Dear Ann Landers,
hese days, when one hears so much about cheat-ing and lying and crooks in high places, will you please rerun a column that appeared 10 years ago? It had to do with a boy named Johnny and the example his elders had set for him from the early days of his life. I be-lieve it might help a great many par-ents understand why their kids "went wrong." I've carried that column since 1966 and I'll bet you've added a lot of readers since then. Thanks, Ann. ST. PETERSBURG FRIEND

DEAR FRIEND,
I know precisely the column you want and here it is, with my thanks for asking. IT'S OK, SON, EVERYBODY DOES IT When Johnny was six years old, he was with his father when they were caught speeding. His father handed the officer a bill along with his driver's li-cense. "It's OK, son," his father said as they drove off. "Everybody does it." When Johnny was eight, he attended a family get-together, presided over by Uncle George. All the relatives were instructed on the best techniques for chiseling on their income tax returns. "It's OK, kid," his uncle said. "Every-body does it." When Johnny was nine, his mother took him to his first theater produc-tion. The box-office man couldn't find any seats until his mother discovered an extra $2 in her purse. "It's OK, son," she said. "Everybody does it." When Johnny was 12, he broke his glasses on the way to school. His Aunt Francine persuaded the insurance company that they had been stolen and they collected $27. "It's OK, kid," she said. "Everybody does it." When Johnny was 15, he made right guard on the high school football team. His coach showed him how to block and at the same time grab the opposing tackle by the shirt so the official couldn't see it. "It's OK, kid," the coach said. "Everybody does it." When Johnny was 16, he took his first summer job at a supermarket. His assignment was to put the overripe tomatoes in the bottom of the boxes and the good ones on top where they would show. "It's OK, kid," the man-ager said. "Everybody does it." When Johnny was 18, he and his buddy who lived next door applied for college scholarships. Johnny was a marginal student. His neighbor was in the upper 10 per cent of his class, but he couldn't play right guard. Johnny made it but his buddy didn't. "It's OK," he told himself. "Everybody does it." When Johnny was 19, he was ap-proached by an upperclassman who offered him the answers to an exam for $10. "It's OK," he told himself. "Everybody does it." Johnny was caught and sent home in disgrace. "How could you do this to your mother and me?" his father said. "You never learned anything like that at home." His aunt and uncle were also shocked. If there's one thing the adult world can't stand, it's a kid who cheats. . . . Chicken Pox Chicken pox is a very mild but highly contagious illness caused by a virus. It is most common in children from three to eight years but can occur in infants and adults. It usually begins with a rash and lasts from seven to ten days. What does the rash look like? The rash develops over a two- to seven-day period and appears in three different stages. First, the child will develop "red spots" or "pimples" that may appear in groups on the face, arms or stomach. These "red spots" then develop into "water blisters" that become crusted scab-like pimples. The rash may spread to legs, scalp, inside the mouth and is usually very itchy. Are there other symptoms? Your child may develop a headache, loss of appetite, tiredness and fever. Fever can reach as high as 105� but usually the fever is mild. How do children catch chicken pox? The virus is spread by your child having direct contact with other children who have chicken pox such as in a family or school. Your child will usually develop the rash about two weeks after contact with an infected child. How long will my child be contagious? When will he/she be able to return to school? Chicken pox is contagious until all the "water blisters" have crusted over or dried out. This will occur about seven to ten days after the rash first ap-pears. Your child should stay at home, out of school and away from newborn infants until all the pox have dried out. Will other members of my family get chicken pox? Most adults have had chicken pox as children. Once a person has had chicken pox, it is extremely unlikely that he or she will have it again. It is not necessary to separate other children in the family from the infected child, because they will probably get chicken pox anyway. It is better to get chicken pox as a child than as an adult. How can I take care of my child with chicken pox? The infected child should be given appropriate amounts of aspirin or Tylenol for fever. A bath in lukewarm water or application of calamine lo-tion (available at any drugstore) may relieve the itching. Fingernails should be kept short and clean to help reduce the chance of infecting the skin due to scratching. If the itching is severe, your doctor may prescribe medicine for relief. Will the chicken pox cause scars? Most scarring is caused by scratching the rash. It is very important to keep your child's fingernails short and clean. Most pox will gradually fade within a few weeks. Are there any shots that will keep my child from getting chicken pox? At present, there is no vaccine that will prevent chicken pox. Complications with chicken pox are rare. Your doctor should be consulted if: some of the pox seem