Sensationalization

OK, here's the wire service reporting that helped fuel the controversy:

Political storm swirls over psychology journal article on child sex 'abuse'
By Erica Goode, NEW YORK TIMES NEWS SERVICE, June 24,'1999

Few people took notice last July when Psychological Bulletin, an academic psychology journal, carried a lengthy, jargon-heavy report titled 'A Meta-Analytic Examination of Assumed Properties of Child Sexual Abuse Using College Samples.'

Nearly a year later, the study, its authors and the American Psychological Association, which publishes the journal, are at the center of a political storm.

The study concludes that the effects of sexual abuse on children are not always severe. Conservatives such as radio talk-show host Laura Schlessinger and House Majority Whip Tom DeLay have declared that the study trivializes the impact of such abuse and condones pedophilia.

Janet Parshall, a spokeswoman for the Family Research Council, a fund-raising organization for social conservative causes, said the article 'gives pedophiles a green flag.' Rep. Matt Salmon, R-Ariz., introduced a resolution in Congress in May condemning the article.

The researchers also questioned the practice, common in many studies, of lumping all types of sexual abuse together. They argued that treating all forms of sexual abuse equally presents problems that, the researchers wrote,''are perhaps most apparent when contrasting cases such as the repeated rape of a 5-year-old girl by her father and the willing sexual involvement of a mature 15-year-old adolescent boy with an unrelated adult.'

In the first case, serious harm may result, Rind and his colleagues maintained, but the second case "may represent only a violation of social norms with no implication for personal harm.'

The authors also suggested that the term 'adult-adolescent sex' or 'adult-child sex' be substituted, in some cases, for 'child sexual abuse.'

Rind, in a statement released by Temple University, said:

'Our article went through rigorous peer review in one of the most difficult journals in psychology to publish in. Even though our study has been criticized by certain persons in the media, many psychologists at academic institutions have praised it as being excellent work.'"

Hey, they've got to sell newspapers.

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