Now, I will be the first to admit that there are some very sick individuals who do some very strange things to little kids (especially among the clergy), but when I hear the word "resources" it sounds like the true scale of the problem is being exaggerated to protect someone's budget from the axe during these difficult economic times.
I recall the brouhaha about Satanic Ritual Abuse in the 1980s and 1990. A media-fed panic swept the nation that children were being abducted and in some cases intentionally bred for the purposes of use in rituals to Satan. Despite many sensational stories in the media, and huge sums of money budgeted for the investigators, not a single case of actual Satanic Ritual abuse was ever found.
One of the most famous cases of accusations of child molestation, including Satanic Ritual abuse, involved the McMartin Pre-School. One of the mothers, an alcoholic and diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, accused one of the workers at the school of molesting her child. There was an arrest, nut in the absence of evidence no charges were filed. That this same woman had a history of false allegations of sexual abuse of her child was kept private, but a "Confidential" letter was circulated warning customers of the school that the issue of sexual molestation had been raised. Fanned by the media and by a local Catholic church that openly called for the death of the main McMartin suspect, Ray Buckey, the situation exploded into hysteria. Parents were convinced their children were victims. Interrogators pressured the children to "remember" the abuse, and forensics tests which contradicted the claims were scrapped while new and unproven testing procedures were tried.
After six years and $15 million, the case ended with no convictions. In hindsight, it was recognized that this had been a witch-hunt in the truest Medieval sense of the word. Popular imagination had run wild, and the people paid to find molesters had seen molesters at every turn, whether they were truly there or not.
In hindsight, it was clear that the children had simply gone along with whatever the interrogators suggested had happened, more in the spirit of a game than our of malice. That no evidence was ever found off the secret underground tunnels that figured in the lurid stories should have been a warning but it was not. The trials proceeded to their humiliating end.
Now, as I said above, I understand that there really are some very sick people out there. But when I hear claims that there are simply too many of them to arrest without more resources, I have to wonder if this is a problem with the economy, rather than with the real crime.
In her book, "Who Stole Feminism" Christina Hobbs Sommers revealed that while rape is and remains a real crime, there was no explosive epidemic of rape in the 1990s. The so-called rape "crisis" was a manufactured issue used to fill talk shows, sell books, and mostly to justify funding for campus rape centers and rape counselors, most of whom sat idle a great deal of the time. Like the Satanic Ritual Abuse panic, the Rape Crisis resulted in a flood of false accusations of rape which had the long term result of making it more difficult for real rape victims to get be believed. But the money flowed to the self-appointed saviors and that was the important thing.
So, I have to view the huge numbers of offenders mentioned in this article and wonder if (not unlike the global warming scam) the situation is being exaggerated to make a grab for more public funds, or at least dodge the budget ax as the economy slides.
If there is one lesson to be learned from the real Medieval witch hunts, it's that when you pay people to see witches, they will believe witches truly exist, and that bystanders, rather than miss out on the fun, will gladly join the hysteria.
Questions? let's hear them @e-mailgary@comcast.net
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