Go to The Reverend Kooka Speaks About Religious Bulls#!t
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- Go to THE CHURCH IS MORE DANGEROUS FOR YOUR CHILDREN THAN STRANGERS
kooka_lives - I raised two girls which is a slightly different set of rules
The funny thing is, I never had any fear of sending them to church. If I had boys, I would have no doubt thought differently.
posted by
gomedome
on August 11, 2008 at 8:12 PM
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Gomedome
I will very much agree that the comparison is not really fair due to the very differing nature of the two situations. After all a random stranger is not going to have as many chances of being alone with a child as someone in a position of trust in their religious institution. But the idea I have very often seen from people is you teach your child to be afraid of strangers to the point where they jump at all shadows but then teach them they can trust anyone that goes to church with them. The foolish paranoia that many parents teach their kids now days in not healthy and is very often misdirected.
posted by
kooka_lives
on August 11, 2008 at 6:47 PM
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kooka_lives - I think this is an apples to grapes comparison, it's not even
close enough to be apples to oranges.
It also smacks of one of those types of truths that may in fact be supported by hard data and statistics but as a comparison tells us little. A more accurate comparison would be between the church and other institutions where a level of familiarity is developed between the child and a person in authority. I do however agree that making children paranoid little schizoids while attempting to streetproof them is not the way to go.
posted by
gomedome
on August 11, 2008 at 6:33 PM
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Fineyoung
You are completely right there. The people who are most likely to abuse children are close friends and family members. Basically those who the child trusts the most, which is really sad. As I was saying to mysteria, part of the problem has been in the past the family knew what was going on but just looked the other way. After all you wouldn't want to make the neighbors get the wrong idea about your family.
You should watch the episode of Bullshit I talked about in my post here. It would be season 6, episode 8, my guess is the title for the episode is 'Stranger Danger'. There was also a great episode of South Park a few years back that took a great look at this issue. The news kept making the parents more and more paranoid by talking about statistic and finally it got to the ones you refer to here and all the parents decided to send all the kids away because they couldn't trust themselves.
Paranoia is not the way to do it. It messes kids up. I do know of many kids who are scared that something will happen to them if they ever leave their house alone. Your best approach is to teach your kids common sense and make sure they feel they can tell you everything
posted by
kooka_lives
on August 11, 2008 at 7:47 AM
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mysteria
It is slowly going away. A big part of that is that when we as a society talk about it and confront it and admit the truth about what is going on, then the problem is something that can be dealt with. In my grandparent's generation you never talked about it, never admitted such things took place and just allowed it all to happen, and it was a bad problem tat no one would admit to at that time. As long as we keep being more and more honest about such issue, they will become a smaller and smaller problem. Of course what we have just seen, that seems to be confirmed by these findings, is that the churches are still trying to deny they have such problems or they make excuses for their priests and try to hide the problem. That only makes it worse. The more areas in our society who openly say there is a problem and who openly go after those who are at fault, making it so fewer and fewer are getting away with this, the more we can combat this and really make it an event that rarely happens.
posted by
kooka_lives
on August 11, 2008 at 7:38 AM
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benzinha
Your average over-protective parent is very rarely rational.
posted by
kooka_lives
on August 11, 2008 at 7:31 AM
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Re: it's however, not higher, than the rate of molestation accusations by
http://www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/cb/pubs/cm06/cm06.pdf for 2006 child abuse statistics. It's rather alarming.
posted by
FineYoungSinger
on August 11, 2008 at 5:32 AM
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it's however, not higher, than the rate of molestation accusations by
fathers. Therefore, using this logic, children are even less safe in their own homes.
posted by
FineYoungSinger
on August 11, 2008 at 5:23 AM
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i hope the day comes posthaste in which these subjects will be
just pieces of dust in the corner of our collective mind. I hope that the mistreatment inflicted on the weak is on its way out of the gene pool...i think it is, but sometimes you have to wonder
posted by
mysteria
on August 10, 2008 at 9:35 PM
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Statistics, facing realities, not as much fun as rampant fear mongering, no
????
But more babies are in more danger, meaning kids, in cars with parents and neighbors than anywhere else....and death is a heavier outcome than molestation....
Statistics piled upon statistics and still we lock our kids inside the house or drive them to school rather than letting them walk, which IS safer than driving them.
posted by
benzinha
on August 10, 2008 at 8:41 PM
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