Flawed Men: Flawed Thinking

 

Living in Pattaya, Thailand for almost two years provided me with an incredible insight into a world most lapsed Catholics never imagine exists, let alone get to see. Having moved there from Singapore, one of the safest cities in the world, the contrast with this ‘Disneyland for men’ could not have been more marked.

Over my time there I got to know many of the bar girls; Each one had their own familiar story - a background of poverty, an extended family to support in the North of the country, a broken relationship, a child left with relatives. Beautiful looking girls with an incredible spirit and a surprising sense of humour. They’d share photographs of their children with me and I’d see the quick flash of pain on their face as they became a mother for a second, before reverting quickly back to a source of entertainment for men.

When I first came to Pattaya I saw these girls as being from another world, one I could not relate to. As time went by I realised it was the men that came to Pattaya from all over the world that were the aliens. These aliens ranged in age from 17 to 117 and came with a whole range of flaws- some visible, some not so visible.

Josef Fritzl, the Austrian father accused of incest, rape and the imprisonment of his daughter, really does look like your typical Pattaya visitor, and we now know how psychologically and emotionally flawed he is. What you notice about these men is the total lack of respect for women and girls.  I often wondered how these men would feel if their sisters, wives, or daughters were treated in the same way, by men like them.

I wondered if these men left their ‘real selves’ at home and allowed a hidden part of them to go on holiday and act in a way they would never dream of doing in their normal life? I wondered if it was the place itself that casts a spell over weak minded men, but then again, they must have booked their holiday knowing exactly what sort of place it was.

I concluded that these men were acting in a way that came naturally to them. I suspected that many would act like this at home given the opportunity and the anonymity. So when today I read that the Home Office has implemented an initiative aimed at men who pay for sex with women who have been forced into prostitution I shook my head in despair. The poster campaign is aimed at making

‘..sex buyers” think twice about paying for the services of trafficked women.

Advertisements, which will be placed in gents’ toilets in pubs and clubs, depict a sleazy brothel with the caption: “Walk in a punter. Walk out a rapist.

It also urges men who discover a woman they believe may have been trafficked: “If you’re man enough, call Crimestoppers.”

The trouble with this campaign is that a real man wouldn’t and doesn’t need to pay for sex. A man who pays for sex wouldn’t care  how a woman comes to be there lying in front of him for his 20 seconds of ‘pleasure’.

Men paying for prostitution are the ones fueling the ‘demand’ and the industry where criminals find it necessary and profitable to force young girls and women into sexual slavery. Were the ‘users’ of prostitutes not there, there would be no forced sex slavery. The Home Office are treating these men as if there were innocent bystanders who just happen across a crime.

Instead of asking these weak-minded men to call Crimestoppers, how about arresting them and making the penalty severe enough to put them off paying for sex ever again?

Instead of putting up posters in toilets, how about some good old fashioned police work to find and arrest the pimps and criminals that ‘traffic’ these women and girls? How about finding these trapped and abused women and girls and rescuing them?

But then…that would take more than a poster on a toilet wall. I’m sure all those trapped young women are very grateful though that help is just around the corner…on a lavatory wall

Petition

 

 

An Explanation

As many of you noticed, my blog has been unavailable for a while and today I will explain why: A few weeks ago I wrote about how a young girl was being held as a sex slave against her will. I wrote about the dangers of our young daughters and relatives being groomed both in real life and on-line and the need for the law to catch up with technology in order to protect our vulnerable children.

I also asked a forum that visits here en masse to sign the petition to help change our laws so that those in danger now can be helped, and any potential future victims can be saved from the living hell these girls and their families are going through.

That forum went one better: One person out of the 300 that read the request signed the petition, but others decided that there were simply not enough young girls in danger of falling into the bloodied hands of these groomers and did something utterly, utterly unthinkable….

They spent time, effort and energy googling one of the people who comments on my blog and PUBLISHED THE EMAIL ADDRESS AND NAME OF HIS 11 YEAR OLD DAUGHTER on their forum, plus other details that any pedophile or pimp could use to track her down.

Instead of signing the petition to help these children, they added another child to the list that needs to be protected.

