I write virtually every day. Sometimes I write about politics, sometimes social issues and sometimes just a rant about poor customer service or some other issue that;s on my mind. . I also write about children at risk and they are the most difficult articles to write. I find it difficult to control my anger as I try to speak out about what we are doing and are allowing to happen to our children.
Every ytear in North America, more than five children a day are killed by members of their own family/. Since 2006 more than 800,000 children in the United States and 60,000 in Canada have gone missing and more than 1,000 children in the care of Child Protection Services in the United States are murdered annually.
These are our children but nobody talks about them.
I got up about 4:30 this morning. I wasn’t all that happy about it because I like lying in bed but lately, I’ve been haulin’ butt out of bed at ridiculous hours in the early morning. Sometimes I wonder if it is a function of getting older. Your body needs more sleep but damned if it doesn’t sense the time clock ticking down to eternity and try to rouse you not to waste any more time than necessary.
Anyway, up I got and dragged my butt downstairs to make lunches for Keina and the Maggmeister. This is one of my jobs. I make their lunches and then trundle them off to school and work later in the morning. I don’t actually mind doing it, I do most of the cooking here and Maggie does most of…ok….all of the baking.
I don’t like to bake, it’s way too finicky. Everything has to be measured and it reminds me of filling out a tax return. No estimates, no approximations, you have to follow the rules precisely. I’d rather cook, you don’t measure anything and if you make a mistake, you can just toss in something or other to correct it. Try doing that on your tax return and see how far it gets you.
So I finished the lunches, made myself a fresh Tassimo and went into the living room to catch some news. It was the usual reportage and I sometimes think I could be on Mars for a few weeks and when I returned, the news would be pretty much the same as it was the day before I left. Nothing much changes or if it does, the mainstream media are keeping it to themselves.
I was about to switch channels to the Olympics when a story about license plate theft in Edmonton, Canada caught my attention.
In the space of five days, Canada and the United States each experienced terrible mass shootings rampages of senseless violence that are virtually impossible to comprehend.
In Toronto, Canada twenty-one people, including a three-month old baby, were shot at a barbeque in an inner-city neighbourhood. Two people were killed. In 1989, Marc Lepine entered École Polytechnique in Montreal and shot twenty-four people, killing fourteen women.
Yesterday, seventy-one people were shot in a movie theatre in Aurora, Colorado; twelve were killed and memories of Columbine and Virginia Tech rush back with all their weight of needless death and horror.
These are moments that go beyond mere tragedy. They are horrific events that tear the hearts out of survivors and the families of those who were wounded or killed. Nobody touched by these moments of callous violence will ever be the same again nor will our societies.
"There can be no keener revelation of a society's soul than the way in which it treats its children."
Nelson Mandela
You can tell a great deal about a society by what it does and what it talks about. What it talks about represents what it holds to be important; what it does demonstrates its level of commitment to it. Together, they underscore a society's values.
In Canada and the United States, it appears that we hold a number of things to be very important. Politics is at the top of the list followed closely by the economy, the environment and various entitlements. Nothing galvanizes action like a threat to our entitlements as we have seen recently with the absurd student riots in Quebec over a planned increase in tuition that is the daily equivalent of half the cost of a bad cup of coffee.
Do you know what is not on the list? Protecting our children!
Let me clarify that a bit. There is always anger in Canada these days, usually directed at the Conservative government. We have evolved from being the nice guys in the world to being like everyone else; loud and brash with hair-triggers on our angry and too often, ill-informed opinions. Much of the recent anger has been directed at the government and more specifically, Prime Minister Stephen Harper.
But the anger in much of Canada is focused on something else today. Graham James was convicted and sentenced to two years.
For my non-Canadian readers and friends, let me provide a little background. Graham James is a former hockey coach who is a convicted pedophile. He is our version of Penn State’s accused child molester, former football coach Jerry Sandusky with the only difference being that Mr. Sandusky has yet to be convicted of anything.
Mr. Graham is not only a convicted child molester, he is a convicted serial child molester and yesterday he received a two-year sentence for his second conviction.
Canadians are angry.
Editorials have been written. People have called online radio programs to voice their outrage. There are criticisms of the judge in the case for exercising too much discretion in passing sentence, for not understanding the true nature of the case or for just being an idiot. There are demands that the government do something to protect children and to limit the discretionary authority of judges when it comes to sentencing.
Canadians are justifiably concerned and they are angry. They were also angry when the current government introduced its comprehensive crime bill which dealt with two main areas; violent crime and the crime of sexual child abuse. The new bill moves to limit the discretionary authority of the courts when it comes to sentencing.
