Darroch, "Adolescent Pregnancy and Childbearing: Levels and Trends in the Developed Countries," Family Planning Perspectives 32 (2000): 14-23. The government recorded the lowest number of teen pregnancies in 1997: 94.3 per thousand women ages fifteen to nineteen, a drop of 19 percent since 1991. Most of those pregnancies are among eighteen- and nineteen-year-old women. In 1999, the U.S. teen birth rate hit its lowest level since recording began in 1940. Of every thousand teenage women, 4.96 gave birth. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention National Center for Health Statistics, National Vital Statistics Report 4, no. 4 (2001).
68. About three-quarters of girls use a method the first time; as many as two-thirds of teens say they use condoms regularly—three times the rate in 1970. Long-acting birth control injections and implants have also gained popularity among teens. "Why Is Teenage Pregnancy Declining? The Roles of Abstinence, Sexual Activity and Contraceptive Use," Alan Guttmacher Institute Occasional Report, 1999. The National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy asked teens themselves the main reason they thought teen pregnancies had dropped in the last decade. Of 1,002 youths surveyed, 37.9 percent named worry about AIDS and other STDs; 24 percent credited a greater availability of birth control; and 14.9 percent said the decline was due to more attention to the issue. Only 5.2 percent named "changing morals and values," and 3.7 percent said, "Fewer teens have sex." With One Voice: American Adults and Teens Sound Off about Teen Pregnancy (Washington, D.C.: National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy, 2001).
69. Singh and Darroch, "Adolescent Pregnancy and Childbearing."
70. "Teen Pregnancy 'Virtually Eliminated' in the Netherlands," Reuters Health/London news story (accessed through Medscape), March 2, 2001.
71. "United States and the Russian Federation Lead the Developed World in Teenage Pregnancy Rates," Alan Guttmacher Institute press release, February 24, 2000.
72. J. Mauldon and K. Luker, "The Effects of Contraceptive Education on Method Use at First Intercourse," Family Planning Perspectives (January/February 1996): 19.
73. J. C. Abma et al., "Fertility, Family Planning, and Women's Health: New Data from the 1995 National Survey of Family Growth," Vital Health Statistics 23, no. 19 (1997).
74. Peggy Brick et al., The New Positive Images: Teaching Abstinence, Contraception and Sexual Health (Hackensack, N.J.: Planned Parenthood of Greater Northern New Jersey, 1996), 31.
75. Peter Bearman, paper presented at Planned Parenthood New York City's conference Adolescent Sexual Health: New Data and Implications for Services and Programs, October 26, 1998; Diana Jean Schemo, "Virginity Pledges by Teenagers Can Be Highly Effective, Federal Study Finds," New York Times, January 4, 2001.
76. Lantier, "Do Abstinence Lessons Lessen Sex?"
77. "Trends in Sexual Risk Behaviors among High School Students—United States 1991-1997," Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Reports 47 (September 18, 1998): 749-52.
78. Abma et al., "Fertility, Family Planning, and Women's Health."
79. It is important to point out that, in spite of these declines, nearly two-thirds of teen births resulted from unintended pregnancies. Abma et al., "Fertility, Family Planning, and Women's Health."
80. "Adolescent Sexual Health in the U.S. and Europe—Why the Difference?" Advocates for Youth fact sheet, Washington, D.C., 2000.
81. Schemo, "Virginity Pledges by Teenagers."
82. It is impossible to find a forthright statement that abstinence-plus education meaningfully delays teen sexual intercourse. Its evaluators have been able to find out only that, for instance, if you want to delay intercourse, you should start classes before kids start "experimenting with sexual behaviors." And all studies show that sex ed does not encourage earlier intercourse. J. J. Frost and J. D. Forrest, "Understanding the Impact of Effective Teenage Pregnancy Prevention Programs," Family Planning Perspectives 27 (1995): 188-96; D. Kirby et al., "School Based Programs to Reduce Sexual Risk Behaviors: A Review of Effectiveness," Public Health Reports 190 (1997): 339-60; A. Grunseit and S. Kippax, Effects of Sex Education on Young People's Sexual Behavior (Geneva: World Health Organization, 1993).
83. S. Zabin and M. B. Hirsch, Evaluation of Pregnancy Prevention Programs in the School Context (Lexington, Mass.: D.C. Heath/Lexington Books, 1988); Institute of Medicine, The Best Intentions: Unintended Pregnancy and Well-Being of Children and Families (Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press, 1995).

6. Compulsory Motherhood
1. This law, the first gate to open in the gradual spilling away of federally protected abortion rights, was reauthorized in every subsequent Congress; its constitutionality was upheld three times. In 1993, after a long battle, it was "liberalized" to add exceptions for rape and incest. But while the government paid for a third of abortions from 1973 to 1977, it now pays for almost none. Marlene Gerber Fried, "Abortion in the U.S.: Barriers to Access," Reproductive Health Matters 9 (May 1997): 37-45.
2. Ellen Frankfort and Frances Kissling, Rosie: Investigation of a Wrongful Death (New York: Dial Press, 1979).
3. "Who Decides? A State-by-State Review of Abortion and Reproductive Rights," 10th ed., National Abortion Rights Action League report, Washington, D.C, 2001.
4. By the 1990s, more than 80 percent of clinics were regularly picketed by anti-abortion activists. Ann Cronin, "Abortion: The Rate vs. the Debate," New York Times, February 25, 1997, "Week in Review," 4.
