Erotic innocence - The culture of child molesting

Gothic narratives always seem to serve a culture under stress. I do not want to draw sensational parallels to Salem, Nazi Germany, or the McCarthy-ridden 1950s; but the stark moral drama offered by our child-molesting stories does suggest the possibility of scapegoating, or at least of a cover narrative camouflaging needs so dark and urgent we want neither to face them nor to give them up. [...]

A recent study of ideal desirability using a computer program called FacePrints found that "the ideal 25-year-old woman ... had a 14-year-old's abundant lips and an 11-year-old's delicate jaw." that small lower face providing also the prominent eyes and cheekbones of children. We are told to look like children if we can and for as long as we can, to pine for that look. [...]

The murder of children receives less attention unless it is associated with abduction; but garden variety murder is becoming more and more frequent, even among tiny children. Since 1950, murder rates for minority children under age four have quadrupled; they have doubled for white children in the same age group. [...] Judging by our discourse, attacks on lives interest us far less than attacks on innocence.

source: From the book 'Erotic Innocence - The Culture of Child Molesting' by James R. Kincaid; Duke University Press, Durham, North Carolina, USA; Paperback edition: 2000; First edition: 1998