The boy became a young man. The young man became a cause. The cause became the hope for the country and its laws. Too many martyrs and too many dead. Too many lives, too many empty words were said. Too many times for too many angry men. Oh let it never be again.
What good reason is there for the news to report on an incident such as molestation or bullying, involving a child, toss around speculation and rumor and tie in every major thought-stopping social issue and cliche whether related or not, for twenty paragraphs, and then not post a followup? What reasonable purpose does it serve to whip a community of readers and watchers into a frenzy over an isolated incident involving a child during a time when there are no answers (preceding a trial for instance), and then not report on the outcome or result of the events?
Are we to believe that the first mention of "Man facing rape charges" or "Area teen arrested for bullying" is the definitive statement on the event? What if the charges are thrown out? What if there is insufficient evidence? What if evidence was obtained illegally? These things don't seem to matter as much as the initial speculation, the unfounded rumor, and the redundant "reactions from locals" on those speculations and rumors, which the news media revels in with such lack of insight. Of course there is no reason, it is simply a ploy to sell news media to the public.
The inevitable outcome of this is that, particularly in cases where children are involved, the news media is able to get whole communities riled up about something, have them coming away believing that the whole world has gone to hell or that their children are in imminent jeopardy (as if they weren't prior to the broadcast) or that the kids have all gone crazy, and then not be there to inform them when justice is served and when all has been rectified. If there is no reason for people to be concerned, no reason to fear, no reason to pass unqualified judgment or dispersion, then the news media isn't interested in telling the story.
In reality it is not the world going to hell, it's not the system failing itself, it's not the kids going crazy, it's the adults who have made money selling insanity about otherwise sane institutions, sane kids, and sane sets of circumstances. We live in a world where things happen and then they are resolved, some issues persist and some don't, some gain in intensity over time and some lose relevance. That is all there is, but in order to make it worth the public's while, these isolated events have to be turned into catastrophes, outrages, and emotional pits where we are expected to dump our personal burdens and frustrations. The outrage is presented and then we move on, and nothing is gained. If it was meant to be genuine, we'd hear the followup.
There is a fascination with child molestation in particular that is grotesque in its own revelry. It is pornographic. Adults don't want to see healthy, happy children living healthily and happily, they want to see stories involving healthy, happy children getting abused or traumatized. If they didn't, then it wouldn't sell as well as it does. News media knows this fact about human nature, and it's time the viewing public becomes honest about it as well.
We're all against child molestation and bullying, but all the expressed concern about child safety we're required to feel after the fact (once we're reminded to worry about it) isn't doing anything to prevent it from happening before the fact. Perhaps if we weren't so fascinated with the harm and destruction of children after the fact, we'd put more consideration into how we deal with situations before the fact. We're all for children living as happy and healthy as possible, but that doesn't mean we have to get ourselves off to the stories, speculations, and rumors of children who have been violated and victimized on (and by) the 6 o' clock news.
Children get abused every day in every community, and nobody ever hears about it. Does every parent who loses a child (by state intervention) due to abuse or neglect or any other reason become vilified on the news? Of course not. Only the easy targets get vilified: the bullies and the child molesters. That which doesn't land on the news is that which has become so customary we don't even pay attention to it anymore. Those who are being abused, the children, see it differently. And just as child molestation was once something just as swept under the rug, the "routine abuse" of children that so bores modern America will one day be as vilified as molestation.
It's a sane world with insane people living in it, so justice prevails, no matter what anyone thinks.
Impinging on a child's right and ability to defend him or herself is the greatest way adults have concocted to ensure the victim's dependence and empower their aggressors. If you want to weaken a child's resistance, teach them that all their squabbles should be arbitrated by an adult, give the bullies reason to believe in their own physical superiority over their victims, and better yet, punish victims for fighting back. This is a "tell an adult" culture, and in teaching our children to swear to never lift a finger in their own defense, we not only empower bullies and punish those who would fight back, but we victimize children who could have otherwise handled the situation easily without becoming a victim.