swollen, hard, hot with yellow drainage or yellow crusting; an infant under three months old develops chicken pox; your child develops unsteady walking, high fever, severe headache, stiff neck and/or change in behavior; there is fever for more than a week. credit: The Children's Hospital Medical Center, Boston, Massachusetts. Abuse Help for Parents Who Want to Stop Beating Their Kids A nineteen-year-old mother of three "just couldn't take it any more" and nearly flung her infant daughter out a fourth-floor window. A single father handcuffed his young son to a bedframe for fear he would kill the boy if interrupted once more while reading. A mother of two teenagers suddenly found herself screaming into a genera-tion gap. A couple can't remember who started hitting first, and now can't remember how to stop. They are abusive parents. For them and their children, life can-quite lit-erally-be brutal. But for hundreds of families, stress will be eased by an organization that spends every day of the year helping parents who want to stop hurting their children. Parents Anonymous, a free self-help program started by an abusive mother in California, now has twenty-five chapters in the Chicago area. And, like the problem it addresses, the organization involves parents of all ages, incomes and neighborhoods. Parents Anonymous is open to anyone who wants to be a better parent. Many of its members, in fact, are not "child beaters." Some have joined for fear they may become that. Others, because they know they already are abus-ing their children verbally or emotionally. All are parents who feel overwhelmed, frustrated and, often, angered by the tasks of parenting. For Anne, who is pregnant with her third child, Parents Anonymous was a last resort. It may be her unborn child's last chance. "I'm so scared. Scared of what my husband is doing, scared of how I'm getting so much like him," she said softly. It was when her husband doubled his belt and "started in" on her eighteen-month-old daughter that she decided to seek help. The hitting had begun years ago, when her first child was just a year old. "Funny thing is," said Anne, "he was a real easy baby. But it seemed the more spankings he got, the more he'd cry." "I decided to get some help for us for the new baby. ... I want this one to come out in a calm environment." Anne's husband, Phil, still thinks of Parents Anonymous as more of a so-cial group, a time once a week to get out of the house and talk with other parents. But Phil said, "The group has opened some doors for me. I see the prob-lem might be me, not the kids. We had like an overreaction to normal things they would do . . . crying or messing with the TV. "My wife used to think I hit 'em too hard. But then, I'm the type of parent, I tell you to do something and you don't do it, I get the belt ... I still be-lieve in whipping when they need it." Phil and Anne, like all the names of parents quoted here, are pseudonyms for real Chicago-area parents. Some are known to the police. Some are familiar faces in hospital emer-gency rooms. Many of them are involved in Parents Anonymous or one of the other programs sponsored by Parental Stress Services, an arm of the nonprofit Citizens' Committee for Children and Parents Under Stress. A few of the parents, primarily those who have killed their children, are sent to the organization by law enforcement agencies. But most join volun-tarily and remain with the group for years. Benjie Barrett, a director of Stress Services, said that hotline volunteers an-swer four hundred to five hundred calls a month from troubled parents. In January and December, the number swells. "It happens after Christmas a lot, when it's snowing outside and the kids are stuck in the house and the toys are broken," said another staffer, Pat Hig-gins. "The Walton family Christmas never materialized and they're devas-tated." For single parents, the specter of spending New Year's Eve alone can send an entire household into turmoil, according to JoAnne Shanberge, Parents Anonymous director. "When you're by yourself, all your energies during the holidays are going to make your kids happy," she said. "You want someone to make you happy and when that doesn't happen, you want to strike out. . . . The kids are the only ones there." Financial troubles during the holidays can be another source of stress for parents. It was the inability to give her children all they wanted that pushed May, a thirty-two-year-old mother of five, to the brink and over the edge. "It was like they were always nagging me for this thing or that thing they saw on television. I'd been on my own trying to take care of the kids since my husband left me," she said. "I didn't blame him. I wish I could've left too. So there I am on welfare and I can't give them what they want. I feel like the worst mother in the whole world." Two years ago, a week before Christmas, she locked her children in the apartment and left, though her eldest was just eight. When she returned nearly two days later, child welfare authorities had placed all her children in foster homes. "I love my children and I want them back. I just can't seem to do the right thing," she said. Although Parents Anonymous officials believe helping parents help them-selves saves far more children from abuse than many other methods, the group is, first and foremost, a parent-advocate. At the weekly group talk