Big Boys Don't Cry

--Maria Datsykova

Thou shall not kill
Thou shall not steal
Thou shall not take the Lord's name in vain
Thou shall not cause thy children pain
--The Eleventh Commandment,
Collin Raye

Little child, looking so pretty
Come out and play, I'll be your daddy
Innocent child, looking so sweet
I'll rape your mind and on your flesh I'll eat
-- Daddy, Korn

The sexual abuse and exploitation of children
is one of the most vicious crimes conceivable,
a violation of mankind's most basic duty
to protect the innocent
--David Walsh

Children are the world's most valuable resource
and it's best hope for the future
--John F. Kennedy

But Jesus said, Suffer little children,
and forbid them not, to come unto me:
for of such is the kingdom of heaven
--Matthew 19:14
__________________

I know four men who were sexually assaulted when they were young.

Four, and I do not that many people intimately. I am not a counselor, nor have I ever solicited such information; how could one? Yet it is true: four men have confided in me of their abuse at the hands of relatives, headmasters or other trusted adults. Their response varies from melancholy and confusion to fury. Some have married, some never will. For each, it is a heavy burden.

It is unforgivable to break the innocence and trust of a young person via sexual exploitation -- to my mind, it is one of the highest moral offenses (ignoring the criminal aspect.) We all get to feel the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune soon enough, but sexual exploitation corrodes straight through to the core of a young person's identity. It can never be set aright, though one can hope -- if the victim is fortunate enough and resilient enough -- that the accretion of a lifetime of compassion may help eventuate some measure of healing.

In my limited experience with these four, they are the more sensitive and thoughtful among us; probably, they were the more trusting. All the more pity their abuse.

Poseur "Bishop" Eddie Long -- self-proclaimed imperfect man and accused child molester -- is back in the news last week after taking a sabbatical from his post at the mega church Atlanta New Birth Missionary Baptist after his wife (who held a position at New Birth via "divine ordination") filed for divorce. Apparently the divination decree did not extend to her marriage vows.

People like Mr. Long cannot earn a seat hot enough in hell, IMHO. Long, married father of four, settled in a non-disclosure agreement in May with five young men who accused him of sexual coercion, and though "[d]etails of the settlement were to be kept secret, people with knowledge of the case have put it at several million dollars paid over a period of years".

One can only be re-born so many times. A suggestion for Bishop Long's next incarnation (if not an incarceration based on new embezzlement charges) would be as a Gospel Clown, doing a perpetual atonement schtick before any ministry willing to listen to such a fraud. Not very funny, but one thing Long is eminently qualified to do.

Equally vile is the unfolding case of Ex-Penn State coach Jerry Sandusky and the now dozens of sexual abuse charges he faces. Many of the young men Sandusky is accused of assaulting were predated upon over a period of years and were procured via his Charity, the Second Mile. Complicit in the tragedy are police, university administration, probably Sandusky's wife, and many others.

How can this happen? Surely some of all of these people subscribe to a religion and presumably believe in the protection of the flock, no? Some say in the case Sandusky, it is a cabal of secrecy which surrounds profitable athletic programs. For those in the employ of the church, they have a ready-made cover.

But really, the issue is power. Children have no voice, and especially children of need. Layered upon that is guilt, and a sense of shame and culpability, and you have victims who nicely feed into the cabal. Shame may be one of bedrock human emotions, one not easily extinguished.

Oh that the perpetrators were able to access their own sense of shame, and minister to it accordingly, as only an adult is able to do. Until they do, the repercussions of violence and assault eddy outward. And we continue to feign naive shock when we hear of the latest shipwreck as we plod on the endless march of stupidity, cruelty and idiocy that is the worst of what we call a life.

If we cannot extinguish cruelty in a personal transaction, we will not be able to halt it on a more universal level. Thinking of the multifold abuses that occur in the silence of the church, one wonders if religion enables poor behavior by facilitating or accommodating our primate nature. Through the Confessional, indulgences, prayers and baptisms, one gets a sort of endless mulligan.

But what if there were no do-overs, and one could only sit in the welter of whatever it is they thought was a good decision at the time? What if one did not have recourse to some kind of divine or cosmic forgiveness, and one was stuck with the reality of his actions and the repercussions upon those whom he acted. Might that change our impetuous, self-gratifying nature? Is conscience capable of rising to the fore for the average person? Not as long as social institutions hand out free passes for feeble excuses called the School of Life.

Unless one is dealing with a true psychopath, it is usually not hard to find the genesis of aberrant behavior. The Sandusky's and Long's of the world are probably not ex nihilo.

• More than five children die every day as a result of child abuse.²
• It is estimated that between 50-60% of child fatalities due to maltreatment are not recorded as such on death certificates. ³
• More than 90% of juvenile sexual abuse victims know their perpetrator in some way. ⁴
• Child abuse occurs at every socioeconomic level, across ethnic and cultural lines, within all religions and at all levels of education.
• About 30% of abused and neglected children will later abuse their own children, continuing the horrible cycle of abuse. ⁵
• ^{Almost 500,000 episodes of child sexual molestation are reported annually in the U.S.}
• 14% of all men in prison in the USA were abused as children. ⁷
• 36% of all women in prison were abused as children. ⁷

(U.S. Statistics from ChildHelp.org)