The more I read about the Sandusky story, the more puzzled I get. As a parent, I always had my antenna out for pedos. I refused to allow my oldest son to go on a Cub Scout camping trip unless his dad went with him. (My husband accused me of being ridiculous for saying I thought one of the adults involved was a perv. “He’s not married, he doesn’t have kids and he’s hanging around a bunch of little kids in his spare time,” I told him. “What is wrong with this picture?” Ten years later, that same pack leader was picked up for multiple child rapes.)
When my younger son was invited to audition for the city boys choir, I said no. Didn’t have the money (lots of rich kids in there!), didn’t have the time to drive him to practice, but mostly, I knew that boys’ choirs were notorious magnets for pedophiles. Anyone who reads the paper can figure this out. (Unfortunately, most people don’t read the paper.)
1.) Sandusky was married and had kids.
2.) When I was a kid. I wanted to take ballet. But my crazy religious mother thought it was too worldly and expensive. I have never forgiven her for that and never will. In fact, she came up with stupid excuses like that to prevent me from developing any interests I ever had, including choir. I was the only kid in chorus who couldn’t sing at the holiday concert.
Pretty fucking stupid.
Last year, I put my 14 year old on a plane and sent her to live with a French family I had never met. She came back speaking French and has developed an interest in languages and linguistics.
You never know, Susie. Better to nurture a talent than to kill it in its infancy.
BTW, I have never heard of boys choirs being a magnet for pedophiles and I’ll bet a lot of choirmasters who simply like music would be offended by that.
RD has some valid points, given the environment we live in these days. But me, a 65 year old black male, having dealt with all sorts of discrimination over the years, had a very hard time turning down the opportunity to become the Boy Scout Headmaster at a local church.
Several years ago a friend who taught at the same community college as I did at the time asked me if I was interested in working with some Boy Scouts. I actually liked the idea, interviewed for it, but was swayed away because of allegations that had been leveled against the prior Headmaster by certain “church” folks.
It’s a difficult proposition these days—-working with
kids of all ages———–when stuff like the Penn thing pops up. Regardless of who saw what, or who KNEW something………………….THE POLICE MUST BE NOTIFIED IMMEDIATELY>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Totally agree with Dandy. It’s sad that adults are considered criminals until proven otherwise these days. In some places, you can’t even volunteer at a school unless you’ve had a background check and have been fingerprinted. And the chain of custody between parents and teachers is getting to be ridiculous. Before you know it, a kid can’t go to the bathroom by themselves, take a bus or play on a swing. It’s all for fear of “something might happen”. You end up with a generation of hothouse tomatos, bred for perfect uniformity and utter flavorlessness.
I don’t know how it is that neither myself or my siblings or anyone I knew had ever been molested by anyone in our lives. The way the media plays up fears makes me wonder how anyone gets through childhood without an adult raping them. The fear is waaaaay overblown. Then you get a crappy case like Sandusky and you start to wonder why the hell Paterno et al didn’t go directly to the police. We train our children to report abuse immediately to adults. Why is it the adults failed them?
For a more sensible response to modern smothering childrearing, check out Lenore Skenazy at http://freerangekids.com
The FreeRangeKids site was pretty cool.
I wonder how I made it out alive when I was a kid in the 60’s.
We were taught safety all through school. I was lucky and learned how to swim when I was very young. I have scars from taking tumbles. But, I do agree the sin of these men not reporting this to the police is horrible.
My kids weren’t hothouse flowers, nor were their talents neglected. In fact, quite the opposite.
Did I say YOUR children were hothouse flowers? I live in the burbs where there are lots of them. There is too much pressure on parents to not let their kids out of their sight for even a second. It is so over the top. People actually schedule playdates. The playdate is obscene. Not only must your kids agree to get together, the parents are forced to interact as well. I don’t want to have to entertain some parent when their kid comes over to visit. And kids here are overscheduled. They’ve got so much to do that they don’t have time to make friends. The only time outside of a playdate that they have to make friends is in school and at after school activities. And schools break up friendships. They think it’s unfair if kids have best friends.
The way you raised your kids is not the way they are raised now. I thought it was bad when my older daughter was a kid but in my younger kid’s childhood years, it’s gotten to be a parody of itself.
As for pedophiles in the news, you’d think there was one around every corner if you read or watched the news. Parents who are fed a constant stream of murdered or abducted kid stories absolutely can not tell a real threat to a rare event. That results in whole neighborhoods that are as quiet as church on a Saturday afternoon. No one is allowed outside. That’s sick.
Then you get this whole Sandusky story and it will color the way parents see every adult male figure who comes anywhere near their kids. That just reinforces every thing they ever feared. But it’s wrong. Just like it’s wrong to assume that every occupier is a long haired, hippy type, pinko fag who is into drugs, sex and rock and roll.
I go with my instincts, and mine was that my son’s assistant pack leader was just plain creepy. Added to that was the the fact that he didn’t have his own kids, yet spent all his time around them. It wasn’t a demographic decision.
Having raised two boys who did all the usual things – Scouts/sports/extracurricular activities at school, etc, I have to agree with Susie here. On numerous occasions I found something really off regarding some of the adults – almost always male – who volunteered their time for these organizations.
I too volunteered, along with numerous friends. And if you saw any of us leading a scout troop in the singing of some silly song you’d have seen parents obviously happy to be helping yet clearly feeling kind of uncomfortable with being the ring leader for a bunch of 10 year olds. And then….there’d always be one or two kinda creepy older guys whose kids were older than me still hanging on and clearly thrilled to be the ring leader for a bunch of 10 year olds. I saw that time and again in every single such organization.
And I am not saying they were all molesters. Frankly I doubt any were. But they were creepy old men I would never have dreamed of leaving my children alone with. They always had a hard time relating with the other adults but jumped right in with the kids and seemed to fit in perfectly with them. And it wasn’t long before the kids themselves began to see old creepy guy as being kinda odd. In the first year or two of Cub Scouts they were accepted; by year 1 of Boy Scouts they were pariahs.