Petition

 

One Year

 

 Evil can never survive, though for a time it may seem to triumph. It is only a question of our endurance and patience.–Paramananda

 The greatest evil is not done in those sordid dens of evil that Dickens loved to paint … but is conceived and ordered (moved, seconded, carried, and minuted) in clear, carpeted, warmed, well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voices.--C. S. Lewis (Screwtape Letters)

He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it.–Martin Luther King, Jr

There is a sacredness in tears. They are not the mark of weakness, but of power. They speak more eloquently than ten thousand tongues. They are messengers of overwhelming grief…and unspeakable love -Washington Irving

 

Madeleine: Light Her Way Home

The group Helping To Find Madeleine has produced this beautiful poster, for a symbolic occasion where people around the world will remember missing Madeleine.

Madeleine Mccann will be missing one year on the 3rd of May. To mark this sad ocassion, we plan to light the way home for Madeleine. Please go outside on Saturday 3rd May at 21.30 - 22.00 and light a candle, shine a torch for Madeleine. (some locations will be releasing sky lanterns those locations will be released shortly). Do it for Madeleine.

Please pass on the message

Download poster here

Madeleine:Compassion Fatigue

Compassion is sometimes the fatal capacity for feeling what it is like to live inside somebody else’s skin. It is the knowledge that there can never be any peace and joy fo me until there is peace and joy finally for you too’Frederick Buechner

Today, I read Julia Taylor’s article about compassion fatigue and couldn’t get it out of my head…her words haunted my preparations for my son’s birthday…

Almost a year ago, when Madeleine McCann went missing, I was genuinely saddened by her disappearance. But now I’m not. That sounds heartless doesn’t it?

When I studied the sociology of news at university (I know, I could have been finding a cure for cancer, but unfortunately my brain was geared to more Mickey Mouse matters), a phrase that was bandied about was “compassion fatigue”.

 It came to a head for me when I was working in Essex, and several bored housewives decided they would mark the 100th day since Madeleine went missing with the release of 100 balloons on a school playing field. I think my first question was, well, why? And the chief bored housewife organiser did not have an answer.
Okay she did. Her answer was: “To raise awareness.” This was at a point where, even three months after her disappearance, she was still in the press. Awareness? In Braintree? Why?  It was sad then, and it still is now, but I can’t bring myself to feel any grief for one particular missing child.

I think the time has come now when the whole issue should be (excuse the turn of phrase) put to bed.

Miss Taylor’s words have disturbed me for several reasons: First of all, the fact that she not only feels the need to tell us she couldn’t care less about Madeleine, but seems almost proud of the fact, is disheartening.

She does, though, have a university sanctioned excuse for being bored with the missing four year old - ‘compassion fatigue’ - that’s OK then; as long as there is a name or a syndrome for it, it’s not her fault.

Not content with boasting of her lack of compassion for Madeleine, she highlights how intellectually superior she is in contracting compassion fatigue by patronisingly contrasting her lack of empathy with some ‘bored housewives’ who released balloons in Madeleine’s name.

Bored housewives apparently don’t have the higher mental functions that ‘journalists’ have and so carry on caring when really they should be laid low with the symptoms of Compassion Fatigue. Perhaps they should have been releasing balloons with slogans such as;

Madeleine who?

Who gives a F**K?

‘Time to move on’ 

 ’Tired of Caring’ 

 ’Stop Boring Me’

‘Put it to bed’

 ’Did you see Eastenders last night?’

Have we really reached the point in our evolution where we can be tired of caring for others? Are we in fact devolving? When did it become OK to say I’m too intellectual to care for a missing child and you should be too? In a world where it seems there is an increasing appetite for violence in all its forms within our media how can we celebrate and advocate the decrease of caring and compassion for others?

My six year old niece was called gay at school this week for hugging her friend. A little six year old boy I know was left in tears after being called gay for comforting a boy who was upset.

I had comforted myself with the belief that the school yard bullies were children and would grow out of their ‘caring is gay/bad/evil’ mindsets. But having read Miss Taylor’s  ‘Too Clever To Care’ article I now know that’s tragically not the case.

 
 

 

Message to Martha

 

Martha, I only came across your email last night as it was sitting in my spam box so forgive the delay in replying. I tried to email you but it seems your email box is full as my reply came back, so I thought I’d reply to you here.

I think you have me confused with someone else Martha? After some head scratching and some sleuthing it appears you think I am a member of the Green Witches forum. First of all can I say I am flattered. Someone sent me the link a while ago and I had a good giggle for half an hour as I read some of the posts. As I said, I’m flattered that you think I was responsible for any of that, but I honestly wasn’t…Now why would you think I was?

