I swear I didn’t write that headline. Honest, I didn’t. I like Canada. I watch “The Bridge.” Heck, I even watched “Flashpoint.”
Anyway, from the Korea Times:
Foreign students studying in Canada without their parents are far more susceptible to sexual abuse and drug use than their Canadian counterparts, according to a study released by the University of British Columbia, Tuesday.
Each year, thousands of East Asian students, mostly from Korea, China and Japan, stream to Canada to study English or attend high school through homestay programs.
[...]
It found that 23 percent of female respondents from East Asian countries reported having been sexually abused, compared to eight percent of Canadian-born girls.
In all seriousness, 23%? Christ!
Among males and females, 25 percent of the homestay students were sexually active, more than twice the ratio of their Canadian counterparts.
Teens away from their folks overseas having sex. Go figure.
Elizabeth Saewyc, co-author and research director at the non-profit McCreary Center Society, said the rates of sexual abuse were far higher than expected.
“When you add to that the higher numbers of homestay girls using cocaine, a fairly uncommon drug among high school students, it raises a concern that some of them may be experiencing sexual abuse or exploitation here in Canada.”
If one in four girls is getting sexually abused, I’d say it raises more than concern — it raises the question as to why such homestay programs are allowed to continue at all.
{ 74 comments… read them below or add one }
1. How many of the students are staying with their Korean-Candian extended family (cousins, uncles)?
2. Is underage sexual activity considered “sexual abuse”?
3. How do the East Asian students compare to other foreign students in Canada? Are the other foreign students getting high and having sex too?
Really, this article sucks. Rape statistics would be useful. Information about their living arrangements would be useful. Comparison to other foreign students would be useful.
I’m not sure about the incidences of sexual abuse, but I organised an english camp in Australia for Korean students once. I brought over about 10 kids and arranged homestay for all of them.
I trusted the school to screen the homestay parents and met the familes once just to make sure I thought they were ok. Two of the families I hesitated about – they were very working class, very rough-and-ready, and I wans’t sure they would have the cultural sensitivities to tackle a couple of wide-eyed, never-stepped-0ff-the-concrete Korean middle school kids. The other families were straight-laced, church-attending, proper and polite people who I thought would be more suitable looking after the kids.
Turned out I got it completely backwards. The high-brow familes bored the kids to death, and the two bogan families proved to be the best. They took the kids fishing, to bbqs, footy matches etc. I had to sneak them some kimchi occaisonally to balance their meat-pie dinner regime, but overall they were brilliant. One of the kids actually burst into tears when it was time to take him back to Gwangju.
It just goes to show that it’s very hard to pick a good family for homestay. I pity the people who organise these setups regularly, because you just can’t anticipate problems, no matter how thorough you screen, and there’s always that nightmare possibility of a kiddie-fiddler lurking somewhere in the equation.
As a Canadian I am ashamed to hear this.
Of course the students are responsible for their own choices regarding sexual conduct, smoking and drug use. The opportunities might be more readily available in lower mainland BC, but it is the individual’s responsibility to make good decisions.
It is also plausible that the Korean students who travel abroad may have predisposed inclinations to be rebellious and experiment with alternative habits/ life styles once free of the shackles of parental supervision.
Can’t blame it all on Canada, yet still, there should be better screening of home stay families and students who wish to participate in the home stay programs.
I am curious as to what constitutes sexual abuse and inclined to believe that many of these students are being dished off on relatives living in Canada with little regard for their safety and well being, making it a Korean on Korean crime.
Articles in Canada have a bit more information:
http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/afp/100713/canada/canada_education_china_japan_skorea_research
Some of it is still not very clear, though:
“The study said 23 percent of home-stay girls reported being sexually abused, compared to nine percent of immigrant or Canadian-born girls from East Asian cultures.
[...]
– they were twice as likely to be sexually active and 25 percent of them had had sexual intercourse, compared to nine percent of immigrant students and 12 percent of Canadian-born students;
– home-stay students were also far less likely than other students to be involved in extracurricular activities and just over half had skipped school in the month before the survey, while only a quarter of their peers did.”
Are the immigrant students also in home stays? Does “Canadian born students” always mean ‘of Asian descent?’ It’s all rather unclear.
How old were the girls they interviewed?
One of my middle school students just got back from a year in Canada. She really seemed to enjoy it. But I sure hope there’s something off on those stats and it’s not one in four!
So… in Korea, sexual abuse goes rampantly unreported. Girls get raped all the time in love motels, and chalk it up to the known consequences of binge drinking. Don’t ask, don’t tell. Are we to buy that as soon as Koreans arrive in Canada that all of a sudden they tell all? How are these surveys carried out? If they are anonymously done on paper in a “choose a b c or d” – the results will be seriously out of whack. The numbers on this just don’t add up. Maybe the stats are including those lovely cult-like churches Koreans set up everywhere they go. Then I might buy it.
In the absence of other information, I’m inclined to take this stat at face value and say Korean high school girls attract the predatory attention of Canadian host ‘fathers’, and the difference with the stat from Canadian born homestayers reflects their greater perceived vulnerability.
And Robert is dead right that some of these programs should not be allowed to continue at all with that kind of record.
Seth Gecko doesn’t appear to know what “homestay” is by the nature of his comments. Hojusaram hits the nail on the head by describing the precariousness of prescreening, selecting and matching the right kind of host family for students, in addition to the inability to predict or guarantee that the host family won’t be predators and be a good fit for the student.
