Again, I encourage you to read the entire article because it includes many charts and images that have not been transposed, and fresh eyes with a different perspective might find different key points than my own perspective. I am just including the parts of the article that stood out as significant to me.
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Summary of Key Facts:
- Half of the men are age 30-39. The next largest group is under 30. The average age is 33. The age range was 18-67.
- The CSEC problem is not simply relegated to urban areas.
- 65% of men who buy sex with young females are doing so in and around suburban areas in metro Atlanta.
- 12,400 men per month buy sex with a young female and 7,200 end up exploiting an adolescent.
- Craigslist is the most efficient medium for advertising sex with young women.
- 8,700 paid sex acts with adolescents occur per month. Each female is exploited an average of 3 times per day.
- Over 700,000 men have bought sex with females. This means that 23% of men in Georgia have purchased sex.
- Just under half of the purchasers are willing to pay for sex with a young female even when they know for sure that she is an adolescent.
Over 400 adolescent girls are exploited each month in Georgia. This number is sustained through the economic law of supply and demand. The elimination of supply will do nothing to prevent the demand.
CSEC can only exist as a commercial enterprise if it is a normal practice in our society. Men who purchase sex come from normal backgrounds and seem no more likely to suffer from pathologies than the rest of the adult male population. Exploitation is a societal problem, not simply an individual one.
Any advertisement that explicitly mentions paid sex with an adolescent is removed by internet sites instantly and automatically... so advertisers use the word "young" to bypass filters. Advertisement creators rely on pictures of the females and young text descriptors to convey her approximate age.
This study was set up in a way in which participants voluntarily contacted researchers without suspecting that they were participating in a research study. It ensured honest replies and responses. They collected information that was ordinary during the course of a discussion to buy sex; anything else would have tipped off the participants.
Men who purchase sex from online ads call an operator. The job of the operator is to figure out what the customer wants and which female is available in the area who closely matches his preferences.
An important consideration in evaluating the data is the larger population represented by the study sample. The sample is of men who responded to advertisements for young females, not females of older adult ages.
Half of the men who buy sex from young females prefer to go to the female's location and half of them prefer that she comes to him. There are no patterns that might lead to why one is preferred over another. 42% of these purchases happen north of I-285, so this study debunks the assumption that the problem only occurs inside the city limits. Only 26% of purchases occurred within the city itself. The men came from all parts of the metro area and represent all ages. Over 27,000 men buy sex with "young" females in Georgia multiple times per year. Consistent with the statistic of 400,000 per year, 60% of study participants said it was their first time purchasing. However, 23% of men in Georgia have purchased sex with females.
On average, 300 acts of paid sex with adolescents occur per day in the state of Georgia. On a typical night, 100 adolescent females are commercially sexually exploited per night. This leads to an average of 3 violations per night.
Most men who commercially sexually exploit adolescent females either don't know or are willing to ignore the possibility that they are having sex with an adolescent. These females tend to look 6-8 years older than they actually are when dressed provocatively. Men very rarely ask for adolescent females specifically and directly, but instead they put themselves in a position that makes them highly likely to pay for sex with an adolescent female. Perceived age is more important than real age; the men only care that the female is "young" and are willfully ignorant of the significant likelihood that a female who looks so young is an adolescent. Almost all men are willing to discuss a preference, and nearly half of them express a preference for the young female pictured in the ad.
To address the extremes, only 6% of men expressed a preference for a female who is "not young" and an alarming 6% stated explicitly and unequivocally that they would prefer an adolescent female. This 6% totals 750 men per month, which is nowhere near enough to sustain the industry's exploitation of 400 adolescent girls in over 8,700 acts per month. Adding in the next statistic set, 29% of men who purchase sex overall specifically and directly seek out sex with a young female.
Men asking for sex with young females represent 67% of the larger population of men who pay for sex. Of these men, 30% asked for young women with a legal caveat. As one man put it, "I don't want to go to jail or anything." Never mind the fact that, in my mind, there's a problem with a justice system where responding to an ad for sex with a young female is legal, and this strikes me as a case which allows men to exploit adolescent girls with "plausible deniability" if the case ever did make it to court. Combining the 12% of men who asked for "young" girls with no specification that she be legal with the 6% of men who asked specifically for adolescents, 18% of these men are looking for a teenager with the knowledge or implication that she is underage. This is almost 1/5 of purchasing men. What makes me the saddest of all these, is the 46% of men who stated no preference for age within the context of responding to an advertisement for sex with a "young" woman.
The study asked some leading questions to alert purchasers that the female they are purchasing is underage. 47% of respondents continued pursuing the sex purchase despite all 3 warnings. The older the male, the more likely he was to heed one of the warnings. The younger the male, the more likely he was to ignore all warnings. This means that 28% of all men who purchase sex would knowingly purchase an adolescent. This makes 5,800 men per month who buy teenagers.
So, 42% of men who purchase sex either specifically seek out teenagers or are willing to ignore all warning signs that the female they are about to have sex with is an adolescent, including a warning as explicit as, "I don't believe this girl is actually 18, and I have no reason to believe she is."
Men of all age ranges are comfortable asking directly for young females. Just under half are willing to pay for sex with a young female even when they know for sure she is underage.
Lawmakers need to be made aware of the magnitude of the demand for CSEC. The study debunks the myth that CSEC is perpetrated by only a small number of "sexual predators." (As my own aside, this means that the men who promote and demand CSEC are NOT your typical pedophile; they are average, normal men you wouldn't suspect.) Only 3-4% of men who purchase sex from minors are specifically looking to buy sex from a minor.
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