Stop the abuse
July 5, 2005 7:52 AM   Subscribe

Blogger Steel Turman is losing patience with a world full of senseless crime against children, and wants to become an activist. Any specific suggestions for him?
posted by growabrain (33 comments total)
 
Direct one's boundless energy for blogging towards dealing with problems in the real world.
posted by Rothko at 7:54 AM on July 5, 2005


You can't stop child abuse as a phenomenon any more than you can stop spam, war, AIDS, drugs, and the like. Child abuse is a manifestation of various social phenomena, including alienation, poverty, cultural change and the like. Address the roots of the problem as is relevant in your culture, on the scale you'd like to address the problem, and get involved in the lives of individual children. Congrats to Turman for authentic feelings and a motivation to help.
posted by By The Grace of God at 7:56 AM on July 5, 2005


If Turman himself abuses children, I advise him to reduce child abuse by stopping. Otherwise, BTGoG has it right. He can focus his efforts on opposing the forces of which child abuse is a symptom. His impulses are admirable, but misdirected.
posted by Faint of Butt at 8:00 AM on July 5, 2005


Is this a new phenomenon? Honestly? I wish I knew the answer to that question.

Here's a clue: no.

Now go, and blog in peace.
posted by flashboy at 8:04 AM on July 5, 2005


Any specific suggestions for him?

change his name?
ignore tv news?
get a life?
posted by quonsar at 8:07 AM on July 5, 2005 [1 favorite]


Child abuse is a manifestation of various social phenomena, including alienation, poverty, cultural change and the like.

Huh?

Child abuse strikes at children of all socio-cultural strata. It's the abusers/molesters ability to get away with it that makes it easy to do so at all levels.

Social stigma is by far the worst victimizer of the kids. Turning a blind eye, minding ones own business and keeping silent to avoid family/personal shame are by far the worst contributor to the problem.

If society would simply sympathize with the victims instead of ostracizing them, there'd be a lot of caponed "men" walking around.
posted by jsavimbi at 8:08 AM on July 5, 2005


we are, as a species ... DOOMED.

oh yeah, and stop writing like a fuckwad.
posted by quonsar at 8:09 AM on July 5, 2005


Doesn't "A neighbor boy RAPES his neighbor's DOG." sounds a little bit silly in an otherwise mostly serious list about mostly serious offenders?

On preview, I fail to see how you disagree with the post you quote, jsavimbi - Or aren't "Turning a blind eye, minding ones own business and keeping silent to avoid family/personal shame are by far the worst contributor to the problem." instances of "alienation.. cultural change and the like."
posted by nkyad at 8:12 AM on July 5, 2005


The question is ... WTF are we going to do about it?

we're going to let the media and government scare us to the point that we'll embrace a police state happily ... next question
posted by pyramid termite at 8:16 AM on July 5, 2005


Doesn't "A neighbor boy RAPES his neighbor's DOG." sounds a little bit silly in an otherwise mostly serious list about mostly serious offenders?

um, no. it's true. the 17 year old was out on bond awaiting trial on charges of raping a 13 year old girl and molesting a 3 year old girl, both neighbors, when he was observed raping a neighbor's dog, which died. here's a mirror. but steel is still a fuckwad. i wonder if he's related to stone phillips?
posted by quonsar at 8:16 AM on July 5, 2005


"A multiple repeat sexual offender buries a beautiful child ALIVE and CONFESSES. His confession will most likely be thrown out as will all the evidence obtained with it."

Item: Someone buries an UGLY child alive and is given twenty to life.

Is there no justice? Will no one think of the ugly children.
posted by OmieWise at 8:20 AM on July 5, 2005


Oh, as to suggestions: if he cares about children he should stop writing stupid blog entries like this one and join the fight to stop using children as soldiers.
posted by OmieWise at 8:22 AM on July 5, 2005


That, OmieWise, is a really great idea! :)
posted by By The Grace of God at 8:26 AM on July 5, 2005


quonsar writes "um, no. it's true. the 17 year old was out on bond awaiting trial on charges of raping a 13 year old girl and molesting a 3 year old girl, both neighbors, when he was observed raping a neighbor's dog, which died. here's a mirror. but steel is still a fuckwad. i wonder if he's related to stone phillips?"