Also, contrary to the suggestion made by Gecko in his #1, this issue has nothing to do with how extended family are treating their relatives. His suggestion that the relatives of extended family — which would not qualify as “homestay” anyway — may be perpetrators of such abuse indicates that Gecko doesn’t even know what “homestays” are. If Gecko wants to investigate the rate of which relatives are abusing or assaulting their visiting extended family members, Gecko ought to find some raw data finding how many relatives visit Canada from overseas every year, by nationality and country of origin, for example, and then correlate how many of them file charges of sexual assault before they leave, compared with the rest of the community for the same period of time. (The absurdity of such kind of research should be obvious, but if Gecko wants to waste his time gathering such data, there would be no useful data of any statistical significance whatsoever at the end of such a ridiculous study to make any kind of meaningful conclusion.)
Leaving all the snark aside in all fairness i always wondered what pushes these families to get involved in this kind of programs. Dealing with your own teens is stressful enough, being responsible for some foreign kid you know nothing about and with whom you might not even able to properly communicate seems like a nightmare scenario to me, and one very likely to feed an adverse selection mechanism
silver surfer, very few of the ones who do homestays are high school students, as they can’t get any credit for their Canadian HS in Korea. The majority are elementary students with a few MS students. The MS and HS students who do go often just do it for up to two months during winther break, hardly enough time to generate that kind of statistic, one would hope. Could uni girls be included in the study, with assaults by other students on them accounting for these figures?
It would be really interesting to read the UBC report and compare it to the KT one.
Just read the articles from the links provided above – grades 7 to 12. I get the impression many of these are from students completing their entire schooling in Canada, not just doing a year or a few months. Quite frankly, I find the rates of smoking and sexual activity by their Canadian counterparts to be rather low – only 5-9% of BC secondary school girls smoke?
I attended a reputable public high school in the North Shore of Chicago, and one of the largest and oldest student exchange and homestay programs was sponsored through AFS — American Field Service — which was founded back in 1915 by Abram Piatt Andrew, a retired Harvard professor of economics and former Asst. Sec. of the Treasury during the Teddy Roosevelt administration. As result of this exchange program, we had kids from all over the world — mostly Western Europe and Japan — popping into our classrooms at the most inopportune times to participate in class discussions and especially, share their experiences with us. (The est were the German kids who came to our German I and II classes, and shared with us all the cool words and expressions.) Anyways, we can only assume that they were being taken in by the most strenuously screened host families who fully understood and were inculcated into the basic tenants of the AFS Intercultural program.
Probably from these original models, came a lot of fraudsters and imposters who sought to duplicate the program with ulterior motives or fraudulent intentions, which brings me to say this has not been just a Canadian problem either.
A Japanese female acquaintance of mine, whom I met through another friend in San Diego, came there to study at one of the local community colleges so she could sharpen her surfing skills. She opted for some shady “homestay” program, although it really wasn’t, so she could afford to live there as it was the only option available to her. The homestay couple had a condo, and while it was agreed to let her have a room in the beginning for no charge, they changed their minds later and asked her if she could chip in monthly to cover the rent plus utilities. She did without questioning them, and by the time we looked at her checkbook, we figured she had been paying down their monthly mortgage for almost an entire year, in addition to paying 100% of their utility bills every month. (After we told her she was getting rippped, she moved out.) So the possibility of “host families” using naive foreign students as quasi-slaves or cash cows especially to pay down their debt certainly exists.
I can’t speak for my step-brother’s family (I simply don’t know), but my mum got into it for several reasons: (1) I’m in Korea/Japan and there are still a lot of things she didn’t understand about the cultures over here and she wanted to understand; (2) the stories coming from my step-brother about his family’s experiences with Korean and Japanese homestayers were warm and funny and my mum felt she wanted the same experience; (3) with the recent death of my step-dad, and mum being an empty nester, the house was too empty and quiet with bedrooms not being used; (4) mum is a naturally social person and loves meeting people and being part of their lives, so she wanted to help the students have a positive experience during their stay in Canada.
She was only able to entertain two separate groups of students (two Korean girls and two Japanese girls) before she herself passed away, but I know she enjoyed the experiences immensely. She’d even started a photo wall of the girls and their stay with her, so I know she missed them after they’d left.
Yeah. A group of teens, away from the whip-cracking do-nothing-but-study system in Korea, away from mommy and daddy on the other side of the globe without any real supervision, going a little wild with drinking, smoking, and sex? Wow. Never would have predicted that one.
I’d like to know more about the abuse though: who is doing the abuse, how did they collect the stats about the abuse, what kinds of questions were asked, and what is the definition of abuse that they used?
Darth’s mum is an exception then.
Most I have come across fall under the two categories like 867 has said.
The exchange with non-English speaking Western Europe (and sometimes Japan, which fall under both categories) exchange where the emphasis is on the “exchange” so genuine curiosity of the culture where often the kids go over and come over – extension of the pen-pal like system.
The more recent Asian hordes (including Japan) going to learn English have indeed provided a source of income to the cottage industry (certainly in the case of New Zealand) where the host families develop prejudice and bitch about the kids constantly, yet continue to take them on. I have heard from both sides and they usually do not have a good impression of each other and certainly don’t help towards developing a rapport and understanding of each other’s culture – having money involved would often do that as well – because it’s a paid service, after all, under some loosely defined pretension of the former category.