sessions, the participants remain anonymous and their conversations completely confidential. The success of the program derives from its dual service to troubled parents: It supports them as "good persons who can be good parents" while offering alternatives to the poor parenting techniques they learned from their own parents. Almost without exception, abusive parents were themselves abused or neglected children. With that in mind, Parents Anonymous groups concen-trate on breaking the cycle. It's not always easy. For the teenaged mother from the North Side who got pregnant to escape life with her own mother, parenthood backfired. She didn't know how to care for her baby. All she knew was how her mother treated her. So when her baby cried, she cried. One day, she carried the baby to an open window. A friend stopped her from flinging the child to the street forty feet below. A few months ago, welfare authorities took her child away from her. Ironically, they put the child in the "protective custody" of the girl's mother. For Phyllis, a west suburban divorcee, mothering became "a living hell" when her children reached adolescence. "My son was swearing at me con-stantly," she said. "My daughter [who was later hospitalized for mental ill-ness] went into a rage at the least little thing. . . . One day she came at me with a kitchen knife because I told her she couldn't use the car." Phyllis doesn't hit her children, but she realized she might hurt them when she found herself one day with her hands around her daughter's neck. "I didn't strangle her, but God knows I could have. I certainly wanted to," she said. Some children are abused by parents who tell them they are "dumb," "fat," "lazy," or "worthless." That is verbal abuse, and it can be as damaging to a child's psyche and future development as beating is to his body. Do you withhold affection as punishment? Do you "get back" at your child by calling him or her names? Do you simply wish you had a better rela-tionship with your child, that you could really talk together instead of yelling at each other? The volunteers who answer the Parental Stress hotlines can relate many stories of parents who called after just such near misses as Phyllis'. A dis-traught father who called in tears after handcuffing his son to a bedframe told a volunteer he was "ready to kill" and terrified of his own anger. For those parents who call the hotline after they've hurt their children, there are trained staffers to accompany the parent and child to the emergency room. "Parents don't want to hurt their children," said Ms. Barrett. "And we want to help them stop. . . . Often at Christmas time, parents say to them-selves, 'This year I'll start being nice to my kids.' It's not that easy. That's why we're here." credit: Pamela Warrick, reporter. Child Molesting (A Message to Mothers) This is a difficult problem to deal with because it embarrasses most people. Your best bet is preventive. If you and your child or children have good communication, enjoy one another's confidence, and can talk frankly about sex, you will be in a favorable position to handle this problem should it rear its ugly head. Hopefully, the child molester is a stranger, a Funny Uncle, a friend or a neighbor. You can best protect your child by warning him or her at an early age (five is not too soon) about the general topic of child molesting. Discuss it as calmly and unemotionally as possible. (The calmness is most easily achieved if this talk takes place before, rather than after, an unfortunate inci-dent.) Explain to your child that some people, even grownups, are confused about sex and sometimes they approach young children. Tell them that the person might start by kissing, touching or hugging when no one else is around. This, they should understand, is a danger signal. Advise them if this happens, they must get out of the situation and away from the person as quickly as possible. Suggest that they do so without hurting anybody's feelings if they can; but hurt feelings or not, it is important to say "No" to any advance and to let the person know you mean it. Explain that even though it might be easier to for-get about the incident, they must tell you about it. An informed boy or girl, knowing what might happen, can often spot an advance very early in the game and turn it off completely. If the person who makes the advance is a stranger, you may be tempted to call the police and try to track him down. If this is the course you choose to follow, be aware that the children are often more upset by a follow-up of this sort than by the incident itself. You will have to use your own judgment as to whether or not you do wish to subject your child to this kind of trauma. If the man (it usually seems to be a man) is a close friend or a relative who is likely to be around often, there is no alternative except for you, or the man in your family, to warn the offender that a repetition of the episode would mean he is no longer welcome in your home. (Fathers often become very angry and will not give a second chance. If your husband takes this po-sition, respect his wishes.) No reasonable talk is going to change the behavior of a person in such seri-ous trouble that he must molest the young, but you can get him out of your house and you should. And now for the most devastating situation in which it is the children's own father who molests them. Difficult