Assessing the Possibility of a Pedophilia Panic and Contagion Effect Between France and the United States

In the early and mid-1990s, the United States experienced what could be called a societal sex crime crisis. This led to the passage of specific types of legislation aimed at addressing what was perceived by the public to be a major social problem. In the mid- and late-1990s, Europe (mainly Britain, Belgium, the Netherlands, France, and Germany) found itself in the same predicament as the United States. Legislation was passed, varying in its nature, in order to provide the public with an answer to its panic. According to a social constructionist approach, a moral panic occurs when certain types of behaviors or individuals are thought to be utterly harmful to the fabric of the social body. The present article aims at assessing whether there is a pedophilia/moral panic and whether it goes beyond the borders of one country. In order to identify potential contagion effects or parallel trends between France and the United States, the historical evolutions of legislation, reported incidence of child sexual abuse, and written media coverage of the events are triangulated into a multilevel analysis including the years 1990 thru 2005. Differences in intensity and in the dynamics are then established between the two sexual abuse moral panics.