Save the Children 1 Your 11-year-old daughter, whose sweet bosoms are beginning to bud, shuts her bedroom door. She turns on the computer. She logs on to AOL. Her name? Aimee011288. She enters a chat room. Within minutes, Tyler12 sends her a message: "Hi!!! My name is Tyler and I'm 12!! I saw your name and thought you might want to talk! Aimee is such a pretty name! I'm in 7th grade! What about you?" And so it begins. Your innocent daughter – having never read a newspaper or watched the evening news – is unaware of the danger that lurks on the Internet. In reality, Tyler is a 35-year-old, pock-faced, garlic-breathed, ass-scratching pedophile who wants nothing more than to take dear Aimee's maidenhood. Soon, Tyler asks Aimee more intimate questions: "Hi, Aimee! I'm soooooo glad you're on!!! School was so rough today! I had to do a hard math problem on the board and I got a hard-on! I was thinking about you! It was so embarrassing! Do you ever get wet thinking of me Aimee?" Aimee – oblivious to Tyler's true intentions – answers his increasingly perverted questions. He's 12, right? He's her age, right? It's okay, right? After telling Tyler about one of her rough days at school, Tyler tells Aimee he knows something that would cheer her up. He sends photos of men fucking children. Gross, Aimee thinks, and she tells Tyler she didn't like those photos. Tyler apologizes. He didn't mean to send them. He didn't know what they were. Aimee forgives him. He's 12, right? He's her age, right? It's okay, right? Tyler gives Aimee his address. Could she send her panties? Aimee thinks it's a strange request, but Aimee – whose parents never had "the talk" with her – complies. He's 12, right? He's her age, right? It's okay, right? After receiving the panties, Tyler tells Aimee they smell good. Aimee wonders why Tyler would want to smell her panties. Tyler then makes his final request: Can they meet at her local mall? Aimee – whose parents told her never to talk to strangers but never told her that everyone on the Internet is a stranger – agrees. Tyler's not a stranger, right? She's been talking to him for months and months, right? He's 12, right? He's her age, right? It's okay, right? Before Aimee can meet Tyler, Aimee's parents accidentally find her saved messages. "My God, Aimee! You don't know this Tyler. You shouldn't meet people you don't know! Tyler could be a pedophile trying to lure you into his demented lair! That's it; I'm calling AOL and complaining! Something needs to be done about these sickos online. They should … they should … they should … pass a law or something!" Maybe you sympathize with Aimee's parents. Their precious daughter could have found herself face to face with a puellaphilist. Parry Aftab would agree with your sympathetic
Save the Children 2 stance. Aftab is a lawyer active in the fight against computer pornography, particularly kiddie porn. The Internet, Aftab says, "gives [pedophiles] a chance to talk to your kid and whisper in their ear." But pedophiles would not have a chance to whisper in any child's ear if parents policed them. Parents policing their children? I find the concept highly revolutionary, as I am sure you do. Who would think parents should monitor their children's activities? Especially when the government is eager to assume the responsibility? While parenting once required a couple to invest significant amounts of time into properly rearing a child, it has now become a part-time job. Half-assed parenting is the rule. Politicians will find a way to pick up the slack. Internet pornography should be regulated, politicians and parents say. Kids could find it. Particularly if the computers are in their rooms, and Mom and Dad are too busy deciding if they should purchase the Chevy Suburban or wait for the Ford Excursion to ensure Austin does not stumble upon the Hun's Yellow Pages. Sex and children, when combined in any lascivious fashion, sends parents screaming from their homes in terror. Thereby leaving the children home alone with a computer and the next-door neighbor who is a registered sex offender. One of the more glaring lapses in parental responsibility is Megan's Law. Megan's Law was enacted in response to the rape and murder of 7-year-old Megan Kanka. Her killer was a habitual sex offender and after his release from the Avenel Treatment Center, moved into a house close to Kanka's. Two other sex offenders resided with him. A fact everyone in the neighborhood knew. On the day Kanka was lured from her front yard, her mother was soundly sleeping. While her 7-year-old daughter played outside. By herself, near the house where three pedophiles were known to live. The heart bleeds for the Kanka’s suffering … the suffering they brought on themselves. Their daughter would still be alive if one of the parents showed a little common sense and responsibility. But sex and children. Sex and children. Sex with children. Gotta protect the children. At all costs. Including logic. Family members and friends of the family molest the majority –85 percent – of children. Megan's Law is not going to protect your child from Uncle Mike or Gramps. The bestkept family secret is incest, and you do not find many people going to jail for it. How are you going to save Joanna from a perverted cousin when no one in the family wants to turn him in and have it be known far and wide that he is a sex offender?
Save the Children 3 The question one has to ask is: Would Megan's Law have saved Megan? And the answer is no. Neighbors already knew pedophiles were in their midst. Megan's Law lulls parents into a false sense of security. If the government tells me a sex offender lives next door, then I can protect my child. I don't have to think about grabby family members. I don't have to worry about pedophiles with cars, who can come into my town and snatch my child as she walks home from school unaccompanied. And if parents have their way, sex offenders will be banned from going online, and pornography will be regulated to death. Then they can worry about purchasing the coolest sports utility vehicle on the block in peace.