5. The agency reported at least fifteen bombings and arson attacks at clinics each year from 1993 through 1995, seven in 1996, and one in Atlanta in 1997 that injured six people. Rick Bragg, "Abortion Clinic Hit by 2 Bombs; Six Are Injured," New York Times, January 17, 1997.
6. Jim Yardley and David Rohde, "Abortion Doctor in Buffalo Slain; Sniper Attack Fits Violent Pattern," New York Times, October 25, 1998, A1.
7. Alan Guttmacher Institute, "Into a New World: Young Women's Sexual and Reproductive Lives," Executive Summary (New York: the institute, 1988).
8. Women ages eighteen to twenty-four are about twice as likely to have abortions as women in the general population. Stanley K. Henshaw and Kathryn Kost, "Abortion Patients in 1994-1995: Characteristics and Contraceptive Use," Family Planning Perspectives 28 (1996): 140-47, 158.
9. Robert Pear, "Provision on Youth Health Insurance Would Sharply Limit Access to Abortion," New York Times, July 3, 1997.
10. About twenty-six million have legal abortions yearly, and an estimated twenty million have illegal ones, ending about half of all unplanned pregnancies. Alan Guttmacher Institute News, January 21, 1999.
11. Estimated rates ran from one in ten to almost one in two, and among Kinsey's unmarried informants, 90 percent of those who got pregnant procured abortions. Lawrence Lader, Abortion (New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1966), 64-74; Kristin Luker, Abortion and the Politics of Motherhood (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), 48-49; Brett Harvey, The Fifties: A Women's Oral History (New York: Harper Collins, 1993), 24.
12. "Abortion Common among All Women Even Those Thought to Oppose Abortion," Alan Guttmacher Institute press release, 1996.
13. Cronin, "Abortion: The Rate vs. the Debate."
14. In a New York Times-CBS poll in 1998, half of respondents thought abortion was too easy to get; as compared with 1989, fewer people felt that an interrupted career or education was an acceptable reason to get an abortion; and only 15 percent believed abortion was acceptable in the second trimester. "[P]ublic opinion has shifted notably away from general acceptance of legal abortion and toward an evolving center of gravity: a more nuanced, conditional acceptance that some call a 'permit but discourage' model." Carey Goldberg with Janet Elder, "Public Still Backs Abortion, but Wants Limits, Poll Says," New York Times, January 16, 1998, A1.
15. Jennifer Baumgartner, "The Pro-Choice PR Problem," Nation (March 5, 2001): 19-23.
16. Naomi Wolf, "Our Bodies, Our Souls: Rethinking Pro-Choice Rhetoric," New Republic (October 16, 1995): 26-27.
17. Janet Hadley, "The 'Awfulisation' of Abortion," paper presented to the Abortion Matters conference, Amsterdam, March 1996.
18. "Abortion Common . . . ," Guttmacher Institute.
19. Nation columnist Katha Pollitt is one of the few who has defended the morality of abortion.
20. See, for example, Vincent M. Rue, "The Psychological Realities of Induced Abortion," in Post-Abortion Aftermath: A Comprehensive Consideration, ed. Michael T. Mannion (Franklin, Wis.: Sheed and Ward, 1994). The antichoice group Operation Rescue has widely distributed Focus on the Family's pamphlet Identifying and Overcoming Post-Abortion Syndrome, by Teri K. and Paul C. Reisser (Colorado Springs: Focus on the Family, revised 1994).
21. "Abortion Study Finds No Long-Term Ill Effects on Emotional Well-Being," Family Planning Perspectives 29 (July/August 1997): 193; Jane E. Brody, "Study Disputes Abortion Trauma," New York Times, February 12, 1997, C8.
22. "Researchers Document Flaw in Research Linking Abortion and Breast Cancer," Reproductive Freedom News 20 (December 20, 1996), quoting Journal of the National Cancer Institute (December 4, 1996).
23. Rebecca Stone and Cynthia Waszak, "Adolescent Knowledge and Attitudes about Abortion," Family Planning Perspectives 24 (Narcg 1992): 53.
24. Stone and Waszak, "Adolescent Knowledge and Attitudes."
25. Connecticut, Michigan, and Rhode Island, to name three, forbade discussion of abortion as a reproductive health method; South Carolina allowed discussion of the procedure but only its negative consequences. "Sexuality Education in America: A State-by-State Review," National Abortion Rights Action League report, Washington, D.C., 1995. Under the federal abstinence-only regulations, of course, abortion may not be mentioned.
26. Sex Respect Student Workbook, 95.
27. On the tonsillectomy comparison, see "Safety of Abortion," National Abortion Rights Action League fact sheet, Washington, D.C., undated, received 1998; and Review of Fear-Based Programs, SIECUS Community Action Kit, 1994: 6. On the shot of penicillin comparison, see Margie Kelly, "Legalized Abortion: A Public Health Success Story," Reproductive Freedom News (June 1999): 7.
28. Girls Incorporated, Taking Care of Business: A Sexuality Education Program for Young Teen Women Ages 15-18 (Indianapolis: Girls Inc., 1998), vol. 6, 1-6.
29. Sex Can Wait (Santa Cruz, Calif.: ETR Associates, 1998), 290.
30. Peggy Brick and Bill Taverner, The New Positive Images: Teaching Abstinence, Contraception and Sexual Health, 3d ed. (Morristown, N.J.: Planned Parenthood of Greater Northern New Jersey, 2001).
