Our sick, cruel culture

Toledo Blade: In a truly alarming study, made after an extensive examination of school and police data, the Associated Press found that roughly 17,000 students were sexually assaulted by other students from 2011 to 2015.

We are not talking about college students. The study covers children in high schools, junior highs, even elementary schools. Children as young as 5 or 6 were included in the data.

The depth of the problem is possibly much greater because some students are unlikely to report an assault, and several states do not even tally cases. Ohio’s state school board does not keep numbers, but there were 293 assaults on school grounds documented in the last two years of available data by police departments.

The painful reality is that a broken society is producing children with warped and dysfunctional views of sex, and it is time to admit this and discuss how we can heal.