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A recent Dear Abby column misses an essential point raised by a reader's alarming question.
The question comes from a couple who have wisely decided to keep their children away from a close relative who is also a sex offender. One of their mothers is upset about these parents "breaking up the family."
Here is Abby's answer:
The best way to move forward is to stick to your guns. This relative has shown he isn't to be trusted around children. Protecting your children is your job. Keeping the family together despite the fact that this person is a threat to them is not. You have nothing to feel guilty about.This is all good, as far as it goes, but I would have added that the person "breaking up the family" is the sex offender, not the family members who now have to weigh how they will navigate any future family gatherings.
I can imagine that many people would dismiss this as a small matter, but it is not: Making such a judgment explicit will maintain the couple's resolve against the sickening pressure, so common in our predominately altruistic culture, to sweep that problem under the rug. Furthermore, having already gotten this point right in their own minds, it will be easier for the couple to shoot down any such suggestion in the future:
But this is faaaamilyyyyy!The person who ruined things for that family was the person who committed that crime. Trying to pretend that the perpetrator was innocent, that life can go on as usual, or -- worst, that honoring a blood relationship is more important that the safety of one's own children -- helps no one.
[Insert name here] should have thought of this before getting involved in that filth.
-- CAV
This kind of behavior on the parents' part is never an isolated incident. Maybe if they hadn't spent their time expecting other people to allow the bad behavior, the person wouldn't have become a sex offender in the first place.
ReplyDeleteSeriously, people, if someone is in difficulties because they did bad stuff, nobody has ANY responsibility to accommodate or help them "put that in the past" or whatever the justification is, and anyone asking for this is an enabler and an accomplice. The only way to put stuff like that in the past is to make an ENORMOUS effort to demonstrate a TOTAL reformation of character, step 1 of which is taking accountability and saying "You're right to be leery of trusting me given my history. Please take whatever precautions you feel are appropriate and just let me know so I can cooperate and show good faith."
Lazy people always address their complaints to the innocent person instead of the guilty one, because they're easier to approach!
Yes. Owning the blame and a long-term demonstration of reform are indeed the minimum such a person would realistically have to do to expect to have even the chance of being accepted again.
ReplyDeleteAnd some acts are so beyond the pale that even that might not reassure some of the victims or people who could be afacted.