31. After reading the curricula used in public schools, I find it a relief and inspiration to peruse the Unitarian Universalist Church's Our Whole Lives. Its curricula both for seventh- to ninth-graders and for older high schoolers present thorough discussions of the values debate around abortion, as well as explicit descriptions of the procedures and clear statements of abortion's safety. The tenth- to twelfth-grade text titles the section on abortion "Reproductive Rights." Pamela M. Wilson, Our Whole Lives: Sexuality Education for Grades 7 to 9 (Boston: Unitarian Universalist Association/United Church Board for Homeland Ministries, 1999); Eva S. Goldfarb and Elizabeth M. Casparian, Our Whole Lives: Sexuality Education for Grades 10 to 12 (Boston: Unitarian Universalist Association/United Church Board for Homeland Ministries, 1999), 199-212.
32. Alan Guttmacher Institute, "Teenage Pregnancy and the Welfare Reform Debate," Issues in Brief (Washington, D.C.: the institute, 1995).
33. Hector Sanchez-Flores, speaking at the Adolescent Sexual Health: New Data and Implications for Services and Programs conference, sponsored by Planned Parenthood of New York City and other organizations, October 26, 1998.
34. On metropolitan areas, see Barbara Vobejda, "Study Finds Fewer Facilities Offering Abortions," Washington Post, December 11, 1998, A4.
35. The Defense Department also prohibited both federally and privately funded abortions at military facilities. Cronin, "Abortion: The Rate vs. the Debate."
36. National Abortion Rights Action League, 1998 statistics (accessed on www.naral.org), Washington, D.C.
37. Margaret C. Crosby and Abigail English, "Should Parental Consent to or Notification of an Adolescent's Abortion Be Required by Law? No"; and Everett L. Worthington, "Should Parental Consent . . . ? Yes"; both in Debating Children's Lives: Current Controversies on Children and Adolescents, ed. Mary Ann Mason and Eileen Gambrill (Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage Publications, 1994), 143 and 133, respectively.
38. Crosby and English, "Should Parental Consent . . . ? No," 143.
39. Court approval by "judicial bypass," the legal remedy to the discriminatory burden such regulations place on girls who can't talk to their families, may even discourage such conversations. Crosby and English, "Should Parental Consent . . . ? No."
40. "Induced Termination of Pregnancy before and after Roe v. Wade, Trends in the Mortality and Morbidity of Women," Journal of the American Medical Association 268, no. 22 (December 1993): 3238.
41. American Medical Association, Council on Ethical and Judicial Affairs, "Mandatory Parental Consent to Abortion," Journal of the American Medical Association 269, no. 1 (January 6, 1993): 83.
42. Lizette Alvarez, "GOP Bill to Back Parental Consent Abortion Laws," New York Times, May 21, 1998, A30. The datum that young women support parental involvement laws was gleaned from a nationwide study of teens and young adult women, but since this fact did not support the political aims of the group that conducted the study, the group's board of directors has chosen not to publicize it.
43. "Woman Is Sentenced for Aid in Abortion," New York Times, December 17, 1996.
44. "Debate Continues on Child Custody Protection Act," Reproductive Freedom News 7, no. 5 (June 1, 1998): 3-4; "Women's Stories: Becky Bell," National Abortion Rights Action League report, Washington, D.C., undated.
45. Alvarez, "GOP Bill."
46. The bill was reintroduced in 2001. At this writing, it has not been voted on.
47. Tamar Lewin, "Poll of Teenagers: Battle of the Sexes on Roles in Family," New York Times, July 11, 1994, A1.
48. Addressing this atavistic social problem, lawmakers in two dozen states have proposed granting money to women who dispose of unwanted infants, as long as the babies are still breathing and the mothers leave them in an authorized location, such as a hospital. Currently, many states prosecute mothers who abandon their newborns. Jacqueline L. Salmon, "For Unwanted Babies, a Safety Net," Washington Post, October 20, 2000.

7. The Expurgation of Pleasure
1. Peggy Brick, "Toward a Positive Approach to Adolescent Sexuality," SIECUS Report 17 (May-June 1989): 3.
2. Guidelines for Comprehensive Sexuality Education, 1.
3. Michelle Fine, "Sexuality, Schooling, and Adolescent Females: The Missing Discourse of Desire," Harvard Educational Review 58 (1988): 33.
4. Girls Incorporated, Will Power/Won't Power: A Sexuality Education Program for Girls Ages 12-14 (Indianapolis: Girls Inc., 1998), V-12.
5. Richard P. Barth, Reducing the Risk: Building Skills to Prevent Pregnancy, STD, and HIV, 3d ed. (Santa Cruz, Calif.: ETR Associates, 1996), 89.
6. Tim LaHaye and Beverly LaHaye, The Act of Marriage: The Beauty of Sexual Love (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 1976), 289-90.
7. This was the definition given by the majority in Stephanie A. Sanders and June Machover Reinisch's "Would You Say You 'Had Sex' If . . . ?" Journal of the American Medical Association 281 (January 20, 1999): 275-77. See also Lisa Remez, "Oral Sex among Adolescents: Is It Sex or Is It Abstinence?" Alan Guttmacher Institute, Special Report 32, November-December 2000.
