Tomato/Tomahto: Vigilante/Guardian Angel

The man on the left is Roberto Saviano, and the reason I have him here on this particular post is to drive home how serious people like me are when it comes to exposing child sexual abusers and ending their reign of terror.

Mr. Saviano is an author who wrote a book and screenplay exposing the hardest mafia families and their business relationships world wide, including with government officials. So scared are they that Mr. Saviano has to live with a near battalion of police and military escorts at all times, even living in and around his home. They put a hit on him last year when his book came out, ordering him to be dead by Christmas. I’m happy to report they failed.

The point is Mr. Saviano knew this would happen. He knew the kind of people he was taking on because he lived among them at a point in his life, witnessing first hand just what they do to “rats.” He knows it won’t be a quick, painless death if they ever get their hands on him, but that didn’t stop him from exposing them, anyway. Why? Because it was the right thing to do. He traded self preservation for an end to the torment and fear by innocent people barely surviving the tyranny of this rabidly vicious organization. Not once has he thought of himself but for the families who needed someone, anyone, just one person brave enough to come forward and tell the world what was happening.

Just as a child being sexually abused inwardly begs for someone, anyone, just one person willing to step out of their comfort zone to save them when they cannot save themselves.

I am about to take a brief break from my internet efforts to take care of the things I do offline. Before doing so, I wanted to say a few things about what I do and how I feel about this fight that may not have been clear to this point. I want people to see me for the average person I am in the hopes more ordinary citizens will realize ANYONE can do what I do. All they have to do is care about saving children.

In my debates with child abusers and their sympathizers, I have been called “prude,” “fearmonger,” “morality police,” “vigilante,” and some colorful names, as well.

“Prude”: The fact is, I write erotica on the side, am a fan of artistic nude, addicted to flirting and street racing, and swear worse than a drunken sailor when I’m really pissed.

“Fearmonger”: I don’t expose anything to make people afraid. On the contrary, what I write about is intended to piss people off enough to join this fight in ending child sexual abuse and the pedophiles’ attempts to make pedophilia legal.

I blog information like grooming tactics to arm parents and care givers as well as children, themselves, with knowledge. How many times have we heard “knowledge is power”? You cannot know a predator is targeting your child if you don’t know the signs, and I hope that if a parent sees these signs, they will react quickly and remove the child from that situation.

My daughter takes karate and she is reaching the stage where she will start sparring. She fears hurting someone and being hurt. I tell her that part of sparring is to get a person ready physically and psychologically for a real life confrontation. One way attackers are able to overpower their target – be it for sexual or non-sexual reasons – is by stunning the person with violence. Most people freeze out of fear if their attacker hits them or threatens to hurt them. By sparring on the floor of the dojo, the body gets used to the blows and the mind learns to fight through the confrontation.

In the exact same train of thought, knowing and understanding a sexually abusive situation before actually experiencing one removes the shock, the fear, and the embarrassment from the scenario that the abuser is counting on. They need their victim to be too shocked to react quickly enough to run away, too afraid to put up a fight, too embarrassed of the assault or even sex to talk about it to anyone after wards. This is why I always encourage parents and caregivers to talk openly with their children and remind them that if they don’t, someone else will. That someone is counting on being the one to introduce sex to that child so that they can mold them better to their will.

So, the only people who should be afraid of anything I put out there are the sexual predators – just as it should be.

“Morality police”: The term “moral” can mean many things to many people, so this is an assessment of me based upon the beliefs of the individual saying it. It doesn’t really bother me on a personal level. It does, however, bother me that what these people are saying is that only people with certain religious backgrounds don’t hurt children.

The people I have heard this from mostly are pagans and wiccans. What they are effectively saying is that they have no common decency since it takes a moral person to care what happens to children.

Nowhere on my site do I dictate how a person should pray or conduct themselves based upon religion. I am pagan, myself, as are many of us fighting against child sexual/non-sexual abuse. It is not the pagan way to demand a specific spiritual path be followed by others. That is entirely contrary to what paganism is, which simply means we follow our own spiritual journey and not that of others.

