Funny thing about this is that this is the way kids learned about sex for millions of years. Everybody lived in one room or hut or cave and saw what everyone else was doing. Then comes the oddity of separate bedrooms (actually, bedrooms themselves), societal morality and prudishness. Suddenly the norm became perverted and criminal. Oh, how much we’ve advanced!
Pair Sentenced for Sex in Front of Girl
A mother and her boyfriend were sentenced to three years probation on Monday for having intercourse in front of the woman’s 9-year-old daughter to teach the girl about sex.
Chief Family Court Judge Jeremiah S. Jeremiah Jr. sentenced Rebecca Arnold of Woonsocket, and her boyfriend, David Prata, to probation and a three-year suspended sentence after they pleaded no contest to a felony child neglect charge.
The judge said he wanted to spare the young girl, now 11, from testifying, according to Michael Healey, a spokesman for Attorney General Patrick Lynch.
During an investigation by the state child welfare authorities, Prata, 33, said he and Arnold, 36, had sex “all the time” in front of the child and that “we don’t believe in hiding anything.” He told an investigator that they did not force the girl to watch.
The allegations surfaced in December 2004 after the girl went to live with her father in North Adams, Mass., after spending the summer with her mother in Woonsocket.
A teacher called a child abuse hotline to report that the girl said her mother and her boyfriend had sex in front of her. Woonsocket police arrested the couple February 2005.
A way to get around the law (this is what America does best in teaching, otherwise known as the loophole) is to have the bed positioned right in front of the door which has an old-fashioned keyhole for peeping Toms. That way the parents have an out if the girl tells the teacher. Freedom is about CHOICE. If the girl wants to see what her parents are doing then she has the choice to look or not.
Personally, I walked into my parent’s room one time on an early Sunday morning as I walked to the TV to watch “Davey and Goliath”. My immediate reaction was to leave. I felt like I had intruded. My only thought after that was, “animals!”
So I assume you do it in front of yours?
“Funny thing about this is that this is the way kids learned about sex for millions of years.”
Less than 300 years ago it was common practice to poop in a pot that was stored under the bed, keep slaves, bleed sick people, etc.. Just because something was a tradition at one time or another does not mean it was a good thing to do.
I’m not sure which is stupider. The charging the mother is stupid as is the pleading guilty.
As Uncle Dave pointed out, people learned about sex this way for the species lifetime until very recently. Suddenly this is wrong? Or did Rhode Island suddenly decide that abstinence and ignorance were the only approved sexual teaching methods?
So why did the mother plead guilty? She might have thought it was to protect the child from testifying, but later when the ramifications hit home I’m sure she will end up regretting this.
#2. The same way I assume you are homosexual? Who taught you how to masturbate, DWright? Your father? Come on, they don’t teach masturbation in school. Where did you learn it from?
#4. Sex does not have to be taught. The teaching is the destruction of sex. It comes naturally. Let a child discover for his own.
The mother’s true love for her child showed by her pleading guilty. Do you know the ramifications of entering a guilty plea? Do you? You are at the total mercy of the court, which is why I believe the parent’s intentions were good-hearted. Apparently, the judge believed the same by not throwing the parents in jail.
Judge Jeremiah S. Jeremiah Jr.? What kind of person names their kid with the same first and last names?
//k
#6, Brew, It is called a Plea Bargain. While the Judge does have a little leeway, the sentence was pretty well decided before hand. A jail sentence might have been grounds for an appeal and a trial.
And FYI, in our sophisticated society, ignorance of sex and reproduction is responsible for a sizable number of unmarried teen pregnancies. While that might not have mattered so much 150 years ago, it does today.
#7, Fixer, Good question. Although apparently the grandparents started the tradition, the Judge’s parents needn’t have continued it. Maybe his close friends call him Jerry to his face.
I had a rather complex – and intelligent post worked up – but I deleted it. There is no point in posting here.
John – you have crossed the line with this one. It’s your blog – so have at it. Keep it up and traffic will dramatically suffer.
adios
#9. Did someone rape you in your ear to make you that stupid?
