TEENAGE S*X A BIG PROBLEM

Force-Ripe’ – 16-Year-Olds Determined To Have S*x; Parents Struggling To Deal With Teenagers
A leading child-advocacy group is reporting that the majority of the more than 17,000 children who went missing in the last nine years actually ran away from home because they wanted the freedom to have s*x.

Betty Ann Blaine, convener of the group Hear the Children’s Cry, says calls made to the family of those who went missing over the years have indicated that the majority of the children were not abducted.

“I would say, of the children that go missing every month, probably about somewhere between 60 and 70 per cent of them go missing, the parents tell us it’s for s*x. It is a very, very serious problem,” Blaine told The Sunday Gleaner.

“They would leave on a Friday and come back Sunday. When they go missing, typically, it’s a few days, but parents do the right thing and they report it,” said Blaine, whose organisation provides counselling for the families of missing children and creates a profile of each child after speaking with their guardians.

Of the more than 1,674 children that went missing last year, 195 were still not accounted for up to the end of December while three were murdered.

According to Blaine, the fact that the age of consent is 16 is creating problems for many parents and is part of the reason for the high number of missing children annually.

“That has been controversial and we need to fix it. The age you stop being a child is 18 under law, but the age of consent is 16. As far as we are concerned, we say raise it to 18; just make everything on one level because it is a problem,” added Blaine.

Maxine Taylor-Cooper, acting executive director of Hear the Children’s Cry, said the difference between the age of consent and the accepted age of adulthood is a major conflict.

“The child is saying I am now 16 and I can have s*x. That is a major problem for me when I make the calls,” said Taylor-Cooper.

Blaine added that because of the constant battles some parents are actually relieved when their children run away.

“Every time when we call, a significant per cent of the parents say, ‘They don’t want them to come back’. So they have gone missing and they are glad,” she said.

“They don’t know how to deal with the children who are s*xually active. Some of the parents are not bad parents, but they are at their limit, they say they can’t manage them,” added Blaine.

MOTHERS OF THE MALES SHELTERING RUNAWAY GIRLS

In several of the cases, the teenage girls are sheltered by the mothers of the males they ran away from home to live with.

Last week, one mother told The Sunday Gleaner that her 12-year-old daughter went missing for two weeks. The child was handed over to the police by the mother of the man she went to live with, after he and his two friends raped her. No arrest has been made in that matter.

Against that background, Blaine wants legislation in place to deal with parents who harbour missing children.

“We had an instance where the child went with another schoolmate and was actually in the house with the schoolmate with his mother, who knew that the child was not at her yard, and I think that the child was having s*x with the boy,” she said.

“In our culture, once the boys get to a certain age, they (mothers) encourage the boys to have s*x. The mothers don’t see anything wrong because boy children should do that sort of thing,” argued Blaine.

The child advocate said while the majority of the children who went missing actually ran away, efforts should still be made to investigate each of the reports, since in several cases, children were abducted, murdered, gang-raped, and in some cases became pregnant.

“I think the general problem with missing children is, we don’t take it seriously in this country,” said Blaine.