This study says “Foreign Exchange Students”, or “East Asian”.
Nowhere does it mentions this is strictly a “Korean” problem. So no, it doesn’t necessarily mean the Korean relatives in Canada are abusing their kinfolks from Korea. You should probably look at the numbers broken down into nationalities before you go on making stupid uneducated remarks, or making any kind of remarks about this report.
I certainly sympathize with victims of any form of abuse.
Having said that, the shockingly high number of victims reminds me of similarly high numbers in a study a few years back of female American students. Turns out, however, “sexual abuse” had been defined in that earlier study to include kissing or attempting to kiss a woman without prior express consent; putting or attempting to put one’s arm around a woman without prior express consent; etc.
Such broad definitions fit nicely with those Korean men who consider as a “sex crime” a foreigner having consensual sex with a Korean woman, or asking a Korean woman for a date, and so forth. I’m not saying that’s what happened here, only that it now informs my consumption of news reports of such studies, pending further information.
Anyone have a link to the original? Can’t seem to find it.
Sounds like the wrong place to put a kid. From my experience, probably half the families I used seemed to be in it for the money – other half probably wouldn’t have done it without the pay, but were very good. Two of them are still in contact with the kids a few years later. So it can work – it just requires a bit of effort on behalf of the people vetting the families.
It sounds like you had an unhappy time in NZ Yuna?
Well, I never experienced it myself – my observation comes from the Korean friends who went there and told me they would never go back in their lifetime (staying with mean grannies who would put Jane Eyre’s England to shame) and also friends of friends Kiwis (well-to-do types who still wanted the money) whose parents hosted these Asian kids who would bitch and moan about them at social gatherings (I’m sure toned down because I was there)
“Such broad definitions fit nicely with those Korean men who consider as a “sex crime” a foreigner having consensual sex with a Korean woman, or asking a Korean woman for a date, and so forth.”
Once again, your stab of insults at Koreans disguised as ‘assumptions’ fall by the way side considering that this is not a Korean made study, and the “victims” are “foreign students” and “East Asian Students”. How do you explain Chinese and Japanese side of equation? Do they also consider dating of teen girls with foreign males as rape?
I wanted to write something venomously insulting about New Zealand but i’ll pass this time
joking aside weikuboy may have a point with the excessively broad definition of sexual abuse…even if giving out unwanted (c’mon guys we know when it’s not the case, let’s use some common sense) kissing and hugging is indeed barfbag material.
Also i was wondering if this problem might be particularly bad for East Asian female students comparing to other ethnicities/nationalities as they might be perceived by Western males as urrrghh fragile and secretly lusting for aggression…you know 2 good decades of hentai might have had some kind of effect on feeble white dudes minds
According to a former US President, certain carnal acts that used to could get you sent to prison in Texas ain’t sex…
So the definitions are important. As are the perps. For example, were these girls “molested” by the homestay folks or boys they went to school with?
Inquiring minds may start to belief this is just another “Trash America” story aimed at sending the girls to a place that “respects” them enough to stuff ‘em in a burka…
(Canada being the northernmost part of America and all)
@ Yuna, 16,
Maybe my wife’s experience was different, but she was living in one of those cottage industry arrangements in Brisbane when I first met her. She loved it and goes back to see her host father whenever we trip back home. The secret, in her opinion, to the household’s eternal harmony — no more than one of each nationality allowed to stay at any one time out of the five or six boarders.
And again at Yuna at 21. The badmouthing circles goes beyond the host mommies and daddies you cited. I know enough professional educators here (Int’l schools, not academies) who will rant until apoplectic about the proclivities of Korean students whose families are here in Indonesia purely for the chance to send the kids to an English-speaking school. One deputy principal at an exclusive elementary school here told me recently they have had to limit Korean student numbers to 25%.
The bottom line for me is that most children need their parents. On an anecdotal note, shortly after I moved here from Korea, I taught a 15 year-old Korean boy, whom we’ll call H. H was part of a Korean homestay situation in a Vancouver suburb; he was one of several children in the homestay, one of whom was his little sister. I was contracted to tutor him through a Korean connection. There was a host-mother, but no host-father in the house, which was very large.
I’m sorry to say that H had no redeeming qualities. His hygiene wasn’t very good. His English was absolutely awful. He didn’t do his homework. He was rude, his body language indicated contempt for learning, and even his handwriting was messy. His only hobby, when he was in the house, was to play video games. His mother ended out flying out from Korea to supervise him, but it was too little, too late. I advised her that my tutoring was not helping him at all, and we ended with a handshake. Now that was a kid who needed parental supervision long before he got it.
Some months later, I saw H. with several of his same-age friends in a mall, walking with an absolutely dynamite-looking Korean woman who was at least 30, and her sense of fashion and bearing made me think she might have been the sort–well, never mind.
I basically think that while some kids can do the homestay thing, others can’t. Most kids need their parents’ involvement in their lives. Meanwhile, the homestay industry in Vancouver is absolutely huge. Vancouver has the highest cost of living, factoring in the price of land, in all of Canada (except parts of West and North Vancouver), and many get by by adding homestay students. Some of these live with as many as eight other children in houses down the street from the homestay parents’ houses. To me, that’s borderline abuse, and the industry desperately needs regulation.
