"Paranoia has taken over child protection", article by India Knight
"Why have we become such a horribly dirty-minded society when it comes to children? Like the salacious weirdos who pervert religion and use it as a tool to see filth and evil where there is none, we have come to view childhood not as a joyful and innocent state, but as one that constantly needs protecting from depraved attacks and abuses."
Update: I recommend reading the comments on this one.
14 comments:
When a child is sexually molested, the resulting adult hysteria about it is usually more harmful to the child than the act itself...the endless questioning, coaxing, humiliation and of course the guilt they feel about their participation in something sexual. I was "molested" as a 4-year-old by a teen girl babysitter...it was more of a mutual exploration and stimulation that happened spontaneously. I still remember how wonderfully "girlie" she smelled. Had we been discovered, the adult shaming of us might have ruined us both sexually for life. Of course there are cruel, coercive situations that are different, but in cases of natural, harmless sexual exploration parents should think long and hard about giving a child the 3rd degree under the bright lights.
Well, Jimbo, that kind of creeped me out. But thanks for sharing.
The mental illness is that of a society which makes such a big deal out of "abuse" without any allowance for scales of grey. Kids--all kids--go through thousands of weird and stressful experiences while growing up, 99% of them are not capable of distinguishing between the death of their dog under the wheels of a car and Uncle Sam helping them get undressed.
The kids don't know to SUFFER for especially evil things until we make a BIG DEAL out of something and include them in the evil and guilt trip! If we catch the abuser without essentially abusing the kid with questioning and guilt to gather the evidence, yes we should punish the adult abuser heavily. But grilling the kid for weeks over something that didn't do physical harm and that they didn't even know was wrong? Come on, do-gooders of the world, cut childhood some slack and don't make mountains out of molehills!
That said, how soon do I get lynched? Well, I guess to avoid THAT outcome, I better stay anonymous, to slow down the vigilantes.
"how soon do I get lynched?"
Funny that you would expect that for a comment that actually brought something to the discussion... ?
Anyway, this is one topic, if there ever was one, that needs to be looked at with a "real-life lens".
For example, it may be that some parents handle this very well, in terms of protecting the child from further damage. But the media mill make sure that whatever we hear of the affair will have the "proper" odor of hysteria. After all, a newspaper cannot report on such events on a mundane tone, some righteous indignation has to be shown here. Yeah, right.
Some other parents perhaps would fare well too, but "cave in" to the pressure when the story is brought into the spotlight (keep in mind that if you heard of it, then that family has to be in the hot seat). Too many people in our society rule their lives by the opinion of others; such people will feel that they have no other choice than to fully play the part of the outraged parents, once the affair is exposed. No consideration for the child could ever take precedence over thy neighbor's opinion!
I could go on forever like this, but there is one other "evil" that just has to be mentioned: the justice system. Child molesting is a serious offense after all, and it is right that it should be severely punished.
But then again, it is also imperative that you or I be protected from false accusations. Any allegations must be proven beyond any doubt, or else it will become perilous for anyone to even come close to any child. And such proof cannot be established without seriously involving the child...
In a certain way, it certainly feels like it would be a good thing that the justice system would punish even more direly any false accusers. This would prevent many children from being traumatized needlessly, and let everyone breathe a little easier.
But then, wouldn't this motivate some parents to hide the truth, in fear of the possible outcome? Thus bringing back the old ways, when such topics were never brought out in the open, and depriving the victims from any help.
In the end, there may be no "good" solution to such problems, after all. Responsible parenting, good communication with children and intelligence in dealing with problem situations would all be infinitely more desirable than any public intervention. But that is utopia.
Funny that you would expect that for a comment that actually brought something to the discussion... ?
It's funny how you only attack the anonymity of someone here if you disagree with them. When is the operations scheduled to take that stick out of your ass, Bert?
"It's funny how you only attack the anonymity of someone here if you disagree with them. When is the operations scheduled to take that stick out of your ass, Bert?"
You are entitled to your opinions, and so is everybody else. What I cannot stand is people that hide behind anonymity to attack others and/or their opinions without rhyme nor reason. People that crap all over the place without ever contributing anything. Shouldn't be that hard to understand...
Yeah, even morons are entitled to a free opinion, so the moreso an intelligent opinion will always be welcome around here. No matter whom it comes from.
As the lebanese proverb says, "Take the wisdom, even from the madman's mouth". Tolerance is in good part based on the confirmed fact that anybody is likely to do or say some good, even those generally considered as "the worst of the worst". For instance, in their days the Nazis passed some nice anti-vivisection laws, and exposed the cancer risks of asbestos and smoking way before the upstanding West.
