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hedgehog

(36,286 posts)
Sun Jan 15, 2012, 03:08 PM Jan 2012

A book that offers some insight to the pedophile controversies:

Over and over we are faced with the question of how bishops or football coaches or teachers or neighbors knew that children were being raped and allowed it to go on. I just finished reading " Lost paradise : from Mutiny on the Bounty to a modern-day legacy of sexual mayhem, the dark secrets of Pitcairn island revealed" by Kathy Marks and came away with a new understanding.

The story Ms. Marks tells is this: the Bounty mutineers kidnapped some young women from Tahiti and took them to Pitcairn Island. Over the years, a culture developed in which the strongest males had the right to any females they wanted. Gradually, this devolved to the point that adult males were routinely raping pre-pubescent children.

Everyone knew what was going on, and no one said a word. If I read the book correctly, Ms. Marks posits that the rapists were tolerated because they were needed to keep the island going and because to confront the rapists would mean the break-up of families. In other words, to confront the rapists would threaten economic survival. To confront the rapists would disrupt all important connections. It was easier to pressure the victims into silence.

If Joe Paterno had confronted Sandusky and/or called the cops, it would have meant that he could no longer call Sandusky a trusted friend. If a bishop had called the cops on a priest, it would call into question an entire system of training and inspection. How could these men admit that they trusted and worked with other men who were rapists?

This is not to excuse their inaction, but to explain it. There is no denying that they took the easy way out and in the process enabled the rapists to move on to new victims.

The fact that these incidents took place in a structure without any form of checks or balances is significant. If the person in charge took no action, others perceived no recourse. They were conditioned to "keep things inside the family", to avoid exposure to outsiders.

It also shows that pedophilia is about power, not sex. Ms.Marks documents that the men who raped girls on the island behaved properly while living in New Zealand or Australia. They generally victimized girls who were fellow islanders and ignored visitors. At least one outside male also joined the culture of pedophilia. He was a teacher, and therefore also had authority/power.

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