The big news today was the arrest of a suspect in the murder of JonBenet Ramsey, the little 6-year-old who was sexually assaulted and murdered in her home the day after Christmas in 1996 in Boulder, Colorado. Inexperienced police detectives immediately focused their attention, and kept it on the mother, father, and siblings of the little girl. The subsequent media attention drove Mr. Ramsey from his job and the family from their home.
Preliminary reports say a 41-year-old former schoolteacher was arrested in Thailand based on a months’ long investigation and has apparently confessed to elements of the crime which had been kept from the public. He reportedly had no connection with the family. My guess would be he was a kiddie beauty pageant follower—it will be interesting to see how he targeted her.
Besides the obvious tragedy of the loss of this little girl, who was only a couple of years older than the youngest kids in my life, is that the mother, Patricia Ramsey, died still under a cloud of suspicion in June of this year of ovarian cancer.
So, I have a point here, other than to rehash this terrible tragedy. Pedophilia has been around since Man started walking upright, but in today’s society, stranger molestations make up only 1% of all sexual abuse cases between adults and children. Studies reveal 62% of girls and 31% of boys will be sexually abused by age 18 and this statistic is considered low. The most horrific statistic is that 80% of children are sexually abused by a family member and 19% are abused by acquaintances.
Nearly every woman I know has experienced some episode of sexual abuse in their childhood. Perhaps there is a disproportionate number of victims in my "community," but does that make it okay?
Even scarier is that the guy who is the molester is most probably the last person you’d suspect. He’s that regular guy, probably white, probably married, better educated, in his 30s, and who will probably have a job where he can be close to kids on a regular basis, or marries a woman with children he’s targeted. How can you profile something like that? He could be the nice retired guy with grandkids next door or the well-regarded historian working for the government with a house in the burbs and 2.5 kids.
With the proliferation of porn on the Internet, these sick bastards have almost unfettered opportunities to exploit children. With a latchkey society, our children are often unsupervised and unprotected in their most vulnerable moments. And to top it off our own ignorance does not allow us to see the insidious way a pedophile worms their way into a child’s trust—even within the “safe” confines of our own homes and neighborhoods.
“Stranger” molesters have no reason not to kill their victim—getting caught would be the end of their existence regardless, so they have no compunction about ridding themselves of the witness who could cause them to be found out. With advances in DNA science and forensic technology, making the victim completely disappear is their best chance to keep doing what they do.
Victims of incest have been violated by the very family members that were entrusted with their care and its victims are frequently not believed even if they do report the abuse. Any chance of having a childhood of innocence is lost. No one still talks about this--and I think this is our country's greatest tragedy. Who the hell are these fathers, uncles, grandfathers, and brothers that think this is somehow okay? Read the advice columns, ask your local therapist--it's everywhere. Just what person, agency, or government is protecting this 80%?
Either way, there is no “better molester” scenario.
Since the average molester molests 50 times before discovery, they’ve already done more damage to more people than can ever be repaired. And, they will probably have created a whole new generation of molesters, since most molesters were themselves molested when young.
My bottom line here is that one offense, just one, would mean life imprisonment in a maximum-security facility, in the general population, where there would never be any chance of parole. I hear the inhabitants of those particular facilities are not particularly fond of people who mess with kids, as molesting ex-priest John Geoghan found out in 2003. Not necessarily a bad thing, I’m just sayin’.
More than 90 percent of all the prisoners in our American prisons have
been abused as children.
been abused as children.
~ John Powell
Published on: Aug 17, 2006
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