Actually #6 – biologists determined decades ago that humans are a species that doesn’t instinctively know how to procreate – any longer. Masturbation may be instinctual; but, we’ve evolved into a critter that relies on (I hate to say this) oral tradition and cultural learning to be able to procreate.
again it’s hard not to be disgusted by the puritanical society we live in…
sex is probably the most natural thing we do… but we are in an ultra repressed christian nation… jesus, the moral sense in this country is so outdated, we’ll see much more of this and similar things come out… people are getting tired of being told how they should live, how they should raise thier kids… why even have a kid anymore, it’s not like you get to be the one who raises them, the state takes care of that for you!
yeah this is dumb.
This thread is fucked.
Use to learn!?! In Brazil I know several families personally that live in one room houses with their kids. Nivia lives in a one room house with her husband, three sons and a daughter. They all sleep together and the kids know and sometime watch when they have sex. This is true for many, many Brazilian families. I can only imagine what India is like…
#6 “Sex does not have to be taught. The teaching is the destruction of sex. It comes naturally. Let a child discover for his own.”
How stupid is that? Something that is primary to our species and you feel that no education is needed? Do you have any daughters? I taught my daughters about healthy love, predators and desperate boys. I do this because it is a fathers responsibility.
I’m sure the mother taught her daughter by example because she felt there was no better way available. I’m not sure I agree with having sex in front of your kids but just letting them learn about it on the schoolyard just ends up with twelve year old mothers.
I don’t know why they just could not have learned about sex the way I did – Cinemax.
‘ A teacher called a child abuse hotline to report that the girl said her mother and her boyfriend had sex in front of her. Woonsocket police arrested the couple February 2005.’
¿ Would the teacher have called a child abuse hotline if the girl had said that the mother and her boyfriend had a bloody fistfight in front of her.
Nope.
The message here is clear, violent behavior is OK, natural sexual behavior is not.
Violent behavior is frequently shown on TV and is generally accepted. There are even sports such as boxing and wrestling that have evolved from violent behavior. Yet, the portrayal of graphic sexual behavior is referred to as pornography.
Pornography, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder; ask any foot fetishist.
The chances are excellent that this child will, in all probability, have sex with another individual at some time in the course of her life.
The chances of her violently beating another human being or being violently beaten by another human being during her lifetime are far less.
Think about it.
Or not.
More wacky pseudopsych talk from “Uncle Dave”. Where does Dvorak find these people?
omg I loved when they tought us about sex in school it was so cool they showed us nude girls I like naked girls
LoL the way we learned about sex is television and internet u damn faggots! You dont see that?
zuhaer20062hotmail.com
thancyuo,were image
People have been doing acts of sexual pleasurment in front of people for many years, but a fu#^& 9 year old is not the age that kids should be learning about sex. That is to early, and I’m sure the parents let her watch before she was 9. This is an entirely new century and we are humans and not animals. We evolved for a reason and that reason is to use our intelegence rather than our animal instincts. With todays society being more suseptible to sexual desires. Due to pornograpy, the aspects of make up so one may appear more beautifull, ehancement pills for better arrousal, and so on. To get back to the point what kind of mother would let there 9 year old daughter watch her have sex with some creep that the girl dont even know. In my oppion the parents were on drugs and just dont care.
I get what you’re saying here, but please learn proper spelling and grammar before you start talking about how people evolved to use intelligence over instinct. .-.
#24- while i do agree that the girls mother shouldn’t have had sex in front of her, i don’t agree that 9 is too early an age to start learning about sex. it is better to teach your kids about sex early than to have them end up having sex and getting STDs and getting pregnant. The more the child knows about sex the more likely she will be to make good choices in the future.
a 2 year old post STILL getting posts..
YEA…
i hate this siscoity every ones so up tight and prude about the stupidest things, ive always hated some of these laws. i think its perfectly natural to do things like that around your family its not like your doing incest or abusing your child how you want to raise your child is your business.