as it will be to do, a mother must take this as an indication that her husband is seriously disturbed. If she cares what happens to her children she must get help at once. The ideal solution would be to enroll the entire family in family therapy. Family therapy, if it could be arranged, would be the best approach for sev-eral reasons. The main reason is that a "sick" family situation is not made up of one lone, deranged individual plus several "good," well-adjusted people. When a family is in such serious trouble as this, more often than not, every-body is involved in one way or another. Thus in cases of child molestation, a female child, for example, may be be-having in an overly seductive way (parading before Dad unclothed or scant-ily clad . . . sitting on his lap and kissing him a great deal, etc.). A mother who may be far from satisfying (or satisfied) in her own relationship to her husband, makes it easier for him to look elsewhere for gratification. The per-son who looks like the villain is often not the one at fault-obvious as his or her wrongdoing may seem. Good family therapy can unwind the tangled skein of family relationships and help the whole family to more satisfactory ways of behaving. However, the chances of a man who is so disturbed taking part in family therapy are not very promising. The next best approach would be to urge him to go for therapy by himself. Here, too, it is unlikely that he will agree. The common sense solution, as seen by an outsider, would be for the mother to lay down the law. This is an oversimplistic solution for so serious a problem. When the person who is most in trouble refuses to get professional help, somebody else in the family must get not only psychological help but practical suggestions as well. If you can't afford a psychologist in private practice, check with your local Mental Health Association or Family Service Association to see what kind of help is available in the bracket you could afford. Most mental health clinics charge according to what the person can pay. Be aware that the prospect of improvement for a man so seriously disturbed and the likelihood of smooth and successful family functioning are limited. But you must try. If professional help seems beyond your reach, you may have to do what women did before this kind of help was available. You may need, at least temporarily, to send any child or children who are "at risk" to live or board with some other family. Or you may be forced to break up your own family. You must start with the premise that any man who, for any reason whatever, molests his children is a very sick person, indeed, and any wife who aids, abets or permits such a situation is in trouble herself . . . more than she re-alizes. Incest is nothing new; in fact, it was an acceptable practice among certain cultures centuries ago. In our society, however, it is against the code of ac-ceptable conduct. Mothers who tolerate such behavior, or are too passive to do anything about it, are failing their children badly. A mother's first and foremost position must be: This cannot go on. Then she must work it out from there in a manner that protects her children. credit: Louise Bates Ames, Ph.D., Co-Director, Gesell Institute of Child Devel-opment, New Haven, Connecticut 06511. Child Pornography also known as "Chicken Porn" and "Kiddie Porn" DEFINITION: Films, photographs, magazines, books and motion pictures which depict children under a certain age (usually sixteen) involved in sexu-ally explicit acts, both heterosexual and homosexual. The American attitude towards its children manifests itself in many ways, including, unfortunately, a tolerance for child abuse and neglect in significant proportions and varieties. One form of mistreatment is the exploitation of children used in the production of sexually explicit films and magazines. This statement is offered to acquaint the reader with the nature of the commercial sexploitation problem, and the impact of these activities on the children in-volved. As far as pornography is concerned, it does not consider the much larger problem of child prostitution, which probably involves as many as 1.2 million children nationwide. THE SEXPLOITATION PROCESS The use in commercial pornography of children ranging in age from three to sixteen has become a mulitmillion-, perhaps billion-dollar industry in the United States. By recent count, there are at least 264 magazines being pro-duced and sold each month in adult bookstores across the country dealing with sexual acts between children or between children and adults. These magazines-slickly produced-sell for prices averaging over seven dollars each. This number of 264 does not include the vast number of films or other media. Until recently, it was incorrectly assumed that child pornography was pro-duced mostly in Europe. Investigations have now revealed that much of it is produced in the United States-even some materials which are packaged in such a manner as to give the impression they are of foreign origin. Film makers and magazine photographers have little difficulty recruiting youngsters. Some simply use their own children, or buy the children of others. Some rely on runaways. Recent findings of a U. S. Senate subcommit-tee on juvenile delinquency indicate that more than one million American children run away from home each year, often for good cause, having been