8. Mary M. Krueger, "Everyone Is an Exception: Assumptions to Avoid in the Sex Education Classroom," Family Life Educator (fall 1993).
9. Cindy Patton, Fatal Advice: How Safe-Sex Education Went Wrong (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1996), 34.
10. The National Survey of Adolescent Males Ages 15 to 19, conducted in 1995 and published in 2000, found that one in ten had experienced anal sex. Tamar Lewin, "Survey Shows Sex Practices of Boys," New York Times, December 19, 2000. In one San Francisco survey of seventeen- to nineteen-year-old men who have sex with men, 28 percent had had unprotected anal sex, the behavior carrying the highest risk for HIV transmission. U.S. Conference of Mayors, "Safer Sex Relapse: A Contemporary Challenge," AIDS Information Exchange 11, no. 4 (1994): 1-8.
11. On the masturbation datum, see Krueger, "Everyone Is an Exception." On the oral sex datum, see Susan Newcomer and J. Richard Udry, "Oral Sex in an Adolescent Population," Archives of Sexual Behavior 14 (1985): 41-46. In another survey, of more than two thousand Los Angeles high school "virgins" in 1996, about a third of both boys and girls had masturbated or been masturbated by a heterosexual partner; about a tenth had engaged in fellatio to ejaculation or cunnilingus, with boys and girls more or less equally on the receiving end. Homosexual behavior was rarely reported among these kids, but 1 percent reported heterosexual anal intercourse. Mark A. Schuster, Robert M. Bell, and David E. Kanouse, "The Sexual Practices of Adolescent Virgins: Genital Sexual Activities of High School Students Who Have Never Had Vaginal Intercourse," American Journal of Public Health 86 (1996): 1570-76. Remez ("Sex among Adolescents") provides a good review of the scant literature on noncoital adolescent sexual behavior. She also suggests that the incidence and prevalence of fellatio probably far outweigh cunnilingus among teens. Many teens who have had oral sex have not had vaginal intercourse. One of Remez's sources guesses that "for around 25 percent of the kids who have had any kind of intimate sexual activity, that activity is oral sex, not intercourse."
12. Tamar Lewin, "Teen-Agers Alter Sexual Practices, Thinking Risks Will Be Avoided," New York Times, April 5, 1997, 8.
13. "Research Critical to Protecting Young People from Disease Blocked by Congress," Advocates for Youth, press release, December 19, 2000.
14. See Thompson, Going All the Way; and, e.g., Deborah L. Tolman, "Daring to Desire: Culture and the Bodies of Adolescent Girls," in Sexual Cultures and the Construction of Adolescent Identities, ed. Irvine, 250-84.
15. Tamar Lewin, "Sexual Abuse Tied to 1 in 4 Girls in Teens," New York Times, October 1, 1997.
16. Lewin, "Sexual Abuse Tied to 1 in 4 Girls."
17. Nancy D. Kellogg, "Unwanted and Illegal Sexual Experiences in Childhood and Adolescence," Child Abuse and Neglect 19 (1995): 1457-68.
18. Not Just Another Thing to Do: Teens Talk about Sex, Regret, and the Influence of Their Parents (Washington, D.C.: National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy, 2000), 6-7.
19. "Many Teens Regret Having Sex," National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy, press release, June 30, 2000.

8. The Facts
1. Adam Phillips, "The Interested Party," The Beast in the Nursery (New York: Vintage Books, 1999), 3-36.
2. Janet R. Kahn, "Speaking across Cultures within Your Own Family," in Sexual Cultures and the Construction of Adolescent Identities, ed. Irvine, 287.
3. Brent C. Miller, Family Matters: A Research Synthesis of Family Influences on Adolescent Pregnancy (Washington, D.C: National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy, 1998), 6-12.
4. Diane Carman, in the Denver Post, March 2, 1999, posted on the Kaiser Family Foundation Web page.
5. Other good books were Changing Bodies, Changing Selves, for teens, by Ruth Bell and members of the Boston Women's Health Book Collective (New York: Vintage Books, 1988); Michael J. Basso, The Underground Guide to Teenage Sexuality (Minneapolis: Fairview Press, 1997); and for younger readers, It's Perfectly Normal: Changing Bodies, Growing Up, Sex, and Sexual Health, by Robie H. Harris with illustrations by Michael Emberley (Cambridge, Mass.: Candlewick Press, 1994).
6. Go Ask Alice! Columbia University's Health Question & Answer Internet Service, at www.goaskalice.columbia.edu.
7. www.positive.org/JustSayYes.
8. A search for this URL in June 2001 yielded an "Object Not Found" message. However, sites for gay teens are proliferating.
9. Sex, Etc. can be accessed on the Internet at www.sxetc.org.
10. David Shpritz, "One Teenager's Search for Sexual Health on the Net," Journal of Sex Education and Therapy 22 (1998): 57.
11. Economics and Statistics Administration and National Telecommunications and Information Administration, "Falling through the Net: Toward Digital Inclusion," U.S. Department of Commerce report, Washington, D.C., October 2000, 2-12.
