“The test of the morality of a society is what it does for its children.” Dietrich Bonhoeffer.




I watched Criminal Minds last night. It was about a 7 year old or so child being imprisoned inside a small room without windows, just a lamp, his toy soldier and a surveillance camera. He was being auctioned off in the Internet, sold for the highest bidder. It turned out that the kid was kidnapped when he was still 1 year old and the unsub (Unknown Subject Of An Investigation) abused him until he had a close call with the FBI that he had to get rid of him.
It infuriated me so much that it brought me to tears. It’s just that we get so immersed with our own lives that we sometimes forget what’s going on around us. And shows or news like these reminds us and bring us back to reality.
I am well aware of how people can be cruel, but I still can’t comprehend those who abuse children and why they do it. Take this statistics for instance:

“In 1975 alone, 166 infants less than a year old were murdered, 327 children between the ages of one and four were murdered, 142 children between the ages of five and nine were murdered, and 205 children between the ages of ten and fourteen were murdered. These numbers, taken from the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports for that year … 460,000 to 750,000 children were beaten to the point of injury by their parents. More dramatically, 46,000 were threatened or injured by their parents with a gun or knife.” James W. Prescott, Ph.D

It just got me thinking that those 460,000 to 750,000 who survived would not only be physically damaged but psychologically as well to the point that the abused themselves would either become a murderer, a violent alcoholic or another abuser. No wonder why crime never stop. It’s a cycle. I really don’t think that there’s anything anyone can do about it. It’s a lost cause unless people become one of those sci-fi movies where they are brainwashed and controlled. I don’t see that happening either.

Sad.