I was horrified this morning to hear this news story:
“Shocking" sexual violence is being carried out by children against other children as young as 11, according to an official report.
The Office of the Children's Commissioner for England said the perpetrators could be 12 or 13, and rape is seen as "normal and inevitable" in some areas, especially among gangs.”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-25090896
The news report itself is shocking enough but on TV and radio actors read some of the transcripts from some of the young people interviewed. And those comments are seriously concerning. One in particular horrified me. It was from a teenage boy saying about how he had taken part in a gang rape of a teenage girl. And from the transcript he seemed to think “the girl was asking for it” as she’d already had sex with a number of other boys and so he'd not done anything wrong. Though he added “I suppose you could call it rape”!
According to the news reports I heard, one of the reasons the researchers found for this abuse is the widespread use of on line pornography by the boys carrying out the abuse. (I think we can assume we’re not talking Page 3 pin ups here.) Consequently young boys’ sexual relationships are solely that – relationships based solely on sex. And abusive sex at that. If indeed you could call it relationships.
So although this is shocking, to me it wasn’t surprising. In part because of a conversation I’d had just last week with a secondary school teacher. The teacher shared with me a situation with a student at school. The girl confided in her form tutor how she’d “been made to do things she didn’t like doing” by a boy. I will spare you the details but it would have been worthy of the report.
What have we come to? And how on earth are we supposed to get children to realise that sex isn’t some video game? Sex is real, it is powerful, it can be wonderful. But it must be founded on love not abuse. And in Christian theology sex is a gift from God who himself is love.
I recognise that the world has moved on over the two generations since the Swinging Sixties (when I suppose people’s views about sex changed dramatically.) And I recognise that sex is no longer seen as something for the marital bed. That mightn’t be right but that is where we are. However, with or without marriage, sex should be an act of two people loving each other. And this report suggests that is a message young people just don’t get.
How on earth do we start to make sure they do?
I believe that some how over the past 40 years in the different generations that have grown up and wanted to change the old ways, and the way they were brought up, we lost how to RESPECT, what is considered acceptable BEHAVIOUR, what are GOOD MANNERS? and that WHAT I WANT I TAKE.
ReplyDeleteI CERTAINLY wanted to change things from my upbringing, as an physically, mentally and sexually abused childhood, I CERTAINLY wanted better for my, at that time future children, and thought I was doing the right thing when raising my children over the past 30 years. NOW, I am not so sure that I did, or we as a society have done.
We stopped the schools in using the cane, Was this the right thing to do?
We clamped down on the police and the way they deal with people, have we done right?
We have given our children more freedom, was this right?
We live in a throw away society, is this right?
We have gone soft on criminals and there rights, did we go too far?
The list goes on...
I got the cane once in school, for standing in the school doorway aged 8 because it was pouring down with rain at playtime, we could not afford to buy me a coat.
I got the ruler daily aged 4, 5 and,6 at school because I wrote left handed, and when I finally learnt to write right handed, my writing was not neat enough.
I was abused at home from age 1 to 16, because my drunken father came home, or later because my mother was a nervous wreck, beatings not smacks and mental abuse, totally acceptable by social services at that time, there action to give guardian ship of me to my mothers second husband, who did not want me, he only did it to keep my mother.
Police Constable S....... used to give me a clip around the ear or if I really did wrong a smack on the backside with his cane, the carried on his bike, worse than his treatment was he was going to tell my mother as well.
Sexually abused at 14, and no one to tell?
All my clothes and toys were 2nd or 3rd hand me downs.
I had to be in at 9pm or before it got dark, until I was 15, then by 10pm.
Was arrested once for play fighting with my best friend outside a row of bungalows, got off with a caution, then a beating from my mother, she sat on my chest and beat me across the face with a shoe.
I could play in the street or go up the hills, or to conker wood, or travel to the beach, my parents did not have to worry about where I was, we were safe.
We did not ask for mobile phones, laptops, or everything that appeared on tv adverts, we accepted what our parents could afford.
I truly believe we did right with the ways we changed from our up bringing, but I believe we have let things get out of hand.
we have forgotten to teach the basics,
How to RESPECT each other, property and ourselves
How to say Please and Thankyou and show good manners.
How to be grateful for what we have and not be greedy for what we have not, but want because someone else has one.
and That we do not have the right to TAKE SOMEONE else's property, as they can claim it back on insurance, and its the insurance company that loses out not the person it was taken from.
I truly believe we need to bring the basics back!
David. Thank you for sharing these thoughts.
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