Handwriting being messy is a sin? Not in the 21st century, it isn’t.
Incidentally, H was supposed to complete his high school in Canada, and many other students are in his situation.
JW, not only could I not read his handwriting, he couldn’t read his handwriting either. At that point it becomes evidence of either sin, sloth, or a learning disability. The placing of handwriting last was a kind of intentional bathos–if I can put it that way–that was meant to show the totality of the problem we were dealing with. Anyway, I wish him all the best, hopefully with his parents in his life.
Why get apoplectic? They are paying money to learn english. Customers can get demanding. Especially korean customers, because learning english for koreans is tougher and more educationally a prerequisite — and therefore more stressful — than for many if not most people of other nations. I’d like to say to those host people, grow some fucking ballz.
yeah, I second that. I had no respect for these host families who would bad mouth these kids after they’d left and kept on taking more. I guess money was too sweet. Most had one at a time none of the 5 or 6 thing- that just sounds like a brat camp.
Children get sent to boarding schools. I think that’s fine. I don’t think one should dump one’s trouble child abroad to some other family under the pretext of English learning or studying abroad, which I am sure does happen.
JW, Yuna, I was not talking host families, but rather international schools being overwhelmed by Korean kids. Come back when you can comprehend what I am talking about.
Stay on topic, then. I was talking about host families complaining.
As for international schools being *overwhelmed*, we don’t need to even go to Indonesia. International schools in Korea have the same problems.
Apoplectic sounds like it’s a fine word to describe educators. Hopefully it’s confined to your own input in such discussions.
Umm, do these korean kids go to the international schools for free? If not, then they are customers. If they being overwhelmed with too many koreans is the problem, that’s the school’s problem — a pretty fucking luxurious problem if you ask me.
Re cm @22:
I wasn’t wrongly assuming the study only concerned Koreans. Rather, the reporting of the study which was the subject of Robert/Marmot’s post was in the Korea Times; and my point was only that a Korean “reporter” with an anti-western male agenda might have used a study in which “sexual abuse” was broadly defined in terms that most of us would not normally think of as sexual abuse to write a story that makes Canada look like a very dangerous place for Korean (and other Asian) girls. I’m not saying that’s what happened here; I’m just saying that’s what flashes through my mind as a possibility when I read something like this, me being the
critical thinkercynical bastard that I am.I’m sure she would have gone on to make a wonderful homestay environment for dozens of other students had she lived longer (she was only 55).
Incidentally, I did eventually meet up with her Korean guests. We were all on vacation at the same time, and met up when we were all in Tokyo. Sweet girls, and they had a lot of warm stories about their stay and my mum before she got sick. Never did meet the Japanese girls, though.
8675309,
I asked
It’s a fair question, because in recent years, I’ve heard the term “homestay” used rather loosely by my Korean students, i.e. to describe living with their Korean-American extended family in Texas. I’m sure other teachers can back me up on this. So my reasoning is that if it’s used loosely by them, it may have been used the same way by the K-students filling out the anonymous questionnaire.
And the rest was strawman B.S., and you should know better.
Lol, I never said I want to, but nice try.
Back on topic…
This is the definition of sexual abuse that was used in the survey:
I found it here:
http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Asian+homestay+students+extremely+vulnerable/3274100/story.html
Two thoughts:
1. Someone was “sexually abused” if they were touched in a place where they did not want to be touched. Not very specific.
2. I didn’t see a time period. That could mean that they were “sexually abused” while they were in their home country.
@37, Luxurious in what respect? Again, these are professional educators who are working in some of the best international schools in the region. They are citing things such as extreme disciplinary issues (and an unwillingness on parents’ behalf to assist with this) and the kind of pressures for favoritism that anyone who has spent any time in Korea teaching knows all too well about.
@Yuna once more, we are talking about Korean students overseas and problems related thereto. But at the end of the day its the kids I feel sorry for and the malarkey they are put through in the hopes of getting an education.
Last week while riding the bus, an adjumma threw her elbow into my kidney. I did not want that to happen. Was I sexually abused?
Apparently so.
Somehow Darth’s story reminded me of this which I’m sure was posted before, but the lovely Bae Doona in a short film as an English student
Here’s the link to the film again
“Sexual abuse is when anyone (including a family member) touches you in a place you did not want to be touched or does something to you sexually which you did not want,” from Seth Gecko @40
Such a broad definition would appear to confirm what I had suspected. A classmate boyfriend trying to kiss her goodnight or hug her closely after a date or touching her breasts (through her shirt and bra) while making out would a) probably shock the hell out of most young women raised in Asia; and b) meet the definition of “sexual abuse” in the study in question.
But what I said about a reporter with an anti-western male agenda upon further reflection might simply be attributable to a reporter or editor with a Stay At Home, Don’t Go Abroad, Buy Korean agenda.
That’s it? Disciplinary issues with kids who don’t want to study? Goodness, I’m scared to think how these educators would react if some crackpot student stabs a teacher or something…
“I wasn’t wrongly assuming the study only concerned Koreans. Rather, the reporting of the study which was the subject of Robert/Marmot’s post was in the Korea Times; and my point was only that a Korean “reporter” with an anti-western male agenda might have used a study in which “sexual abuse” was broadly defined in terms that most of us would not normally think of as sexual abuse to write a story that makes Canada look like a very dangerous place for Korean (and other Asian) girls.”