I was not disouting the truth, but his list entry never says anything about the dog raper previous rapes - only that a dog was raped. While reading it I found it somewhat tasteless that he would mix children being burried alive with a dog. But then again maybe it was his dog.
posted by nkyad at 8:37 AM on July 5, 2005


> But whether it has been with us forever or is just now being brought to our collective attention is NOT the question.

Yes it is, Mr Turman, that is exactly the question! Today's child abuse was yesterday's discipline and right of property over children.

The only people who go "oh what is the world coming to!!!" are people who see the world filtered by their obsession over the most morbid tabloid news, don't have a clue about history and/or mythologise the past. Or, fundamentalists.

If his concern was genuine, he wouldn't have to ask what to do.
I also second OmieWise's suggestion.
posted by funambulist at 8:45 AM on July 5, 2005


If his concern was genuine, he wouldn't have to ask what to do.

I'm sorry, but this dosen't make any sense. People can slowly become outraged at a seemingly omnipresent horror and feel powerless to do anything about it.

Just because he's reached that stage dosen't make him inauthentic. There seem to be some people on this thread who are too cool to give a shit about child abuse. Personally, I really can't get all het up about someone who is really upset about child abuse and wants to do something to help.
posted by Snyder at 9:11 AM on July 5, 2005


of course it's existed as long as forever, although i think that this alienation that's been spoken of has exacerbated both the conduct of sexual predators and the consequences for their victims. focusing on the big picture's good.

however, more focused on what he cares about: i think we all know someone who's been victimized in this way, and if you talk to them, you'll find that it was the paralysis of not knowing what to do that led to much of the later guilt and continued victimization (along with the fact that it's usually someone close to them, someone they like). it would seem that if this guy wants to be active on the subject, he could help organize reasoned (meaning non-hysterical) education in the schools or elsewhere so that children *do* know what to do...

i think there's something important left out in the focus on "bad touch" and strangers--like teaching kids to follow their instincts on creepiness. i.e. there's nothing wrong with acting on "i don't want to hang out with you because you creep me out." they don't have to shriek "go away!"--although if there's half a reason, i wish we'd teach them to do that, as well. despite everything, kids want to be nice, and don't want to reject the presence of someone based on "a feeling" when that's exactly what they should do.

in my own experience, predators catch you by playing on what's missing in your life. they're master manipulators on your weaknesses. children who are left to their own devices much of the time, or who suffer a family life devoid of the necessary affection and caring look for it elsewhere. that's what predators hope and wait for.

so maybe blogger dude should work on teaching families to be real families.
posted by RedEmma at 9:38 AM on July 5, 2005


> There seem to be some people on this thread who are too cool to give a shit about child abuse.

*sigh*

How would you know that, Snyder?

I realise my comment sounded nasty but I'll explain what I was thinking of when I wrote it. The usual "oh what is the world coming to!!!" I used to hear a lot from people who would not bat an eyelid in front of "ordinary" abuse they considered acceptable or they themselves heaped on their children. NB I'm not assuming this person is anything of the sort, but there can be a tendency to focus only on the most horrible and extreme examples of violence in the news, to distance oneself from something that actually in its more "ordinary" forms is more widespread.

I was also thinking of the paedophile hysteria that hit Britain a few years ago with the tabloids going bonkers over cases in the news and even publishing lists of suspected sexual predators, if anyone recalls. Well, again, my impression is people who have these "we're doomed, the world is crazy these days" reactions tend to focus on extraordinary cases of murder or sexual assault from strangers, picturing a boogeyman that's always someone so completely removed from their own world and society. And yet, all sorts of child abuse - like domestic violence against women - happens every day, in perfectly 'normal' families and environments, and across the whole world, in varying degrees from country to country, but it's pretty much a constant. This is more painful to acknowledge, than only the craziest examples we read of in the news. But it's also more in our reach to deal with!