Secondly, you seem to be under the impression that I read the 3As forum? I think your medication may need tweaking as this is the second thing you have got completely wrong. Again, I’m flattered that you care where I read and I’m sorry to disappoint but I don’t read it…the same way as I don’t read The Sun, the Daily Sport or the Beano. Sometimes people send me a link to a specific thread but nine times out of ten, I reply ‘I’m sorry but I’ve got better things to do than read reams of bile’

My ego doesn’t need massaging thanks…but nice of you to offer. As explained previously, this is my blog, my little piece of cyberspace. Nobody is compelled to come here, let alone read my posts. I get to choose which comments to allow and which to delete. Why would I soil my blog with four letter words and threats from people who forgot to take their medication?  There are plenty of forums for such people, I’m not obliged by any law to post such detritus here. That you feel compelled to inform me of your opinion of me (based on misinformation) says more about your ego than mine, don’t you think?

As for your condoning the harrassment, stalking and threats made against another person, I think you should think long and hard about when and why you crossed that particular line.

I think you are the one that is obessed. I think you are the one that has forgotten Madeleine, Martha.

 

 

 

 

The Leaks:Update

Regarding my blog about the leaks of the Mccann’s police statement to the press: It seems I inadvertently missed out a group of people who would oppose an Amber Alert that would help save the lives of children.

Why it never occurred to me is obvious now, but it took an email from one of this group to open my eyes. In my defense, like the Loch Ness monster, I didn’t believe that such people existed…but it seems they do.

This ‘group’ state that they oppose the Amber Alert which would save the lives of children- mine, yours- purely on the basis that the Mccanns have proposed it and championed it.

Let that sink in for a while…..

They vehemently oppose a scheme that would help to save children from the men and women that abduct them simply because their hatred for the Mccanns overrides everything else - including the lives of children.

Staggering, isn’t it….

Blind hatred….

Hatred, in the course of time, kills the unhappy wretch who delights in nursing it in his bosom ( Giacomo Casanova)

Here’s a challenge to all you 3A people that visited my blog yesterday and today - 400 or so of you. If you really care about the welfare of children, put your money where your mouth is and sign this NON- MCCANN related petition that will help save young girls.

If the petition figure doesn’t hit 500 by the end of today, we will know who and what you really care about.

http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/exploitedgirls/

Update: As of 4.30pm 78 people from the 3As have read about the petition and less than 10 have bothered to click on the link to it. Speaks volumes…

 

Mccann Leaks: The Real Target

OK, here’s a small quiz for you (10 points for each correct answer):

1. What sort of people would want to sabotage the setting up of a Europe wide Amber Alert system that has proved successful in the US and France for quickly finding abducted children?

Answer: Obviously, those who know  that their business of abducting children would be hindered.

2. Who might these people be?

Answer: Pedophiles; pedophile networks; those who take bribes from or who are being blackmailed by pedophiles rings. In short, those who stand to lose from children being quickly found.

3. Who tried to sabotage the discussion of the Amber Alert system in Brussels this week?

Answer: Pedophiles The Portuguese Police. (Give yourself 100 bonus points if you got that one right)

Yes, I was shocked too; they weren’t on my list either: Someone from the so called professional police force (PJ) chose the very day the Mccanns went to Brussels to ask for the Amber Alert system to be adopted across Europe, to leak transcripts of their police statements to the press.

The person that leaked the information has had ten or so months to leak it, but chose the day the Mccanns were in Brussels fighting for a system that would help save the lives of children. Not the Day before they went, not the day after, but that very day when the agenda was about something bigger and more important than the Mccanns.

The information leaked was nothing new; that the Mccanns left their children in the apartment believing them to be safe…we all knew that and have known about it since day one. So, the only conclusion can be that the leaker’s target was the Amber Alert system rather than the Mccanns…or he thought he’d kill two birds with one vicious stone.

4.Why would a Portuguese policeman want to derail a system that would help abducted children?

Answer: see answers to question 1 and 2

Teenage Sex Slaves:Trapped in No Man’s Land

This is the Olympic Torch, a symbol of the granting of the Olympic games to China in return for access for big business to the lucrative and growing Chinese market. What’s a few dead Tibetan’s between business friends, eh?

