[I originally posted this on a reddit discussion, link's at the bottom]
One day, my friend Bryan was charged with the daunting task of getting Ellie, one of the older and more difficult students, to read out of a children's book for a distinct and measurable amount of time.
After some cajoling, pleading, and maybe even trickery, the two were finally sitting down at a table with myself and another student. To keep Ellie in control long enough to read more than a sentance was a complicated maneuver, but the best way (this was relayed by the teacher-coordinator person) involved being really close with him and loosely holding him in place. I don't know much about Ellie's potential conditions or history, but this makes some sort of sense. Suffice it to say, they were close, but in a totally appropriate manner (I was in a position to guage, because I was basically staring in awe the entire time)
But a few minutes in, Ellie decides he's done reading for the day. And for one reason or another, he jumps up out of the bench seat, pointing an accusatory finger at his tutor. His English wasn't super clear, and he wasn't being very loud (thank god), but I did catch "touch" and "special area."
The two of us are frozen in horror. What can you say but "I... b... no..."? Ellie maintains this outrage long enough to really get some good satisfaction out of the looks on our faces, and then he relents and just starts laughing at us.
What if someone walking by had heard? We were in a partially exposed church basement kind of area, so it's not unheard of for random people to be walking by - and the cry of abuse stirs the indignation better than most anything else - so there was a really good chance that something really awful was about to happen.
But it didn't.
So the question was, what do you do now? We tried to impress upon him never to do something like that again, but he clearly didn't grasp the full potential force of his actions. We were like 20 at the time, and ill-equipped to deal with children on this level, so we probably should have relayed the event to an adult of some sort, but we were too worried about how it would be perceived, so we just moved on.
Neither of us stopped volunteering because of the incident, but I'll never forget the sinking dread of that instant, that's for sure.
I'll never forget when my two oldest kids (now in their 20s) went to one of those early head-start kind of places when they were a kid.
One week the lesson was on inappropriate touching. I know this because both kids spent the next month inappropriately touching everybody they met -- with some very humorous results.
Of all the things that have changed in the last 40 years or so, this thing we've done where we've trained everybody to be afraid of each other is probably the worst. Every day parents are bombarded by statistically highly-unlikely events that they take to be commonplace. It's made an awful impact on the fabric of society. Very sad.
All the french people in the audience will remember the Outreau trial ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outreau_trial ) where several innocent people spent years in prison and one commited suicide, all that based on the lies of two persons and bogus psychiatric expertise of the children. The media also took a big part in this debacle. I think it really made people realize something here, I don't think this could happen again anytime soon. I hope you won't have to live something like that in the US to make things change.
People should be presumed innocent unless proven guilty, not the other way around. The modern western society would have us think otherwise (and not only for child molesting, see CCTV, airport screenings, ...).
Ah, but we did live through it in the '80s with the satanic abuse hoax, and we didn't learn anything. In fact, the people involved in pushing the hoax were rewarded with higher office. See http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405274870428120457500... for a good writeup of the case.
In reading about these child abuse cases I was struck by how familiar they sound to the Witch Trials of the 17th Century.
We have prosecutors convinced they have discovered a hidden evil and that it is more widespread than people like to think. They sometimes have children as witnesses. They have false confessions from the accused. And we have bodily investigations of "secrete places" either to confirm that sexual abuse has taken place or the devil "knew" was familiar with the accused. And we have bizarre stories of strange practices, which are credulously believed.
It is like there is some universal process going on here. Communities require these expressions of hidden evils. And if you doubt the veracity of these claims then you are suspect too.
I don't think this paranoia is a new phenomenon to human society. What changes is the topic, but not the underlying need we have in human society for these expressions.
There was a campaign like that in the UK - the kids were given dolls with somewhat impressive external genitals. If the kids touched the genitals that was evidence that they were being abused.