Of course, this blogger guy could be simply genuinely enraged and feeling powerless. I don't know. I'm only commenting on his post, and frankly I got more of the impression of that kind of "righteous indignation" for its own sake. Especially with his questioning if this ever happened in the past, which is typical reactionary denial.

In the past, there was even no such thing as child abuse helplines or social services or government programmes or any media attention to issues of child abuse within the family, which is, again, where most child abuse occurs. So I'm not too impressed by cries of doom where there is not even the slightest acknowledgement of the enormous progress that's been done in this respect, and the efforts being done to continue reducing the incidence of abuse. Someone with a genuine concern for the issue - as opposed to interest in the most extraordinary crime cases - would know this already.
posted by funambulist at 10:47 AM on July 5, 2005


Here's what I posted in his blog:

1) Go work at at-risk youth centers. Juvee halls. After-school programs. Give kids a good mentor, someone they can trust to talk to, someone they can speak to their abuse about without fear. Help abused kids heal and break the cycle.

2) Go work at community centers and help out with classes on parenting, debt management, family planning, child care, job training . . . All of these stressors lead to abusive situations in families.

You can't really hunt down current abusers, at least not until the abused child talks and then it's a police matter. But you can do a lot to help prevent future abuse.
-----------

I think it's also worth mentioning that teaching kids not to follow strangers isn't enough, because most abusers aren't strangers. Teaching kids to talk to an adult if they've been put in an uncomfortable situation (even if the abuser has threatened them, even if the abuser is a parent) and keep talking to adults until someone helps is good, and teaching kids if someone hurts them it's the abuser's fault, not the victim's. Being abused is nothing to be ashamed of.

Every kid knows not to follow the strange man with the candy. But the kindly next-door neighbor who gives you candy after putting his hand down your pants? The father whose bedtime kisses go too far? We teach kids to fear the unknown but not how to deal with real problems.
posted by Anonymous at 10:49 AM on July 5, 2005


funambulist: I actually didn't intend to include you in the "too cool" comment, although the proximity of your quote that I took issue with and my other thoughts made it seem that way. Sorry about that. I see your point, though I don't entierly agree with it. I think a lot of people who get fixated on extreme cases don't do it because they want to distance themselves, but because that even in the context of "ordinary" abuse, these crimes can seem even more horrific. We can understand abuse that happens for reasons we can fathom, for example, as a punishment, even if we would consider the crime and rationale inexcusable, unconscionable and wrong, the same way we can understand murder in a bar-room brawl or a robbery gone wrong.

It's the extreme cases, like serial killings, and in the case of child abuse, the various items in the post, that cause true fear and loathing, mostly because they are so unfathomable. You may be right about his motivations. The reason I came away from the post differently, I suppose, was the request for ways to help. I think people often become energised by the extreme cases, but can end up helping in the common ones.
posted by Snyder at 11:19 AM on July 5, 2005


Any specific suggestions for him?

Put together a militia, go to Uganda, and kill Joseph Kony. Miserable fuck, that Kony.
posted by mr_roboto at 11:26 AM on July 5, 2005


item, for everone of those miserable fuckjobs there's an audience of 500,000. thank god for human decency.
posted by nervousfritz at 11:45 AM on July 5, 2005


steel turdman - just a used pampers in the information drainage ditch.
posted by quonsar at 2:17 PM on July 5, 2005


How dare that blogger steel turman! That sort of impotent outrage and incredulity is exclusively reserved for Metafilter threads about Bush, fundamentalists, creationists and Iraq.

Pots, please cut the kettle a little slack.
posted by klarck at 2:57 PM on July 5, 2005


Something tells me that quonsar is not a big fan of Steel Turman.
posted by clevershark at 6:37 PM on July 5, 2005


You can't stop child abuse as a phenomenon any more than you can stop spam, war, AIDS, drugs, and the like.

