Up to our knees in evil – child porn and other abuses

I and the public know
What all schoolchildren learn,
Those to whom evil is done
Do evil in return. – W. H. Auden

https://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/capress/070207/national/cda_child_porn

By Sue Bailey

OTTAWA (CP) – News of a Canadian link to a major international child-pornography ring is the latest in a growing number of horrific homegrown cases, says a top investigator.

“We’re up to our knees in evil,” said RCMP Supt. Earla-Kim McColl, officer in charge of the National Child Exploitation Co-ordination Centre.

“I think it’s important for Canadians to understand that we get a file like this about every two weeks now.”

I can’t for the life of me understand child sexual abuse. I can understand some other evils, not that I’d ever condone the behavior, but sexual abuse makes absolutely no sense to me. Think if it made some sense, it would have made it easier for me to understand the pedophiles who abused me as a child, and why they abused me. Although it’s very possible that those predators were themselves exploited and abused as children.

When you’re a child and you don’t understand, and especially if you’ve been raped or mistreated, you’re likely to take the abuse as  a comment on who you are and to blame yourself for it. And the abusers don’t generally help either. If they don’t tell you outright that you’re the dirty one, they treat you like you’re the dirty one. Like you’re the reason for their shameful act.

When you’re abused, you’re marked. It’s not just a transgression of boundaries, it’s not just a violation of trust and abuse of authority, it’s not just underage sex when physically the body is too immature. It’s that these children, if they don’t get help, will believe that somehow they deserved to be abused and to have their bodies violated. That they just weren’t good enough as children to get the love, attention and nurturing they were seeking. Sexual abuse is what happens when adults tell you that they just can’t love you.

That it’s becoming so prevalent is, I believe, a sign that we live in a very sick society. A society where women are prodded and shamed into getting mammographies, not for improved health, but because it’s a profit-driven technology. Where many children are forced to be on Ritalin, not for any health reasons, but for behavior control in classrooms A society where capitalism and the pursuit of profit seems to be all that really matters, and where children are seen by some as nothing more than objects for sexual gratification. Considering the kind of selfish and narcissistic world we live in, is it any wonder?

Found this by Dr. Sanity (Weblog awards finalist 2006) – Repression and the Mirror of Insight – about evil and the need to look in the mirror:

https://drsanity.blogspot.com/2006/04/repression-and-mirror-of-insight.html

There is an inner courage required to look at one’s self in the mirror of insight and truly know the person looking back. All of us are capable of the most horrible behavior; just as we are capable of finding ways to rationalize it and cover it up or blame others for it. Psychological health requires that we look into that mirror frequently and understand our own motivations and behaviors and not flinch in recognizing the truth about ourselves.

That is the only way we can begin the process of change that leads to solving problems and personal growth. Recognizing the problem by looking at ourselves in the mirror is the first hurdle that must be overcome. Admittedly, it is not the only hurdle; but without it individuals and societies go off careening off in all the wrong directions–directions that will never lead to the recognition or acceptance of reality, and so can never lead to effective solutions. In psychiatry we refer to this abiiity to look in the mirror and see what and who is reflected back at us truly as “insight”. Ultimately, the development of self-awareness and psychological insight are the keys to solving most human dilemmas that lead to our own unhappiness and misery–both in individuals and societies.

It is likely that true evil never looks into that mirror; never questions their own motivations and always sinks to using the most immature and infantile coping mechanisms. That inability to acknowledge any degree of responsibility for their behavior; or to see clearly into their own souls–particularly on a societal level is responsible for much of the human misery, genocide, and brutal behavior we witness all around the world.

And that is the ultimate purpose of, and necessity for, Justice — to impose insight on the blind; force awareness of the consequences of behavior; and to reflect reality for those who refuse to look in the mirror.