Therapists out of Control

[Shan]

Most places don't require any special educational background or degree and in some cases not even a license to hang out one's placard as a therapist. Here are several stories of young lives that have been ruined when overzealous therapists have declared them to be sex offenders. Thought this article was interesting because transgender lives have also been harmed by so-called therapists who have taken liberties at the expense of their clientele. As a parent and grandparent I find it infuriating.

www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/03/14/when-kids-are-accused-of-sex-crimes

[Deleted]

People who simplify the world do a great deal of harm:

“The simple truth is that juvenile sex offenders turn into adult predators.”

Especially when they're wrong, as they always are:

Despite what Amie Zyla told Congress in 2005, researchers had already observed that most youths who are charged with a sex offense—upward of ninety-five per cent, Letourneau told me—don’t reoffend sexually.

They're probably about as harmful as those who are just plain cruel:

“Your identity is you’re a sex offender,” DuBuc recalls the girls being told. They’d never be cured, but they could learn to refrain from harming people in the future.

And why do psychologists so often get the idea that cruelty will cure people?

Several scholars told me that the notion of shaming youths into compliance is itself a fantasy. In the journal Child Maltreatment, the pediatric psychologist Mark Chaffin describes polygraphs, masturbation logs, and other such methods as “coercive techniques of doubtful accuracy, untested benefit, and considerable potential for harm.”

You know, Shan, so many times I've heard that the US is a "Christian nation".  A lot of times I have my doubts.

[Shan]

Mar 17, 2016 3:36:21 GMT 8 @foxglove said:

You know, Shan, so many times I've heard that the US is a "Christian nation".  A lot of times I have my doubts.

A misnomer to be sure!