When The Law Fails You

By: Gaétane Borders, Ed.S 

Let me ask you a rhetorical question....How do you feel about the Casey Anthony verdict? To be honest, I have not met a person yet who isn't outraged by the findings, and the apparent slap on the hand of a mother, human, egg supplier who covered up the murder eh hem...accidental drowning of beautiful Caylee Anthony. Well let me share another story with you that may very well put you over the edge. Please make sure you're sitting down...sigh.

Weldon Marc Gilbert of Washington state is a wealthy commercial pilot acting as his own defense counsel, so he gets to personally review the evidence against him. Not such a big deal, right. But wait, there's more! Gilbert is accused of child rape and molestation and the "evidence" that he is allowed to view is the 100s of pornographic material seized from his home in 2007. Reports indicate that he lured children to his house. Once inside, he would get them drunk, tie them down and beat them, all with the camera rolling, detectives said.

According to ABC News, authorities found a stash of pornographic videotapes and DVDs depicting 250 scenes involving 40 individuals, including one of a boy who was 12 years old. Police also allegedly found a cassette tape on which Gilbert described his spanking fantasies in addition to a variety of sex toys, paddles, blindfolds, spanking devices and two handguns.

Apparently Gilbert will be put in a private room whenever he wants to watch the porn....to research. OUR legal system allows this obscenity! Imagine how the children and their parents must feel knowing that this pedophile gets to relive their rape and abuse as often as he wants. Sickening! The only rule is that he is not able to show the tapes to other inmates, and must have one person supervise him while he researches.

This travesty and the results of the Casey Anthony case are a blatant indication that we have to put pressure on lawmakers in order to protect our children. Because, clearly the laws that are in place are wishy washy, and reward the perpetrators instead of the victims. However, until these laws are changed we can also help our children from falling prey by teaching them critical safety skills.

1. Role play with your kids frequently in which you act out various scenarios where “tricky adults” attempt to lure them away. Have them take turn being both the adult and the child.

2. Come up with a password or phrase. Tell them that if a stranger says "Your mom said that you have to come with me," they should immediately ask "What's the password?" If the person knows it they can go. If they don't....they should NOT GO. Remember, for this to work...the password must be kept secret and shared upon your discretion.

3. In an emergency, a loud yell is one of the best things a child can do. Teach them to yell out "MOM, DAD", "STOP," "HELP", "THIS IS NOT MY DAD." A child calling attention to himself in public is a predator's worst nightmare. 4. Review your home address and phone number with children. All kids should know their parents' cell phone number. If necessary, you can write in on a slip of paper, and tuck it into their pocket. 

Gaetane Borders is the President of Peas In Their Pods

An Intentional Media Stunt or Has MTV Accidently Crossed the Line?

By Pamela Chapman

SKINS Chick. That was the message sprawled in large white letters across the back window of a cherry-red, 2008 Toyota pickup sitting in the airport parking lot. I immediately thought Skin Heads, snarled, and continued moving quickly toward the terminal. I never gave the words a second thought. That was until a few days later. Fox Cable News and The Sean Hannity Show were running a piece which began like this, “The risqué MTV show, Skins, may have violated federal child pornography. Publicity stunt or has MTV crossed the lines of child pornography statues?”

I turned up the volume on my flat screen immediately. What the heck did I just hear? Thank goodness for DVR; I rewound the sound bite. Unfortunately, I hadn’t misheard. Hannity’s guest panel was providing debate around whether MTV had intentionally crossed the line and aired a risqué piece or had they plotted a well-thought publicity scheme. MTV has gotten plenty of PR around this and, yes, I’m giving them more. I believe we have grown to be a society who hides its head in the sand like an ostrich. I believe we believe if we ignore our debauchery and social maladies they will go away. Not so.