Apart from the fact that dolls of adults with penises are rather unusual and likely to produce an odd reaction - the same logic suggests my nieces are being abused by the lion from Lion king.
Kids aren't stupid and they are mischevious. Little kids in Brooklyn already mess around with older people by yelling "pedo" at them. I've seen more than one dark British comedy where this is a repeated joke. When adults get too neurotic about stuff kids end up using it against them.
By far, the most gruesome example of this was the Salem Witch Trials, which lead to the deaths of 51 innocent people. This was a clear case of children sensing fear in adults and using it against them. The driving force of the murders (for they really were murders) was a few girls in their early teens. Past a certain point, the judge and some of the town elders almost certainly knew that the girls were lying, but none of the adults could afford to appear to be soft about confronting the Devil. Each adult needed to appear, to the other adults, as if they were taking a strong stand against Satan, and the young girls sensed this tension, and manipulated it in gruesome ways.
That's how society gets rid of future kids (AKA "solving problem of overpopulation").
The more dangerous it is to deal with kids (because of potential legal consequences), the less people want to deal with kids.
End result: childcare (formal and informal) is getting more expensive, potential parents have less children or don't have children at all.
It's surely more pointing out the absurdity of adults being so petrified of terrorists/pedophiles/etc Basically everything the media tries to make us scared of.
We were like 20 at the time, and ill-equipped to deal with children on this level, so we probably should have relayed the event to an adult of some sort
At 20 you are an adult of some sort, and have been for some time. The only problem I see in the story is you don't act like it.
At 20 I had more than a decade of odd job work experience. It is just funny to see people who have such a different idea of what they are responsible for.
I had been working face to face customer service for my mom's business since I could talk - it could never have prepared me for this situation, as I suspect is the case with your odd job experience, but that's not the point.
I didn't have a problem with saying I didn't handle the situation like an adult - at no point did I contend that I did. But we were taking as much responsibility as we could feasibly handle, this just went above and beyond what we were prepared for.
So I hope you understand when I take exception to you suggesting that we didn't take on enough responsibility. This organization was filled entirely with people who wanted only to help their community by taking on additional responsibilities.
You could argue that we were irresponsible to take on such roles if we were unprepared, but there was nobody else stepping up to help out. This was in a town of 40k college students, most opting to spend that saturday morning getting some extra sleep or nursing a hangover.
So when you say it's "funny to see people who have such a different idea of what they are responsible for," I say "Yes. Yes it is."
So I hope you understand when I take exception to you suggesting that we didn't take on enough responsibility.
Where did you take on responsibility? You went in to a situation where responsibility was required and when even the slightest hint of responsibility was necessary you said "I am not responsible, I am not even an adult". When you were clearly responsible and clearly an adult. Helping other is admirable. Flipping out and disclaiming responsibility at the slightest hint of trouble not so much.
But a few minutes in, Ellie decides he's done reading for the day. And for one reason or another, he jumps up out of the bench seat, pointing an accusatory finger at his tutor. His English wasn't super clear, and he wasn't being very loud (thank god), but I did catch "touch" and "special area."
The two of us are frozen in horror. What can you say but "I... b... no..."? Ellie maintains this outrage long enough to really get some good satisfaction out of the looks on our faces, and then he relents and just starts laughing at us.
What if someone walking by had heard? We were in a partially exposed church basement kind of area, so it's not unheard of for random people to be walking by - and the cry of abuse stirs the indignation better than most anything else - so there was a really good chance that something really awful was about to happen.
But it didn't.
So the question was, what do you do now? We tried to impress upon him never to do something like that again, but he clearly didn't grasp the full potential force of his actions. We were like 20 at the time, and ill-equipped to deal with children on this level, so we probably should have relayed the event to an adult of some sort, but we were too worried about how it would be perceived, so we just moved on.
Neither of us stopped volunteering because of the incident, but I'll never forget the sinking dread of that instant, that's for sure.
http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/e7l16/i_work_with...