https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-66204893

There were 105,542 sexual offences recorded against children in the year up to March.

The Home Office figures have been analysed for the BBC by the Centre of Expertise on Child Sexual Abuse (CSA Centre), which studies the causes, impact and scale of abuse. The centre says greater awareness is a key reason for a 57% increase in recorded offences over six years.

It's fascinating that we act like it's one of, if not the worst and most morally offensive crime, yet it appears to be widespread across history, cultures and through institutions, even when we're probably only seeing the tip of the iceberg of actual abuse cases. It's like we're lying to ourselves; this appears to be some part of what humanity really is.

Spearthrower wrote:this appears to be some part of what humanity really is.

Maybe so, but it's different now. We care about consent.

Falsely accusing people of it is nasty too.

Ken Fabian wrote:Falsely accusing people of it is nasty too.

Don't be a dick, Ken. If you're going to toss out ad hominem, well poisoning arguments at people, then don't complain when someone turns it back on you expressly to show you how fucking stupid that is.

http://www.rationalskepticism.org/gener ... l#p2797970

You still seem unable to parse the fact that your litany of well-poisoning doesn't reflect on me - it reflects on you and the paucity of your argumentation. It would be just like me implying you're a pedophile as an irrelevant means of undermining your argument - i.e. it would make me look deranged and irrational. Your repeated attempts to paint me as some kind of crackpot simply because I don't agree with you makes you look deranged and irrational.

If you still can't grasp it, I'll be happy to explain further, but go make another thread about it if it's that interesting to you. This thread, as you may have noticed, is about the increase in reporting of child abuse. The kind of thread you want to drag off topic?

TopCat wrote:

Spearthrower wrote:this appears to be some part of what humanity really is.

Maybe so, but it's different now. We care about consent.

That's one of the contradictions I'm trying to tangle with here.

Even though 'we' - the society - do seem to care and realize that child abuse is wrong, that we is also composed of an awful lot of people who don't realize, or don't care that it's wrong.

https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-shee ... ltreatment

Nearly 3 in 4 children - or 300 million children - aged 2–4 years regularly suffer physical punishment and/or psychological violence at the hands of parents and caregivers
One in 5 women and 1 in 13 men report having been sexually abused as a child aged 0-17 years.
120 million girls and young women under 20 years of age have suffered some form of forced sexual contact.

And that's just from a small selection of countries - most middle and lower income countries have no formal assessment method. If we even simply extrapolate 1 in 5 to the 2 billion children up to the age of 14 living today, that would mean four hundred million of them have experienced sexual abuse.

Spearthrower wrote:

Ken Fabian wrote:Falsely accusing people of it is nasty too.

Don't be a dick, Ken. If you're going to toss out ad hominem, well poisoning arguments at people, then don't complain when someone turns it back on you expressly to show you how fucking stupid that is.

http://www.rationalskepticism.org/gener ... l#p2797970

You still seem unable to parse the fact that your litany of well-poisoning doesn't reflect on me - it reflects on you and the paucity of your argumentation. It would be just like me implying you're a pedophile as an irrelevant means of undermining your argument - i.e. it would make me look deranged and irrational. Your repeated attempts to paint me as some kind of crackpot simply because I don't agree with you makes you look deranged and irrational.

If you still can't grasp it, I'll be happy to explain further, but go make another thread about it if it's that interesting to you. This thread, as you may have noticed, is about the increase in reporting of child abuse. The kind of thread you want to drag off topic?

Don't be a dick, you are the one that made malicious accusations of pedophilia - a truly vile thing to say of someone - rather than simply disagreeing with me.

Ken Fabian wrote:

Spearthrower wrote:

Ken Fabian wrote:Falsely accusing people of it is nasty too.

Don't be a dick, Ken. If you're going to toss out ad hominem, well poisoning arguments at people, then don't complain when someone turns it back on you expressly to show you how fucking stupid that is.

http://www.rationalskepticism.org/gener ... l#p2797970

You still seem unable to parse the fact that your litany of well-poisoning doesn't reflect on me - it reflects on you and the paucity of your argumentation. It would be just like me implying you're a pedophile as an irrelevant means of undermining your argument - i.e. it would make me look deranged and irrational. Your repeated attempts to paint me as some kind of crackpot simply because I don't agree with you makes you look deranged and irrational.

If you still can't grasp it, I'll be happy to explain further, but go make another thread about it if it's that interesting to you. This thread, as you may have noticed, is about the increase in reporting of child abuse. The kind of thread you want to drag off topic?

Don't be a dick, you are the one that made malicious accusations of pedophilia - a truly vile thing to say of someone - rather than simply disagreeing with me.

You're clearly incapable of reading, and don't seem to have the self-awareness to know when you're being a dick. But see if you can muster the self-restraint to stop derailing this thread about child abuse to make it about you instead. You're just ironically poking yourself in the eye with a Streisand Effect.

In England alone:

https://www.communitycare.co.uk/2023/02 ... rt-centre/

The number of children’s social care assessments in England that identified CSA as a concern rose by 15% in England in 2021-22, to 33,990, the highest level since this information started being published in 2015.

However, while CSA Centre welcomed this rise, it said it fell well short of the 500,000 children it estimated fell victim to sexual abuse each year, leaving a “huge gap between those children who get help and those who remain unprotected”.

This is in a rich Western nation with the resources and infrastructure to monitor and identify potential sexual abuse cases, and the experts in the field believe it's under-reporting by an order of magnitude.

So you knew how vile calling me that was - that was worth the comment, derail or not. Am I especially privileged or is it your go to insult? I would be happy to discuss why I think the barriers to Mars colonies may be insurmountable or why I don't buy the humanity must get into space rhetoric or other subjects I may have unconventional or disagreeable views about, just not with you. Derail done.

Ken, can you stop fucking about trolling this thread and trying to revise history looking for feathers to put in your cap?

I am not in the slightest bit interested, and the thread remains there for all to see. As others are capable of reading, they'll undoubtedly be able to read what I said in that thread and quickly realize that I was showing you how fucking pointless your litany of well poisoning ad hominems were by example... the fact that you have whined spectacularly including dragging this thread off topic to revisit past failures suggests you should be able to grasp that your actions with respect to continuously attempting to paint me as a religious zealot were inane, but somehow you still seem impervious to any quantity of self-awareness.

I don't care, though. Your bruised ego isn't my concern. Chin up lad, worse things happen at sea.

Do you have something on topic to say about what the volume of child abuse uncovered in recent years means?

Or are you just going to keep acting like a plonker in public?