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Our sick and cruel culture

Our sick and cruel culture

In a truly alarming study, made after an extensive examination of school and police data, the Associated Press found that roughly 17,000 students were sexually assaulted by other students from 2011 to 2015.

We are not talking about college students. The study covers children in high schools, junior highs, even elementary schools. Children as young as 5 or 6 were included in the data.

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The depth of the problem is possibly much greater because some students are unlikely to report an assault, and several states do not even tally cases. Ohio’s board of education does not keep numbers, but there were 293 assaults on school grounds documented in the last two years of available data by police departments. Michigan keeps numbers, but only if the assault results in expulsion. There were 54 cases during the course of the study in Michigan.

The painful reality is that a broken society is producing children with warped and dysfunctional views of sex, and it is time to admit this and discuss how we can heal.

We have a sick culture.

The opioid crisis has resulted in orphans or drug-addicted parents who are inattentive or abusive. Single-parent households often have no strong male role model. Economic pressures force fathers and mothers to work constantly, leaving children with large amounts of unsupervised time. And unfortunately, that time is sometimes spent on the Internet watching dubious material — including violence and pornography.

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A study by researchers at the Crimes Against Children Research Center at the University of New Hampshire found that 93 percent of boys and 62 percent of girls were exposed to online porn before turning 18.

All this is very difficult to take in.

But now there is an unlimited amount of pornography available on phones or desktop computers.

And our children are watching it.

They are watching it along with scores of video games in which life has precisely no value.

Meanwhile, young women as well as young men listen to pop and rap music that, at best, lacks all respect for intimacy and at worst is deeply misogynistic.

The sexual abuse of 17,000 students should be a wake-up call for parents and school officials throughout the nation. We need to renew and reform our culture — perhaps with pockets of countercultural small communities, the so-called “Benedict Option.” We need that “old-time religion” and a rebirth of shame. We need a moral rebirth in America, for we are creating monsters in this society — starting with the very young.

First Published May 6, 2017, 4:00 a.m.

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