I AGREE WITH LENORE SKENAZY; PARENTS AND VICTIMS ARE NOT TO BLAME, THE PERVERTS ARE!

She's right. Millions of people tried to shy away from rape and child molestation because if they disassociate with the victim, it won't happen to them. The problem is it could happen to them!

I'll comment at the end of this article:

Are Parents To Blame When A Kid Gets Molested?


by Lenore Skenazy (Subscribe to Lenore Skenazy's posts) Apr 6th 2010 11:00AM

Categories: In The News, Media, Opinions

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Should parents be blamed -- or even prosecuted -- if they allow their child to go on an overnight where he ends up molested?

Yes, says the head of the Boy Scouts council for Portland, Oregon. No, says me. No more than parents should be blamed if they send their kids to church and they get molested there, or at camp, or at grandma's house. Blaming the actual victim is taboo. But these days, it's all the rage to blame a victim's parents.

Jaycee Dugard is snatched from her bus stop? Her parent should have been with her! Oh, he was? Well, he should have been closer! Somer Thompson is kidnapped on her way home from school? That'll teach her mom to let her walk home! A boy is molested by his scout leader? It's all the parents' fault.

Remember how we used to say rape victims were asking for it? "She wore her skirt too short!" It was our way of feeling safe: If she brought it on herself, then we're safe because we're not like her! Then finally we realized: No one asks to be sexually assaulted. We were blaming the innocent victim. We stopped.

And then we turned around and started blaming victims' parents.

When my friend's daughter broke her arm, the local moms pounced. "Where was her mother?!" Uh, her mom was pushing her on the swing. The kid fell off. These things happen. Why were they so eager to blame the mom?

Same reason we used to blame rape victims: We're terrified something bad will happen to our kid. If we can distance ourselves from the parent of a victim, we can reassure ourselves that it won't happen to us! We care more. We are better.

Except sometimes bad things happen to good kids with good parents. This latest case takes place in Portland, Ore., where a former assistant scoutmaster has admitted molesting a Boy Scout back in the 1980s when the boy came to his home for an overnight. The now-grown victim is suing the Mormon Church, which chartered the troop, as well as the local Boy Scout Council for $29 million. The Council's defense?

"His parents should have known better." That's literally what the head of the council, Eugene Grant, told the jury.

Well, if his parents should have known better, I suppose I should, too. I'm the parent of two Boy Scouts who regularly go on overnights with their troop. True, these trips are out in the woods, but anything could happen there, too. And anything could happen at a piano lesson. Or Sunday school.

The best way to keep our kids safe involves teaching them about good touch/bad touch, telling them they can always say no to an adult, and adding that they can and should tell us about anything creepy, even if a (creepy) adult tells them not to.

According to the Crimes Against Children Research Center, those lessons keep kids safer than new sex offender laws. They certainly keep kids safer than pointing fingers at the people who are saddest of all when a child gets hurt.

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I am appalled that the Area Director for the Boy Scouts in Portland, Oregon, Eugene Grant, blames the parents.
 
What? Were the parents supposed to immediately raise their hands in opposition when the Scoutmaster at the time gets called for his position at Sacrament Meeting? Are they supposed to engage in "mind-reading" which some people claim it's the tool of the devil? Are they supposed to find urim and thummin, stones that haven't been used in over 160 years, to help them tell the parents, "don't have your son go camping with the Ward's Boy Scout Troop"?
 
The Scoutmaster, if did molest the boy over 15 years ago, was a child molester, he should have been excommunicated a long time ago. The Bishop and Stake President should have also been reprimanded and probably released, if they knew the Scoutmaster molested the child and others and did nothing about it. I know what this is coming to, but unlike other Churches, the LDS Church WILL disfellowship or more likely excommunicate members who engage in sex outside of marriage. They will not sweep it under the rug, like the Jehovah's Witnesses, or the big culprit lately, the Catholic Church. The LDS Church will do it for two reasons, one it is vehemently immoral for a member to have sex outside of marriage, and two liability. Who wants the tithes go to pay Judgments when the Scoutmaster shouldn't be a Scoutmaster, Elder, and member if he engages in predatory acts?
 
The LDS Church should be and is above the Catholic Church when they separate the "wheat from the chaff". The "chaff" should not be near children when the Church and their parents teach the children all they can to help them reach their Exhaltation. It is the children whom they are our future. As I said all along, we need to stop begatting abuse.