Please. Spam, war, and AIDS can be stopped.
---

Also, the problem is simply too much freedom. I mean, what kind of sick perverted nation would allow Children to be around their own parents unspervised. Clearly we need to install video cameras in every parents bedroom, and possibly keep kids covered up in burquas all the time.
posted by delmoi at 11:19 PM on July 5, 2005


Just out of curiosity, how come he isn't upset about the hundreds of thousands (or whatever) of kids starving to death and being executed, etc in Daurfur? Is a handful of American children (the ones raped and murdered) really more important? I mean, why fixate on one horror when others are so much worse?

.the father whose bedtime kisses go too far? we teach kids to fear the unknown but not how to deal with real problems.

Well, how far is too far? Obviously kissing the genitals or something like would be way across the line, but what about all the 'grey' areas?

Breaking up a family and putting a kid into foster care is going to seriously damage a child to. People tend to think this is cost free.

The black and white cases, where a kid is pressured into sexual acts that they oppose, or physicaly forced should be stopped, and they are I guess.
posted by delmoi at 11:37 PM on July 5, 2005


He later comments on his blog.

Heh. This problem is not that complex. It is something that can be stopped in a generation or two.

LOL.

I wonder ... no ... I demand to know if it was your child would you suggest anything short of DEATH?

Hell no. And ... assuming logic follows ... why in the hell would anyone suggest society be anymore lenient?

The 'problem' is incurable and there's no shortage of studies to support that premise.


We could put them in 'colonies' or monitor them for life. But why?

Would that make you FEEL better about yourself?

FUCK YOU.


If by "colonies" you mean prisons, then we already do that. And yes, locking them up for life rather then killing them, does, in fact make me FEEL better about myself. Not only that, but my apparent empathy for all human beings is not only enjoyable in and of itself, but also for the smug sense of superiority I feel over spite-filled vengeance animals like mr. Thurman here.

Some people are so defective that they need to be guaranteed from the general population. I understand this, but they are still humans. vengeance solves nothing.

Mr. Thurman only wants, himself to FEEL better about himself by getting his revenge. Perhaps he can travel to England and help lynch some pediatricians.

There was one moron I read at Metafilter. Quoron maybe?

To you I say this ...

...you would be the best evidence to support post-natal abortion. I only wish I could facilitate that procedure.


What a novel turn of phrase! I've certanly never heard that particular euphamism. An origional thinker all the way, and almost able to read!

But yes. Wanting to murder adults who think you're stupid is totaly reconcilable with your desire protect children from abuse. After all, once a child graduates from High School they are no longer "the future" and quite worthless. We can feel free to rape them, I guess, or murder them if they insult you on the internets.

Society has an obligation to persevere. The new members of 'society' are children. Without them ... society will fail.

No, I suppose it does not. Nor is it incumbant on society to to fufill the blod-soaked revenge fantasies of barely literate.

Won't some one think of the children?!
posted by delmoi at 12:01 AM on July 6, 2005


but also for the smug sense of superiority I feel over spite-filled vengeance vengeful animals like mr. Thurman here... some people are so defective that they need to be guaranteed quarantined from the general population.

*sigh* mefi's spellchecker sucks.
posted by delmoi at 12:04 AM on July 6, 2005


Snyder, yes, in general, people tend to be more horrified by extreme horrible crime cases because they are extreme. But, because they are extreme, they also statistically rare and completely at the margins of society and no one finds excuses for them. So I find it ridiculous to generalise about society from those cases. Simple as that. See my point?

It's that boogeyman mechanism that is very much at play and fueled by the tabloids who love sensationalism. It also plays into the paranoia of parents especially those with authoritarian and/or control-freak tendencies.

