The music industry is the main gateway to our values and we are now abused by “flaky” people with drugs, porn and dicey values. We are in deep mess and sleepwalking into an ethical abyss. The youth – a third of our nation – are exposed to entertainers who care for self only and do not embody our values. Parents worn down by fear and economic stress have taken their eyes off the ball, struggle to stay alive, keep the cable, house and SUV and say it’s all for the kids, yet find no time for kids. They just “go with the flow” but forget that all flows go downhill. It’s hard to protect kids from predators when parents are so distracted and they are not chasing riches, they just want their family to survive.

Recently, a chilling concert, Teensplash, swept our kids into serious adult themes and music. Not slick innuendo but the coarse greige of adult fabric: crude people, gyrations and lyrics.Yet it raised no eyebrows, no protest, no outrage, no one was surprised – it’s normal. We are battered so we don’t know we are bleeding. That’s how far we have sunk. Where are the teen tunes and artistes? When did “hard-back” adult artistes – Lady Saw, Beenie Man, etc – become teen idols? Where are the new artistes to entertain our children and gradually ease them into the adult world without the rough baptism into tunes as “Slab Vampire, Domestic Abuse or Teenage Pregnancy”? Who licenses these events for kids? Who protects our trusting teens from inapproprite adult material in public spaces from the paedophiles and proto-rapists who mingle and solicit sex at teen events?

We should protect our children as they are our future. Yet even at home the child is at risk – incest, abuse – in a toxic emotional and physical atmosphere. Recent reports on the rise of lung cancer among non-smokers point to the effect of passive smoke on kids brought up by parents who smoke. As adults, they die of lung cancer never having smoked. Sad!

The child must face real life, but timing is the key. A child worries about an unemployed parent, school work suffers and its life is blighted. A child does not need to know everything and parents who whinge to the child about adult matters only spoil their childhood. Some parents indulge the child to compensate “since me neva hab tings, fi mi pickney dem affi hab butta pan dem chese” and their kids are walking adverts for Gap or Nike as they atone for their own inadequacy through consumption – it does not help!

Musicians and their industry fuel the early sexualisation of our kids. Their net benefit to society is suspect, but they are the source and beneficiary of sleaze with a lyric formula of 50 per cent abuse, 50 per cent titillation. Minibus rape and school seduction are fed by these adult messages beamed to immature kids, who imbibe and gyrate to the raunchy lyrics, a turn-on for a predator or paedophile. We lack transitional entertainment – music, dance, drama, DJs – that speak to “puppy love”, teen infatuation, en route to adult love, foreplay and sex. Our kids go straight from “Jack and Jill” to “daggerin”. Even “cultural items” are of this type. After the nativity play, the next time you see your daughter she is winding like a Rolex on a festival stage, in a pole dancer’s outfit. Kids abroad grow up with age-group entertainment; Barney, Teletubbies, 16-year-old Miley Cyrus (Hannah Montana) concerts; teen stars as Emma Watson, Daniel Radcliffe (Harry Potter), Tequan Richmond (CSI); boy and girl bands playing “bubble gum” music. Later on they graduate to P Diddy, Beyonce, Jay-Z, Snow Patrol. Our adult male and female artistes exploit kids’ events for money, drugs and teen sex. We produce adult music performed by adults in adult venues. In the infant, tweenie and teen entertainment genre we have little to use here or to export. Our music in the adult genre is pastiche and mainly boring. Let’s try to create for the teen market:

Meanwhile, let’s give our kids a good start by doing the following:

*Certify performances for kids and set terms and conditions for acts and venues. The co-mingling of random adults and kids at unsupervised venues is a great risk to kids.

*Create one child agency – Registry, Advocate and Development – for effectiveness. It should also license, regulate and inspect all provision for a child and develop age-group criteria, terms, safety standards and classify acts for entertainment for or using kids.

*Grooming and conditioning are tactics of the sexual predator. When kids deal with strange adults in contexts of unequal power, for example, conductor/driver to student; or which make kids dependent, for example, the adult who offers candy, lunch money or advice, they are very vulnerable. Some Muslims groom kids (as Pavlov’s dogs) to wear an improvised explosive device (IED) and gladly die as suicide bombers by age 12. We must all be alert to the power of grooming!

*Kids must be told of “stranger-danger”. Some missing kids are not kidnapped, but are seduced by a sympathetic stranger, as the parent is just too busy. Adults too must be vigilant to older men in inappropriate situations with kids. The sexual predator may be a “big man”, a queer-looking man or an irie guy with pants way down his backside, bling, sculpted hair, moisturised, looks young; but is really a 40-year-old serial predator who likes 13-year-old girls or boys – it might also be a woman. Our kids are all in harm’s way.

*Issue a code of conduct for performers, promoters, DJs which covers child protection. Bounty Killa could then be censured for his crudity at Shaggy’s family event.

*Register entertainers and venues. Ban those in breach from playing at kids’ events and set terms and conditions for venues used for kids’ events. Building a nation is tough work in diverse fields. If we play our part we can do it. Stay conscious!

Reply to readers’ tax column queries : “When we governed Cayman the zero-income tax model worked – still does. Cayman is rich, we are poor. Please explain why it’s impossible here?” Let me help you: Inertia is more powerful than change and there is no hero in the Cabinet!

Dr Franklin Johnston is an international project manager with Teape-Johnston Consultants, currently on assignment in the UK.

franklinjohnston@hotmail.com