Child Abuse

Oregon man, 96, sponsors
his own wake, “because
he wanted to attend.”

Perusing the Seattle Times I came across an article that said “Hundreds expected to file abuse claims against Jesuits.” Then on Truthout there was an article about brutalizing kids in the public schools. At the same time I came across an article on Truthdig, “Australia Sorry for Abuse of Castoff Kids.” This was all on the same day. It made me pause to reflect on this practice of brutalizing and sexually abusing children. Just after World War II, England sent 10,000 children to Australia, there were two reasons given: the British Government would have to spend less money on the children, and Australia would get “good white stock.” The reasons don’t matter much here because the children were made to work extremely hard and many were sexually abused. I know the same thing happened in our shameful past when we took Indian children from their parents and forced them into schools to make them more “like us.” This also happened in Australia with Aboriginal children. We also know that in other parts of the world children are forced to work in sweat shops and are exploited for sexual reasons. You cannot read the newspapers here without seeing virtually every day accounts of the sexual abuse of children. We also know we have American tourists going to Asia and other countries for the express purpose of having sex with children forced into prostitution. The Catholic Church, of course, has an extremely cloudy history of sexually abusing children as we have learned in the past few years. In ancient Greek society there were relationships between men and boys that were considered perfectly normal, even desirable. Recently it has been reported that some Corporations are resisting laws that would make slavery and child labor more difficult to control. There are said to be tens of thousands of child prostitutes around the world, many of whom are slaves. Child pornography is a huge problem here in the U.S., but also in many other industrialized nations. It is an international problem. When a small girl was kidnapped and murdered not long ago it was reported there were 150 sex offenders living within a five mile radius of her. A woman was recently arrested for selling her five-year-old daughter into prostitution, and accounts of the sexual abuse of children are absolutely commonplace nowadays. If you have read Dickens or anything much about the Industrial Revolution you know how bad these things were in the past.

So I am not surprised to learn that things like this happen. I have known of cases for years and have always been mystified by them. I simply cannot understand what drives humans to sexually exploit their children, or even to exploit them economically in slave labor and such (of course I know there are economic necessities for the very poor that cause them to sell their children into slavery and prostitution). While I can at least partly understand why children might be economically exploited, what I do not understand more than anything else is the actual sexual abuse of children. What is there about boys and girls that create such lust in adult humans? But that is not what inspired me to think about this now. What has now finally sunk into my dim brain is that this is so commonplace and has been for what seems like forever. I do not wish to say it occurs so often as to be actually considered “normal,” but how does one explain the fact that it is obviously so common. Always before when I read about it I assumed it was just some deviant, some pervert, some twisted person who was clearly outside of the normal range of human behavior, someone who had themselves been abused, or were of abnormal intelligence, or something. But many, if not most of these guys who trade in pornography and have sex with children appear to be perfectly normal people: businessmen, neighbors, blue collar workers, teachers, athletes, both rich and poor, and so on. I do not believe there is anything like this in any other species. It must have something to do with the fact that human sexuality is not seasonal and people crave sex at all times. But that doesn’t specifically explain the sexual attraction of children to so many people. It may well have something to do with dominance rather than sex per se. In some cases it may have to do with the fear of contracting diseases from more experienced sex objects, but this is just a recent phenomenon. I am thinking here mostly of people having sex with young children. It is not difficult to understand why people might be sexually attracted to teenagers, especially older ones, but that is a separate question. There is even an organization called NAMBLA (North American Man/Boy Love Association) that wants to legalize relations between older teens and adults. But very often the sex is between adults and smaller children. There are even occasional accounts of infants being raped (and even extremely old women) which, I believe, have to be pathological cases. Even so, it appears that the sexual abuse of both boys and girls, both young and older, is far more commonplace than you might think. It seems to be particularly widespread in institutional settings, like churches, schools, reformatories, and such, but is by no means restricted to such places. I think it may say something about basic human nature, as well as pathology, a possibility that would seem ripe for explanation.

LKBIQ:
Sex: the thing that takes up the least amount of time and causes the most amount of trouble.
John Barrymore

TILT:
My lovely little cat, Katie, has been playing with a skunk!