Sexy Sex Offender List Causes Outrage

A piece published in The Houston Press titled “The 10 Hottest Women on the Texas Sex Offenders List” has caused a stir. It included photos and descriptions of ten attractive (and not-so-attractive) female sex offenders in the Lone Star State, along with their crimes.

Many readers were outraged, and Change.org, a prominent social activism website, immediately circulated a petition demanding that the newspaper apologize for “the trivialization of the sexual assault of children and the misguided emphasis on the women's physical appearance.”

While the majority of sex offenders are male, women rape and sexually assault children far more often than people realize. Some cases are famous, like that of Mary Kay Letourneau; other times women rape and kill their child victims, as happened with eight-year-old Sandra Cantu, who was sexually assaulted and dumped in a pond by a neighbor, Melissa Huckaby, in March 2009.

Part of the reason that sexual abuse — especially child sexual abuse — is so hard to combat is that the general public has been misinformed by sensationalized “stranger danger” predator panics. Parents spend their time worrying about strangers with candy and people on sex offender registries instead of focusing on the far greater dangers lurking in their own homes, schools and churches.

Female child molesters and sex offenders are often treated as a joke, especially if the victim is male. Girls are considered violated victims whose innocence has been taken, while boys who have been abused are sometimes considered lucky for the sexual attention.

[Click Here To Read The Rest Of The Article On Discovery.com News]