Let me try and get this right.

Government legislation over the past few years has expanded the definition of child abuse, thus widening the net to capture more people for what used to be quite ordinary activity, and even for assumed intent. They have also demanded that any adults having contact with children be submitted to a background criminal check. Paranoia has increased. We are encouraged to spy on each other and constantly discourgaed from trusting anyone. The media has conducted various scaremongering witch hunts and anti paedophile campaigns which a number of innocent people have been caught up in.

Considering all this, why is anyone showing surprise at todays annoucement that there has been an increase in child neglect?

I remember reading, a few years ago, about a man who drove past a toddler playing beside a pond. He said he didn't notice any adults and his first instinct was to go guide the child away from the pond. His second instinct, that of self protection, made him change his mind and drive away. He had visions of someone seeing him approaching a child and accusing him of molestation. He later heard about that same child drowing in the pond.

Some might remember the story. I googled and found the link. It was in 2002.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,190586,00.html

Seems nobody learned anything from that incident. As a society we all used to look out for each other. Now we are too afraid to interact. People even die as a result. Thanks to politicians and journalists who do what they can to keep the issue alive without doing anything to actually resolve it.

Thanks JC,

I remember reading about that incident quite recently. It is very telling.

You say that no lessons have been learned. In a sense that's true, if we assume that the purpose is to protect children. There are many reasons not to make that assumption. Amongst them is the fact that so little comment is illicited when we hear news of several hundred Lebanese or Palestinians killed in an Israeli onslaught, most of them women and children.

Consider an alternative explanation; that no one cares about the children; they care about prevention of pleasure. They want a stick to beat us with, to shame us with, to control us. In this highly securitized environment driven by fear, allegations of paedophilia have great power. They are almost impossible to challenge because, in accordance with the hallmark of an episode of hysteria, anyone who calls time on the hysteria is himself engulfed in it. The result is the empowerment of an illigitimate security state which undermines democracy and, together with the fear surrounding "terrorism", takes upon itself the powers of judge and executioner.

If anyone really cared about children why would they tolerate the death by starvation of 12,000 children per day, whilst spending billions on needless missiles, bombing populations of foreign countries without even stopping to count the children killed. It's OK to kill children, evidently, as long as no pleasure is obtained in doing so.

We send our police to Bangkok to persue suspected paedophiles abusing children there. Evidently we are not satisfied that Thai authorities are sufficently active protecting their children. But we ignore all the rest, or do little about it.

Do we really care about children?

Best Wishes,
Jim