Has it gotten to the point that any negatively reflecting articles on Western hemisphere is immediately regarded as anti-foreigner agenda from Koreans? This story has been reported in local Canadian news, in a city and a country where thousands of Korean parents who have their kids sent. It’s not a surprise that this story gets reported in Korean newspapers, when it has everything to do with Koreans. It’s parents’ right to know the pitfalls of sending their kids, unsupervised, to strangers in foreign lands. All too often Korean parents think if they send their kids abroad, they’ll learn English, and that’s the only thing that counts. It’s important to know that such strategy may not only end up with poor returns on the expensive investments, but it could also damage the kids psychologically. I just don’t see the need for you and some others’ knee jerk reactions in this case.
cm: the old “The truth hurts” adage explains lots of Western knee-jerking.
It’s a pathetic show i know bust still lots of white dudes still can’t come to terms with the fact the world doesn’t actually need their beer bellies, their shitty liberal arts degrees and the toilet paper with ugly faces printed on it they dare to call money
Just to point out that the foreigners aren’t being discriminated when it comes to sexual crime news on Korea Times:
Here’s all the story about Korean on Korean sex crime headlines that’s on today’s web edition:
동대문구 초등생 성폭행 용의자 검거
학부모 “‘초등생 구타 교사’ 동영상 내용에 경악”
“성폭행 현장에서 피해자가 셀카 찍었다고?”
목사가 교회서 여중생 상습 성폭행… 남동생엔 성추행
낮잠 자던 20대 여성 손 묶고 흉기 위협해 성폭행
한국으로 시집 온 외국여성들의 삶은
And this is just the first page. Criminals are all Koreans, while victims are Koreans or foreigners.
Out of all these stories, we have one more story about the young Korean students sent to Canada, with a larger than expected percentage of them being sexually molested by a group of people who are largely unknown of their ethnic background. One story out of dozens of sexual criminal cases.
Let me rephrase this before somebody misconstrues this:
“Just to point out that the foreigners aren’t being discriminated when it comes to sexual crime news on Korea Times:”
I meant to write, foreigners aren’t being discriminated when it comes to Koreans deciding to print stories with sexual crimes involved – both Korean sexual and foreigner involved sexual crimes are printed.
Re cm @47:
Good response. I imagine the truth lies somewhere in between your and my takes on this Korea Times piece. (But you should’ve stopped there.)
Good point, and to elaborate further — many of the homestay kids from Korea are the kids who couldn’t really cut it in Korean schools, and began their path toward loserdom punctuated by drinking, smoking and sex. Parents then send them away to countries that appear to have easier school systems like U.S. or Canada, with the hope that “At least they will learn English.” Those parents often end up being very wrong, because their kids end up doing the exact same things that they were doing in Korea — smoking, boozing and having sex, and not studying.
A Korean proverb describes the situation perfectly: “A ladle that leaks inside also leaks outside.” Poor students in Korea often end up being poor students everywhere else in the world.
When 1/4 of a student population is reporting sexual abuse, that is a crisis (not least because such abuse is more often under-reported than over-reported). And this was from 2003 survey data!
Like the well-reported ills associated with unqualified foreign teachers and fly-by-night hagwons in Korea, this is another by-product of Korea’s unhealthy English learning obsession.
That obsession is the debate that the usual media and political suspects Weiku Boy refers to above should be focusing on.
Does anyone know what a typical homestay household would get in terms of monetary compensation? Flat fee? Not implying anything, just curious.
Guys – the Korea times article is MISLEADING.
Here is the ORIGINAL article – http://www.cihr-irsc.gc.ca/
FACT – 80% of the students surveyed (aged 14~19 y.o.) were BORN in Canada.
………An estimated 1,531 male and 1,554 female homestay students ranging from 14 to 19 years old were in the sample. Twenty percent of those surveyed were not born in Canada and nine percent had been in Canada for less than five years………….
3085 students were surveyed.
617 were students NOT born in Canada
2468 students had been born in Canada.
Wong estimates that B.C.’s homestay student industry generates about $60 million per year from agency fees, public school tuition costs and monthly fees for host families to provide a furnished private room, meals and shared amenities. As there is no formal oversight of the homestay industry, there are no requirements for screening or licensing homestay families.
The study’s key findings include:
• A much higher rate of sexual abuse among homestay girls: 23 per cent of homestay girls compared to nine per cent of immigrant or Canadian-born girls
• One in five homestay students were current smokers, compared to only five to nine per cent of other students
• Homestay students were two to six times more likely to report using cocaine compared to other students their same age
• They were twice as likely to be sexually active; 25 per cent of homestay students had had sexual intercourse, compared to nine per cent of immigrant students and 12 per cent of Canadian-born students
• Homestay students were far less likely than other students to be involved in extracurricular activities
• Just over half of homestay students had skipped school in the month before the survey, while only a quarter of immigrant or Canadian-born East Asian students did
re: #8 – Nowhere does it say who sexually abused 20% of the girls – (so don’t assume it was by touchy homestay fathers) it could have just been other male students who the girls hung out with.
I mean they weren’t exactly “clean” girls now were they… 20% of the homestay girls smoked – and nobody FORCED them to do that. (compared to only 5% on the NON-homestay girls who smoked) – who seemed to be “cleaner” girls.
