Sam wrote:There are still youtube-clips from the seventies and later, where leading politicians of that and later times freely told, that children have a really free sexuality and this is very beautiful. If a child sits on your lap and begins to open your pants... [...]. It is one of the big riddles of german history, why this party still exists. This is not a german phenomenon, I am pretty sure. Maybe that is what you meant by these canadian organisations? While the victims certainly suffered, the thinking behind it was not completely wrong. Sexuality morale of the past was never based on evidence but only on "Well, it's wrong because we all know it's wrong, right?". Maybe society had to learn it the hard way. I don't blame those idiots. I blame almost 2000 years of church morale. But that is what happend in germany. Pedophiles entered our green party, also other parties, and sometimes there were open debates about that sort of thing. "Should kids have the right to have sex". The whole old world collapsed, everything was questioned, sexuality was researched in every way, so of course this as well. Usually with good results. But sometimes... with terrible ones.
My anger towards the Canadian agencies has nothing to do with any kind of position or advocacy.
I'm stuck with more or less American perspectives on many things, including matters of sexuality. I've not observed that Canadians differ markedly in most such matters.
However, on the matter of child sexuality, as far as I personally am concerned: at the farmhouse, what happens between chicks probably needs to
remain between chicks. The problem with chicks is that they're not knowledgeable or foresighted enough to post a sign on the entranceway stating that foxes may not enter. This is one of the major reasons the farmer needs to keep a Winchester handy. This metaphor fails where the matter of 'legal age' arises because for chicks, it's simple: when she starts laying eggs, she's now a hen, and when he starts sitting on fences and chasing away other roosters, he's now suddenly a rooster. We can't say that for human children when even people still living in stone age conditions recognise that the young ladies need to get to be just a
little bit older before they'll have a reasonable chance of surviving childbirth, and the guys need to get to be just a
little older, bigger and stronger before they can start worrying about bringing home the wild boar.
As I understand it, child sexuality
may have bonbobo-like social (bonding) implication, but tends to be more a matter of curiosity. They know something is there, and are trying to figure out what it is. Other than simple exploration, there's no agenda or goal; it might "feel good" about the same way it can feel
really good having your back scratched in those areas where you just can't reach, or having your scalp massaged, but there's no 'cresting' to seek. With adults, it's usually more a matter of sating a hunger, and this is where a child's sexuality collides painfully with an adult's.
There was a girl who'd been fondled from the age of six or so by a "family friend", said friend becoming her stepfather shortly afterwards. He started forcing himself regularly on her when she was still only nine years old, and this continued until she left home for good when she was seventeen. She had stretch marks on her body by the time she was fourteen, and told me she was more than happy to turn her daughter over for adoption because she didn't
want to know who the father might have been ("because, you know, it'd be really sick if it turns out that ...").
Mom did the laundry; did she not see the blood?
There'd been beatings severe enough to break arms, legs, ribs and collarbones, and those aren't the worst of the injuries she'd sustained. Even though she took to locking and barricading her bedroom door, she felt she had no right or reason to say "no" to
anybody to the point of casually "servicing" her boyfriend's friends when he told her to, and passing around pictures of herself naked to random strangers. There were drugs of various sorts, and she seemed to have a particular affinity for the ones that made her puke (trying to expurgate something, maybe?). She cut herself frequently, explaining to me once that when she could focus on the pain the knife, razor or piece of broken glass, she was able to ignore the
other pains she felt, especially the ones that had no definite size, form or place.
I once had very persuasive reason to watch her city's newspaper obituaries very closely for most of a week. She'd told me she was going to try to get away for good. It wasn't the first such attempt.
She tried to tell the police. They didn't believe her, and did nothing but take her back home. She went to the child protection agencies, and they sent her to a mental institution to be sedated out of her mind, lectured at and subject to long stretches of solitary confinement. It seems that people tended to believe that her behavioural problems were the
cause, and not the
effect. She says that
nobody tried to investigate her claims.
I suppose I could understand the police not having a good grip on what was happening. They have to handle
every little thing that comes down the turnpike, from jaywalking to mass murder, and so can't be expected to understand any of it with any depth. Child protection agencies, however, by their very intended nature,
can be expected to recognise that radical behavioural problems often stem from abuses within the home. I can't even begin to imagine how traumatising it must have been to be sent to that
place after begging for help.
She's a sweet girl, and
smart. Put herself through college in
two foreign countries, and put herself through a marriage long enough to have a daughter and a son to keep. She's one of the most loving and attentive parents I've ever seen, and I have no outwardly visible reason to fear for her children.
She was very lucky, or extraordinarily strong. She survived her own personal hell where some of her friends who'd had to endure similar lives hadn't.
Canada didn't help her, and didn't help her dead friends.
