Actually it was said and yes there is a difference between child molestors and sex offenders.
Well, if I said that then I misspoke and apologize. I'll let the article speak for itself.
I'm not saying that this policy is the best solution to an age old problem, only that it brings to light that there is a problem and that it's a serious one and that everyone you, me and Johny down the street should all be
concerned with the welfare of all children. There seems to be the consensus that it's ridiculous to consider that molestation could happen
on an airplane. Nothing is ridiculous or inconceivable in this day and time.
Ridiculous? You want to know what is ridiculous? By the time they are 18, 1 in 4 girls and 1 in 6 boys have been sexually abused in some fashion. Yet, our laws have proven time and time again, to be more concerned with giving an appearance of safety, not actual safety, and with punishing anyone who appears even remotely like a pedophile instead of actually protecting children. Two teenagers whom can legally have sex caught with them videotaping it? They are now, for their own protection, sex offenders guilty of producing child inappropriate content. Therapy method which reduces re-offense rate to under 2%, no telling how well it could help those who have not yet offended, not ever advertised at large (so as to get it to those who may be in need of it, thus saving a child before they were ever harmed). Teaching young children about good touch and bad touch at public school? No way, that is sexualizing children, and the parents are supposed to teach them that. Not as if some parent might be molesting their child and not wanting to teach their child that what they are doing to the child is wrong. And societies reaction. To many abused children begin to see themselves as damaged goods.
We are getting better at it; less than 150 years ago a lawyer was arguing a little girl named Mary Ellen was an animal. You know why? Because, there were better laws to protect the treatement of farm animales than children back then. Little Mary Ellen was being abused, and no laws were able to protect her as a human child, so a lawyer argued that she was the same as a dog, as a cow, as a pig, in order to help protect her.
Yes, we have come a long way since then. We have come along way since the days of Frued, where he received countless reports of women who were sexually abused as childrens by relatives, but when he spoke of his findings, he was so shunned by the still Victorian-esque society that he created his theories of false memories, which only served to help child molesters get away under claims of false memories for years. And then came the time when we finally realized that false memories, while not like Frued had spoke of, do exist.
Yes, we have come a long way in protecting children. Yet, for as far as we have come, we still see the stranger as the primary danger to a child, when it is family, or someone as close as family who is almost 9 times more likely to sexually abuse them. We see the pedophile as the, only the, and nothing but the only threat to children, yet there are many whom never harm a child, and there are many non-pedophiles who, for, if you mind can even believe, darker reasons that pedophiles themselves, harm children. We have, in our quest to protect it, criminalized child sexuality, to the point where teachers are affraid to hug a kid less it even appear sexual, even though science and nature have shown touch is an essential need of children; where two teenagers who are caught in a unwise situation are no longer punished by their parents, but instead labeled child molesters, for their own safety no less.
Yes, we have come a long way in protecting children, but we have a far far ways to go. And lest you think we are getting close, remind yourself I have not even mentioned the epidemic of physical abuse, emotional abuse, and neglect that sweeps first world countries, much less how much children living in the poorer 75% of the world are suffering.
'It was the best of times' for never before had we gotten so far in helping the little ones.
'It was the worst of times' for never before had we seen how much pain and suffering we are still unable to ease.
