Last year, when the state board of education proposed new sex-education standards for teaching about issues such as sexual orientation, gender identity and consent, a retired pediatrician in this central Nebraska town reached out to Gov. Pete Ricketts and state lawmakers.
“This is NOT Sex Ed as anyone knows it,” Sue Greenwald wrote in a July 16, 2021, email obtained by The Washington Post. Lessons that met these standards, she wrote, would be “ ‘grooming’ children to be sexual victims.”
It was a shocking claim, and it was catching on — repeated by Greenwald, by members of the Protect Nebraska Children Coalition, a group she co-founded to oppose the standards, and embraced by Ricketts (R) himself. The message also spread through screenings at libraries and churches of “The Mind Polluters,” billed as an “investigative documentary” that “shows how the vast majority of America’s public schools are prematurely sexualizing children.”
Grooming erupted as a national issue earlier this year, but this state in America’s heartland has been roiled by that attack on comprehensive sex education since last spring, providing a unique window into a newly inflamed debate. The unsubstantiated claim helped activate an army of self-described Nebraska patriots who rose up against the standards, took over the local Republican Party and propelled a wave of far-right candidates for local and statewide school boards, a Post examination found. Earlier this month, these activists were part of a broader, anti-establishment insurgency that toppled leaders of the state Republican Party.
The term “groomer” has become a catchall epithet hurled by the right wing against the left, particularly against advocates for LGBT people, who have become the target of a recent surge in violent threats and attacks. The Post’s examination focused on the specific claim that modern sex education — including lessons on sexual orientation and gender identity — makes children more vulnerable to pedophiles.
Greenwald and others who have endorsed that claim acknowledged to The Post that there is no scientific body of research that shows such lessons make children more likely to be victimized. The American Medical Association and American Academy of Pediatrics both back a comprehensive approach to sex ed that includes discussions of sexual orientation, contraception and consent. Leading child abuse experts say that arming children with information helps protect them against harm.
Nonetheless, the claim that comprehensive sex ed amounts to grooming has simmered on the right for decades, often fanned by Christian conservatives who disapprove of same-sex relationships and favor home schooling and private schools over public education, The Post found. The foundation was laid in part by Judith Reisman, a self-styled expert who opposed gay rights, claimed that gay people are more likely to sexually abuse children, and spent decades trying to discredit pioneering work by the sex researcher Alfred Kinsey.
Reisman, who died last year, makes multiple appearances in “The Mind Polluters” to bolster the argument that modern sex education makes children more vulnerable to predators. Greenwald and candidates endorsed by a political committee she helped launch have promoted the film, and much of their criticism of the proposed standards echoed Reisman’s views.
In an image from video, Kearney school board candidate Paul Hazard speaks during the May 7, 2021, state board of education meeting in opposition to proposed new sex-education standards. (Nebraska Department of Education)
Paul Hazard, a former state trooper who dubbed the proposed sex-ed standards “a pedophile’s dream,” was the top vote-getter in the May primary among eight candidates for the Kearney school board. Sherry Jones, a retired educator who has said the standards “sealed” her decision to run for an open seat on the state school board, garnered more than twice as many primary votes as Danielle Helzer, who supported the sex-ed framework. Elections for the local and state school boards are nonpartisan.
“Vote for SHERRY!!! Helzer wants to groom your kids for pedophiles & traffickers,” one Jones supporter wrote on Facebook. Helzer, 36, is a former teacher who has screened volunteers for the Big Brothers Big Sisters mentoring program.
“I don’t take it personally because I know it’s not true, but I don’t take it lightly,” Helzer, who as the runner-up will move on to the general election in November, said in an interview. “People are genuinely fearful of their kids being sexually abused, and that fear has driven them to use grooming as a political weapon.”
Jones and Hazard did not respond to requests for comment.
In an email to The Post, Greenwald, 64, wrote that as a pediatrician who has examined abused children and testified in court as an expert witness, she believes there are similarities between materials currently used in public school sex-ed programs and the sexually explicit language and images used by pedophiles.
“The fact that they are already desensitized or ‘groomed’ by a trusted adult to accept sexual language and images as appropriate could make it that much easier for a predator to gain that child’s cooperation in understanding and accepting sexual demands,” Greenwald wrote.
