Quote of the Day

[Content Note: Rape culture; sexual violence.]

"I told them I thought it would be good for someone to do a review of [the Boy Scouts' 'perversion files'] for scientific purposes. A lot of us were scientists and thought this could be very helpful. We raised it pretty regularly every year or two."—David Finkelhor, a University of New Hampshire child abuse expert who served for a decade on the Boy Scouts' advisory board and whose suggestions were diligently ignored as more children were victimized by sexual violence.

The LA Times' review of the "nearly 1,900 confidential files opened between 1970 and 1991"—the very sort of review Finkelhor recommended and the Scouts refused to do—has revealed a pattern: "Many suspected molesters engaged in what psychologists today call 'grooming behavior,' a gradual [process of normalizing inappropriate sexual contact] in which predators lavish children with attention, favors and gifts."

The sort of behavior that's frequently considered being an extra super duper awesome adult pal to children by people who don't know to identify grooming behavior.

Or people who don't care about it, because their sanctimonious, homophobic, atheist-hating organization cares more about its reputation than about protecting children from rape.

[Side note to the LA Times: Raped children don't have "relationships" with their rapists. And grooming behavior is not "seduction."]