victims of intolerable conditions, with physical and sexual abuse present. From this vast army of dispossessed children, exploiters select literally thou-sands of participants for their production needs and prostitution rings. Los Angeles police estimate that adults in that city alone sexually exploited over thirty thousand children under seventeen in 1976, and photographed many of them in the act. Five thousand of these children were under twelve. In 1975, Houston police arrested Roy Ames after finding a warehouse full of pornography, including fifteen thousand color slides of boys in homosex-ual acts, over one thousand magazines and paperback books, and a thousand reels of film. In New York City, Father Bruce Ritter of Covenant House, a group of shelters for runaway children, has reported that the first ten children who en-tered Covenant House had all been given money to appear in pornographic films. These children, in their early teens, could not return to their homes be-cause of extreme conditions of abuse and neglect, and could not find jobs or take care of themselves other than in illegal ways. There is no other way for a child of twelve to support himself or herself, and, sadly, too few sheltering al-ternative environments are provided by our communities. Many are not runaways, but come from broken homes. They can be in-duced to pose for five dollars or a trip to Disneyland, or even a kind word. Sometimes the mothers are porn queens; often parents or guardians are ad-dicts or alcoholics. Approximately 2.8 million children are in the sole custody of substance abusers, and 2.2 million are with parents involved in sex for sale. In 1977, at the Crossroads Store in New York's Time Square, we purchased Lollitots, a magazine showing girls eight to fourteen, and Moppits, children aged three to twelve, as well as playing cards which pictured naked, spread-eagled children. We also looked at film depicting children violently deflowered on their communion day at the feet of a "freshly crucified" priest replacing Jesus on the cross. Next, we saw a film showing an alleged father engaged in urolagnia with his four-year-old daughter. Of sixty-four films able to be seen, nineteen showed children, and an additional sixteen involved in-cest. THE VICTIMIZATION OF CHILD-PORN STARS Despite the highly secretive nature of the recruitment and sexploitation process, a growing body of information about the children involved confirms that psychological scarring and emotional distress which occur in the vast majority of these cases lead to significant other problems. Prepubescent sexual activity, especially in conditions of exploitation and coercion, is highly destructive to the child's psychological development and social maturation. Psychiatrists report that such inappropriate sexuality is highly destructive to children. It predisposes them to join society's deviant populations: drug addicts, prostitutes, criminals, the promiscuous and pre-adult parents. Over seventeen thousand babies were bom to mothers under fourteen years of age in 1976. Venereal diseases in children have now reached epidemic figures. Although there may not be a proved link between adult pornography and sexual abuse, beyond a doubt this degradation of chil-dren scars them usually for life. There have also surfaced a number of children and young adults who have been involved in posing and/or performing for sexually explicit films and magazines. These children are now or have been in treatment programs for substance abuse, delinquency or other aberrant behavior. Some of these chil-dren have voluntarily recounted their experiences to law enforcement and news media persons who are attempting to learn more about the recruitment process and the type of activities involved. Many are victimized in more brutal fashion. Los Angeles Police Investi-gator Jackie Howell rejects the commonly stated belief that nude posing is harmless to the children. "We have found that a child molester is often also the photographer. Photography is only a part of it, a sideline more often than not, to prostitution, sexual abuse and drugs." It is important to note that the victimization in the child pornography proc-ess goes beyond the child actor. For example, authorities in Rockingham County, New Hampshire, reported recently that in 1977 every one of the twenty-seven cases of incest reported in their jurisdiction included child por-nography preceding and accompanying the assaults on the children. Many more such cases are beginning to surface, with recent reports from Ohio and California. Dr. Henry Giarretto, one of the nation's leading experts in incest, who works directly with the Probation Department of Santa Clara County, Cali-fornia, reports that he saw fifty cases of incest in 1975, had over 350 in 1976, and predicts that 800-plus will be referred in 1977. The men who support this billion-dollar industry do so because they are seeking justification and rationalization for their deviant behavior. Indeed, one magazine in the Odyssey Institute files, Lust for Children, is a primer for the sex molester, teaching him how to go to the park and pick up two little girls, what games to play to induce them to co-operate, and what acts to per-form which will have the least evidence for the police should the children re-port him. Another, entitled Schoolgirls, instructs a father in text and photo-graphs as to