News Articles

Excerpt from The Public Discourse
By Leonard Sax

History has been made. Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion’s latest release, “WAP,” has crushed the previous record for the most streams by a song in its first week after launch. For the week ending August 13, WAP garnered 93 million streams in the USA alone. In addition to claiming the #1 spot on Billboard’s Top 100—where it remains at this writing—WAP has also reached the number 1 spot in 15 foreign markets, […]

By Ron Haskins
Courtesy of Brookings

Policy aimed at promoting economic opportunity for poor children must be framed within three stark realities. First, many poor children come from families that do not give them the kind of support that middle-class children get from their families. Second, as a result, these children enter kindergarten far behind their more advantaged peers and, on average, never catch up and even fall further behind. Third, in addition to the education deficit, poor children are more likely to make bad decisions that lead them to drop out of school, become teen parents, join gangs and […]

Summary by Emerald O’Brien

Emotional grooming is a process by which the perpetrator or “Con” manipulates their target’s emotions to seduce, coerce, or con them into sexual behavior.  They most likely learned their behavior from peers, media, or other adult role models.  Most Cons have never seen or experienced the mutual respect and selfless behaviors it takes to maintain or create a healthy relationship.

Perpetrators of sexual crimes and that is what it is, can be male or female.  They need two things, first to control their victim to create a false sense of trust and second, secrecy.

Sexting among children in the UK has risen dramatically during lockdown, with some girls as young as six composing sexually explicit messages.

SafeToNet, a free phone safety app available via the gov.uk website, said the number of messages children attempted to send had risen by 183 per cent.

The app analyses message content and stops harmful messages from being sent. It also offers guidance as a message is being composed.

Explicit messages

The figures also revealed a 55 per cent rise in the number of ‘sexts’ drafted during normal school hours.

Girls were more likely to try to send explicit messages than boys, and eleven-year-olds […]

By ANGELA HILL | Bay Area News Group
Courtesy of Mercury News

Here’s a prescription for better health and happiness: Forgive.

Yes, forgiving someone who has hurt you can reduce anger, depression, stress – and even blood pressure — and lead to greater feelings of optimism, hope, compassion and self-confidence.

This is not just a nice, ethereal concept or something a Sunday school teacher once told you to do. There’s a method to this gladness, with ongoing research that shows forgiveness can promote improved mental and physical health.

We spoke with Dr. Fred Luskin, director […]

By Christen Price, Esq.
Courtesy of End Sexual Exploitation

The sex trade is a haven for racial violence in this country. It violates the most basic human rights of women and girls of color, largely with impunity, as it has for centuries.  Under chattel slavery in the antebellum South, enslaved black women were commonly raped by their owners and owners’ friends.  Sometimes they were abused so that their forced reproductive labor would produce children that the owner wouldn’t have to bother to buy.

Some women, particularly those who were light-skinned, were sold as sex slaves to white men in the […]

Unmasking Sexual Con Games: Helping Teens Avoid Emotional Grooming and Dating Violence
by Kathleen M. McGee, Laura J. Buddenberg, Boys Town Press

“If you love me, prove it.”

“I’m going to make you feel good.”

“You want it, you know you do.”

“Just this once.”

“What’s the big deal? Everybody does it.”

Language can be a powerful persuader. The term “con game” (confidence game) is defined as a swindle in which a person is defrauded after his or her confidence has been won.

When someone is tricked into a sexual encounter by what another person says, it is called a “sexual […]