So, we have 20% of homestay girls (aged 14~19y.o.) who choose to smoke, chose to use Cocaine – most probably hanging around in a “bad crowd” – skipping school, and 25% of them suffered “sexual abuse” – what did they expect.
“Hey boyfriend, shoot me up with cocaine, but whilst I am under the influence of the drugs, don’t touch my “private parts”…
We all know it doesn’t work like that.
Those girls chose to hang out in that “bad crowd”.
The study also looked at – why are “homestay students” more likely to do the wrong things (smoking, sex, drugs, etc) than non-homestay students?
Probably because they are normal teenagers – who lack “parental surpervision and guidance”.
They were NOT victims, they were just unsupervised teenagers, doing what unsupervised teenagers like to do.
The study (at least the press release of the study, which formed the basis of the article that was republished all over the world) fails to establish causality. Did the homestay experience cause these negative behaviors or—as many on this thread have pointed out—were these individuals already prone to this type of behavior before going abroad? I think we need to see the actual journal article before jumping to conclusions (it’s not available for free). In the mean time, here’s a point-by-point breakdown of the studies major findings as stated in the press release.
This seemingly-shocking statistic has been re-hashed enough on this thread that I need not go over it again. It seems a lax definition of sexual abuse is to blame.
Smoking rates in Asia tend to be higher than in North America. Did the authors take this into account? Did the students become smokers before or after their homestay experience?
The press-release authors are using relative risk here to make this look a lot worse than it actually is because they fail to leave out the absolute risk of cocaine abuse. If 2 out of 1000 homestay students use cocaine, that would mean that 1 out of 1000 “other students” would use it (I’m making up numbers here to demonstrate a point). But the absolute probability of a homestay student using cocaine is only 0.002%. Even if the homestay student was 6 times more likely, using the numbers above that would only mean that 0.006% use the drug. This hardly constitutes a public health crisis.
Post hoc ergo propter hoc: which caused which? Is there any evidence to suggest that the homestay environment caused this sexual activity? And if so, with what confidence level? And thought what mechanism? Were these individuals already prone to/already engaging in this type of behavior before going abroad?
Have the authors taken into account cultural considerations? Are the authors aware that the definition of extracurricular activity in Asia is a lot different than it is in North America, or that Asian students have different priorities in their schooling years than their North American counterparts? North Americans consider extracurricular activities to mean things like sports, art, clubs, etc. Asian students consider extracurricular activities to be homework, private academies, and tutors.
At the risk of being accused of laziness: Post hoc ergo propter hoc: which caused which? Is there any evidence to suggest that the homestay environment caused the skipping of school? Where they skipping school in a manner which even real parents might find hard to track? Why were the schools themselves not more involved in making sure these kids came to class? How did these students act when they were in their home countries with their legitimate parents?
Oh yeah, and the data is from 2003. That’s a bit stale for me.
And all these are good questions that need to answered.
But let me throw you another question. What if this study was the other way around? What if the study was done in Korea, and they find 24% foreign students studying in Korea were sexually abused. Would any of these good questions that were asked above, be raised here? I doubt it because the study will probably be taken as face value and no such questions would be asked. It’s really not that much different from what so many people here complain about Koreans.
Putting aside issues of the relevancy of your question, I would certainly hope I would be as questioning in the event the situation were reversed. I don’t speak for everyone else here, but I try to be as skeptical as possible of claims people make using statistics.
Again speaking for myself, I have not a single anti-(South) Korean bone in my body, so I have no motive to distort, cover up, or otherwise accept specious reasoning at face value.
I wonder, did the kids interviewed in this study understand the question to mean ‘while you’ve been in Canada’ or ‘ever in your life’? What, exactly, was the question presented to them?
IMO, Canada is slightly better than USA and Australia, sexual abuse in US and Australia is even worse. Let’s face it, Asian girls are treated like sex toys here in US.
let’s face it bro, all women everywhere are sex toys. as they should be.
Hat off to the King of the Trolls…
When i read JD works of art i realise why i’m still and probably will always be junior league
Come to Korea and tell me how many bikini bars, barber shops, massagee parlours, room salons, business clubs, etc. etc. etc. you see. Asian girls are treated like sex toys here, too.
IIRC, the stats are 1 out of 4 here, too (for ALL women, not just foreign students).
Ah, yes, but the problem with your reasoning is that in the former case its white men treating their women like sex dolls (the real crime in all of this is who is doing the objectifying). What they want to do with their women is their business, no?
In this case though they’re professionals who choose to work in this kind of places, they don’t like it, there’s always the check at the local Family Mart.
Unwanted harassment is another thing, from this point of view are English speaking countries a difficult area to travel for foreign women ? In my view (and leaving all the snark aside) yes they are, despite common stereotypes in a way worse way than Southern Europe is: rampant alcoholism and shall i say ? A general tone of aggressivity in these societies, together with a vast underclass of very poorly educated people, combine to create a relatively dangerous environment for women.
Seriously i would invite any woman to go out on her own on a saturday night in say Athens, Greece and Manchester, UK and then tell me where she felt safer.
Are Asian women a particularly sought after target of harassment ? I have no idea but it wouldn’t surprise me if they were, the hentai reference was a joke, but truly there are tons of dimwitted knuckleheads in the West who mistake j-porn for reality.