12. See chapter 1 for more discussion of legislated and voluntary Internet filtering.
13. Phillips, "The Interested Party," 14.
14. Stephen Holden, "Hollywood, Sex, and a Sad Estrangement," New York Times, May 3, 1998, "Arts & Leisure," 20.
15. Francesca Lia Block, Weetzie Bat, in Dangerous Angels (New York: HarperCollins, 1998), 29.
16. This insight, of course, must be attributed to the great art critic Leo Steinberg.
17. Journalist Debbie Nathan, ever-vigilant watchdog of cultural absurdity, reminds me that the soundtrack of the 1996 movie William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet was on the stereo when police arrived at the home of Kip Kinkel to find the dead bodies of his parents. The Springfield, Oregon, boy had just been arrested for the shooting deaths of two of his high school classmates and the wounding of twenty-five others. He is serving a life sentence for murder.
18. William Butler Yeats, "Brown Penny," in Selected Poems and Two Plays of William Butler Yeats, ed. M. L. Rosenthal (New York: Macmillan, 1962), 37.

9. What Is Wanting?
1. See, e.g., Barrie Thorne, Gender Play: Girls and Boys in School (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1997); and R. W. Connell, Masculinities: Knowledge, Power, and Social Change (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1995).
2. See Michael Reichert, "On Behalf of Boys," Independent School Magazine (spring 1997).
3. Males, Scapegoat Generation, 46. About 15 percent of tenth-grade students in a longitudinal survey reported fewer experiences of sexual intercourse than they'd claimed in the ninth grade, and of all the kids questioned over the years, two-thirds reported the age at first intercourse "inconsistently." Cheryl S. Alexander et al., "Consistency of Adolescents' Self-Report of Sexual Behavior in a Longitudinal Study," Journal of Youth and Adolescence 22 (1993): 455-71.
4. Susan Newcomer and J. Richard Udry, "Adolescents' Honesty in a Survey of Sexual Behavior," Journal of Adolescent Research 1, no. 3/4 (1988): 419-23.
5. "Fact Sheet: Dating Violence among Adolescents," Advocates for Youth (accessed at www.advocatesforyouth.org), Washington, D.C., n.d.
6. In Our Guys, Bernard Lefkowitz cites another relevant study: "When the psychologist Chris O'Sullivan studied 24 documented cases of alleged gang rape on college campuses from 1981 to 1991, she found that it was the elite group at the colleges that were more likely to be involved. These included football and basketball players and members of prestigious fraternities." Bernard Lefkowitz, Our Guys (New York: Vintage Books, 1998), 278-79.
7. A critique of quantitative desire disorders has been mounted by sociologist Janice Irvine, journalist Carol Tavris, sexologist Leonore Tiefer, and some others. Tiefer's sociopolitical perspective is rare in her discipline.
8. Social Security Act, Title V, Section 510 (1997), Maternal and Child Health Bureau, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
9. William A. Fisher and Deborah M. Roffman, "Adolescence: A Risky Time," Independent School 51 (spring 1992): 26.
10. Deborah Tolman, "Daring to Desire," in Sexual Cultures and the Construction of Adolescent Identities, ed. Irvine, 255.
11. Jack Morin, The Erotic Mind (New York: Harper Collins, 1995), 83-85.
12. Mary Pipher, Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls (New York: Ballantine Books, 1994), 208.
13. Pipher, Reviving Ophelia, 205-13. These pages contain Lizzie's account, as described here and in the following paragraph.
14. Tolman, "Daring to Desire," 251.
15. This difficulty of putting emotions into words—what one writer called "alyxrythmia"—has been all but naturalized as a masculine trait. (A good example of interpreting everything as biological, even when the description is clearly social, is "Boys Will Be Boys," Newsweek's cover story of May 11, 1998.) But there's plenty of evidence it is completely socialized. Janet R. Kahn interviewed 326 families in 1976 and again in 1983 and found that, across class and race, parents talked less often to their boys about fewer topics related to sexuality and relationships and that fathers talked with their kids far less than mothers. The situation was so serious for boys that she called it "conversational neglect." Kahn, "Speaking across Cultures within Your Own Family."
16. William Pollack, Real Boys: Rescuing Our Sons from the Myths of Boyhood (New York: Random House, 1998), 150-51.
17. Pollack, Real Boys, 151.
18. Susan E. Hickman and Charleen L. Muehlenhard, "By the Semi-Mystical Appearance of a Condom: How Young Women and Men Communicate Sexual Consent," paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Society for the Scientific Study of Sex, Houston, Texas, November 1996.
19. Alwyn Cohall, speaking at a Planned Parenthood of New York conference, Adolescent Sexual Health: New Data and Implications for Services and Programs, October, 26, 1998.
20. Kaiser Family Foundation, "National Survey of Teens on Dating, Intimacy, and Sexual Experiences," reported by SIECUS, SHOP Talk Bulletin 2 (April 17, 1998).

10. Good Touch
1. Ashley Montagu, Touching: The Human Significance of the Skin, 3d ed. (New York: Harper and Row/Perennial, 1986), 33.
2. Stephen J. Suomi, "The Role of Touch in Rhesus Monkey Social Development," in Catherine Caldwell Brown, ed., The Many Facets of Touch (n.p.: Johnson & Johnson Baby Products, 1996), 41-50.
3. Montagu, Touching, 97-99.
4. Madtrulika Gupta et al., "Perceived Touch Deprivation and Body Image: Some Observations among Eating Disordered and Non-Clinical Subjects," Journal of Psychosomatic Research 39 (May 1995): 459-64.
