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The Price of Family Shame

Trish Schaefer

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This problem is ingrained in almost every culture.

It’s probably safer now than at any time in our lives for kids to roam free believe it or not.

Even though statistics show our streets are as safe as they were back in the 1970s, we still keep our children close and don’t let them run about town because of “stranger danger.”

I reject “stranger danger.”

Why? Because they aren’t a stranger to someone. Every person out there who has less than healthy designs on children, women, or people in general are KNOWN to someone. But we wait for human predators to mature and get caught instead of doing anything to stop them before they hurt someone.

There will never be an absence of predators out there. That is the way of things. Yet, overall, life is a whole lot less dangerous than it used to be. But we still keep our kids close and often to their detriment. Better a little weak from Vitamin D deficiency and lack of exercise than the remote possibility they will be kidnapped by a stranger while riding their bike. Not that such doesn’t happen. It’s just the odds are extremely low. Whereas the odds of being the victim of someone they know is much, much higher.

I maintain that for every bully, sociopath, psychopath, molester, ephebophile, pedophile, rapist, hater — for every predator — there is someone who KNOWS, someone who KNEW, but chooses/chose not to tell. That choice ‘not to tell’ is the crux.

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