Sexologist: 'Teach sex education, prosecute predators'

Onika Henry

Photo source: Onika Henry
Onika Henry Photo source: Onika Henry

Teaching young people decision-making skills through sex education and punishing perpetrators for breaking the law and taking advantage of minors would help decrease the number of teenage pregnancies.

This was the view of Onika Henry, trained sexologist..

Last week at a parliamentary Joint Select Committee (JSC) it was revealed there were 3,777 teenage pregnancies in TT between 2014 and 2018. There were 570 and 2,970 pregnancies in the 13-16 and 17-19 age groups respectively.

The statistics on the fathers showed 1,395 were between the ages of 20 and 30. There were 146 fathers between 31 and 40, and 24 between 41 and 50.

Henry told Newsday in a phone interview, "It is clear, especially since we have laws, because we have such power dynamics, that the adults are the ones who need to be held accountable. They are the ones who are responsible for the situation. That is clear to me."

She said there is a controversial issue of men who exclusively target girls of a particular age.

There are three categories of people who have sex with minors: paedophiles are those who have sex with prepubescent children; hebephiles are attracted to early-adolescent minors, typically between 11 and 14; and ephebophiles prefer people between the ages of 15 and 19.

These categories, she said, "may have that age group as their only attraction. They are not interested or sexually attracted to adult women or women of their own age.

"That controversial issue is that it is an orientation that needs to be dealt with in the mental health facilities, where men are taught to reframe their thinking of how to view the opposite sex in a particular kind of way and how to manage their feelings and behaviours."

Henry said sex education would be key to teaching adolescents proper decision-making tools to empower both boys and girls.

"Sex education includes not just knowing about safer sex practices, it includes learning about understanding your body, preventing pregnancies, preventing STIs (sexually transmitted infections). It includes teaching young people very real skills they could apply to their lives to keep themselves safe. It includes sexual decision-making. It includes understanding risk and avoiding risk, and it includes abstinence."

That, she said, was "a very real skill. Abstinence is something that is part of comprehensive sex education.

"We do not view abstinence as a talent. It is a skill that you teach, and you can teach your young people how to be abstinent. That is part of decision-making. If we teach them these skills, along with punishing perpetrators for breaking the law and taking advantage of minors, I think we could make a huge improvement and a huge dent in the number of teenage pregnancies we have."

Henry said the ways boys and men are socialised to view women also contribute to the rates of teenage pregnancies. These include hypermasculinity, hypersexuality and the notion that being a man involves having control over their woman and female partner.

"That whole abstinence skill is something boys need to learn too. That whole understanding of power and the dynamics in gender, boys also need to learn.

"If we start to do this education with adolescent boys and girls, right through the developmental stage, then we would have less and less men who engage in that type of behaviour of wanting to be in that position of power and control, which is a symptom of toxic masculinity," she said.

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