5. The French children were touched more. Author interview, 1999.
6. James W. Prescott, "Body Pleasure and the Origins of Violence," Futurist (April 1975): 66.
7. Clellan S. Ford and Frank A. Beach, Patterns of Sexual Behavior (New York: Harper/Colophon Books, 1951), 180.
8. Alfred C. Kinsey, Wardell B. Pomeroy, and Clyde E. Martin, Sexual Behavior in the Human Male (Philadelphia: W. B. Saunders, 1948), 177. Kinsey also notes observations of infant girls in "masturbatory activity" to what he called orgasm. Alfred C. Kinsey, Wardell B. Pomeroy, Clyde E. Martin, and Paul H. Gebhard, Sexual Behavior in the Human Female (Philadelphia: W. B. Saunders, 1953), 141-42.
9. Robin J. Lewis and Louis H. Janda, "The Relationship between Adult Sexual Adjustment and Childhood Experiences Regarding Exposure to Nudity, Sleeping in the Parental Bed, and Parental Attitudes toward Sexuality," Archives of Sexual Behavior 17, no. 4 (1988): 349-62; Paul Okami, "Childhood Exposure to Parental Nudity, Parent-Child Co-Sleeping, and 'Primal Scenes': A Review of Clinical Opinion and Empirical Evidence," Journal of Sex Research 32, no. 1 (1995): 51-64.
10. Tamar Lewin, "Breast-Feeding: How Old Is Too Old?" New York Times, February 18, 2001, "Week in Review."
11. Lewin, "Breast-Feeding."
12. Richard Johnson, unpublished manuscript, March 1998.
13. This has been reported to me by many sex educators, including the veteran Peggy Brick, of Planned Parenthood of Greater Northern New Jersey.
14. Joseph Tobin, ed., Making a Place for Pleasure in Early Childhood Education (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997).
15. "It is unclear whether prevention programs are working or even that they are more beneficial than harmful," concluded N. Dickson Reppucci and Jeffrey J. Haugaard. See their "Prevention of Child Sexual Abuse: Myth or Reality," American Psychologist 44 (October 1989): 1266.
16. One study measured a 50 percent rise in fear levels among children who had been subjected to a prevention program that made use of comic-book characters. J. Garbarino, "Children's Response to a Sexual Abuse Prevention Program: A Study of the Spiderman Comic," Child Abuse and Neglect: The International Journal 11 (1987): 143-48.
17. Bonnie Trudell and M. Whatley, "School Sexual Abuse Prevention: Unintended Consequences and Dilemmas," Child Abuse and Neglect 12 (1988): 108.
18. Thomas W. Laqueur, "The Social Evil, the Solitary Vice, and Pouring Tea," in Solitary Pleasures, ed. Bennett and Rosario, 157.
19. Alice Balint, The Psychoanalysis of the Nursery (New York: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1953), 79.
20. Benjamin Spock, Baby and Child Care, rev. ed. (New York: Pocket Books, 1976), 411.
21. John H. Gagnon, "Attitudes and Responses of Parents to Pre-Adolescent Masturbation," Archives of Sexual Behavior 14 (1985): 451.
22. Congressional Record, 103d Congress, 2d session, 1994, vol. 140, H 9995-10001.
23. Joycelyn Elders, "The Dreaded 'M' Word," in nerve: Literate Smut, ed. Genevieve Field and Rufus Griscom (New York: Broadway Books, 1998), 130.
24. William N. Friedrich and Patricia Grambsch, "Child Sexual Behavior Inventory: Normative and Clinical Comparison," Psychological Assessment 4 (1992): 303-11.
25. Friedrich and Grambsch, "Child Sexual Behavior Inventory."
26. Robin L. Leavitt and Martha Bauman Power, "Civilizing Bodies: Children in Day Care," in Making a Place for Pleasure in Early Childhood Education, ed. Tobin, 39-75.
27. Leavitt and Power, "Civilizing Bodies," 45-46.
28. Peggy Brick, Sue Montford, and Nancy Blume, Healthy Foundations: The Teacher's Book (Hackensack, N.J.: Center for Family Life Education/Planned Parenthood of Greater Northern New Jersey, 1993), 2-7.
29. Larry L. Constantine and Floyd M. Martinson, eds., Children and Sex: New Findings, New Perspectives (Boston: Little, Brown, 1981), 30.
30. Nancy Blackman, "Pleasure and Touching: Their Significance in the Development of the Preschool Child," paper delivered at the International Symposium on Childhood and Sexuality, Montreal, September 1979.
31. Outercourse was named, but not invented, in the 1970s. Even before the eighteenth century, when travel was slow and distances long, there was "bundling." "The practice allowed a [courting] couple to spend a night together in bed as long as they remained fully clothed or, in some cases, kept a 'bundling board' between them. . . . Parents and youth shared the expectation that sexual intercourse would not take place, but if it did, and pregnancy resulted, the couple would certainly marry." John D'Emilio and Estelle B. Freedman, Intimate Matters: A History of Sexuality in America (New York: Harper and Row, 1988), 22.
32. Marty Klein and Riki Robbins, Let Me Count the Ways: Discovering Great Sex without Intercourse (New York: Jeremy P. Tarcher/Putnam, 1998), 125.
33. Leonore Tiefer, "Bring Back the Kids' Stuff," in Sex Is Not a Natural Act, 71. Note from a detractor who read this chapter: "This strikes me as a crock, remembering instances of petting with strangers. ..."
