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Interview — Ryan Shields (Patreon)

Published:
2024-09-10 02:23:48
Imported:
2026-06

Content

Content Warning - CSA

Ryan Shields is an Assistant Professor in the School of Criminology and Justice Studies at UMass Lowell, approaching criminal justice issues from a public health point of view.

I asked him to walk me through the research on child sex abuse and how to prevent it—as opposed to the concepts put forth in To Catch a Predator.

This was the second conversation we had (first was off the record), but you'll hear me reference it a few times. It's a fairly statistics and research based conversation, but be aware of the topic we're discussing before listening.

Comments

Jacob Palmer

Can you do an analysis of Rebel Ridge?

Yasiel Romero

Great conversation. Will this be available later on in any other platforms? I'd like to share it with my brother and maybe a couple of friends

Yasiel Romero

I really enjoyed that movie. Would be interesting to hear Jackson talk about it

Jacob Palmer

Eye opening. I don't think much about other minors contributing to sexual abuse even though I've known people who've experienced such things. Fortunately, I was never victimized as a minor, but I two adult men attempted to groom me, my piano teacher and my swim coach. I can't explain how I avoided abuse, maybe it was mere luck.

BatwingCandlewaxxe

I think a large part of the reason that conservatives don't push prevention over punishment goes beyond the commonly brought up easy answers -- religious emphasis on punishment, emotional satisfaction of punishment, they don't really care about children, and such -- and goes into something more complex. Teaching children the sorts of things that would make them less vulnerable to sexual manipulation also makes them less vulnerable to the sorts of religious and social manipulation that are inherent to conservative culture. Rigid social hierarchies, unquestioning obedience, near-absolute respect for authority figures, children lacking individual agency, victim-blaming, childhood innocence (aka ignorance), and so on. The principles inherent to the conservative worldview also make children in particular vulnerable to manipulation, and less likely to inform adults if they are abused. Bodily autonomy, strong sense of self-worth, critical thinking, sexual education, general education... all these things that give children the ability to recognize when they're being abused, and more likely to report abuse, are at odds with the type of person that conservatives, and particularly conservative authorities, want children to be.

Skip Intro

I absolutely agree with you. giving children the tools to recognize abuse and gain agency in their own lives is something that also undermines the conservative authoritarian worldview (I don't just mean dictators when I say that, I mean any imposed hierarchy like the ones you laid out). However, I do think that most people are reachable on this idea of actually preventing abuse, because I think that human empathy towards children is just too hard-wired into us to ignore

Skip Intro

is there any interest in a livestream?

BatwingCandlewaxxe

"I think that human empathy towards children is just too hard-wired into us to ignore" I would really like to believe that. Unfortunately, a childhood characterized by violent abuse tell me otherwise. The insane popularity of people like James Dobson and Michael and Debi Pearl among conservative communities tells me otherwise. The staggeringly high abuse rates for children -- especially disabled children, the most vulnerable among them -- tells me otherwise. The rates of CSEM, especially in conservative communities, tells me otherwise. The abuse and homeless rates of LGBTQ+ teens tells me otherwise. The huge push by Republican legislators to roll back protections for children and at-risk teens, both during the Trump administration and in their published future plans, tells me otherwise. Yes, caring for children is something that is hard-wired into us by evolution. But we've seen far, far too often, and in far too disturbingly large numbers, just how easy it is for ideology and self-indulgence to overrule our natural instincts and convince us that it's not only acceptable, but desirable, to treat the most vulnerable and dependent members of our society as objects to be used or discarded depending on how useful they are. That's why conservatism is so dangerous, it inherently devalues and denigrates everything that fails to perfectly express its very narrowly-focused and exclusionary values and expectations; and will not tolerate deviation of any sort.