On January 23, 2011 the New York Times writer, David Carr, wrote “’MTV’s Naked Calculation Gone Bad.’ What if one day you went to work and there was a meeting to discuss whether the project you were working on crossed the line into child pornography? You’d probably think you had ended up in the wrong room. Last week my colleague, Brian Stelter, reported that on Tuesday, the day after the pilot episode of “Skins” was shown on MTV, executives at the cable channel were frantically meeting to discuss whether the salacious teenage drama starring actors as young as 15 might violate federal child pornography statutes.

No one at MTV, which is owned by Viacom, set out to make child pornography, but make no mistake: the series is meant to provoke. “Skins”—a title that derives its name from the rolling papers that are used to make the blunts that go with the vodka that washes down the pills that accompany the hookups—is mostly about explicitly teenage characters doing explicit things. In a cluttered programming era, controversy is oxygen, so MTV was undoubtedly happy with the tsk-tsking the show incited in advance. But objectifying teenage pathology, along with teenage bodies, is a complicated business— and the business that MTV is in.” 

My mind began to reel. I thought of my grandchildren ranging between the ages of four and eighteen. My mind went back to the large letters sprawled on the cherry-red pickup, “Skins Chick” and the other four words that accompanied, “I Just Don’t Listen.” As I continued to watch, the panel on Mr. Hannity’s show began to explain what this new show on MTV was all about. As briefly as possible, Skins is a realty TV series portraying the “real” problems teens face: drugs, alcohol, sexual desires/anxieties/encounters, bullying, parental clashes, etc., etc

Skins portrays young adults (teens) drinking irresponsibly, dropping pills, having wild sex,  and more. Again, its youngest actor is fifteen years of age. What is getting MTV all the publicity is a preview for the series that shows a teen running down the street from a wild party, naked, supposedly with an erection after having taken either Viagra or Cialis. The young man is 17 in real life. So, again, the question is whether MTV crossed the line.

This new show is supposed to be written for adults, MTV argues. LOL! A huge LOL! What adult in their right mind is going to sit around watching this kind of garbage? Let’s see. Let me think about it a couple of minutes. I don’t need to think long just like you don’t. Unfortunately, we know the answer all too well: pedophiles, child molesters, and the sexually perverted. The first show had 33 million viewers which included many of our children.

For God’s sake, can we not see why some countries see us as the devil? Yes, anyone can argue that our children are exposed to this every day. But does that make it right for MTV to target and exploit young people, glorify sexual immorality, promote drug use, and illicit behavior? The Hannity Show shared a photo, from MTV, of a group of young people naked all lying on top of each other inferring an orgy.

In Holy Scripture, the Book of Matthew, Chapter 24, verses 15-16 reads, “So when you see standing in the holy place the abomination that causes desolation, spoken of through the prophet Daniel—let the reader understand— then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains.

There has been great discussion by religious scholars over what the abomination of desolation is. I believe when we sell our children’s souls for the mighty dollar and sacrifice their lives on the altars of greed that is the abomination that causes desolation (wretchedness, bleakness, devastation). Is there any doubt desolation has hit our world? Times Up! Blog is not a religious arena, so I’m going to refrain from delving into this any further.

Let me ask: Where do we draw the line? When did we just give up! When did we decide it was okay to sell our children anything and everything? When did we decide to lie down and allow the networks to rape, pillage and ravage our children’s hearts, minds and souls? Why and how did we become so depraved and decadent? Are our minors so invaluable? Is our future so bleak, so dark that it’s not worth fighting for their lives and very souls? How did we become so complacent?  What’s up with parents? Don’t we care anymore? Are our 9 to 5’s, our homes, and aluminum cars, that lose half their value once they’re driven off the lot, more important?

Skins is programming out of Britain. May I dare to suggest that we lock out MTV until MTV gets the message and sends Skins and all of its other depraved programming packing? Can we tell them we don’t want them influencing our children anymore? Parents take back your homes. Win back your children in love. Teach them what they need to know about unprotected, early sex. Find self-esteem programs run by people who really care and get your children involved!

