From: adamsr@netcom.com (Rick Adams)
Newsgroups: alt.activism,alt.individualism,talk.politics.misc
Subject: Re: Age of Consent
Date: 18 Aug 92 02:40:01 GMT
Organization: Netcom - Online Communication Services (408 241-9760 guest)


	In his rather lengthy response to my message, Jack Newsbaum asks a
number of questions and raises several issues, most of which relate to my
knowledge of child abuse, runaway and throwaway children, and prostitution,
as well as my use of "pop psychology" to make my points.

	Rather than quote his message here (except for a very few
citations), since the majority of it was a series of quotations from other
messages which preceeded it anyway, I will instead respond to hie main
questions.

	Qualifications, Jack?

	I have a Ph.D in Clinical Psychology and I am currently pursuing a
second graduate degree in Forensic Psychopathology.

	I _came_ from an abusive household, lived on the streets from the
time I was 13 until my late 20s, and was actively involved with precisely
the kinds of street kids you claim to know so much about.

	From the mid 1960s until the 1980 (when I finally decided to
complete my education) I worked with runaways, throwaways, abused kids, and
battered women at a variety of programs ranging from the Haight Ashbury Free
Clinic to a Suicide prevention line where I had the opportunity to listen to
a seven year old girl DYING at the other end of the telephone after having
taken an entire bottle of her mother's downers because mommy would be
through with the man in the other room soon and then it would be her turn
with him, and she couldn't deal with it anymore!

	I've worked with prostitutes of BOTH sexes, done counseling with
pimps, and currently work with convicted sex offenders and murderers. My
academic specialty is the Antisocial Personality Disorder  - better known as
the psychopath or sociopath.

	Over the last 20+ years I've met and dealt with more felons, sex
offenders, prostitutes, pimps, dopers, runaways, throwaways, and victims
than you've seen portrayed on Television - and almost NONE of them fit the
stereotype image you seem to believe in.  For every ONE pimp who controls
his prostitutes with fear there are ten who do so by playing on their
emotional needs - and you CAN'T legislate against that, if you permit the
child to make the choices you insist are "fair."

	It isn't "pop psychology," Jack, its cold hard FACT!

	There _are_ kids, some fairly young, mature enough to make such
decisions. But for every ONE like that there are a hundred who would become
victims - and those aren't very good odds!

	The Libertarian party has some VERY good points. Certainly anyone
who has ever had any contact with the streets knows that the WoD is a farce,
and that the rights of the poor and of youths are FAR too limited and
repressed by our current administration. But your position is too far to the
other extreme - you seek to protect rights by giving up other protections,
and when it comes to children that simply isn't a reasonable answer!

-- 
    rick.adams on GEnie   /|\        You are right from your side,        
     adamsr@netcom.com  /  |  \        And I am right from mine.          
    adamsr@irie.ais.org \ /|\ /  We're both just one too many mornings,   
   adamsr@norwich.bitnet  \|/  And a thousand miles behind. (c Bob Dylan)