Look at it; surrounded by a group of Chinese ’security guards’ - a little disturbing don’t you think? What were the rules of engagement for these foreigners acting like police on British soil?

Surrounding them, a large group of policemen in yellow jackets with safety helmets who have seemingly left their bicycles somewhere.

Flanking them a large group of uniformed police, who apparently held hands in a ‘Cum by yah my Lord’ moment at some point on the route, which magically stopped protesters getting near the flame.

Outside of this picture were police helicopters, police buses and a cast of thousands of law enforcement officers all for one little torch…and the securing of those lucrative Faustian contracts..

Meanwhile…in a galaxy far, far away, thousands of young girls and their families are caught in a legal no man’s land where pimps and criminals are following the ideals of big business and making money from the suffering of others: Any student of criminology will recognise a scale of importance when it comes to victims: Any victim that is male and has a business will come top of the scale of priority; any male victim takes precedent over any female victim; and females who are deemed to be hovering anywhere near the underworld of prostitution are so low on the scale that they’re off the chart.

So when a troubled teenaged girl is groomed by a pimp masquerading as an older boyfriend; is lured away from home and gets ensnared into the world of forced prostitution, they are seen by the system as a problem for social workers rather than police. Once they reach sixteen they are seen as nobody’s business except the pimps who threaten them and their families with death should they even think of escaping and depriving their ‘owners’ of their huge profits.

Look at that picture of the torch again…protected and guarded by London’s finest as though it were the second coming. In total contrast, as I write this, a sixteen year old girl is being badly beaten by her pimp. Lured away from those who loved her she now protects their lives by not running away, and by allowing her body to be brutalised by men who are soul-less.  I cannot even name her in case her captor/pimp reads this and beats her to death.

The police response to her life being in danger and to her being forced to allow herself to be raped day in, day out is ’she is sixteen and not our concern’. This mantra is cruelly echoed by social services. So in stark language - a sixteen year old girl is being held against her will and is being raped everyday, yet the police/social services/ law cannot/will not do anything to rescue her. But that torch…that flaming torch mobilised an entire police force, and 37 people who dared to go near it and who dared to stand up for those who have no voice were arrested.

Isn’t there something wrong with this picture? Isn’t our society suffering from some form of psychosis when a symbol merits police action and protection, yet a young girl, considered by the law to be too young to drive or vote is deemed old enough to be held as a sex slave against her will and is beyond the protection of the law? If she were a Yorkshire Terrier being beaten and abused the police would be around in a heartbeat. She’s unlucky in that she is living through a time when a dog and a silly torch are considered more important in the eyes of the law and government than a beautiful, vulnerable girl living in fear of life.

So how about helping to redress the balance in favour of sanity?  These girls are normal children who have been manipulated and groomed online and face to face by unscrupulous criminals who know exactly what they’re doing. Men who seem to be able to act with impunity and are allowed by us to use and abuse young girls for money. If you have a young daughter, a young sister or niece she is as vulnerable as the girl I am talking about. We need to educate our children and then educate our MP’s, police force and Social Services. We need to act and quickly. Not one more girl or her family should suffer this hell. So what can you do?

1. Educate yourself

Teenage Sex Slaves - Daily Mail article - here

BBC Panorama - here

Forum - here

2. Take Action

Sign this petition - here

Send an email to the following

Alan Johnson - johnsona@parliament.uk - head of the Department of healthvernon coaker - coakerv@parliament.uk - Under-secretary of State in the Home Office

Beverley Hughes - hughes@parliament.uk - Department for Children, Schools and Families

Gordon Brown’s office

 

http://www.number10.gov.uk/output/Page821.asp

3. Educate your children

4. Educate your friends; send them links, petitions and encourage them to help.

5. Do something, anything  to help these girls and their families.

‘If you tolerate this then your children will be next’ (Manic Street Preachers)
 

 

 

 

 

 

Forever Searching: Mission Possible

Nearly every parent knows that unreal, terrifying feeling that etches itself onto your soul when you turn around and cannot see your child. I lost my son Richard in the middle of Birmingham city centre once when he was three. It was only minutes but it seemed like time stopped and each second felt like a never ending day.

