“The unseen enemy is always the most fearsome.” -George R.R. Martin. When I was around 15 or 16 years old I was feeling the pressure of what major I was going to go into college with. I was so scared because I had no idea of what interested me. One day I stumbled upon the TV show Law & Order Special Victims Unit which is about catching a sexual abuser or child molester and I was instantly hooked. I realized that type of detective job interested me, so once I got into college I started taking courses for Administration of Justice which involved understanding crimes like child molestation. One thing I never quite understood was how people turned into child molesters and wanted to know how these people developed. Child molesters are a danger to society and I want to be able to understand how they operate. A child molester is someone who sexually abuses a child under the age of 18 without consent and is seen as one of the most hideous crimes because it is done to a child.
This is not only one of the worst crimes but the damage it can do to the victim is astronomical. The scariest parts of these molesters are that they blend into the society and can be your neighbor, friends, teachers, and even family members. Child abuse is a horrendous crime that should never be done but has been going on for too long. Child molestation has a very long history in this world. These children have been exposed to this terrible abuse by people they have come to know for as long as they can probably remember. For as long as the United States has had laws it has seemed to fail to protect innocent children from abuse. Early on in American history Children under English common law were referred to as the property of their fathers. American colonists in the 16th and 17th centuries continued to carry the tradition of kids being property of their fathers to the early years after the United States was created but has since been changed.
According to family findlaw com it was a relatively lowkey crime that you did not hear much about. “Child abuse captured the country’s attention again in 1962, when an article appearing in the Journal of the American Medical Association described symptoms of child abuse and deemed child abuse to be medically diagnosable. Within 10 years, every state had statutes known as ‘mandatory reporting’ laws”. Mandatory laws are laws that require trained professionals, which include doctors and teachers most importantly, to report suspected child molestation to the state child protective services agency.
I know this because I currently work with kids and when I first got hired my employers explained that process to me. Thank goodness I have not had to report anything about abuse, however I will if I see anything suspicious. Also in that quote, it says child abuse captured the nation’s attention in 1962. Therefore that means that child molestation had not been a huge deal to the United States until 1962 which is crazy to think about since this crime has been around for a very long time.
