The following e-mail was recently sent by a staff member of The Refiner's Fire to several different websites that condone "adult-child" sexual/bi-sexual contact. These websites are forums for people who are engaged in so-called "scholarly discussion" about the "understanding and emancipation of mutual relationships between children or adolescents and adults":

(CAUTION: Please be advised that this correspondence contains adult interpretation of sexual abuse, using explicit language. It wasn't easy for our friend Carmen to expose her deepest secrets, but given the nature of these horrid websites that promote sex between adults and children, she felt it necessary to "tell it like it is"....)

Hello:

I am writing in regards to the above website, in which you insist that adults do not harm children by having sexual contact with them. I would like to take this opportunity to tell you my personal story.

When I was a baby, I was given away to live with foster parents for the first eight years of my life, then retrieved by my natural mother and her new American husband who immediately moved us to the U.S. from Germany. My alcoholic mother (who ultimately married about eight times) and I never bonded; she never explained why she had given me away, and I resented her for jerking me out of my happy foster home. To make matters worse, my new father was a mean-spirited, abusive man who used to "make love" to me at least once a week starting when I was ten. When my adoptive 72 year old grandfather eventually came to live with us, he too, attempted to "show me the ropes". So did my mother's third husband, when I was 15....

None of the men who abused me sexually were "mean" to me; quite the opposite. Each one had a "good" reason for what he did: My adoptive father was going to show me how to make love "properly and how to keep from getting pregnant;" grandpa was going to show me "what secret things grownups do;" and my mother's next husband was basically just horny one night when my mother was too drunk to help him out.

By the way, lest I forget, I was also a sexually abused baby -- a fact I didn't discover until some extensive therapy uncovered the reason behind a recurring nightmare I'd had for most of my life. A nightmare that had me convinced I'd swallowed a fresh egg which had became lodged in my throat and prevented me from breathing. A nightmare that always jerked me out of bed in a cold sweat, coughing and gasping for air.....

According to your website, adult-child "love" is perfectly normal, and doesn't have any harmful effects, whatsoever, because we are all sexual beings, right from the beginning. Well, I'd like to propose that there are some major errors in this line of thinking.

Granted, we are all sexual beings, but he thing is, children look to adults as their guardians and protectors--people who protect them from the "bogey-man" and the neighbors barking dogs, and who hold them tightly when they've had nightmares in the middle of the night. Children view adults as people to look up to and respect--not to have sex with. Once that adult/child barrier is broken and a sexual relationship begins, the child loses all respect for adults, and it starts a spiraling chain reaction of twisted thinking about what is normally supposed to be a beautiful act between a husband and wife.

I'm a living result of adult/child "love." The mindset I inherited cost me many relationships during my lifetime because I had been conditioned to believe that sex was love, when in fact, it isn't, and that any kind of a touch was a "come-on." Anytime someone hugged me in a friendly manner (male or female), I got "turned on", and consequently felt disgusted with myself because down deep, I knew it was wrong. I was confused and miserable because I never felt fulfilled in my soul, yet I didn't know what to do about it. To me, relationships were all centered around sex, because apparently, that's all relationships were comprised of. Real parental love and platonic friendships no longer existed.

A child's mind isn't prepared for sexual activity, especially with an adult. A child has to experiment on its own and in due time; it should not become"awakened" to sexual pleasures at the whim of some adult. Awakening sexual desires in a child too early is extremely dangerous in that the child becomes obsessed with sex and begins to act out with other children, animals, dolls, etc. Any adult hugs from then on are perceived as sexual advances. This simultaneously excites and angers the child because it feels "raped" and "dirty" and confused, nonstop.

Sexual abuse (let's just call it what it is) haunted me throughout my life and contributed to the ruin of many relationships. To wit, I:

• Opted to be childless due to a secret fear that the same fate would befall any child of mine. I as afraid that my child would either be sexually abused by one of my boyfriends, or that I might have sexual feelings for him or her and act on them. This fear drove me to have two abortions for which I still feel guilty today.
  
• Had to have a total hysterectomy at age 28 due, probably, to my extreme promiscuity because I could never feel totally fulfilled since I viewed all my my human contacts as sexual relationships.
  
• Had major hangups about sex that prevented me from enjoying it, because every man "felt like Daddy" to me. It took a suicide attempt at age 21 to get me angry enough to want to drop that awful "baggage" and begin to realize what a real sexual relationship was supposed to be like.
  
• Could never have relationships with any single fathers who had little girls because, although I knew that not every man was a pervert, I secretly I felt that they might be turned on by their daughters and I couldn't stand the thought. I wanted to scream whenever the men held their little daughters in their laps....
  
• Never respected any man and secretly harbored contempt for all of them.

In closing, you made it abundantly clear that you abhor the thought of traditional thinking about sex, and it's ovious you don't believe in God. Well, I do, and I'm going to take this opportunity to tell you that God calls what you are doing "an abomination":

1 Corinthians 6:9-10: "Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters, nor adulterers nor male prostitutes nor homosexual offenders nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God

1 Thessalonians 4:3: For this is the will of God, your sanctification; that is, that you abstain from sexual immorality....

1 Corinthians 6: 18-20: Flee immorality. Every other sin that a man commits is outside the body, but the immoral man sins against his own body. Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own? For you have been bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body.

Ephesians 5:11-13: Have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them. For it is shameful even to mention what is done in secret. But everything exposed by the light becomes visible, for it is light that makes everything visible.

In Genesis 19 Lot's daughters got him drunk and had sex with him in order to get pregnant and have babies. The descendants of Lot were a war-mongering, unhappy bunch whose race eventually was melted down and lost among the nations. God does not bless unholy unions, no matter how we try to sugar-coat them. God is watching what you are doing -- whether you choose to believe in Him, or not....

I beg you, if you don't wish to rethink what you are doing to, and how you are affecting children, then at least please consider removing your website from the internet so as not to spread this sinful, decadent, and twisted belief system.

Carmen @ The Refiner's Fire