those positions for intercourse best used with prepubescent girls (in this instance a girl of nine) and still another book shows how to affix a lock to one's daughter's genitals so that no other man may "get to her." Such sadomasochistic activities are part of the "kiddie porn" market. Furthermore, not only are these activities harmful emotionally, develop- mentally and psychologically to the child actors and children subsequently sexually abused, but physically, as many suffer lacerations of the vagina and rectum. Additionally, the research of Dr. Malcolm Coppleson, one of the leading gynecologists in Sydney, Australia, has shown the vaginal pH of the prepubescent female is not sufficient to neutralize infectious agents that come with intercourse, so that she is subject not only to vaginitis, but early onset of cervical cancer, often necessitating hysterectomies prior to attaining thirty years of age. It is obvious that children were not meant to satisfy the sexual needs of adults, and such use of them is, like rape, a crime of power and abuse. solution: There are many parts to the solution of this problem. This menace will not be removed by simple changes in law or harsh penalties, although these are essential components of the complete strategy. There must be first a public awareness in each community that child porn exists, that it is very big business, in large part run by organized crime, that it victimizes children in every community, that it can be stopped and that it will only be stopped by a commitment to the children of the community manifested in explicit actions: Amendment of child abuse and neglect statutes to include sexual ex-ploitation, and to prescribe harsh criminal penalties for offenders. Amend Civil Codes to provide for licensing of all children used in commercial modeling or performing, with carefully worded proscriptions and substantial sanctions against the use of such children in sexually explicit ac-tivities. Extend criminal liability to promoters and distributors of child por-nography, without whose promotion and marketing of the finished product there would be no financial motive for the sexploitation of children in the first place. Develop intervention and treatment models for children victimized by this process, to mend their emotional and psychological injuries and to return them to the mainstream of society. As Erik Erikson wrote: "Someday, maybe, there will exist a well-informed, well-considered, and yet fervent public conviction that the most deadly of all possible sins is the mutilation of a child's spirit; for such mutilation undercuts the life principle of trust, without which every human act, may it feel ever so good, and seem ever so right, is prone to perversion by destructive forms of consciousness." credit: Judianne Densen-Gerber, J.D., M.D., F.C.L.M., President and Chief Executive Officer, Odyssey Institute of America and Australia, and Stephen Hutchinson, Esquire, Vice President and General Counsel, Odyssey Institute of America and Australia. Child Prostitution Definition: The use of, or participation by, children under the age of majority (or sometimes defined as under sixteen years of age) in sexual acts with adults or other minors where no force is present. Prostitution differs from statutory rape and incest in that there is an element of payment, usually in money, but often in drugs, gifts, clothing, food or other items. Prostitution is "the oldest profession" and a lifestyle for women, men, adolescents and now, sadly, children, some as young as three. Occasionally, parents who are in-volved in the sex-for-sale industries sell their daughters who are too young to know right from wrong. Child prostitution is closely allied with child pornog-raphy, incest, drug addiction, child abuse, and generalized family disruption and juvenile delinquency. HOW MANY CHILDREN ARE INVOLVED? Experts in the field of juvenile delinquency have shown that in the United States there is a minimum of three hundred thousand active boy prostitutes under the age of sixteen. Approximately thirty thousand of these are located in New York City, with at least two thousand concentrated in the Times Square area. The Los Angeles Police Department has identified thirty thou-sand boys working as prostitutes within that city, of whom five thousand are under fourteen years of age, and several hundred are as young as eight. No one has counted the number of girls involved in sex-for-sale, but most au-thorities agree that there are probably as many girls involved as boys. In other words, there are more than a half million children in the United States who are actively engaged in prostitution. Some experts estimate the number is easily twice that number-1.2 million-and this includes only children under the age of sixteen. The number nearly doubles again if sixteen- and seventeen-year-olds are added. Odyssey Institute has consulted on this problem in Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Detroit, Houston, Los Angeles, Milwaukee, New Orleans, New York and San Francisco to name but a few cities. It touches all the cities of our nation and all walks of life. Child prostitution has occurred in church- affiliated boys homes (Tennessee), independent schools (Massachusetts) and Boy Scout troops (Louisiana). It has reared its ugly head in the Roman Polanski case (California); in the making of a major movie, Pretty