In which I take an unpopular view...

[conuly]

In a community I'm in, somebody asked if you'd move if you knew you lived near a registered sex offender. And one of the replies was "No, I'd make them move".

*sighs*

Now, I in no way think highly of those who would harm children. We'll assume, for the purpose of this discussion, that the only people who are on those lists have either molested children or raped people - no Matthew Limons, no "Well, she told me she was 19!", nothing like that.

So, you do whatever it was, and you go to prison, and you get out... and you have to live somewhere, right? Where do you live? Where, that there are no children around, at all?

As far as I know, there are no lists of convicted burglars, or convicted murderers - or even convicted rapists, unless they raped a minor. So, it can't just be about protecting ourselves, it's got to be about punishing others...

And let's say it is all about protecting our kids. That's fair, nobody wants kids getting hurt. I can see keeping people from getting jobs as teachers, pediatricians, and so on.

The vast majority of children who are molested, it's by somebody in the family, or a family friend. The rest of them, it seems, are mostly victims of authority figures - priests, doctors, teachers, that sort of thing. While some kids certainly are taking candy from the nice man down the block, and others certainly are being snatched from the streets by men in ski masks, that doesn't seem to be very common.

And here's something else. If you're any good at your criminal activities, whatever they are, you don't get caught.

So you want to protect your kids? You won't do that by shutting off your neighborhood. In fact, the false sense of security this gives you may be more dangerous, I think, than not doing that. Best way to protect your kids is to educate them. That's the only way to protect them, not by trying to remove oh-so-dangerous elements from your world.

Besides. Harassment is a crime. You want to be a vigilante? Go put on a mask, and douse yourself with dangerous chemicals like everybody else.

Comments

[feasel.livejournal.com]

Best way to protect your kids is to educate them. That's the only way to protect them, not by trying to remove oh-so-dangerous elements from your world.

No. The best way to protect your kids is to educate YOURSELF and learn WHAT the traits of child-molestors are and HOW to spot them and HOW to keep your children away.

I'm not saying NOT to educate your kids. OF COURSE you do that. But that will never PREVENT children from being molested...it will merely (MAYBE, because even children who know damned well that they should TELL, don't tell.) prevent the molestor from getting away with it after the fact.

[conuly]

Or you could teach your children the traits of child molestors, and how to stay away from them....

[feasel.livejournal.com]

That too. You should educate your children to the absolute best of your ability, but first you educate YOURSELF and acknowledge that it is your responsibility to protect your child...and while your child can help, he or she is A CHILD. There's only so much that a child can do to protect him or herself, however much knowledge and warning they are given.

Children can only protect themselves to an extent...and the adults who love them can only protect them to an extent too, BUT to a much greater extent than they typically do.

You might want to read Identifying Child Molestors: Preventing Child Sexual Abuse by Recognizing the Patterns of the Offenders by Carla van Dam. It's a very informative book, and it really goes into why parents need to rely more on themselves to protect their children, instead of relying wholly on their children to report abuse when it occurs.

And this is actually a really touchy/painful subject for me, so I'm going to have to stop now. There are other subjects I'm okay debating and nitpicking about, but this...is absolutely not one of them. It's way too personal, I'm afraid. Sorry. :/