Doomsday begins at home...

...Especially when the household involves child abuse, or, worse, child sexual abuse.

Sick stories involving the creatures who do such things have been popping up in the media with greater frequency in the past couple weeks than I've seen in quite some time. I've seen at least six such stories. A few are: Here in MA, 11 guys got nabbed in "Operation Trenchcoat" for using the Web to solicit sex from minors. Another couple recently got convicted for molesting their own kids... and encouraging them to have sex with each other -- the husband got 5 life terms, the wife, 40 years. And now, a Cleveland guy purporting to be promoting the arts -- and self-proclaimed pedophile -- is being held for molesting autistic children.

In part of the last article the Herald didn't print, AP added:
"Not all pedophilia is bad, and sex with boys can be healthy,"
Distasio said. "It's an argument I'm willing to make, but my attorney is not."

No shit. That's because the attorney's not a twisted fuck. These kinds of self-justifying arguments are common for pedophiles, who typically have little ability to see things from another's point of view (esp. their victims'). Detective Mark Gado has several common traits of pedophiles here.

The first website a Google search for Distasio's group turned up said, "Arcadian Fields is a ministry of the Universal Life Church. The goal of the ministry is to provide free food and shelter for artists and musicians in order to promote education and health through interactive entertainment."

Since this pervert is apparently AF's FOUNDER, I can guess what kind of "interactive entertainment" he had in mind. Even more twisted details of "Brother Patheticus" can be found here.

The ULC has zero qualifications for ministers. They will literally ordain anybody, and that points to a serious problem. Groups like ULC, while they might be well-intended, provide cover for those who see authority of any kind as a ticket to express their own whims. Those can be good; I believe the group aims to give Pagans a chance to practice their faith with legal protections other ministers get, including the right to marry others. But for some (obviously including this creature), the authority is solely being used to benefit themselves.

As a step-brother to two people who are developmentally-disabled & someone who worked with autistics and others for several years, I can't really put into words how disgusted people like this make me. But I can summarize it this way: Child sexual abusers are among the VERY few criminal types I have no problems executing.

But that doesn't prevent the problem from recurring. As someone I interviewed once said, child abuse "grows like mold in darkness." The only way to prevent it is to blow open the doors of secrecy, to stop treating children as if they're the property of adults and acting as if their ideas and their reality mean nothing. I think a big part of that means standing up to our society's acceptance of religion as an excuse for people's behavior. While the vast majority of religious folks are NOT child abusers/molesters, all too often, molesters justify their abuses with religion or use religious threats as a weapon against their victims.

Child abuse, with or without molestation, just continues the cycle of violence we see writ large in society's drug abuse, gang and international wars, and less obvious manipulations of people for the benefit of a few. If we want real peace, it literally has to start at home, by ending child abuse.

A few good sites on this issue:

The National Assoc. to Protect Children
Andrew Vachss's website
RAINN
David Baldwin's Trauma Pages
Men's Resource Center for Change

Thanks to Dispatches from the Culture Wars for the tip.