A Difficult Issue

"Don't worry about things you can't fix."

"It's not a big problem. The media just makes it look that way."

"Singling out priests as child molesters is just Catholic-bashing."

"People need to stop complaining about being molested and get on with their lives."

"Why are we picking on pedophiles? There are lots of other pervs in the world."

These are just a few of the most common knee-jerk reactions to the subject of the sexual exploitation of children. It's a topic that's coming up with increasing frequency in every corner of the world, in the wake of the latest Michael Jackson trial and the spate of child abductions like that of 8-year-old Shasta Groene. Yet it's a topic that people, myself included, are not comfortable confronting in depth. It's only when the tide of disturbing information reaches flood levels, as it has this week in Canada, that we begin to wonder What's going on? What kind of society have we created? Here are just a few of the recently reported incidents:

• The BBC reported that roughly 3% of Dublin-area priests since 1940 have been suspected of child sexual abuse.
• Desperate Housewives star Terry Hatcher has spoken out for the first time about being molested by an uncle from ages 5 to 8 or 9. She first disclosed in 2002, after another of the man's teen victims killed herself. The abuse severely affected her sex life and led to suicidal thoughts. She hopes that other victims will be encouraged to speak out.
• In Edmonton, 49-year-old Carl Treleaven, 49, has been charged with possession/distribution of violent child pornography, some of it involving newborns. He was busted after he frequented an online chatroom on which a British man was caught molesting his 12-year-old stepdaughter on webcam last year. Treleaven's wife is a daycare worker.
• This month's Mother Jones magazine features a story about a thriving family business in Cambodia: Trafficking in underage sex slaves.
• 40 underage girls were involved in a Newfoundland prostitution ring busted this week.
• Early this year, 40-year-old Toronto actor John Norman Smith, who starred as a surly Scotsman in those hilarious Keith's beer commercials, was charged with possessing over 1000 child pornography images, some involving infants. Another man in his 20s was arrested as part of the same investigation. Norman is married with two small children.
• Dateline NBC's 3-part To Catch a Predator series netted dozens of men willing to meet kids as young as 12 for sex while their parents weren't home (dozens more arrests have been made thanks to volunteers at Perverted Justice, which collaborated on the Dateline series).
• On a recent Oprah, a teenaged boy spoke out about being a "webcam porn star" with the help of his own father. There were over 1000 adult subscribers to his explicit webcam service. Similiar stories are surfacing in cities around the world, including Edmonton.
• In the past few years, numerous female junior-high and high school teachers (even a few elementary-school teachers) have been charged with having sexual relationships with minor students.

These incidents are not isolated. I was molested by a family friend around the age of 5, and over half of my childhood friends and/or their siblings were molested by relatives. We didn't share this information with each other: It usually came to light in discussions with other family members, and in my case it didn't come to light at all until roughly a year ago, at age 27. I kept it a secret until that time out of guilt, shame, and discomfort; like many victims, I made excuses for the person who molested me, hoping he had reformed. Since he was a veteran with alcohol-abuse issues, I felt he didn't "deserve" to be punished. I've seen other victims make the same kinds of rationalizations. "He was going through a rough time...He was molested, too...I didn't tell him to stop, so it's partly my fault." Even victims who do disclose are often pressured not to "air the family's dirty laundry" or "ruin a person's life". I know only one person who disclosed her abuse at the time it was happening (her abuser, her mom's boyfriend, was successfully prosecuted). Keeping the abuse secret results in even greater guilt and shame. In my case, I suspect it contributed to the depression that developed in my early teens and to some of my sleeping problems. And I was one of the "lucky" ones: I didn't experience problems with promiscuity, drug/alcohol abuse, or suicide attempts.

The problem isn't webcams, nor myspace.com, nor any other technology that is being utilized by sexual predators. It's the predators themselves, and the ways in which their crimes are actually faciliated by ambivalent law enforcement, ambivalent parents, and an ambivalent society. The Catholic Church is a prescient example of all three problem areas, because parents are often reluctant to confront or report abusers who happen to be clergymen, law enforcement is discouraged from "attacking" a religious institution, and society at large doesn't really care. Worst of all, church officials have taken extraordinary steps to hide the problem of clerical child abuse and to impede outside investigations. In most cases, offending priests have been allowed to continue their public duties in different dioceses after brief stints in spa-like, church-run "treatment centers". Pointing out that we have an epidemic of unparalleled proportions on our hands isn't "Catholic bashing". Saying that active pedophilia is completely unacceptable is not discriminatory. It's facing the facts. The truth is, child molesters come from all countries, races, religions, age groups, professions, and income brackets. There is no "typical" child abuser. As the examples cited above show, he isn't always the walrus-mustached hillbilly you see on America's Most Wanted ("he" isn't even always a he). And the victims aren't always the drug-addicted, self-destructive wrecks you see on TV movies-of-the-week. They're also relatively well-adjusted people who don't talk about their abuse until it's too late.