34. Tiefer, "Bring Back the Kids' Stuff," 70.
35. Advocates for Youth, "Adolescent Sexual Health in Europe and the U.S." (2001).
36. Klein and Robbins, Let Me Count the Ways.

11. Community
1. Patton, Fatal Advice, 34. Patton was not the only one to indict abstinence education as a killer. In 1997, the International AIDS Conference proclaimed that the abstinence-only "approach place[d] policy in direct conflict with science and ignore[d] overwhelming evidence that other programs would be effective." In the face of a worldwide health crisis, conferees strongly suggested, teaching "just say no" was worse than a waste of public resources. It was lethal.
2. Half of the forty thousand new HIV infections a year are in people under twenty-five, according to estimates from the Centers for Disease Control and the National Institutes of Health. Bill Alexander, "Adolescent HIV Rates Soar; Government Piddles," Youth Today (March/April 1997): 29.
3. They were down 44 percent in the first six months of 1997 compared with 1996. Altman, "AIDS Deaths Drop 48% in New York."
4. Hilts, "AIDS Deaths Continue to Rise in 25-44 Age Group."
5. Including those who inject drugs, the numbers fell from 65 percent in 1981 to 44 percent in 1996. Centers for Disease Control, Atlanta, Ga., March 1996.
6. Interview with Gary Remafedi, director of the University of Minnesota/Minneapolis Youth & AIDS Project, 1998.
7. "Rate of AIDS Has Slowed," New York Times, April 25, 1998, A9. African Americans make up half of new HIV infections and 40 percent of full-blown AIDS cases. Doug Ireland, "Silence Kills Blacks," Nation (April 20, 1998): 6. Poor neighborhoods, where almost everybody knows somebody with the disease, are being ravaged. In the South Bronx, for instance, AIDS is the leading cause of death in children (interview with GMHC spokesman, 1999).
8. Altman, "Study in 6 Cities Finds HIV in 30% of Young Black Gays."
9. Cherrie B. Boyer and Susan M. Kegeles, "AIDS Risk and Prevention among Adolescents," Social Science Medicine 33, no. 1 (1991): 11-23.
10. New York City Health Department, phone interview, April 1999.
11. Barbara Crossette, "In India and Africa, Women's Low Status Worsens Their Risk of AIDS," New York Times, February 26, 2001.
12. B. R. Simon Rossner, "New Directions in HIV Prevention," SIECUS Report 26 (December 1997/January 1998): 6.
13. Governments of developing countries have won some concessions from the major pharmaceutical companies, but many observers believe these are too little, too late.
14. The following remarks from people in the Twin Cities came from interviews that I conducted during my visit there in 1998.
15. District 202 Youth Survey (Minneapolis, 1997).
16. District 202 Youth Survey.
17. Marsha S. Sturdevant and Gary Remafedi, "Special Health Needs of Homosexual Youth," in Adolescent Medicine: State of the Art Reviews (Philadelphia: Hanley and Belfus, 1992), 364. The authors cite a study of male prostitutes and other delinquent young men that found that 70 percent of the former group considered themselves gay or bisexual compared with only 4 percent of the latter. D. Boyer, "Male Prostitution and Homosexual Identity," Journal of Homosexuality 15 (1989): 151.
18. R. Stall and J. Wiley, "A Comparison of Alcohol and Drug Use Patterns of Homosexual and Heterosexual Men: The San Francisco Men's Health study," Drug and Alcohol Dependence 22 (1988): 63-73.
19. "Although there is a significant relationship between substance use and high risk sexual activity, substance use does not cause sexual risk taking," according to a compilation of research by Advocates for Youth. "At-risk teens tend to engage in several inter-related high risk behaviors at once." Marina McNamara, "Adolescent Behavior: II. Socio-Psychological Factors," Advocates for Youth fact sheet, Washington, D.C., September 1997.
20. Studies suggest that as many as 35 percent of young gay males and 30 percent of lesbians have considered or tried suicide. Alan Bell and Martin Weinberg, Homosexualities (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1978). As for kids who succeed in self-annihilation, the 1989 U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Task Force on Youth Suicide reported that 30 percent may be gay.
21. Gary Remafedi, Michael Resnick, Robert Blum, and Linda Harris, "Demography of Sexual Orientation in Adolescents," Pediatrics 89, no. 4 (April 1992).
22. Patton, Fatal Advice.
23. U.S. Conference of Mayors, "Safer Sex Relapse: A Contemporary Challenge," AIDS Information Exchange 11, no. 4 (1994): 1-8.
24. Altman, "Study in 6 Cities."
25. D. Boyer, "Male Prostitution and Homosexual Identity," Journal of Homosexuality 9 (1984): 105.
26. In one study of New York kids selling sex on the street, only 36 percent of respondents had failed to protect themselves in the last encounter. S. L. Bailey et al., "Substance Use and Risky Sexual Behavior among Homeless and Runaway Youth," Journal of Adolescent Health 23 (December 1998): 378-88.
27. Amy Bracken, "STDs Discriminate," Youth Today (March 2001): 7-8.
28. Minnesota's Youth without Homes (St. Paul: Wilder Research Center, 1997), 5.
29. Ine Vanwesenbeeck, "The Context of Women's Power(lessness) in Heterosexual Interactions," in New Sexual Agendas, ed. Lynne Segal (New York: New York University Press, 1997), 173. A 1998 study of homeless youth, however, found that only 36 percent of respondents, who were mostly female, did not use a condom with a casual partner, and the less-well-known a partner was, the more likely they were to use a condom. S. L. Bailey et al., "Substance Use and Risky Sexual Behavior."
