JonBenet exploitation Prof whose e-mails led to arrest sees wider issue
BOULDER, Colo. (National Catholic Register) A university professor at the center of the media firestorm about the JonBenet Ramsey case said the media is missing the true significance of the story.
JonBenets story should be a warning about the modern tendency to sexualize children, professor Michael Tracey told the National Catholic Register.
Traceys e-mail correspondence with John Karr led to Karrs extradition in connection with the 1996 murder of the 6-year-old beauty pageant star. Tracey, a Catholic who is a former altar server, exchanged hundreds of e-mails with the suspect. Tracey tipped police when his e-mail correspondence with Karr raised red flags.
Tracey said he believes JonBenets coquettish pageant performances and costumes probably got her killed by attracting a pedophile. The cultures continued fascination with JonBenet raises troubling questions, he said.
Was JonBenet a pedophiles dream? Clearly, clearly she was, Tracey said. Her death, and the whole circus surrounding it even 10 years later, has everything to do with the cultures desire to sexualize children.
Tracey is British and has produced three documentaries about the JonBenet case. He said hes considering a future documentary that would expose the evils of the pre-teen modeling industry.
He called pre-teen modeling simply *advertiser censored* by another name. It plays right into this whole child-sex phenomenon were seeing, Tracey said.
Traceys not alone in seeing the JonBenet tragedy as the tip of a culture-wide iceberg.
This story in many ways encapsulates a societal sexualization of children, said Tom Plante, a Catholic psychologist and chairman of the psychology department at the Jesuit Santa Clara University in Santa Clara, Calif. All clinical evidence tells us children in the United States are being sexualized, and are engaging in sex at earlier and earlier ages every year.
Plante said its difficult for parents to isolate their children from the cultures obsession.
If you go shopping with a young girl, youll find that most of the fashions available for her are designed for sexual provocation, Plante said. Parents are finding that its difficult to properly outfit their daughters for school. Popular music, movies, commercials its all working to sexualize our children.
This marketing phenomenon in turn makes children prime targets for abuse by adults. Though media reports have focused on abuse by Catholic clergy, the problem of teachers molesting children dwarfs the comparatively small problem in the church.
John Mark Karr, a suspect in connection with the murder of JonBenet, worked as a school teacher in the United States before taking teaching jobs in Thailand.
In the public schools, pedophiles arent uncommon. A federal study of the public school system, headed by Hofstra University researcher Charol Shakeshaft, found that nearly 10 percent of public school children have been targets of unwanted sexual attention by teachers and staff.
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