Dear Reader,
In my over 25 years of working in the children's sector, I have never experienced anything of the scope and magnitude of what I am seeing now. Our country is in a state of moral decline and our children are placed squarely in the middle of this precipitous downward slide.

The sexual abuses against Jamaica's children are now at an all-time high, and the ages of the babies keep dropping lower and lower. Of the 500 reported cases of rape last year, several were children under four years old, not including the five-month-old baby girl who was carnally abused and presented at the Cornwall Regional Hospital in Montego Bay earlier this year.

Heart To Heart

Gang rapes are also on the increase, as more and more young girls are being sexually violated by boys their own age.

The questions we must ask are, what exactly is driving this abominable trend of sexual violence, and how do we begin to tackle the problem?
The major contributors to this deviant and criminal behaviour are the influence of the media - particularly the electronic media - and the latest, the use of cellular chat rooms by young people.

A study was undertaken in the United States some years ago in which kindergarteners were questioned to determine their perception and understanding of sex in the media. An alarming outcome of the study was that most of the small children didn't know that rape was wrong. From what they saw on television, the kindergartners believed that it was OK for a man to force himself on a woman.

This steady and calculated conditioning of our children's minds is being orchestrated by people outside of our country, who develop material for children's consumption, and are supported here at home, by those who are responsible for what our children view.

If we here in Jamaica believe that we are powerless in taking on the big boys in the American film industry, then we ought to at least make sure that the material doesn't reach our shores. The stuff is killing our children!

What is particularly dishonest is those who tell you that people are free to make choices, and that parents themselves can decide what they do or do not want their children to watch. Even in the best of homes, it is next to impossible to regulate and monitor vigorously what children view, and even in those homes without cable television, parents are complaining about the quality of local programming, and the violence and sexual overtones from local commercial advertisements.

Let us be honest. There is a huge population of parents, many of them teenage mothers and fathers, who are not educated or equipped to make the right choices. The argument about parental choice could possible apply to highly literate societies, but it certainly cannot apply to ours.

The only clear choice we have right now is for the state to step in and protect us from ourselves. It is the only way it seems to me, to protect the interest of our children - including life and limb.

I have little hope in the integrity of Jamaica's corporate community. It is very clear that profits and principle don't mix very well, even in the face of the blatant attacks against our children. The cellular chat rooms are a case in point. It must be clear to the companies involved that the chat rooms are putting our children in harm's way.

The stories of sexually deviant encounters are being reported with increasing rapidity.

I'm told that some of the most perverse and rawest forms of sex are being communicated to our children by paedophiles through cellular chat rooms. In one case, five teenage girls from a Kingston high school were lured in the middle of the day by a sexual predator to a spot in Half-Way-Tree, and then taken to a house where the man engaged in oral sex with all five.

People tell me that I need to just log on to the chat room for even half a day to experience the levels of decadence that exist.

Every one of us is either a parent or a family member. It should be clear to us that there is an enemy out there willing and ready to kill and destroy our children without any apology, let alone conscience.

If we are not prepared to do everything in our power to protect our children, we might as well call it a day, and just die right now.

With love,
bab2609@yahoo.com

Trousers in Denim

Cream of the 'Crop'

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