Content warning: this post deals with child sexual abuse. It may be distressing to some readers.
What were you doing when you were 11?
You were probably crushing on celebrities and listening to your favourite songs. Maybe you were reading books about babysitters or wizards. You were thinking about what to wear to the school disco. Your parents were probably So Unfair because they made you do your chores.
But for one little Australian girl, this wasn’t her life.
At 11 years old, police say that this little girl was being assaulted in the most hideous way.
For at least two years, police say that her father and seven other men would repeatedly rape her and abuse her in her own home. She was allegedly the subject of the most immoral and violating acts in the place she should have felt most safe.
Together, the eight men have been charged with over 500 offences. There are forty charges alleging that the girl was sexually penetrated. Two of the men have been charged with stupefying the victim (with alcohol or drugs) in order to abuse her. The girl’s father is facing several counts of holding his daughter in “sexual servitude”. Most of the charges (an unthinkable 383 counts) relate to filming the girl. One of the men has been charged with possessing over 200,000 child abuse videos and 4 million videos.
The police charges tell the darkest of tales: This little girl was trapped in a nightmare. A nightmare where monsters were real and nowhere was safe.
Paedophiles prey on the weakest and the most vulnerable and damage them in ways beyond our understanding. They often join together in secret to share their perversions and protect each other. They have flourished in some of our oldest institutions – and for that reason, we only really know about a fraction of their crimes and only the smallest proportion of their victims.
People who abuse children are the lowest of the low. They are inhumanly cruel, according to every measure.
But there is one group lower.
One group more depraved, more repulsive.
One group more perverted, more corrupt and if it were possible, far more morally culpable.
There is a special place in hell for people who prey on their own children.
The people who take responsibility for the care of a child and then breach that sacred trust are so deeply sadistic it defies understanding.
A father or mother who abuses their child and encourages others to abuse them are beyond reason and beyond forgiveness. They are beyond all definitions of what is human and humane.
If you touch children, you are a vile criminal. If you touch your own children, you are a deviant of the highest order.
For more:
Carrie is the survivor of a paedophile ring. This is her story.
Jehovah’s Witnesses failed to report 1,000 alleged perpetrators of child sex abuse.
The cost of child abuse to Australia has been revealed, and it’s staggering.
Top Comments
Where is the detailed research into what makes a pedophile? We have often been told that they are themselves child abuse victims but I am starting to believe that instead, it is a hush hush male fantasy for many men, to abuse children. We are seeing them revealed in droves in the current media, from all facets of society and if most of these men were child abuse victims themselves, it doesn't seem to have damaged them enough to prevent them functioning, indeed being able to lead successful lives and obtaining respectable positions in society.
Maybe if researchers could tell us more about their sickness, and it is absolutely a vile sickness, scientists could develop medication to switch off that impulse in their brain, for those that despise it in themselves or at least we could all be more vigilant in knowing who to protect our children from. The civil rights of pedophiles should be secondary to the rights of children to be protected. Especially if pedophilia is a form of sociopathy, causing them to be incapable of feeling remorse.
Then again, so much of what is sick and depraved and dangerous in our society is caused by men's sense of entitlement to having their sex drive satisfied. It is long overdue that scientists be working on medications that start making this less of a problem for society, like they have been remodelling women's biology with medications for decades. Men will fight the idea but women and children have been the victims of this problem since time began. It is time to acknowledge that men need to take responsibility for their own biology and that sex, in the way that they want it, is not their birthright. Abusing power to take it anyway is even moreso, not their entitlement. Women and children deserve the right, for the first time in history, to not be the victims of men's violence, abuse of power or playthings to satisfy their sexual depravities.
Well said.
Following on from your comment, I wanted to clarify a few points. Firstly, it's not true that most child sex offenders are abused themselves. Not in Australia anyway (I don't know the data on other countries). Secondly, not all pedophiles are child sex offenders, and those dudes, wow, they have my respect. They know what they are, and they seek help before they hurt someone, resisting their own sexual needs. There is a program in Germany that guarantees complete privacy to those men (and 1 woman) who contact them for help with their sexual urges. It's intensive therapy (don't know any details but you can look it up, it's well known) for these guys. The last point I wanted to make is that for all the publicity we've seen recently, we've barely scratched the surface, and it's horrifying. The magnitude of this issue is devastating. The average time to disclose is around 25 years. So much pain.
Not all pedophilles are sexual assault victims themselves.
Things that cause pedophilia:
-Suffering from any kind of assault (sexual, physical, psychological);
-Being raised without any kind of affection from family members;
-Deficiencies to the brain itself caused by any mental illnesses or physical deseases.
Not all pedophiles are the same but none of them chose to be pedophiles.
and one more piece to this story. We need to let open adoption be possible for this girl - a home in a screened, loving, safe, family. You see abused kids then become wards of the state, and then many suffer what we call system abuse. That is, they shift around a care system that only lets the very few uncomplicated cases through to adoption. Many children move through 8 homes, its a disaster for them. Further, in NSW its possible for this man, supported by Legal Aid, to put in an application to say he had reformed and wants restoration. And the courts will hear it. Over 1000 foster families want to provide permanent safe homes for their kids, and you can help them tell Mike Baird to get on with it. Change.org - Streamline and expedite adoption for children in Out Of Home Care in NSW.