MTV promotes music videos portraying young girls lying across the laps of gangsters suggesting disgusting, lewd acts of sex. And, trust me, I believe what happens between a man and woman in their bedroom is sacred—no matter what it is; but, to cheapen and lessen what God has made beautiful, to exploit women and children, glorify violence, profanity, and immorality is an abomination.

I took a stand in my home years ago and fought for my son’s soul. I’m willing to take a stand and fight for them all. What about you? Are you the ostrich with you head in the sand; or are you willing to take a stand and fight for what is right for women and children in this country—these United States of America? We’re only as strong as our weakest link.

I only have one thing to say to Viacom, MTV and their Skins show. Get the Hell Out of our living rooms and go back to Britain. Whether this was a MTV publicity stunt or not, the young man in the commercial is 17. Whether you air the show or not, doesn’t matter either. MTV you are in the business of child pornography. You crossed the line in this instance; and you crossed the morality line years ago.

Economics 101 -- Supply and Demand

By Charles Moncrief

The company that made the perfect dog food experienced a marketing failure because the dogs wouldn’t eat their product. The most basic of economic principles, supply and demand, were in play. The dog food was one of countless patents and copyrights that languish because of no demand.

An April 29 editorial in the Houston Chronicle applies this principle from a different perspective. The title is “In Child Trafficking Cases, Place Blame on Buyers.” While this editorial indirectly suggests penalizing those on the demand side, the intended result is the same: to make it unprofitable to supply a product.

We can apply this principle to most of the major social problems that plague society. Consider pornography, made worse in the last decade by emerging and growing technologies that make this one of the most lucrative industries on the internet. It’s profitable because of the demand for commercial sex.

Drug trafficking is a similar problem, profitable only because of demand. Any war on the supply side of the illegal drug trade is a failure before it starts. Everyone in the supply chain has at least one other person ready to take over when the position is vacated either by arrest or by death. (Actually, death typically follows arrest. The procedure is to bring cash to make bail, kill the released prisoner, present the death certificate, and recover the bail money.) Nonetheless, someone is always willing to take the risk in return for the potential reward.

Several years ago the “Just Say No” program was instituted, and immediately the program and its champions became a laughing stock. America’s youth had nothing but contempt for the program, making it a laughing stock. Since that time it has become common knowledge that the program was only an attempt to appear interested in slowing the drug trade.

The April 29 editorial brought out a concept well known in our national and state capitols. The problem goes deeper than ignorance. It reaches into the pocketbooks and addictions of those in the highest levels of government. We’ve all read reports of cases exposing government officials who pay for sex with children, legislators being treated for drug abuse, and high-level officials viewing and downloading pornography from the internet onto government computers.

The legislators and our chief law enforcers for one reason or another are inadequate to address the demand side of illegal trafficking. The court systems are also of little help, since their only concern is with the law. Such high-sounding terms as morality, ethics, and justice are irrelevant unless they are happy by-products of following the law.

The demand side of much illegal trafficking must first be addressed in the home.

In the case of child trafficking, the issue needs to begin with sexual abuse in all of its dimensions. Diane Cranley, the founder of TAALK (“Talk About Abuse to Liberate Kids”) has set up taalk.org to help in the efforts to educate children effectively. Her premise is to break the silence that surrounds child sexual abuse, promoting early exposure and creating a safe home environment for open dialogue between parent and child. Age-appropriate sharing can go far in the inoculation of children against all forms of sexual abuse, from inappropriate contact by predators to avoiding abduction and later even becoming a customer of the sex trade.

These principles are portable; that is, they can apply to drug consumption as well. Just as parents can tell their children that there are good and bad touches, parents can tell their children that there good and bad medicines. Just as parents can tell their children that some people try to touch them in bad ways, parents can tell their children that some people try to give them bad medicines.

The principle of supply and demand is more powerful than any legislation ever passed in the capitals of the states and our nation. Obstacles remain to the effective use of these principles in the areas of human and drug trafficking, undeniably. But it is possible to make strides in overcoming these obstacles only if we will start. The time to make that start is now.

Grace and Peace,

Charles+