30. Author interview, New York, 1999.
31. E. Matinka-Tyndale, "Sexual Scripts and AIDS Prevention: Variations in Adherence to Safer Sex Guidelines in Heterosexual Adolescents," Journal of Sex Research 28 (1991): 45-66; S. J. Misovich, J. D. Fisher, and W. A. Fisher, "The Perceived AIDS-Preventive Utility of Knowing One's Partner Well: A Public Health Dictum and Individuals' Risky Sexual Behaviour," Canadian Journal of Human Sexuality 5 (1996): 83-90; Linda Feldman, Philippa Holowaty, et al., "A Comparison of the Demographic, Lifestyle, and Sexual Behaviour Characteristics of Virgin and Non-Virgin Adolescents," Canadian Journal of Human Sexuality 6, no 3. (fall 1997): 197-209.
32. Carla Willig, "Trust as a Risky Practice," in New Sexual Agendas, ed. Segal, 125-35.
33. Graham Hart, "'Yes, but Does It Work?' Impediments to Rigorous Evaluations of Gay Men's Health Promotion," in New Sexual Agendas, ed. Segal, 119. Gary Remafedi, "Predictors of Unprotected Intercourse among Gay and Bisexual Youth: Knowledge, Beliefs, and Behavior," Pediatrics 94, no. 2 (1994): 163.
34. Sarah R. Phillips, "Turning Research into Policy: A Survey on Adolescent Condom Use," SIECUS Report (October/November 1995): 10.
35. Willig, "Trust as a Risky Practice," 126.
36. Willig, "Trust as a Risky Practice," 130.
37. Regarding adults who stray, the 1994 University of Chicago "Sex in America" survey put the numbers at 25 percent of married men and 12 percent of married women, but these statistics do not include unmarried committed heterosexual or gay couples and have been considered by others to be extremely conservative. Other studies have found higher incidences. In their extensive 1983 survey, Pepper Schwartz and Philip Blumenstein divided their subjects among married couples, heterosexual cohabitors, and gay and lesbian couples. Their numbers for "nonmonogamy" ranged from 21 percent for wives to 82 percent for gay male cohabitors. Of course, their study was done before widespread awareness of AIDS. Pepper Schwartz and Philip Blumstein, American Couples: Money, Work, Sex (New York: Pocket Books, 1983). Regarding the number of teens who stray, see Susan L. Rosenthal et al., "Heterosexual Romantic Relationships and Sexual Behaviors of Young Adolescent Girls," Journal of Adolescent Health 21 (1997): 238-43.
38. Of these, African American teen males report the highest use, at 72 percent, with whites and Hispanics following at 70 percent and 59 percent, respectively. Freya L. Sonenstein and Joseph H. Pleck et al., "Change in Sexual Behavior and Contraception among Adolescent Males: 1988 and 1995," Urban Institute report, Washington, D.C., 1996.
39. Willig, "Trust as a Risky Practice," 130.
40. Jeffrey Weeks, Invented Moralities: Sexual Values in an Age of Uncertainty (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995), 42.

Epilogue
1. Jane E. Brody, "A Stitch in Time," New York Times, March 21, 1999, "Week in Review," 2.
2. Steve Farkas et al., Kids These Days: What Americans Really Think about the Next Generation (New York: Public Agenda, 1997).
3. Children's Defense Fund, Web site, 1999.
4. "The State of the World's Children 2000," United Nations/UNICEF report (accessed at www.unicef.org/sowc00/).
5. "Study Says Welfare Changes Made the Poorest Worse Off," New York Times, August 23, 1999; Elizabeth Becker, "Millions Eligible for Food Stamps Aren't Applying," New York Times, February 26, 2001.
6. Matt Pacenza, "911, a Food Emergency: Soup Kitchens Are Flooded," City Limits Weekly Web site, October 1, 2001.
7. These data come from a small but well-controlled sample. Patrick Boyle, "Does Welfare Reform Hurt Teens?" News Briefs, Youth Today (March 2001): 6-7.
8. Children's Defense Fund, Web site, 1999.
9. Most of these children live in homes in which at least one parent has a job. State of America's Children Yearbook 2001 (Washington, D.C.: Children's Defense Fund, 2001).
10. David G. Gil, "The United States versus Child Abuse," in The Social Context of Child Abuse and Neglect, ed. Leroy H. Pelton (New York: Human Sciences Press, 1981), 294.
11. Ethan Bronner, "Long a Leader, U.S. Now Lags in High School Graduate Rate," New York Times, November 24, 1998, A1.
12. Children's Defense Fund, Web site, 2001.
13. Forty percent of prison inmates twenty-five and older are illiterate. Marc Maurer, "Young Black Men and the Criminal Justice System: A Growing National Problem," The Sentencing Project report, Washington, D.C., 1990.
14. At this writing, President George W. Bush and the Republican Party used the September 11 attacks and the ensuing war in Afghanistan to push through an economic "stimulus package" including more tax cuts for the richest individuals and the elimination of the minimum corporate tax. The GOP resisted such Democratic demands as increased, more easily obtained unemployment insurance for people who have lost their jobs since the attacks.
15. Gisela Konopka, "Requirements for Healthy Development of Adolescent Youth," Adolescence 8 (1973): 1-26.