Judith Reisman, shown in a 2012 C-SPAN interview, was a self-styled expert who opposed gay rights, claimed that gay people are more likely to sexually abuse children and spent decades trying to discredit pioneering work by the sex researcher Alfred Kinsey. (Courtesy of C-SPAN)
Her 10-year-old daughter had been sexually assaulted years earlier by a neighbor boy who had been looking at his father’s Playboy magazines, Reisman later recalled in an essay, and she focused some of her research on pornography. But she made a name for herself by criticizing Kinsey, whose work had helped to usher in the sexual revolution of the 1960s and 1970s. Reisman highlighted data he had published about children’s orgasms, claiming that his work had justified child sexual abuse and triggered a cultural decline.
Her work caught the attention of conservatives in Washington, and in the early 1980s, President Ronald Reagan’s Justice Department approved a grant of more than $700,000 that she used to study cartoon images of children in Playboy, Hustler and Penthouse magazines. The fact that the grant had been awarded on a noncompetitive basis, coupled with questions about Reisman’s credentials and an auditor’s finding that the study as originally proposed could be done for $60,000, fueled congressional oversight hearings.
Reisman defended her work in a 1985 Washington Post op-ed, writing that her efforts to catalogue depictions of children engaged in sexual or violent activities would lay a foundation for preventing abuse. “When it is completed, I believe the citizenry will consider their $734,000 well spent,” she wrote.
The 1986 report was harshly criticized by some academics on a peer-review panel. The Justice Department declined to publish it. The agency eventually made it publicly available but did not endorse its methodology or findings.
Reisman went on to a career as an independent researcher, and later as a research professor at the Liberty University School of Law and at the evangelical university’s School of Behavioral Sciences, though she was not trained as a lawyer or psychologist. Her advocacy helped prompt the Kinsey Institute at Indiana University to disclose that a pedophile’s diary had been the source of the data on children’s orgasms.
much more at: https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2022/07/24/grooming-sex-ed-nebraska-judith-reisman/
“This is NOT Sex Ed as anyone knows it,” Sue Greenwald wrote in a July 16, 2021, email obtained by The Washington Post. Lessons that met these standards, she wrote, would be “ ‘grooming’ children to be sexual victims.”
It was a shocking claim, and it was catching on — repeated by Greenwald, by members of the Protect Nebraska Children Coalition, a group she co-founded to oppose the standards, and embraced by Ricketts (R) himself. The message also spread through screenings at libraries and churches of “The Mind Polluters,” billed as an “investigative documentary” that “shows how the vast majority of America’s public schools are prematurely sexualizing children.”
Grooming erupted as a national issue earlier this year, but this state in America’s heartland has been roiled by that attack on comprehensive sex education since last spring, providing a unique window into a newly inflamed debate. The unsubstantiated claim helped activate an army of self-described Nebraska patriots who rose up against the standards, took over the local Republican Party and propelled a wave of far-right candidates for local and statewide school boards, a Post examination found. Earlier this month, these activists were part of a broader, anti-establishment insurgency that toppled leaders of the state Republican Party.
The term “groomer” has become a catchall epithet hurled by the right wing against the left, particularly against advocates for LGBT people, who have become the target of a recent surge in violent threats and attacks. The Post’s examination focused on the specific claim that modern sex education — including lessons on sexual orientation and gender identity — makes children more vulnerable to pedophiles.
Greenwald and others who have endorsed that claim acknowledged to The Post that there is no scientific body of research that shows such lessons make children more likely to be victimized. The American Medical Association and American Academy of Pediatrics both back a comprehensive approach to sex ed that includes discussions of sexual orientation, contraception and consent. Leading child abuse experts say that arming children with information helps protect them against harm.
Nonetheless, the claim that comprehensive sex ed amounts to grooming has simmered on the right for decades, often fanned by Christian conservatives who disapprove of same-sex relationships and favor home schooling and private schools over public education, The Post found. The foundation was laid in part by Judith Reisman, a self-styled expert who opposed gay rights, claimed that gay people are more likely to sexually abuse children, and spent decades trying to discredit pioneering work by the sex researcher Alfred Kinsey.