"That said, how soon do I get lynched?"
[Takes out notebook] Well, mister, I'm going to need your full name, address, social security number, a signed confession that you're a liberal anarchist, and a security deposit. Um, we need some time to gather a mob and get them properly warmed up. How about next Saturday, you available? We ain't got anything sooner, what with the Presidential campaign and mud-slinging and spin-doctoring and [glavin] and all.
Oh, and please be so kind as to bring along your own rope. Budget cuts, surely you understand...
;-)
Back to business now.
Firstly about the linked article's last paragraph: last time I was at the book fair, for TWO FULL HOURS, confirmed by my watch, a small girl was let loose and not only having fun, alas, but constantly yelling at the top of her lungs, as if in school recess or something. I couldn't even keep focusing on picking books. I finally snapped, and the moment she passed right next to me yelling, I burst in her face, something like "Shut! Up! Not ONE more sound from you, ya nuisance!". I didn't feel proud afterwards, but boy! the relief from the ensuing silence was unfathomable.
BTW, undoubtedly I blame the parents. I mean, bringing little children to a boring place like that, for hours, just letting them loose, and leaving their (pathetic imitation of a) care to the hapless Asian/African maid, who doesn't hold a shred of authority on them. (Those "dark-skinned" housemaids are barely considered -and treated- as human beings as it is. It's a national standard of shame.)
Time for the main topic. I'd say there are SEVERAL things more traumatizing for a child than being sexually abused, or even raped. For one, getting killed afterwards, by a perp who doesn't want to leave witnesses. For two, not daring to complain and speak up themselves, in a great many cases, because of the stigma of shame, dirtiness and sin engraved in their minds since infancy. And third, as others have said before me, the mental iron-branding which will give them guaranteed issues about sexuality (many boys abused by priests became either gay or suicidal, or both), even if they could hope to assimilate what happened to them as what it truly is in fact: an aggression. It's not the sex that hurts a child OR an adult: it's the violence of being assaulted and forced. Heck, it's common knowledge that children like to stimulate their genitals at a certain age. I'm sure it's not out of masochism.
There is, in fact, little genuine difference between the trauma of a child being abused, and a woman being raped, fragile age excepted. In many parts of the world, today still, [the majority of the planet today, in fact] a woman who's raped is regarded as dirty, and having a responsibility in the event. Until recently, even in the West many didn't dare file a complaint. Some islamic countries TODAY even jail them under the indiction of "adultery"! Because, and I swear I'm not making this up, they are presumed guilty of [consenting/willing] adultery unless they can produce "four witnesses" -preferably men- to confirm they were constrained into the whole thing. Otherwise, they might even get the whip. Excuse me while I go empty my stomach, I'll be right back.
........................
Ah, feeling lighter now.
Jim,
I think perhaps it's best if I don't sympathize for your "plight". :-)
"My first time? I was twelve years old, and she was a nun! Talk about pressure..." - (Danny DeVito, in Twins)
I fear in today's global atmosphere, such a -rather amusing- line would be self-censored by movie producers. Too "reminiscent of pedophilia"...
I think MOST of us probably had some sort of early experience with another person way before we became "legal". Why, I myself can recall no less than three. In Lebanon, in the Eighties... (No no no, don't start drooling. None of them was anything "to write home about". To my regret!) Still, maybe 4 years is a little young? Well, guess it all depends on what happened. I think it's a safe bet that Jim here won't "reproduce a pattern of abusive assault because of the trauma". In fact, I don't see anything warranting an emergency Confession in church. :-)
For some very mysterious reason, I view God as far more forgiving than those who taught me about God. :-P
Joe,
How do you manage to always crack me up?
No need for lengthy explanations, just answer in a nutshell. ["Oops! I did it again." - Nut expert Britney]
Anon sighed at...
"a society which makes such a big deal out of "abuse" without any allowance for scales of grey."
Well, if people around you automatically assimilate "giving each other a good time" as "abuse", you can expect the deal to become very big very fast. :-(
I wish all the abuse I have met in my life could have been as enjoyable as Jim's story...
No such luck, of course! And believe me, most of what I've perceived as abuse to my childhood had nothing to do with sexuality. More like mental cruelty. (Are you stunned at my revelations yet? No? How puzzling.)