Baby (Louisiana), whose storyline is legalized child prostitution at the turn of the century in Storyville; in the recent death of a twelve-year-old prostitute (New York) who fell or was pushed from a window of a "quick-tumover" hotel; and in the Ms. and Mr. Nude Teeny Bopper Contest, scheduled to be held at Naked City (Indiana). There, children were to be paid ten dollars each-as were their parents-to enter the contest naked, and observers, fully dressed, were to pay fifteen dollars to photograph them. An unexpected visit in the summer of 1977 to one of the truckers' stops at Naked City by CBS Televi-sion, Chicago, uncovered eleven- and fourteen-year-old girls waiting, stark naked, for eighteen-hour shifts, for which they were paid fifteen dollars a day. These circumstances were found to be violations of the minimum wage law, the child labor law, and the liquor licensing regulations. There were no laws to address the matter of their nakedness. However, we are delighted that community and official action in the state of Indiana has halted many of these objectionable practices. But much still remains to be done. An interesting sidelight is that in Victorian England a group of concerned women organized to raise the ages of girls within the brothels from nine to thirteen. They were successful. Children engaged in prostitution often are recruited from rural areas or midwestem cities. There are more than one million runaway children each year, many of whom turn to prostitution for survival. Many leave homes of violence and sexual abuse, others are lonely because of neglectful personally preoccupied families. Still others are overwhelmingly bored and unchal-lenged. A few are severely mentally ill but untreated. The longing for adventure and to be rid of parental abuses leads hundreds of thousands of children into the streets, brothels and bus terminals. Their common needs are affection and attention. These needs make them vulnera-ble to smooth-talking pimps, who woo them with pretenses of love and prom-ises of fun and big money. For some, drugs and alcohol are part of the en-ticement. For others, these habits follow. Most are involved in drug abuse sooner or later. The habit ensures their captivity in the lifestyle of domination by the pimps. Many child prostitutes travel from city to city. In some cases, this travel is due to their being employed by organized prostitution rings, which often carry the children's vital statistics on computers in order to efficiently meet customers' demands. Boston, Chicago and New Orleans have eliminated such technologically advanced rings in recent months. Child prostitutes are rotated around the country like circuit riders because the men who desire children also desire variety. These men need the illusion of innocence and virginity. One child I treated literally claimed to have sold her maidenhood forty-four times. In other cases, the wandering is to avoid arrest or territorial disputes with local established prostitutes. Still others follow conventions of professional and business groups. WHAT HAPPENS TO THESE CHILDREN? The life of a child prostitute is generally very different from what may have been promised or anticipated by the child victim. Besides the drug and alco-hol abuse, there are frequent beatings by pimps, violence from customers, and conditions of slavery. If the girl has a child, her pimp often takes her baby from her. He sends the infant out of state to be cared for by one of his relatives whose name or whereabouts she does not know. If the prostitute tries to leave his stable (the name for a pimp's group of girls) he threatens her with the reality that she may never see her child again. The youngest mother I personally delivered during my medical training was nine years and eight months old. She had been prostituted by her own mother from age three. When delivered of a son, she thanked God that it was not a female who would have to experience a life similar to what hers had been. There is physical damage to the child arising from the premature and inap-propriate sexuality of child prostitution. Nature did not intend for children to have sex with adults. In addition to lacerations of the genitals, venereal dis-eases, pregnancy, etc., there are local infections of the genitals and a well-es-tablished correlation between precocious sexuality and cervical cancer in young women under thirty, necessitating hysterectomies. When a child's nor-mal physical development has been punctuated by extensive premature sex-ual activity a total disruption of emotional development usually occurs as well. How can we expect a child to trust an adult world which sexually exploits him or her? WHAT KIND OF PEOPLE USE CHILDREN SEXUALLY? They are almost exclusively men. While occasionally I have treated mother-daughter incest and, even more rarely, mother-son, when I have con-sulted on child-sex-for-pay, the buyer has always been male. The men come from all classes and races though there is a marked Caucasian prepon-derance. Many are married-even those primarily interested in boys-and a surprising number are middle or upper class. Many are men of prominence and power. Some are jaded and bored, but almost all feel inadequate and un-able to meaningfully relate to peer sexual partners. They see sex as something one person does to another, not as a mutually reciprocal relationship. Sexual activity equals