In moments like that - of incredible fear and panic- your senses become heightened and everything seems surreal and distorted. You run the gauntlet of heightened emotions; first comes the tsunami of fear that paralyzes you, set against a background of unrelenting guilt and abject shame. Then come the ‘what ifs’ - what if a paedophile has taken him; what if he’s under a bus; what if I never see him again. This is followed by, and mixed with, the instant grief sandwiched between waves of utter despair and morbid panic.

The whole experience gets imprinted onto your subconscious in glorious 3D Technicolor will all the accompanying sounds, feelings, thoughts, emotions, smells..etc. It only takes a simple trigger to bring all of that flooding back, almost as if it is happening in again - which it is as your body holds the memory and never lets it go.

I was lucky, I found my son within minutes; he was playing with the Manikins in the shop window and entertaining a small crowd, as my legs buckled inside the store. The contrasting feeling of blissful joy when I found him was indescribable. I thanked every god that ever existed for his return. I held onto him for dear life and vowed to buy some superglue to fuse our hands together so that I never, ever experienced those feelings and that immobilizing pain again.

There are people, however, that never get to experience the happy ending, the thanking of gods, that blissful joy. For them the tsunami of fear is a constant state of being, a way of life, an unexpected career. I cannot begin to imagine, and to be brutally honest I won’t allow myself to imagine, what the families of missing children and adults must be living through. Like many other people I busy myself with mundane things and try to pretend they don’t exist and that there is nothing I can do for them, even if I did acknowledge their existence.

But when I do allow myself to think about what these families must be going through I feel shame. Shame that for the most part they are dealing with their own personal tsunami totally alone. We live in a society where drug addicts are given help and counselling; joy riders are sent on courses where they get to drive cars around a race track; prisoners get to complete a degree..etc. Families of missing children and adults are in contrast, left to their own devices at a time when they need as much help as we can possibly give them. They are drowning and yet we expect them to rescue themselves at a time when they cannot breathe let alone swim.

Thankfully there are people trying to throw them a lifeline, people who volunteer to help these families and get little or no help, financial or otherwise, from government. Why are convicted criminals deemed more worthy of government money and initiatives than the innocent families of missing children and adults? When did our priorities become so skewed?

Forever Searching is a volunteer organisation that seeks to redress the balance. They are actively lobbying the government on behalf of these families. That they need to do this should shame every member of Parliament and their constituents.

Below is Forever Searching’s press release for their latest initiative. It is a worthy cause and I would ask that people email their MP and express their support for “Early Day Motion” 1119.

FAMILIES OF THE MISSING NEED SUPPORT - LET US REMEMBER THE MISSING AND THEIR FAMILIES IN 2008

Every day, in every country children and adults go missing. This is fact. What support do those that are left behind get?

We are raising your awareness to a “Forever Searching” initiative.

On the 2nd April 2008 - every registered MP in the House of Commons, will receive a letter from “Forever Searching”, asking them to get behind and support “Early Day Motion” 1119.

Ann Winterton MP laid down an Early Day Motion in the house of commons, to start the process to bring about discussing this issue of how the Government can support the families of the missing. This was on the back of a request from the father of a missing child.

Families and Friends of Missing UK citizens who have gone missing in Britain and overseas, recently held a high profile march in London, the aims of this march was as follows:

1) Campaign for a counselling service for families of missing people in the UK and UK citizens missing abroad.

2) Raise public awareness of the serious problem of missing people.

3) Assist families of missing people with their local media to ensure that a missing person case receives immediate and widespread publicity.

4) Help families of missing persons to set up Internet websites with information and photographs of their missing relative(s).

5) Work with government and law enforcement agencies in order to maximise investigative and other resources in the search for missing persons.

6) Network with other missing person’s support groups in other countries in order to search for UK citizens missing abroad and to continue improving services both nationally and internationally.

7) Liaise with the Missing Person’s organisation in order to facilitate the best possible services for families of missing people.

There are not many people who would give up their spare time to actively take on the challenge of keeping the faces of Missing children, in the public domain. This is the sole purpose for the existence of “Forever Searching” a UK based group, made up solely of volunteers. For the last 6 months, this group have actively circulated thousands of images of missing children, using the Internet.

“Forever Searching” fully support the aims of the march, and we continue to assist the families by lobbying the government to take action, and to start supporting the families of missing people.

Please support this initiative by raising awareness of it - We need the British Government - to listen and to take action.

I thank you for your support
Kathy

I wish Kathy and her team good luck with their initiative.