"The kids don't know to SUFFER for especially evil things until we make a BIG DEAL out of something"
Apologies, but now I'm going to contradict you seriously on that one. If the worst you can think of is a pet dog run over by a car or a groping priest, then you have led a very privileged life in a very protected country. I could tell you about some children who have been through such horrors, that their emotions are dead today, as a survival mechanism. But telling I won't. I know you'll all take my word for it. Just think "Darfur" or "Auschwitz". Or "Beirut". And read my book when it gets published.
Sometimes, a child won't consciously realize how horrible things he's been through were. But nevertheless, they'll eat at him from the inside. Trust me, I know. One day it surfaces like a big fetid swamp gas bubble.
Fortunately, for some secret reason children are often braver and more resilient than most adults I know. A secret I shared with a young patient feeling down, because at age 12 he was being treated for cancer... for the second time in his life! That's right, two DIFFERENT cancers.
"If we catch the abuser without essentially abusing the kid with questioning and guilt to gather the evidence, yes we should punish the adult abuser heavily."
This raises some very genuine legal problems, you know. It's not often that the perp was obliging enough to make a video tape of his deeds.
Still, I know what you're actually saying. Grilling the kids is what led to the whole fiasco of the outraging Outreau affair (pronounced "ootroe") in France. The investigators were ravenous for more and more culprits, "dismantling a network", and as a result 14 innocent adults were abused with jail and the stigma of Society until they were cleared. Cleared, released, but their lives in ruins: lost job, house, family, custody of their children, bankrupt, one died in prison...
All because of the prevailing inquisitorial mentality of today which "can never go wrong, for it is supported by holy Virtue".
):-P
Honestly? I feel as if the world, in a twisted Shoah Syndrome, is suddenly overwhelmed with a feeling of guilt because of the centuries during which no child abuser was ever punished!
Summum jus, summa injusta. Extremist justice yields extreme injustice.
Bert wondered...
"Funny that you would expect that for a comment that actually brought something to the discussion... ?"
Yea, verily. Maybe we are so civilized around here, that the competent lynchers would call us "degenerate"? :-)
"But the media mill make sure that whatever we hear of the affair will have the "proper" odor of hysteria."
Is that brimstone, or burning tyres? Myself, I have an inclination toward burning stakes. Wood smoke has such a natural feel to it, especially pine.
;-)
As for the hysterical media, I think Diana's accident is eloquent enough. Had they left her in peace, she'd still be fighting landmines today, and two already disturbed young british men would still have their mother.
"Too many people in our society rule their lives by the opinion of others; such people will feel that they have no other choice than to fully play the part"
Well, implicit subjective peer pressure, now that's a shortcoming from those people themselves. Nobody today is going to tar and feather them for refusing to conform to the mold! Besides, being a non-conformist is the latest craze.
It has been since the Sixties. :-P
"it is also imperative that you or I be protected from false accusations."
France again, a school teacher was falsely accused by a teenage student, and escaped the madness through suicide. Prompting the teen to admit he made it all up because he had some grudge againt the teacher.
I think it was the topic of a South Park episode, "The M word". Every time a child had a gripe against some adult, he'd say the "M" word, and the adult would get arrested for molestation. Eventually, SP became a city of children, while adults to the last one underwent "rehabilitation therapy" in prison, with step#1 being "admitting that you've done something wrong".
In just 2 weeks, the children create a barbaric primitive superstitious society à la Lord of the Flies, until a couple of highway-stranded grown-ups discover the mess, and convince them that false accusations are wrong, and remind them that their parents love them, feed them, care for them...
When the parents get released, and Stan confesses to his father that he lied, the father shuts him up: "Stan, we molested you all, it was a very bad thing, and that's that. Not another word from you!"
Bad taste can carry such deep satirical wisdom behind a paper-thin facade of 2-dimensional absurdity...
"it would be a good thing that the justice system would punish even more direly any false accusers."
Surely. But a child, or even a disoriented teenager, can also become the victims of the paranoid indoctrination from the prevailing atmosphere around them. Often, the false accuser is little less than the Society as a whole.
And as we very well know, "when it's everybody's fault, it's nobody's fault, case closed, good evening my fine fellow citizens".
But I doubt it that God is so easily duped. I think in the Old Testament there is a specific condemnation not only of false testimony, but also of spreading any gossip!
It's like lapidation: no single cast stone kills, but the mob hailing rocks is undoubtedly lethal. In fact, lapidation is basically the custom of cowards. And Talibans, but I repeat myself...
"In the end, there may be no "good" solution to such problems, after all."
There IS such a thing as an optimal solution, at least. Firmness and sense. Like the two very symbolic Scales of Justice, representing the pros and the cons.