Personally I'm more shocked by daily instances of ordinary cruelty perpetrated by people who are not monsters but acting within the bounds of what's more-or-less acceptable in their society and think they're doing something good based on their set of values. Like, I don't know, sending their gay teen kids to boot camp to straighten them out.
That's something that can be dealt with at social level if enough people acknowledge it as wrong and want it to stop, because it's something that is justified based on certain sets of ideas accepted within a specific social and cultural environment, whereas the crazy psychopath who likes to bury children alive is so far out on the margins of society it is completely rare and random and impossible to foresee, and what he's doing has not even any limited social support or acceptance.

And again, in the past, physical punishment of children used to be far more acceptable. It changed, because society and culture and laws changed. Whereas the extreme isolated cases of crazy extreme sadism are always there.
posted by funambulist at 2:34 AM on July 6, 2005


Also, reasons why I didn't take that post as an expression of genuine concern:
1) he's mixing those extreme psycho criminal cases (child buried alive, etc.) with something like the child abuse by Catholic priests which is entirely another matter, it was widespread because again of certain conditions that were accepted within that environment; he's bringing up the case of Woody Allen and his adopted daughter, which wasn't even his, and wasn't 15, but nevermind - creepy perhaps if you find it impossible to accept, but child abuse it isn't; also the Roman Polanski case, I'm not even going there, but it so doesn't belong there either.

2) his "The question is ... WTF are we going to do about it? Personally, I have some ideas. I will keep them to myself for awhile" and in the comments: "Yup, I'd rather err on the side of children and kill the perps after a cursory trial. I prefer burning at the stake in a public square" - "We could put them in 'colonies' or monitor them for life".

That is exactly the kind of sanctimonious outrage behind that paedophile hysteria I was talking about, the lynch mob reaction that's just idiotic self-righteous venting. See, he's not even talking of the 'ordinary' child abuse and the kind of feasible social and cultural intervention to deal with it that is already in place, no, he only wants to point at the boogeymen. Also, interesting how he focuses entirely on sexual abuse. It's the kind of mentality that was perfectly satirised in the UK by Chris Morris.

I think at this stage the only clear advice to this person is: go vent at your local shooting range if that's your idea of fun and stay away from children.
posted by funambulist at 2:58 AM on July 6, 2005


What.. about.. the CHILDREN?

Seriously, work on solving a lot of the world's ills, and children will be better off. The mistreatment and abuse of children is a huge issue, but (as I see funambulist and a few others have mentioned) turning it into the "paedogeddon"-style hysteria isn't helping. Give children a safe place to go, whether it's by volunteering at an underprivileged school or by becoming a foster parent.

And, although I may be alone in this, if you encounter a child who has been abused, don't demonize their abuser as the ultimate evil. They're human beings, no more or less than the rest of us. There are so many abusers who were once victims themselves and will never seek any sort of treatment or admit their impulses because they feel they've become monsters like their attackers. Most child molestors/abusers have reached a point where they will never be safe with children, but I do believe that some people are driven away from counseling because of this stigma.
posted by mikeh at 7:32 AM on July 6, 2005


Yeah, upon reading this dudes comments I withdraw any benefit of the doubt I had for the guy. The whole "It is something that can stopped in a generation or two," is both creepy and idiotic. Yeah, while your doing that, I'll be wiping out all greed and hate. That, and his whole poo-pooing of any action that dosen't involve being a grim-faced Agent Of Justice really shows his commitment to helping childeren. His unwillingess to do anything beyond posting on his weblog really shows just how much he cares.

Like I said, I can understand looking at the outliers and becoming energised by those to find out more or do something, or perhaps being concerned with one type of abuse, but this guy seems more interested in proving his own moral superiorty by attacking easy marks. It's a shame really.

On preview: You know, looking at a comic posted to his blog immediatly after the linked post, I'm not sure if I've ever heard of sex offenders being catergorized precisely in that matter, but my first reaction is, "Only 3,000 more XP to level up."
posted by Snyder at 7:35 AM on July 6, 2005


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