Child Sexual Abuse: Have you been outraged enough?

Revulsion beyond words

Three years and a day to the day I wrote a blog about the apparent absence of outrage to reports and incidences of child sexual abuse, I find myself on the topic again.

This time, the news broke on Twitter about a video circulating of a 14-year old girl having sex with a 4-year old boy. The information shared in the 8 or so tweets was graphic enough with nothing left to the imagination – I was almost sick.

Then to muster the innermost bits of revulsion a human-being could dare to gather, a link was posted to the video for the apparent viewing of others and maybe for their titillation, excitement or just plain curiosity – it was absolutely wrong to do.

Is there any adult supervision

I am left aghast at the apparent lack of outrage and in some case the particular and peculiar interest in this video by some who should for all intents and purposes know better.

To think that someone on observing this devilishly heinous and criminal act thought it better to record the event and then post the recording online is beyond belief, it leaves me speechless and wondering if our society has suddenly become bereft of adult supervision.

I know issues of child sexual abuse are complex and difficult, too many times the perpetrators have walked free, the victims only getting physical examinations with no attention to their mental state or welfare and everyone will rather the whole matter were hushed up than report the issue, start criminal proceedings and face that unfortunate stigma that ensues.

Uncomfortable truths

We have to come to some decision on these matters because a good deal of the sexual abuse I encountered and those I have learnt of occurred under the roofs of places where children are supposed to be safe and secure –in their parents’ homes – one will think there is no safer place for a child to be and yet it is within that setting that many children have been sexually abused.

We also have to address another issue which is that of boys being sexually abused by females. It happens a lot and many think to have lost your sexual innocence to heterosexual sex being guided by a more mature female is a good thing. The fundamental is this – a child is still a child is still a child and if that kind of education was wholesome, legal and wonderful, it would be on the curriculum – it is NOT!

Children should not be having sex. Period!

Give ‘em therapy too

There is enough information out there about sexually abused children rarely growing up to have fulfilling and wholesome sexual lives. Many have taken serious sexual risks that have led to more complicated and damaged lives, sadly, the Genesis of such lifestyles are buried too deep in the psyches for remedial intervention except for some miraculous touch.

It goes without saying that we need to become more amenable to therapy, any one child who has been touched, violated or sexually abuse needs to be offered therapy, counselling and some additional comfort and help.

We do not just forget these things as time rolls by, we are literally marked by our experiences and even if we do not recall the horrors of abuse or the pleasures, if you may of pederasty, the amazing inner recesses of our memory have made an indelible record of the abuse and the lack of essential support that should have been offered at that time.

There needs to be more outrage – no child should have to suffer any kind of sexual abuse without the perpetrators being brought to book and the child getting all the medical, physiological and psychological help and welfare that can be gathered for their support.