PrintApril 24, 2008
Children are like sponges
We've all heard that truism and if you have children of your own or even if you've only been exposed to the little walking info-vacs for brief, one or two hour periods, you know just how easily they can assimilate and regurgitate information you'd rather they didn't. Letting an errant expletive slip from your lips in their presence and than trying to unring that bell is tantamount to the old toothpaste back in the tube cliché.
Now factor in three things: You simply can't monitor their every waking moment, especially when they go from being helpless babies to being semi-independent adults in the making. There there's the millions of pedophiles and ephebophiles that hide behind the First Amendment and the anonymity of the internet as they seek out and exploit naïve, innocent children to sate their sick, twisted perversions. And finally, and possibly the most insidious, is the not my little angel and/or the isolated incident factors.
Case in point: There's a 10-year-old girl over in England, which for all it's worth web-wise, could be the cute, precocious little girl right next-door, who was caught posing as a male pedophile in an MSN [Microsoft Network] chat room and posting obscene messages to another youngsters. The isolated incident factor is revealed in the Sky News report:
A [police] force spokesman said: "It was more cyber-bullying than paedophilia."It seems to be an isolated issue between these two youngsters.
Where do you suppose she learned such behavior? Does it even really matter? Do you really think it was "...more cyber-bullying than paedophilia." or just "...an isolated issue between these two youngsters."?
Almost every First World child spends time on the web, most semi or completely unattended, and there's lots of folks working pretty hard to connect all the underprivileged Second and Third World children to the wonders, and unfortunately the dangers of the World Wide Web ASAP!
So I ask you: do you think the problem of exposing the world's precious little walking semi [?] blank slates to anonymous, First Amendment abusing, sexual perverts is going to increase, decrease or simply resolve itself? Anyone want to bet there aren't already dozens or hundreds, possibly thousands of similar as yet undiscovered stories of 10-year-old or younger kids being groomed to take the place of the millions of existing pedophiles and ephebophiles out there? Can you say exponential?
So I ask you: do you think the problem of exposing the world's precious little walking semi [?] blank slates to anonymous, First Amendment abusing, sexual perverts is going to increase, decrease or simply resolve itself? Anyone want to bet there aren't already dozens or hundreds, possibly thousands of similar as yet undiscovered stories of 10-year-old or younger kids being groomed to take the place of the millions of existing pedophiles and ephebophiles out there? Can you say exponential?
