UNITED STATES
Bilgrimage
We Are Losing the War
On the eve of the November 4 election, America is at war. I’m not talking about the war in the Middle East. I’m talking about a different war. On the one side of the battle lines are those who abuse children or allow children to be abused. On the other are those who have declared war on these monsters in a fight for a world in which children are safe from all forms of predation. If ever the doctrine of jus bellum iustum applied, it is here and now. Because the statistics are horrifying. This year, the US Department of Justice cited figures from the Centers for Disease Control that approximately 1 in 6 boys and 1 in 4 girls are sexually abused before the age of 18. Rates of other forms of abuse are also high. This is the here and the now. This is not historical. And it is totally and utterly unacceptable.
We do not live in a child safe society. Predators and those who protect them are winning the war. As dismal as may be is to say this, it’s true, and we have to face it. Here, I hasten to add that in stating this, I am not denigrating or minimizing the extraordinary efforts of survivor groups, individual survivors who speak out about their experiences (even when it means exposing truly frightening individuals – see this blog for the voice of a very brave Australian survivor), outspoken supporters, advocates, and hard-working frontline staff of various governmental and non-governmental organizations who combat child abuse on a daily basis. The importance of their efforts cannot be understated, and I do not do so. However, as I note, we cannot get away from the fact that we are failing children, and failing them miserably. We may be winning several battles, but that doesn’t mean we’re not losing the war.
So what is going on? Why, despite the valiant efforts of all these fine and dedicated people, are we failing on a massive scale? In trying to find the answer to the question myself, I found the best way forward is to think of society as a huge, woven piece of fabric. This fabric is made up of laws, individuals, societal attitudes and norms, and institutions. Child abuse continues to occur because there are ‘holes’ in the fabric. We can continue to round up and put away child abusers as they come to light, as we are doing reasonably well at present, but until we find all the critical failure points, the rents in the fabric of our society that allow abuse to flourish, we will never move forward, forever stuck with the present horrifying rates of abuse. Only by examining every thread of society can we find where the holes are and fix them.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.