Really shocking. Child abuse tendencies.

[pickledandpuzzled]

I’m sharing this here because the other board is tumbleweed.

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/feminism/4947961-we-suspected-but-now-a-survey-abuse-of-children

For some reason I can't load it.
Are you able to post anything from the article/ have another link?

Does this link work better? https://www.independent.co.uk/world/child-sex-abuse-men-australia-b2450369.html

Another link:

Independent.co.uk: Shocking survey reveals how many men would abuse child if ‘no one found out’

The article claims "one in 15 [Australian] men questioned admitted they would have sexual contact with a child under the age of 14 if “no one found out”, while one in 25 said the same about children under 10."

That works. Thank you BinturongsSmellOfPopcorn

Is this the Australian part of the survey in the previous topic?

One in ten men have carried out sex offences against children | Mumsnet

Looks like there is a link to a report this time

World's largest child sexual abuse perpetration prevalence study recommends significant investment in early intervention measures | Australian Human Rights Institute (unsw.edu.au)

And that's the ones that admitted it, bound to be many more that don't answer truthfully at all.

It is a very important study as it seems to make sure that these men are aware of the age of the child in the question. I have had a very quick look for the survey itself but couldn’t find it on my phone. I will have a look later to see how the questions were asked.

I had a quick look at the first few pages of the report. I have not looked at the data tables so I may be misunderstanding it.

This report is part of an international survey that included men in Australia, the US and the UK, where the age of consent varies from 16 – 18 depending on the region and the offense. Accordingly, we used 18 as the age of consent for all sexual offences, although the age of consent for sexual activity is 16 in Australia

This decision seems odd - the normal age of consent in the UK is 16, in Australia it is 16, in 34 of 50 states in the USA it is 16 but the survey uses the less common 18. Using 18 means that a lot of sexual interaction that is legal and expected (e.g. a sixth form relationship) is being classified as child sexual contact.

95% of men who answered yes to the question “Have you had sex or sexual contact with a person below the age of 18 while over the age of 18?” were over 24 years of age, and almost half (48.4%) were over 54 years of age.

This statement does not seem well phrased. Are the authors saying that the men involved were over the age of 54 when the contact occurred or were they* over the age of 54 at the time the survey was undertaken. *

In addition, we asked an honesty question at the end of the survey (as used in previous research on child sex offending), which asked participants to rate their level of honesty in their survey answers. “Cheaters” who stated they were not honest were removed from the survey

The people who lied through the questionnaire decided to tell the truth on the last question?

@CheckingTheNumbers great username. It does seem bizarre that this even gained traction unless it was clarified elsewhere and the 18 y o cut off is odd - thinking back to all the 17 y old girls I knew who had a relationship to someone who was 18. Most men of my age group (sixties) would answer yes to the question "did you have sexual relationships with someone under 18 when you were over 18". It's also interesting they didn't do a survey on cohorts of women which might have elucidated some of the conclusions.

I was also rather uncomfortable about some aspects of the way this has been positioned and do hope to see the survey questions. Because as an Australian, I know many men in that older category who would have been older than 18 and married to 17/18 year olds decades ago. So, I am keen to see how the questions were posed and what can be questioned here about this survey asking questions about cultural elements that were the norm of previous eras.

If it is more about questions that are directly related to their current opinions, ie. whether they would consider that appropriate today or if they are referring to their current age having sex with a person under 18 or whatever, then that is obviously much more clear and abhorrent.

Thank you for raising those questions. It would be good to know either way.

Presumably the newspaper has an interest in publishing scandalous stories, but would the researchers have been simply incompetent in not checking the wording of those questions?

It does read like research into ‘minor attraction’ so I would have assumed the questions were explicit in their intent.

I have been wondering about the socio economic factor as well as the age factor. Entitlement?

and controversially… I wonder whether as we age we lose impulse control to a more significant extent than we realise. I’m thinking about some of the awful American shootings where the perpetrator shoots someone who is being annoying- turning on their drive, holding up traffic with a protest, playing in the wrong garden…

I tried to further understand the report by relating one of the talking points to the underlying data. There are other taking points in the report, that are all very important, by looking at this one I am not commenting on any of the others.

95% of men who answered yes to the question “Have you had sex or sexual contact with a person below the age of 18 while over the age of 18?” were over 24 years of age, and almost half (48.4%) were over 54 years of age.

On the face of it, this statement reads as if people over 54 years old are 10x more likely than those between 18 and 25 to have sexual contact with people under 18. The younger age group has a 5% number when the older group is nearly 50% - 10x bigger
But the author is comparing the sum of all the people in a 6 year age range with all the people in a much wider age range of 55-64 and 65+. No upper limit is given to age - it could be 75 or 80 years. The comparison is between a band that is 6 years wide and a band that could be 25 years wide.

The report does give a breakdown of the age range of the survey participants (figure 9). It is not fully clear but it looks like they then take a set of Australian census data and use this to weight the original survey so that it reflects the make up of age ranges in the census (supplementary table S1).

The tables show that when scaled the 18-24 age group represents 15.2% of the population and the 55+ group is 34.5%. If target subjects were evenly distributed across age you would expect these percentages to be reflected in the answer to the 'below age of 18' question asked in the survey.

So, 18-24 expect 15.2%, survey reports 5%
54 and above, expect 34.5%, survey reports 48.4%

The numbers for 54+ age group are higher than expected but only by 40% or so. This difference may just be due to a change in attitudes - some of these people could be 75 or 80 years old - they turned 18 in around 1960. Attitudes have changed a lot since 1960

The low value for the 18-24 age range could also reflect changing attitudes.

Looking through the report, the original survey contained 275 people in the 18-24 age range. Of these, around 5% are relevant so the group size is about 13. It would not take much underreporting to significantly skew this group

Reasons for underreporting? Maybe the people in the 18-24 age range are the ones most likely to still have a partner who was 18 or under when they met - perhaps these people underreport because the survey questions imply their relationship is one of sexual predation?