This is very true.

Peel back the stats and you will probably find that "verbal" abuse is included in "abuse" figures. And then the 'abuse' figures are projected as 'sexual abuse' figures.

Smoking and child abuse stats are notoriously 'cooked'.

Real problem yes, but fudging figures does no one any favors.

Indeed, this is the most interesting part. Society gets all up in arms about child sexual abuse, but television, movies and magazines are just loaded with sexualized images of children. Methinks there is some cognitive dissonance going on here...

One cannot define 18yo girls as the very epitome of beauty and object of sexual lust, and plaster the world with their images and then turn around and pretend that a 17.9 yr old girl is a helpless and innocent child and totally sexless. That just doesn't work.

Or how about the Hollywood habit of casting 25yo stars (and sex symbols) to play teenage roles? Again, socieity massively reinforces the 'sexualized teenagers' meme here and then acts shocked when society sexualizes teenagers.