Milton i’d like to conduct an experiment: let’s take some young good looking effete eurotrashy French dude and let’s send him in a tour of the bars in various shitvilles in the good ole U.S. of A where he would try to flirt with the local girls….let’s see if he lives to tell
Funny you should mention the French. I was having a beer with what you might consider a “meat and potatoes” American, or what the Canadians might call a “Molsen Canadian.” (You the type: lumberjack-y, rural, a guy’s guy who crushes empty bear cans on his head). Anyways, after pounding back a few Casses this guy spent the remainder of the night railing on against French people. I’ve never seen so much animosity towards another people in all my life.
So, if this guy is any indication of what your French dude can expect, he probably wouldn’t live to tell the tale. But that doesn’t justify such attitudes.
The uber-machismo some males have when it comes to non-group members dating in-group females is always wrong, whether it’s Korea, France, rural America, or the Tuvalu. Adult women are free to make up their minds about who they wish to date/marry/consort with, and it’s none of the business of the males of their culture.
That should be “you are,” lest there be any confusion.
I’m a dumbass. That should be “You know the type.”
“You are” is what I didn’t want you to insinuate.
Amen to that…words that should be sculpted in stone
What about the Almond Tease’s out there that need to make money to attend school in Canada?
Wow – lots of misinformation on this page. I have to be a little careful here because I know both of the authors. I am not able to disclose all I know about incidents and experiences that moved them to study this phenomenon.
To answer a few questions:
Craaash – re: FACT 80% of students were born in Canada – reading comprehension is obviously not your forte. I could recommend a good English Language school for you if you wish?
Fact: 80% of the 30,500 BC high school students who were administered the 2003 BC Adolescent Health Survey were born in Canada. The Wong / Saewyc study reference in the UBC press release looked at a sub-population or sample of some 3085 non-resident students from East Asian. 100% of these students were foreign born. The study looked at East Asian students because they comprise the majority of the homestay student population in BC. This does not suggest a bias against Asians or suggest that Asian born students are somehow of lower moral character than Canadian born students.
You are also reading into the report an awful lot of editorializing that the researchers didn’t do. The study did not try to impune the character of either the students, host families or home stay agencies as you have. You suggest that because someone smokes, they are “not clean” and deserve to be sexually abused. That is absurd! Maybe your new language school could add a course in critical thinking for you?
The study did not identify the source of sexual abuse or when it took place, only that the respondents had experienced it. Regardless of the source of the abuse, the study points out that these students are more at risk of abuse. This is an indication of a problem – not a sweeping indictment on homestay programs or host families.
However as one who has been a host family with several agencies, I have personally met students who have been treated horribly by previous host families. Because families are paid $700 – $750 per month per student, there are some families for whom this represents a lucrative, undeclared cash business. Some families host with multiple agencies (none of whom would think of placing 8 students in a home) but by hiding information from other agencies they have 6, 7 or 8 students at once, often sharing bedrooms and a single bathroom. One student who stayed with us complained that at a previous home, she didn’t get dinner unless she was home at 5:00 – and her classes downtown ended at 6:00. She wasn’t given a key and if the host family went out for dinner she would be locked outside until they got home.
On the sexual abuse, there was probably a mix of sources of abuse including host families, relatives, school friends and other older associates from out of school. My experience is that there are things written in the host family guidelines of agencies that are clearly there as a result of “incidents”. E.g.
– you are not to give or receive massages to/from students.
– it is not your responsibility to give sexual or reproductive health education to students.
– you are not to show or expose students to sexually explicit materials or pornography.
– in all areas of the home accessible to students you must be fully clothed at all times.
– do not enter your students bedroom without their permission.
Clearly the agencies have responded to complaints of abuse by students. However there is no oversight and nothing to stop an abusive host family from going to another agency and putting more youth at risk.
Milton:
As far as a “lax” definition of sexual abuse, while this may capture the odd case of a boyfriend going for 2nd base, that wouldn’t explain the discrepancy between this sample and the broader population. One would think that boyfriends of Canadian born teens would be just as apt to go for the titties (larger targets??) as boyfriends of Asian born foreign students. The study also found that abuse was more prevalent in homestay students than in East Asian students living with relatives in Canada.
On causality – the study showed correlation, i.e. that the sample population was statistically more at risk for these behaviours that larger BC high school population. While this does not prove that the home stay experience per se causes students to be more at risk for abuse and sexually/socially risky behaviours, it does indicate that there is a problem and that further investigation is needed. However, I think you would agree that it is far more reasonable to suggest that teenagers living without any real parental oversight are put at risk as a result of this than it is to suggest that Asian born students in general are morally loose and naturally more prone these risks. Because causality is not proven doesn’t mean it is not there.
Some of the variance could possibly be explained by other factors. The smoking finding in particular could be explained in part by the fact that smoking rates are far higher in Asian than in North America. It stands to reason then that teens recently from Asia would also have high prevalence of smoking. But are 2 – 4 times higher (20% versus 5-9%)?
Cultural differences are clearly also at play here. It is true that many Asian families have a different view of extra-curricular activities than non-Asian families (I’m caucasian but my wife and in-laws are Chinese). Our experience with high school age homestay students is that their families at home want them to do nothing but study, study, study. However once away from home, they often do not study, study, study – they find other activities and friends that are not so healthy. We have tried to encourage them to get involved in sports, volunteering, arts, and age appropriate community groups, but have met resistance from their parents. Instead, they spend hours and hours on the Internet – initially on Skype/Twitter/Facebook with friends in Asian. But who is to say what else they do on the Internet until 4:00 in the morning. We supervise our own children’s Internet use, but are not permitted to do so for homestay students.
