from the British Christian press
Submitted by Jules on March 07 2000 13:15:38
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Shared for information from the British Christian press... For non-Brits, it will help to explain that a history of systematic sexual abuse in children’s homes in North Wales has been recently uncovered... I'll try and post something more encouraging soon as well. With love, Jules Reaping the harvest of sexual abuseby Linda Hopper (Baptist Times, March 2, 2000) “MOST people are just coming to terms with the fact that sexual abuse of children is a cancer eating into our society. But many will be relieved as well as shocked; relieved that by consigning the appalling occurrences in North Wales to a remoter part of the country somehow puts the rest of the United Kingdom in a better light. The Waterhouse Report listed the paedophiles and stated that the Health Consultancy Index, the list of people identified as being unsuitable to work with children, now gives local authorities and children’s charities an opportunity to check that none of these people are working with children under their auspices. In reality, children’s charities are often unable to access the Index, and the Home Office is content to say that they have no need to check out workers and something will be done in about two years time. That is a scandal. But even if we could lock away all these offenders we would be duping ourselves if we thought that the problem had been dealt wit. It is far more widespread than the North Wales incidents. There are child abusers everywhere – in our family homes as well as in youth clubs, summer camps and Sunday schools. Paedophiles will be drawn to wherever children are together. Some people retain the image of a child abuser as a middle-aged man in a dirty raincoat. But in fact they are ordinary people, both men and women – mothers, fathers, uncles, aunts, police officers, judges, social workers, teachers, clergymen, etc, many of them working their way to the top jobs in their chosen professions. . . Having worked for some years with the survivors of childhood sexual abuse, I know that the damage is heart-breaking. Children who looked to their families — or substitute carers — to provide love and affection have found themselves paying a very high price for food and shelter. The very people who were supposed to nurture them abused them. The emotional damage is as great if not greater than the sexual damage. How can you become a person when you have been treated as someone else’s toy for gratification? Abused children feel that they only have a use as far as they can give someone else pleasure, no matter the cost in terms of physical pain and emotional turmoil. Along with the abuse are the most terrible threats if the secret is disclosed. All children long for a special relationship, it is their right of birth; so it is easy for them to respond to someone who treats them as special, a response which then leads to inappropriate touching. When a nine-year-old boy, who has never had a birthday party, finds that a friend of his mother’s is willing to give him a wonderful new experience by arranging such a party, how can he say ‘No’ when the guests have all gone and the friend tells him he is so special that he is going to love him in a sexual way? How can a child who has been ‘loved’ and sexually abused every night by his own father give up his father’s ‘love’ and let out the secret? How can our children know what love is when it has been totally confused with sexual intercourse? But then most adults now see sex as just another activity, no longer held within marriage. It has no affinity with commitment of morality. Is child sexual abuse wrong just because the child is under age? Do we want children to be more moral than adults? We have wanted to believe that childhood is a time of innocence. A child with secure loving parents in a home that gives unconditional love has the best childhood in the world, and the best opportunity of becoming a nurturing, caring parent. But so few value this. It doesn’t fit in with instant gratification or with the individualistic permissive society. The principle of ‘doing what you want’ – what is fulfilling for the individual – has been the altar on which the children have been sacrificed. Society has embarked on a series of disasters, treating children’s emotions as playthings in the game of personal satisfaction. Our children and their welfare have been demoted way down our priority list. That is why we have so many abused children. Family values have been discarded; now we are reaping the harvest. I fear we have much more of this harvest to reap.” |
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