a performance, and they relish an inexperienced child as the judge. Persons who use children are called pedophiliacs. Pedophiliacs fre-quently feel disquieted with themselves and punish themselves with degrading sexual acts that the children have to perform-acts often sadomasochistic in nature or involving urine and feces. We must never confuse healthy adult human sexuality and our own experiences with the activities these children must experience. The size discrepancy alone is cause for pain and fear. Incredibly, during the British Psychiatric Society's meetings in Wales in May 1977, the first meeting of the International Paedophilic Information Ex-change was held. This is a group of persons who believe that sexual conduct between child and adult is perfectly permissible behavior. This society is working for the rights of adults to so use "consenting" children. Children, in my opinion, do not have the capacity to judge the consequences, or give con-sent in the true sense. There are many American sympathizers with this newest rights movement and, indeed, one association, the Rene Giuon Soci-ety in California, claims to have 2,500 members who have filed an affidavit that they have each deflowered a child under eight (male or female). The motto of this group is: "Sex by eight or it is too late." WHAT CAN BE DONE? First, we must recognize that a sexually permissive society without hu-manistic caring contributes to the defective values presently being developed in children. Children need structure. They must learn that sex is more than just doing what feels good or earns them money. Sex is part of a relationship -a special kind of friendship which is not exploitative. Second, children must be given attention and affection in the home. This includes loving, cuddling, warmth and concern-basic psychological needs devoid of genital sexual overtones. If these warm touching experiences are missing in the home, the child may seek them elsewhere, becoming vulnerable to sexual ex-ploitation by others with their own agendas. Third, we must develop and provide all children with sex education-not simply information about human sexuality, but including the preciousness of human relatedness, caring and commitment. Anatomy and warnings about masturbation are not a substitute for dealing with the very real concerns and frustrations of adolescence, and all information shared with our young must be appropriate for them, not for sophisticated adults. Fourth, when a child gets involved in prostitution, authorities should rec-ognize the behavior as a symptom of more serious problems. The juvenile justice system or other strictly legalistic approaches cannot alone prevent or stop the problem. We must take a comprehensive look at the child in trouble, including psychological, medical, educational, legal and intra-family issues. Fifth, communities must recognize that child prostitution and pedophilia are very serious threats to all children in the community and to the commu-nity itself. Community resources must be organized to maximize the impact of appropriate skills and resources to return the victimized child to a happy, healthy and appropriate lifestyle. At the present writing there are no treat-ment centers specially designed to treat child sex abuse victims. Much remains to be done, but at least we have begun by identifying that these prob-lems exist. Now we must create a society where children can enjoy love and affection without being subject to sexual abuse. All children should have an inalienable right to love and affection. credit: Judianne Densen-Gerber, J.D., M.D., F.C.L.M., President and Chief Executive Officer, Odyssey Institute of America and Australia, and Stephen Hutchinson, J.D., Vice President and General Counsel, Odyssey Institute of America and Australia. Child Safety dear ann: You have, in the past, printed some very useful suggestions and guidelines sent in by readers. As superintendent of the Allegheny County Police, I would like to share some literature put out by the Boys and Girls Crime Prevention Corps. We hope young people everywhere will profit from these rules: Keep out of wooded areas, empty lots and empty buildings. Do not talk with strangers or get into a car driven by a person you don't know. Never thumb rides. Don't permit anyone you don't know to touch or handle you. Turn down any offer by a stranger who asks you to sell things or pass things out. Do not take candy or money from strangers. Keep away from strangers who get friendly in a movie, park, swimming pool or other public place. Never eat anything or puff on anything given to you by a stranger. If someone should grab hold of you, do the following: Scream as loud as you can. Keep screaming. Don't stop. Jerk free and run as fast as you can. Run to the nearest home or building and tell the first person you see what happened. Call the police and your parents. Remain there until someone comes for you. Try to remember the description of the person who bothered you. ROBERT G. KRONER, SUPERINTENDENT ALLEGHENY COUNTY POLICE, PITTSBURGH. dear friend: Thanks for the expert advice. I hope parents everywhere will go over your suggestions with their children and re-emphasize the importance of each one. It could mean the difference between life and death. credit: The above article appeared in the Providence Evening Bulletin on June 25, 1975. PREPARING JOHNNY FOR SURGERY