How to Protect Our Children's Innocence

Childhood is possibly the best time in one’s life. Free from the nagging day-to-day worries that plague us knowledgeable adults, children have such innocence; they can have no comprehension of what life really is about.  From infanthood, children learn through play, and this continues right through school until they grow up enough to want to become involved in a different type of game, and start looking for a partner of the opposite sex.

This is how it should be. I still don’t actually know what life is all about, but it certainly involves continuation of the species.

Children do not yet have the equipment to fulfil this role, and so I fail to understand what some men find sexually attractive about a child. I’m not even going to try, because the mind conjures up images I hope to never witness in my lifetime.

Men that are attracted to children sexually are known as paedophiles or pedophiles as it is spelt in the US.

When I was a child, I was warned by my parents not to speak to strange men. Being an inquisitive child I’m sure I asked why and was told that something bad would happen, but this explanation must have sated an immature mind because I don’t remember asking for more information on exactly what was the bad thing that would happen.

I was warned never to get into a car with a stranger, and not to accept sweeties or lollypops from strangers.

Apparently some of my parents friends were tickled pink when I refused offers of a lift in their car somewhere (we lived in the country) or the offer of a sweetie, because, as I told them at the time, “they were strangers”. I did not always know the people my parents knew.

My childhood was uneventful in that sense. I played with friends. We went bluebell gathering in the woods, or fishing for eels in the stream that we insisted on calling a river but had a long way to go reach that status! We sometimes played football. We sometimes fell out and I’d go home crying. But I never accepted a lift from a stranger, and nothing bad ever happened.

We swam together all summer in the freezing Atlantic waters. It was fun waiting to see who’d be first under the water. That person was considered the bravest amongst us. Once we’d been under, the water didn’t seem so cold and we could swim a little, or dive underwater to look for sand flounders or crabs.

Looking back, childhood seemed to last forever. We lived, we laughed, we learned together.

We didn’t have computers. They wouldn’t even get invented for another 20 odd years at least, so there was nothing other than the telly to keep us indoors, and my house couldn’t even pick up a TV reception. We played until dusk was falling before we went to our respective homes. Some of the other kids were allowed to stay out later. That was hard on us kids that had to home before dark. I didn’t understand why at the time. I do now.

I was a teenager before I learned of the existence of paedophiles – not through an encounter with one, but through talking to school pals. I was shocked and that feeling of shock has never left me. I will never understand their motivation and even now I do not understand why the key is not thrown away when they get locked up.

I’ve been an adult now for more years than I care to remember, and have lived through paedophiles getting locked up, serving their time, and then coming back out only to repeat their offence. Like a heroin addict they keep going back for more.

That tells me that unlike other criminals, paedophiles really can’t help themselves. They will repeatedly reoffend until they get caught, and will always be a danger around children.

Our children are the ones paying the penalty for the crimes of others. I am sure if I was young again now I would not be allowed out to play with my friends – to wander carefree through fields of fresh hay that used to grow so tall we couldn’t be seen, to skip down to the beach dressed in nothing more than a bathing costume, to cycle or walk the half mile home from the village as dusk was falling.

Paedophiles are getting bolder. They find a single mother to wine and dine and move in with. They hang around children’s playgrounds waiting for the inevitable crying child to comfort. They befriend the local children and ask them back to their houses under some pretext or other –a new puppy for example.

Many of them have already been jailed for offences, but when they are released no-one knows who they are. This is the friendly man that moved in next door, or the man who is friends with your parents. The nice guy who everyone has a good word for. Children learn to trust him, and so do their parents, because no-one knows what is going on in his head and what he is capable of.

And anyway, he is NICE! He always has a smile for you when you are feeling down, and always asks after you, and your parents. He is a joy to have around and you feel safe with him, and more importantly, your parents feel you are safe with him.

But they were never told about his paedophile past. How he’d already been convicted and jailed for raping a 7 year old, how he’s molested several nine year olds, how he’d interfered with a baby of 11 months.

Even if they were told, they’d struggle to believe it if they’ve already built up a friendly relationship with him.

And one day he gets you alone.....

Paedophiles target both boy and girl children and I’m not even going to try understanding what is wrong with their heads.

But I really fail to see why children should lose the only time in their life where they can be truly free. Why shouldn’t parents be warned when a paedophile lives amongst them? Instead of keeping children in to keep them safe, why not keep paedophiles away from the community? As far as I am concerned, they have given up their right to live in a normal society. They are scum and should be treated as such, and not treated with kid gloves as the Human Rights nutters amongst us insist they are.

If you’ve ever read the book Sarah Payne, A Mother’s Story, you would agree with me, and want laws like Sarah’s Law (UK) or Megan’s Law in the US, where communities have a legal right to be informed when a convicted paedophile moves in amongst them. Then you have an informed choice of whether or not to allow this man (it’s almost always a man, but some women have been convicted too) to babysit your children, or to befriend you or your child.

I’m all for laws to protect convicted criminals, as many go on to lead perfectly lawful lives, but not paedophiles, because they always seem to repeat their offences and can’t be cured.