Pedophilia: The Exploitation of Children

Pedophilia The Exploitation of Children: A few years ago a friend of a friend's husband was arrested for involvement with child pornography on the internet. I do not know the details but this man was a respected Christian judge. He was sentenced to prison and served about two years in prison.

How in the world did a respected, responsible citizen get to this point in his life?

We are told that pornography is addictive and like other addictions reguires more and more to satisfy? In the case of porn, more explicit and sometimes one may go from adult to child porn?

I heard very early one morning recently a report that was beyond the imagination of normal adults in a civilized country; the arrests and busting up of a Pedophilia Molestation Ring on the internet. Children, one as young as eigthteen months, were being brutaliy and sexually molested.

Recently, my daughter, Dr. Janice Crouse wrote a book about "Children at Risk," addressing the problem.

My mother was born in 1885. Her father, Charles Dick had died when she was a baby and a few months before her younger brother was born. (Charles Dick had gone hunting on Christmas day. He caught a cold which turned into flu and pneumonia).

At age 2, my mother, her five siblings and pregnant widowed mother were moved from Clay County, Alabama to her grandfather's farm in the Inman community in Fayette County, Georgia.

My mother grew up in a little house on her grandfather’s farm. Her grandfather was a community and church leader. He was a respected Methodist preacher and owned a large farm.

But this was in the late 19th century. The South was still in reconstruction. Many who still owned land were "land poor." Some of the children had to drop out of school and work in the cotton fields and some got jobs in a cotton mill nearby to help support their widowed mother and siblings.

My mother's youngest brother, Irvin Dick we are told, got a job at age 12, running an elevator in a Cotton Mill about 15 miles from their home in Inman Georgia.

In 1988, my brother and a cousin and I rode together to Griffin Georgia to attend the funeral of a cousin. Our conversation turned to family history. My mother’s family has been a family, not wealthy , but community leaders, teachers and preachers, land owners, office holder.

My brother, Bill (eighteen years older than I) recounted to me some of the family history. Our conversation turned to talking about how wonderful it is to now have better opportunities for women left alone with children. Now we have more opportunities for widows. We now have child labor laws, so children no longer have to leave school to work in cotton fields and cotton mills to help support their families.

Then I thought, in some respects, we have gone backwards. We do not have children working their childhood away in cotton fields or standing all day on stools to reach spindles in cotton mills.

But we have child alcoholics, children who are addicted to other drugs, children abused emotionally, physically and sexually as reported in the news article that began this writing. Children stealing and killing. You know the headlines as well as I.


Also it seems that today's clothing industries are determined to turn all our girls, younger and younger from early childhood on into sex objects with the ready-made clothing on the market? (1)

There is an answer and it is God’s answer. During those difficult years, many learned about God's love and wonderful plan for life. In our desperation many believed and turned to God's plan by faith is Jesus Christ. We got our children back in school, educated, prosperous. Then, in our arrogance, many said, “OK God we’ll take over now."

How much more tragedy and messed up lives in our nation do we have to see before we fall on our knees in repentance?

Notes:
1. No, I am not "citing female dress" as a cause for any of the exploitation or rape of children or older females. However, many see it as an example of the unhealthy sexuality in our society.