At the time it was introduced, many Canadians criticized the legislation as draconian, it was oppressive and just one more example of the totalitarian fascist state that Prime Minister Harper was introducing into Canada. He was accused of being obsessive about crime and for trying to impose regressive punishment on convicted criminals instead of introducing new measures to combat the causes of crime. The criticism against the bill was based more on dislike of the Prime Minister than anything even closely resembling common sense.
Until this morning.
This morning the same media and many of the same Canadians who failed to recognize that the government had, perhaps, correctly identified the problem with our courts and had introduced the needed legislation to try to correct that problem are now demanding the government they criticized do something.
It is national schizophrenia fueled by blind ideology and ill-informed thinking or more likely, just a complete lack of common sense. Perhaps it is all three. Take your pick.
Canadians are angry because a convicted serial child molester has once again received a light, inappropriate sentence. They are right to be angry. In this country, a bank robber receives a stiffer sentence than Mr. James received for his second child sexual assault conviction. There is something wrong with a justice system that has such inverted values.
There is also something wrong with a society when too many within it fail to recognize until after the fact, when a government they have decided to hate actually gets it right. As Christie Blatchford of the National Post wrote, the Graham James sentence is "par for the course| and that is neither a surprise to the government nor should it have come as a surprise to Canadians. The travesty is that too many Canadians refused to acknowledge that in their blind opposition to the Conservative government's crime bill because they were simply opposed to the Conservatives under Stephen Harper.
It doesn’t matter whether you support one political ideology or another. What matters is when you allow ideology to make you so blind to common sense, you actually end up opposing the very thing you want and need simply because the political party or leader you hate is introducing it.
If this bill had been passed two years ago when it was first introduced by the Conservative minority government Mr. James might well be serving a much longer sentence today. But it wasn't. It died on the order paper, just one more victim of politics and ideology undermining common sense.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper
Canadians are right to be angry today. They should be angry with Mr. James and with the courts. What has happened is not justice nor is it moral.
But many Canadians should also be angry with themselves for the hypocrisy of allowing ideology and delusions to cloud their judgment. The one person they have no right to be angry with is the prime minister. He saw these problems with our courts years before and moved to do something about it. For that he was ridiculed and called a fascist.
Perhaps if Canadians had listened and actually thought for a moment instead of giving in to hysterical and unfounded fears, Mr. James would not be now serving a sentence that will see him released after having served only six months.
And that, my friends, is just one more price a society pays when people recklessly abandon common sense to emotional knee-jerk reactions based on nothing more substantial than a dislike for someone. As the former victim of not one but two sexual predators when I was a child, I'm tired of this rampant and willful blindness interfering with finding consensus on resolving the most serious issues we face.
There is a dirty little secret about abuse and the damage it does. There are too many victims but not everyone is content to remain a victim. Some, sometimes with help, sometimes alone, overcome the gift that keeps on giving. The truly brave ones bring it out into the light, not in a search for sympathy, but to expose to the light the darkness thrust on them by someone else.
I invited today's guest contributor to share her story, not the petty details but the dark side the abused go through in order to find the life we were meant to have. She kindly consented and I admire her for the courage it takes to expose yourself to the world without reservation or apology.
She has a real name but I met her as Rainbow Woman and she will remain Rainbow Woman to me. She exemplifies what life can be like after the storm and I admire her courage and for the optimism she reclaimed in her life.
Two weeks ago, two little boys were murdered by their father, hacked to death with an axe and then burned in the house he torched to take his own life along with theirs. Now it’s a little girl, who is dead and those responsible appear to be her own family.
Savannah Hardin, just 9 years old died after her step-mother and her grandmother forced her to run outside their home for three hours. It was punishment for lying about eating candy. The little girl became dehydrated and later died of a seizure.
History is littered with the indoctrination of children by totalitarian regimes. Nazi Germany had the Hitler Youth. The Soviet Union, North Korea, China and others all moved to control their societies by indoctrinating children at an early age. Children as young as kindergarten age were educated in the ideology of the state with heavy emphasis on the state's view of history, it's enemies and physical training. In virtually every case, there is a strong militarism nature to the training which in many cases included weapons and unarmed combat.
There are many ways to gauge the health of a society. The condition of its economy, the effectiveness of its political leadership, how united or divided the people are on the issues they face and so on. How a society treats its most vulnerable is probably the most accurate form of measure because it speaks to the heart of that society’s values.
There is no more vulnerable group in our global society than children and we aren’t measuring up.
