Soooooooooooo let’s say you walked into a locker room and saw an adult, ahem, ahhhh, well ahhh, molesting a child. Hard to say isn’t it? What would you do?
I know, I know if you walked into a room and saw someone doing this unthinkable thing to a child you would yell, scream and knock the attacker silly. Wouldn’t you? And then you would go directly to the police and tell the whole story. I know you would.
What if you worked for a powerful company, school or organization that would find a way for you to no longer work there if you told. What if you would threaten to bring down a tradition if you told. What if suddenly you found yourself without that big paycheck you depend on every month if you told?
Enough of this, the fact is nothing was done with the feeble mention that someone saw someone molesting a child. It burns me up, it makes me sick to think how many boys Sandusky “allegedly” molested. Here is a man who people knew was doing bad things to children and yet for years he was allowed to be around children every day. Go figure.
Here is the thing, stuff like this happens all the time. When will we ever get the message that this destroys lives? It robs children of their childhood, life will never be the same for them, ever. Do you know when personally confronted with child abuse, only 6 percent of people report it to the authorities. SIX percent!! And why don’t they? They are afraid of the consequences. They don’t know who to tell. They even worry that what they saw was not what they thought it was.
This is what I read in my newspaper this morning: By the end of the year, in my city, there will probably be at least 1,000 children who will come to the Child Advocacy Center.. More than 84 percent will be victims of child sex assault, 75 percent will be under 12 and a third will be boys. For 98 percent will have been abused by someone they know. Get this, for every report made, 10 will go unreported.
My plea to you is educate yourself about the problem and report it! This is a crime and don’t you forget it.
Love your neighbor as yourself–Paul knew what he was talking about when he wrote these words in the book of Romans.
