Caroline Overington of The Australian, has today written on Innocent Seduction. An excellent article that offers a balanced argument on the alleged sexualisation and exploitation of children through the marketing and advertising of designer children’s wear, I was saddened to read that giant retailer, David Jones, has entered Litigious Street. Demanding that references to their company be removed from an Australian Institute research paper entitled, Corporate Paedophillia (see Revealing Children’s Fashion), David Jones’ CEO has called in the legal guns to support their “reputation for high-quality apparel and corporate decency.”

It would appear that the research report, “Corporate Pedophilia”, has upset many fashion brand labels. Add to this, everyday parents who view that the author of Corporate Pedophilia is way off beam. One father was quoted in Overington’s article as saying that, "Parents are doting on their kids. Children are saturated with love and affection and care."

This may be the case for many families. Certainly, my children are loved and protected as are the children of the vast majority of people that I am friends with. However, the reality is that the rates of child sexual assault remain high and eighty-five percent of child sexual assault is perpetrated by somebody well known to the child. While it is not the corporate entities that are sexually abusing these children, their marketing and advertising may well become skewed in the minds of a voyeuristic child abuser – a person who has access to innocent children, a person who may well collect and read advertising from their mail box and then carries out their perverted thoughts on the children in the home.

Discourse is needed around this. It is the responsibility of all of us to stop pedophilia. Child sexual abuse is an emotive topic and the divide between the believers and those unable to believe is wide. Somehow, we’ve got to find a common ground, a place where both parties can understand what the other is saying.

Many years ago I watched a Dave Allen skit on a scantily clad woman rubbing herself all over a car. The skit was a take off, of a car marketing add. Dave’s punch line was, “Buy this car and you’ll be fuc*ed!” That one line has stayed with me for twenty years. It assisted me to become highly sensitive to the use of sex or sexualised behaviour in marketing. Conversely, advertising that talks directly to pedophiles, telling them that what they are doing is wrong, unacceptable but that there is help for them, would also work on me. I would support that corporate entity in their delivery of exceptional corporate responsible.

If one in three adults have reported in survey that they were sexually abused as children, then this is a high number of potential children’s fashion label buyers, or non buyers. Already I won’t purchase several brands of clothing because the companies openly flaunt sex to sell their product. How many more people are there in the world like me? David Jones may well be concerned that they have been slighted as being non-protective, but it is their reaction that has concerned me to the point that they may well become one of those shops I stop shopping at. They are failing to hear the essence behind the report and have instead personalised it. However, if David Jones displayed corporate responsibility toward ending child sexual abuse, perhaps even donating to treatment programs for sexual offenders, then I would be likely to purchase all of my clothes there. If this was a similar case for the one in three prevalence statistic of people who have claimed sexual abuse then that is a massive increase in potential customers to David Jones or any other fashion label/house.

Please, it is time to end child sexual abuse. To the corporates, we need your help. To everyone else, the corporates that are displaying recognition and action for ending child sexual abuse need our support.

Are our children becoming overtly sexualized through fashion? Two interesting sounding papers recently released by The Australain Institute for a Just, Sustainable, Peaceful Future supports so: Corporate Paedophilia: Sexualisation of children in Australia and Letting Children be Children: Stopping the sexualisation of children in Australia .

I stress that I have not yet read these papers but the media release and blog comments surrounding the research has reminded me of years of anecdotal concern from parents of children. Many parents refuse to slave to the fashion industry and dress (or undress) their children as mini Britneys, Keeley Hazells or Tammy Nyps. The parental concerns revolve around enforcing sexualisation of children and turning them into sexual objects.

Children wearing clothes that state “Porn Star” is in my view, a form of abuse. The global community is mostly outraged about peodiphilia and sexual predators tracking and grooming our children, yet too many of us groom our babies to become voyeuristic objects of lust. Of course any body has the right to wear what they want and when they want, but with rights comes responsibility. It is a parents responsibility to look after their children, including minimizing risk of all forms of child abuse.

There’s been a long running and interesting feminist debate about why many women remove hair from their legs, underarms and private parts. One analysis is because we continue to cater to the patriarchal and sexual view of women from men. Apparently, some men prefer their women to look pre pubescent.

Joining the above analysis with the sexualised clothing that some fashion labels create and market as children’s wear, I would have to agree that our children are becoming overtly sexualised through fashion. But…I have the power of choice and I choose not to dress my children in clothing that caters to the financial gain of the fashion industry. More importantly, I choose not to dress my children as voyeuristic candy for those sexual predators that so quickly evil their way into our communities, our lives, our homes. Instead, I have taught my children about protective behaviours, what sexuality is, what sexual development is and what to do if anyone steps over their body space boundary.

Children’s fashion does not have to be revealing or sexualized. Children’s fashion enables a child to do their work: play. Last time I checked, overt and ongoing sex play was not within the normal bounds of childhood development.

Are our children becoming overtly sexualized through fashion? What do you think?

Another fashion article you may want to address: Reuters Knife Dolce & Gabbana

Our neighbors had a prowler last night. The mother of the female only household caught the prowler peering through the bedroom window of the teenage daughter. Mother yelled at him and sang out for the help of her neighbors. The prowler stayed. It took several attempts at calling for someone to ring the police before prowler got the hint that his behaviour was unacceptable.

Peeping Tom behavior is voyeurism. It is against the law. It is a form of sexual assault. Sexual abuse occurs on a continuum ranging from non-contact behaviors at one end (voyeurism, showing children pornography, and sexual comments) through to penetration by use of a penis, fingers or an object at the other end.

Many sexual predators escalate in their behaviors. Their excitement increases and their ability to delay their own twisted sexual gratification of a need for power decreases. Let us make no mistake here though. Sexual assault is not about sex. It is about power.

That the prowler was unaffected by being seen last night is a warning bell to me. Is his behavior at point of escalation? Has he been peering through that young girl’s window previously? Is he so unbothered by the threat of Police that he waits until last moment of departure? I do not know; I am not a sexual predator.

What I do know is that I am wild that people do these horrible things to children. Child safety is of the utmost importance to our sustainable future. Every thing that happens to our children affects our collective global future. If threats to child safety are on the rise then we are going to have a next generation of adults who make reactive choices based on their own childhood traumas.

Together we can end the sexual exploitation of our children. Ensuring our own children’s safety is paramount, to reach out and ensure the safety of a least one other child is a humane and socially responsible action. To care costs nothing. To not act protectively will cost us misery in our old age as we watch the unthinking decisions our once children make because they did not live in a world that valued them or their safety.

I will be wandering over to our neighbor today. I will let them know that we will be watching out for them. I will let them know that we care. I will let the girls know that we are a safe house and that if ever they need to run to us that they are not to hesitate. I will not whinge about how our community is not safe. I will instead be proactive in ensuring that other children in our neighborhood know that there are people willing to stand up for their basic human right to live a life free of abuse – including being safe from peeping Toms.

Child protection: serious business. What would you do if you caught someone looking into your daughter's bedroom window?