Reisman, who died last year, makes multiple appearances in “The Mind Polluters” to bolster the argument that modern sex education makes children more vulnerable to predators. Greenwald and candidates endorsed by a political committee she helped launch have promoted the film, and much of their criticism of the proposed standards echoed Reisman’s views.
In an image from video, Kearney school board candidate Paul Hazard speaks during the May 7, 2021, state board of education meeting in opposition to proposed new sex-education standards. (Nebraska Department of Education)
Paul Hazard, a former state trooper who dubbed the proposed sex-ed standards “a pedophile’s dream,” was the top vote-getter in the May primary among eight candidates for the Kearney school board. Sherry Jones, a retired educator who has said the standards “sealed” her decision to run for an open seat on the state school board, garnered more than twice as many primary votes as Danielle Helzer, who supported the sex-ed framework. Elections for the local and state school boards are nonpartisan.
“Vote for SHERRY!!! Helzer wants to groom your kids for pedophiles & traffickers,” one Jones supporter wrote on Facebook. Helzer, 36, is a former teacher who has screened volunteers for the Big Brothers Big Sisters mentoring program.
“I don’t take it personally because I know it’s not true, but I don’t take it lightly,” Helzer, who as the runner-up will move on to the general election in November, said in an interview. “People are genuinely fearful of their kids being sexually abused, and that fear has driven them to use grooming as a political weapon.”
Jones and Hazard did not respond to requests for comment.
In an email to The Post, Greenwald, 64, wrote that as a pediatrician who has examined abused children and testified in court as an expert witness, she believes there are similarities between materials currently used in public school sex-ed programs and the sexually explicit language and images used by pedophiles.
“The fact that they are already desensitized or ‘groomed’ by a trusted adult to accept sexual language and images as appropriate could make it that much easier for a predator to gain that child’s cooperation in understanding and accepting sexual demands,” Greenwald wrote.
Judith Reisman, shown in a 2012 C-SPAN interview, was a self-styled expert who opposed gay rights, claimed that gay people are more likely to sexually abuse children and spent decades trying to discredit pioneering work by the sex researcher Alfred Kinsey. (Courtesy of C-SPAN)
A songwriter becomes a crusader
Reisman was not trained as a psychologist or sociologist or sex researcher. She had worked as a songwriter for the children’s television program “Captain Kangaroo” in the 1970s. Then, concerned about the effect of television on children, she earned a doctorate in communications in 1980, according to her résumé.Her 10-year-old daughter had been sexually assaulted years earlier by a neighbor boy who had been looking at his father’s Playboy magazines, Reisman later recalled in an essay, and she focused some of her research on pornography. But she made a name for herself by criticizing Kinsey, whose work had helped to usher in the sexual revolution of the 1960s and 1970s. Reisman highlighted data he had published about children’s orgasms, claiming that his work had justified child sexual abuse and triggered a cultural decline.
Her work caught the attention of conservatives in Washington, and in the early 1980s, President Ronald Reagan’s Justice Department approved a grant of more than $700,000 that she used to study cartoon images of children in Playboy, Hustler and Penthouse magazines. The fact that the grant had been awarded on a noncompetitive basis, coupled with questions about Reisman’s credentials and an auditor’s finding that the study as originally proposed could be done for $60,000, fueled congressional oversight hearings.
Reisman defended her work in a 1985 Washington Post op-ed, writing that her efforts to catalogue depictions of children engaged in sexual or violent activities would lay a foundation for preventing abuse. “When it is completed, I believe the citizenry will consider their $734,000 well spent,” she wrote.
The 1986 report was harshly criticized by some academics on a peer-review panel. The Justice Department declined to publish it. The agency eventually made it publicly available but did not endorse its methodology or findings.
Reisman went on to a career as an independent researcher, and later as a research professor at the Liberty University School of Law and at the evangelical university’s School of Behavioral Sciences, though she was not trained as a lawyer or psychologist. Her advocacy helped prompt the Kinsey Institute at Indiana University to disclose that a pedophile’s diary had been the source of the data on children’s orgasms.
much more at: https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2022/07/24/grooming-sex-ed-nebraska-judith-reisman/
