Any time you have kids with parents who put them under the care of authority figures you’re setting up a stage for abuse of trust and power. Abusers seeks these positions of trust and exploit them. [edit Penn State] and Sandusky, the Olympics, the Catholic Church, other religious orgs, schools, etc.
There needs to be more oversight and kids need a better reporting environment while also protecting good people from ‘revenge’ unsubstantiated accusations. I don’t see an easy solution. But in most large cases, there are years or even decades of repeated accusations which go ignored. That can’t be squared. That’s a leadership failure.
> Any time you have kids with parents who put them under the care of authority figures you’re setting up a stage for abuse of trust and power
The same could be said of many ‘adult’ institutions, like corporations and governments. America elevates the idea of a titular, all-powerful leader (CEOs, President, etc), yet we seemingly cannot go a day without news of a new scandal or abuse of power.
Fair, but adults have full emancipation and can make their own decisions. Children are not full adults, so they need extra care when put in these situations.
Totally agree. My point was that perhaps the problem is our tendency to vest complete, unquestioned authority to individual leaders within many different institutions.
> The last century has been painful for children as every venue of leadership has been used for abuse...
I'm going to preface this with "I have no hard data to back this up", but I have a feeling that this isn't a matter of the last century as being more of a problem than previous ones. Rather, I think it's the globalization of communication that has brought it to light in that time. This sort of thing has probably been going on since there have been positions of power (pretty much forever) but in the last century it's become much more easy to report on cases when they're found. And now thanks to the internet, with the ease of communication between people that you may never meet in person otherwise, corroborating stories and figuring out that there's a problem is an easier process.
It does a lot to highlight the dumpster fire that is the terrible side of the human race, and many positions of power are still powerful enough to evade consequences too much of the time, but maybe one day it will give voice enough to the oppressed and abused to be able to start making a real difference. (Not that it should be _solely_ their responsibility, but in order for the process to start, they have to be able to speak and be heard.)
I think economics play a role as well. Specifically, when the economy increases rewards to education and higher-level thinking, the damage caused by child abuse becomes felt more broadly. It's always been horrible for the individual victims, but it's easier for society to turn a blind eye when it's an easily replaced unskilled child laborer than when it's a young student on a long road to a sophisticated trade.
I think you can see this dynamic in many places. For example, the birthrate goes down when wealth goes up. You invest more in fewer children. That investment includes caring more about ensuring they are treated humanely.
It's always been wrong, but now it's also expensive.
Agreed, bit for the notion that parents with more children would care less per child: As a parent with multiple children, there seems to be a network effect, because you see them interact more with one another as a group, so the caring compounds.
I was thinking someone along these lines as well, but then taking into consideration the massive number of wars and total number of deaths in the last century compared to much of human history, we are still slowly recovering from that.
> while also protecting good people from ‘revenge’ unsubstantiated accusations
It's important to note that such accusations are incredibly rare, and that the presence of multiple accusers (as in the Larry Nassar case) leaves little room for doubt.
Of course there have been cases of false allegations of crimes against children (as in the Satanic panic), but those were due to mishandled interrogations of young children, not to adults attempting "revenge."
This is a big issue tbh. I've been through one interrogation, in a fairly peacefull country and not as a suspect, i'm sure i could've handled that poorly enough to help convict an innocent man (he was still convicted, then found not guilty).
Interrogations are hard for good reasons (its easier for the police to get people off their feet and incriminate themselves), but using the same interrogation techniques on adults and children is a recipe for disaster. In my country we had a fiasco caused by this.
Should that be charged? Convicted would imply they were found guilty, to be charged a prosecutor only needs to think they have a reasonable chance of their case succeeding at trial.
Saving face at all costs may be a reason, keep up the outer appearance and do business as usual. Cowardly, makes me sad when i think about it.
(edit) Well, i guess it is better for the own career, rocking the boat seems to be frowned upon a lot. Maybe we need to create an atmosphere where dissent is allowed instead of ostracized? Where people are fine with differing opinions. Where we can accept differences. And do the right thing when it is needed. Is it our biological wiring that disagrees? The dog-eat-dog scarcity mindset? The conservative "As long as my car is bigger than the neighbours everything is fine." frame?
It should be a requirement that every public school classroom is live streamed so the parents can watch. There is no reasonable expectation of privacy between a government employee and children.
University endowments, the crystallization of privilege, should be seized and distributed as reparations. There is very little value in these places besides the maintenance of power and economic hierarchy.
Except I don’t want my kids’ broadcast to other people. Plenty of other kids’ parents are just as problematic as the teachers. It takes one family to opt out of this for the whole thing to be moot for that classroom so this wouldn’t work.
You don't get to opt out of police wearing body cams when they arrest you. You don't get to opt out of public school teachers wearing body cams when they teach you.
Actually I do. Schools have you sign a photo and video consent policy where you get to choose whether you do or do not consent to having pictures/video of your child taken while at school.
Police work is a strawman argument. I’ll give you another strawman: installing cameras in all the bathrooms would prevent abuse in this bathrooms, wouldn’t it? Except all the unintended terrible consequences this plan is bulletproof.
Moreover, classrooms isn’t where abuse happens, by and large. Private offices, bathrooms, locker rooms, are all much more likely places.
They also don't give you a handy link to share the video when something does go down. Giving all the parents a way to view the video at any time is a very different proposition. Besides, the number of times you hear about a camera being shut off or obstructed, either on purpose or "accidentally" when something is hinky is afoot happens too often to think that it's _the_ solution.
There needs to be more oversight and kids need a better reporting environment while also protecting good people from ‘revenge’ unsubstantiated accusations. I don’t see an easy solution. But in most large cases, there are years or even decades of repeated accusations which go ignored. That can’t be squared. That’s a leadership failure.