Abstinence-only instructor arrested for sexual indecency with a child.

[sinkingfeeling]

http://www.kfsm.com/sns-ap-ar--abstinencegroup-arrest,0,50799.story

Risley says Lyons previously worked with Reality Check, an organization that makes abstinence presentations in area schools. The Reality Check office in Fort Smith confirmed Lyons had worked there, but declined further comment.

Fort Smith police say Lyons admitted asking a minor female for sex and asking another minor female to send him nude photographs of herself, which she sent to his phone.

Sexual indecency with a child is a felony punishable by up to six years in prison. It wasn't immediately clear whether Lyons had an attorney, and he did not have a listed telephone number.

Love this Iconoclast blog about this US/Arkansas sponsored stuff:
http://jonah-m-tebbetts.blogspot.com/

Last week, Blanche Lincoln was the deciding vote when the Senate Finance Committee voted 12-11 to approve an amendment to provide millions of dollars to fund abstinence-only sex education programs. The amendment, sponsored by Senator Orin Hatch (R-UT), would allocate $50 million per year for such programs through 2014. Federal bureaucrats do not conduct these no-nookie programs; the government gives the money to local non-profit groups to spend, despite documented evidence that the programs spread inaccurate information and are proven ineffective. That is, they do not work.

One such purveyor of abstinence-only hokum is a Lowell-based outfit called Reality Check. It claims to work with John Brown University, Northwest Arkansas Community College, the Boys and Girls Club, First Tee, Youth Bridge, Springdale School District, and the Rogers School District to share its message of birth control by just saying no to sex. Despite spending millions of dollars on this message, Arkansas ranks fourth in the nation in the number of teen births per capita. It ignores the fact that contraception works. Reality Check is a subsidiary of Tree of Life Preventative Health Maintenance, Inc., a faith-based organization that, according to its website, works under the guidance of the Holy Spirit.

Here's one reason that Reality Check's services might not work. Tobias Patrick Lyons, a former employee of the private nonprofit, was arrested Friday for sexual indecency with a child after he admitted texting a 14-year-old girl to ask for sex and asking another minor female to send him nude photographs of herself, which she sent to his cell phone. He is facing up to six years in prison for a Class D felony.

Just two years ago, our local Congressman John Boozman (R-Dark Ages) said, “I am a strong supporter of abstinence education, and I am glad to see Reality Check taking a leadership role in providing this type of learning to our youth, This money represents an investment in the future of our children and in the ‘positive life choices’ that are part of Reality Check’s mission.”

Senator Lincoln and Congressman Boozman should think on these things whenever they go spouting off about how lucky we are that they funneled $532,509 of our tax dollars in a grant to Reality Check of Lowell for programs that not only don't work but make matters worse.

[LynneSin]

1. Wowza and I thought Sarah Palin was a hypocrite

this guy takes the cake!

[seabeyond]

2. shut 'em down like acorn. nt

[Barack_America]

3. So basically the stuff ACORN supposedly did, but much worse.

ACORN was defunded for giving advice that could lead to sexual abuse of minors. This guy actually sexually abused minors.

Where is Glenn Beck, demanding Tree of Life Preventative Health Maintenance, Inc. be defunded?

[derby378]

4. Bwaaaaah!

Here's a real "reality check" for ya:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UwXLit-ynyg

[robinlynne]

11. That is hilarious! Thank-you.

[qb]

5. Abstinence only programs "do not work"... Actually, they make things worse

by omitting information about contraception & safe sex. Teen pregnancies up, STDs up, HIV up.

[peace13]

6. 6 years?

He should be facing much more time than that. But hey, if he were a priest he would be on a train to Peoria!

[NashVegas]

7. He Was Just Giving a Demonstraion of What Not to Do, Is All

I'm sure.

[Octafish]

8. Child sex enthusiast Ex-Rep. Mark Foley (R-FL) chaired caucus on 'Missing and Exploited Children'

Foley Resigns Over Sexually Explicit Messages to Minors

Not that there's a connection, it's just a repeating GOP characteristic.



Fox News, of course, misidentifited the perverted Mr. Foley's party affiliation.

[Turbineguy]

9. "What is it about "abstinence" you don't understand?"

I guess it's being obsessed about not having sex that does it. Kind of a Zen thing.

Don't think of a monkey!

[piratefish08]

10. Wow - who could have seen this coming??

Fucking sexually repressed, right wing hypocrite assholes.

Next stop - the priesthood.

[yellowcanine]

12. I am sure Beck. Limbaugh and Hannity will be all over that story.

[Shallah Kali]

13. One of the girls tried to commit suicide :(

http://www.swtimes.com/articles/2009/10/06/news/news100609_04.txt

When Lyons was interviewed later in the day on Sept. 30, he told Vongphachanh he had talked “inappropriately” with the minor female, asked her to have sex with him and asked her to send him a picture of her in her underwear, which she did, according to a police report.

Lyons said he asked the girl to have sex with him when they were together one day at “UrSpace,” a storefront Tree of Life leased at Central Mall where students between 12 and 18 years old who are involved with Reality Check congregated on weekdays during the summer.

Lyons also told Vongphachanh about having inappropriate conversations with another minor female and that he met both girls at a Fort Smith junior high school through his work with Reality Check. The other minor has since moved out of state. Lyons then revealed that he asked a third minor female, whom he met at Ben Geren Regional Park, to send him nude photographs of herself, which she did by phone, according to police.

Police began investigating Lyons in mid-September when the minor female he solicited sex from attempted suicide and was taken to Sparks Regional Medical Center. A nurse believed she heard the girl talking to her father about sexual contact between her and an adult male.

Police determined the nurse misunderstood, but the girl’s father provided police with text messages exchanged between his daughter and Lyons the day she attempted suicide, in which she told him she loved him and Lyons asked her “to prove it,” according to a police report.

The girl also told Lyons she wanted to see him, but Lyons remained at home with his wife, who he said “knows everything between” him and the girl, according to a police report.

Lyons told police his relationship with the girl had faded away after he got married in June.

[jmowreader]

14. As usual, these guys get it ALL wrong

At the risk of sounding too clinical, it is my experience that the more your institutional values system prohibits or disdains some form of conduct, the more likely it is you're going to try it. Sex is a good example: look at the pedophile priests, abstinence-only pushers who get nailed for child abuse, etc, etc, etc. Drinking is another one: in the US we run around telling our kids not to drink and to proselytize the no-drinking message, and as a result the United States may have the largest population, both in hard numbers and per capita, of underage alcoholics in the world. Whereas in Europe they teach their kids how to have sex and how to drink (yes, there is a technique to both) and they don't have these kinds of problems.

I'm not sure whether the "sex ed" class they showed in Monty Python's The Meaning of Life or the Malthusian Drills from Brave New World are quite appropriate, but we can do better than to take people in the horniest time of their lives and give them a sexual education which consists entirely of telling girls they don't need to know anything about contraception because Jesus is going to keep their boyfriends' pants up.