The cocaine use is particularly troubling. Only 4% of the larger high school population reported to have ever used cocaine – so 2 – 6 times risk would mean 8% to 24% of the East Asian homestay population had used cocaine. This may have something to do with money. Cocaine (it didn’t say crack) is mostly a white collar drug. It costs approximately $12,000 in tuition and $9000 for room and board to send a student to high school in BC. Students also generally have a fairly generous bank account for cloths, books, sundries and expenses. The homestay population is then likely to be more representative of the upper or upper-middle classes of Asian society.
The rest of the findings – skipping school, earlier and more sexually active, etc. are to be expected by teens living abroad with little adult supervision.
LeftCoast,
Thanks for your insights and for filling in the gaps left by the press release. I assume you are somehow involved in this study?
My main concern is that the definition used and questions posed may not take into account cultural differences. According to the Vancouver Sun, the definition used was: “Sexual abuse is when anyone (including a family member) touches you in a place you did not want to be touched or does something to you sexually which you did not want,” (correct me if this is wrong). But this doesn’t explain how the question was posed. Were students asked, “Were you sexually abused?” or something more ambiguous like, “Were you touched where you didn’t want to be touched?”
North Americans and Asians have different conceptions of what constitutes “appropriate touching.” North Americans in general tend to be more tactile than Asians. Hugging and kissing is even rare among Asian parents and children. A North American host father may think nothing of putting his arm around his host daughter, while the latter views the same gesture as unwanted and perhaps inappropriate. If the question posed was something along the lines of “were you touched in a place you did not want to be touched?” or even “were you touched inappropriately?” there is certainly room for misunderstanding. Such occasions wouldn’t explain away all the data, but it should certainly be taken into account.
Are there any statistics on how many homestay abuses were reported to the police? And how does this compare with study’s findings?
I’m not denying the causality. I’m just wondering aloud if it has been established statistically as opposed to intuitively (yes, it makes sense that teenagers without supervision would be more unruly, but is that actually the case in homestay situations?). Unfortunately, press releases aren’t the best way to gleam that type of information, but as I don’t have access to a journal archive, I’m not in a position evaluate the claim. I’d be appreciative if you could shed a little light on this question.
Was the study looking at one-time use or habitual use? Also, did the study ask if the students used cocaine during their homestay period or before?
RE the cocain question: were rates of other drug use tracked among the target population? And if so, how did these compare to the cocaine findings?
Cocaine use is well-correlated with prior drug use (Cocaine is usually not considered a “gateway drug”). But if rates of non-cocaine drug use among homestay students are less than or equal to the rate of non-cocaine drug use in the general population, it may be indicative of a different problem.
By the way, 8 to 24% is quite a margin of error.
“As far as a ‘lax’ definition of sexual abuse, while this may capture the odd case of a boyfriend going for 2nd base, that wouldn’t explain the discrepancy between this sample and the broader population. One would think that boyfriends of Canadian born teens would be just as apt to go for the titties (larger targets??) as boyfriends of Asian born foreign students.” Left Coast @71
I automatically skip long posts, but in your case I made an exception. You make some good points; but the quote I copied above is just plain silly. The survey did not (apparently) ask objective questions such as, “Has anyone touched your chest?” The survey instead defined “sexual abuse” in terms of the recipient’s not wanting to be touched, and without specifying body parts. As others have already pointed out, young women raised in strict East Asian cultures would probably apply such a vague and subjective definition of “sexual abuse” differently than would most North Americans.
Example: boyfriend puts his arm around classmate girlfriend, and then tries to kiss her. She avoids the kiss; he removes his arm, and does not touch her again. Is that sexual abuse? In this survey, it could be; and my point (our point) is that a sheltered East Asian girl experiencing such a thing for the first time might be more likely to regard it as such than a North American girl going through it for the 2nd (or 200th) time.
I am reminded of something I saw on TV several years ago, about a U.S. military program designed to prepare Korean women who were engaged to U.S. servicemembers for life around Americans. In the portion I saw, horrified Koreans were being taught to not be shocked to receive a bear hug upon meeting their new American mothers-in-law. It was pretty funny.
The sad thing is, I (and I bet most denizens of The Hole) really want to be sympathetic. It hurts me to think that any of my former students could be vulnerable to real abuse, sexual or otherwise; and if there are serious problems with the homestay program, then as Robert Le Marmot said, why continue it? Let’s hope the next survey is conducted more carefully, so that we might know for sure.
Milton – I was not involved in the study, but I am married to one of the authors. We have been hosting homestay students in Vancouver for about 6 years and I also run a consulting business in the health care arena. Please note however – I don’t speak for either of the authors.
WeikuBoy – in answer to your question regarding the definition of sexual abuse. Homestay students were compared to: a) immigrant youth living
with their parent(s) and b) Canadian-born East Asian youth living
with their parent(s). Homestay students were defined as those
who were a) raised outside of Canada and b) not living with their
parent(s) or in foster care. Canadian-born students not living with
their parent(s) were excluded due to small sample sizes. Presumably, these groups would have a similar cultural context around inappropriate touching.
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