Violence and self defense are two different things. This has been known forever, and yet, it appears the ancient warrior codes and chivalric honor is completely lost on modern civilization when it comes to children. In the old world, a bully could be subdued and rightfully punished. The resisting victim would be encouraged to go on resisting, standing up for him or herself. A victim that lay on the floor and received his beating would be encouraged to put his foot down should his aggressor come back with another round. In the new world, the victim is expected to lay there and absorb the beating, and wait desperately for an adult to intervene. Then they bully's needs are equally considered. If the victim doesn't resist, they are praised. If they fight back, they are punished too, perhaps with offender sentencing even. Both are considered victims, despite the fact that bullies and delinquents are often different things.
This new scheme has all the best intentions. It seeks to sympathize with the bully's plight (the very thing that shouldn't be reinforced), and it seeks to be a neutral overseer in the dispute, but only drives itself more partisan with its insistence that every act of aggression has a definitive victim and abuser. In this way, a child may be harassed by another student for weeks and months only to be dealt the swift hand of justice the moment he or she retaliates--only because the child refused to bring their problem to the ear of an adult who was most likely just going to do nothing about it anyways, or the equivalent of nothing. Is a "stern talking to" really going to set a bully straight? The bully's actions are not considered acceptable by no means, and are said to be the work of a "traumatized soul"--a soul that has to be "pampered" and provided "attention" so that it may somehow find alternative means to express itself, or so goes the theory. The so-called neutral overseers then coddle that soul rather than educate it, with the effect of only emboldening it.
The problem here is that this scheme rigidly applies the theory that children are utterly morally perfect and pure and incapable of handling their lives in all aspects, that only adults have the ability to intervene in children's squabbles (with their self-agrandised "higher wisdom), and that children's transgressions are solely a result of contamination from an outside aggressor. Therefore, even the victim isn't off the hook. To keep the victim from being "contaminated" by the bully, he or she must also be reprogrammed, along with his or her peers. They are given non-violent alternatives that basically amount to self-limiting victimization strategies (society having totally lost grasp of the difference). They are told to either submit to an adult's intervention or submit to the bully's. To a kid, there is very little to distinguish one from the other.
The victims need to know that the adults are in their sparring corner, and if the child comes to an adult requesting assistance to deal with a bully, then that request ought to be honored and non-violent solutions hashed out. Ultimately though, unless the situation is absolutely too hazardous, the child should be encouraged to be the one carrying out the solution, whatever is appropriate. We can all agree that children should not be taught to throw weight around needlessly and act out violently without provocation, and that in all possible circumstances they should find the least violent path possible, but there are one or two occasions where a child seems more than entitled to give another kid a good punch in the mouth. Not all bullying is the same and requires aggressive responses, but some do.
If all non-violent options fail, and the bully is still persistent, the victim really ought to be granted carte blanche to defend themselves, knowing of course, that such action will cause them disciplinary action too. If that's the price for finally subduing the bully (standing up for themselves), then it's well worth it. They ought to be encouraged to greet their disciplinary action with their head held high. Someone ought to shake their hand as they are banished to their room, to a detention hall, or wherever they are going. If, as the theory goes, the bully is simply acting out an inner sense of inferiority by choosing to dominate others, wouldn't it be wise not to give him submissive bodies in order to dominate? Empower the victims, even as they step up to receive their own discipline. The moment a bully lashes out at another student is the last point in time when they ought to be "attended to," such an action should have probably happened long before it reached that point.
And speaking of ignoring bullies until they lash out, let us not forget that girls are just as vicious, just as aggressive, if not always physically, but verbally. Boys bare the bunt of the adult attention when it comes to bullying because physical violence is always more visceral (and adults have a hard-on for all things viscerally arresting at an ignorance of all else), but girls who are relentlessly harassing other children verbally don't deserve to be ignored just because what they do may not result in "bloody noses" and "black eyes."
What we shouldn't be agreeing to is that violence can be eradicated in children if we all just join hands, victim and abuser alike, under the guidance of an adult, declare peace and assume that all is settled. Such claptrap is born out of the adult's shortsightedness, their ego, their feelings of superiority over kids (as if they are in any way the ultimate arbiters of morality that all children must just beg at the feet of), and their desire to be useful. It is nurtured by inaccurate ideas concerning the inhuman "purity" of children and their general shock that children can be just as destructive and downright evil as they themselves are. Bullies are nature's way of holding a mirror up to the adult world and reflecting its image onto a "manageable" size. When an adult sees themselves in a child, more often then not, it's because the child is a bully.