Otherwise put: the Sword of Justice alone is useless. Or catastrophic. Anarchy versus dictatorship? "Same difference."
Meanwhile, a harmless nudist like Stephen Gough gets registered as a sex offender, and treated the same way as a child rapist should he seek a job or a bank loan...
Might explain why nobody was left to arrest the Boston abusing priests for several decades. All available men were hunting down stray boobies in every realeased movie, or still-framing Janet Jackson's dances asking each other "what do you reckon, is this oddly-shaped metallic thing leather or a black woman's skin?
):-P
While at it, I'd like to mention a pet peeve of mine: in many places in the West, in the name of some complex-free attitude, welcome kisses to kids on the mouth have become commonplace and "ordinary". Well, call me old-fashioned, but I'm strongly against it for two main reasons:
- Some special displays of affection must be reserved for "couple" love. Coitus, obviously. But uprooting the kiss on the lips from its romantic context is just wrong. Kids will grow up with blurred boundaries, and adults will need to come up with something new to replace the romantic kiss. Possibly something far less innocuous in public!
- Reason #2 is summed up in one word: Herpes. 20 years ago, I was already hearing cases of children who got a nasty case of herpes from the slobbering smooches of icky Halloween-faced relatives. Here in Lebanon, it's even worse: DENIAL. Herpes is labeled exclusively as the name for a veneral disease, meaning that "only whores, sluts and loose men can get «that»". As a result, those feverish rashes that pop up on regular occasions are never considered as a contagious virus.
Any wonder why I'm very weary of living in this country? It's not getting remotely close to reasonably civilised in MY lifetime.
Also, the national stigna on sex means that quite frequently, when a man goes as far as rape, he'll go as far as murder to avoid being accused. They still usually get caught since they have a one-digit IQ, but too late for the victim... And clearly the automatic death penalty for unmitigated homicide doesen't efficiently deter the sexually pent-up typical lame-o losers in these parts. Because, naturally, porn mags are prohibited.
A pity the average ramapithecus doesn't just get his venting-off material from the internet. Unlike islamic Gulf countries, here the Net isn't firewalled like a medieval fortress.
And you should read the article I once found on "the secret sex lives of women in the Arab countries"! It was scissored away by the local censorship, so I had to e-mail the editors to have the missing pages digitally delivered. Ho, boy! These fabric-entwined, ultra-frustrated women are hotter than the Mount Kilauea around their own, um, sacred mountain! They risk their lives every day for a fleeting moment of physical passion, simply because otherwise their mullah-monitored morose existences are not worth living anyway.
In parallel, the Afghan and Pakistani madrassas -religious schools- are "secretly notorious" dens of underage boy rape and "abominable" homosexuality. But one cannot even mention the issue, for it would be akin to "questioning Religion", ergo insulting Allah. Strange how confidently these "fundamentalists to end all fundamentalism" rely on Allah's indulgence?!
Um... I think I've ranted enough for one day. Or one week. Plus, I'm expecting Jehovah's Witnesses back today. The poor candid folks are hoping to convert me to their eyes-shut piousness!
[Grimly cracks all knuckles at once, in a sickening series of snaps, crackles and pops.] This is going to be fun. I've probably read more of the Bible than these two...
PS: did this post break my record? I'm not sure, but I really feel peppy today!
:-)
Not even close. Not the record for length anyway. But perhaps pertinence is more important, and for that it's way up there.
[Blushes] Aw, shucks... :8)
Don't know if that blushing cheeks emoticon already existed, but it does now.
I like your emoticons. You should publish them, I'm sure they'd beat Hairy Potter.
I have a blog, it could be just the thing.
Check out my latest post, and place your cursor over any of the two images for an "apparition" of my latest macabre one, "Skull 'n' Bones".
Another font would render it better...
Those paedophiles are everywhere these days. Like this 82-year-old woman, for example.
Right. But don't let this healthy awareness distract you from noticing other, similarly fearsome ultimate threats to our society and the pillar of its morals. One commentator on the article nabbed it:
"I am shocked and horrified that you included a photo of the 82-year-old photographer with this story. Don't you know that there are perverts out there who lust after elderly women? By publishing this photo, you are stoking the sick fantasies of elder-fetishists, and potentially inspiring a horrible crime!"
Actually, it's even got a name. Pervs who lust after children suffer from paedophilia. Pervs who lust after the elderly suffer from gerontophilia. Even I, believe it or not, have an incurable case of normalophilia. I'm trying to very discretely seek help before this ruins my life... and my afterlife!
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