The most absurd times I have been called morality police is when I have stated that it is wrong for grown men to approach little girls they don’t know and request they share private time in their homes out of the presence of their parents or any other adult. As the arguments heated, it was clear those calling me this were arguing for the rights of these men to be alone with little girls, some pre-pubescent, in “instructions” on wiccan “rituals,” particularly “sacred sex” rituals.

Now, I’m not going to get into all of that again. It’s all been blogged about before on my site. I just wanted to point out that “morality” in a religious perspective doesn’t have anything to do with protecting a child from being a sex toy. In that case, are they saying atheists have a Constitutional right to rape children? The absurdity becomes more clear the longer you think about this one.

“Vigilante”: Vigilante is a culmination, in my opinion, of the above three. Pedophiles, predators, child rapists and their sympathizers have used this term on all of us in this fight to stop child sexual abuse.

Vigilante, as described in the Webster’s Dictionary, is “a member of a volunteer committee organized to suppress and punish crime summarily (as when the processes of law are viewed as inadequate); broadly : a self-appointed doer of justice”.

Civilized society frowns upon a group of people beating to death a man for holding up a convenient store because it’s wrong on many counts. For ordinary citizens to commit murder in order to punish someone for stealing is ignorant, for one, as the punishment doesn’t fit the crime and citizens don’t have the right to commit crimes for any reason, even to bring their idea of justice to another. Secondly, those citizens don’t know what the circumstances were surrounding the theft. Stealing is a crime, yes, but only the court can determine how harsh the sentence should be.

What if that guy was in there taking money the shop keeper received from pimping out the “thief’s” daughter and he wanted to turn it over to the police? What if the thief is mentally retarded? What if his children hadn’t eaten in three days and all he was stealing was a loaf of bread or some pre-made sandwiches? Then again, what if the thief had a bomb strapped to his chest? What if the theft was a cover for a much larger crime and the vigilantes distracted the police trying to break up the mob scene, not noticing a suicide bomber enter the building down the street?

We can put so many variables on situations like that, logically arguing the impropriety of vigilantism. What, however, are the reasonable variables in raping a child? What good excuse does someone have for holding down a helpless child and forcing sex on them? What excuse in the world could possibly justify any form of sexual abuse? Particularly if the victim is a child. There is no excuse. This is why so many are for the death penalty in child sexual abuse cases, at least child rape, and then comes the notion that anyone for such a punishment is inciting violence.

There are things I am willing to do that would easily label me a vigilante, but I’m fine with that. When it comes to keeping a child from being raped or stopping the sexual abuse of a child, there is no line in what must be done. There is often no time to think, just react. At this moment, it is determined just how willing we are to protect a child. It is at this moment we discover our place – as a witness or a guardian angel. I know if the time ever comes, I will not be the one to stand there debating what course of action will affect my future. My reaction will be selfless, swift, and just.

This mentality is something we must have before we need it, and it is why I am the way I am.

There are a lot of things I won’t do because I have toned my mind to defend a child in whatever way necessary. I don’t want that reaction to present itself at the wrong moment. It is the side of a “vigilante” that people don’t see. The restraint, the wisdom, the ability to discern between right and wrong, justifiable and overboard.

People say “vigilante” as though it is a bad thing because they only see it on the news in the course of mob mentality. People don’t realize “vigilante” in other cases simply means the person is willing to accept punishment in order to unselfishly do what law enforcement cannot and what needs to be done to remove the victim from immediate danger.

If someone grabbed my daughter, I would fight them with as much force as needed, even if that meant killing them. If someone would sexually abuse my child, I would have my way with them long before the police were involved. It’s how I have fine tuned my mind to carry out the necessary deed without a second thought. It has nothing to do with morals or hatred or anger, but everything to do with protecting my child. I would do the same for any other child I saw in such a dangerous situation, as well.

If more of us would step up to that plate ignorant people call “vigilante,” we could stop child sexual abuse all together by letting abusers know it will never be tolerated. There are too many people out there, however, demanding we show them mercy even when they showed their innocent little victim the horrors of rape. That is why people like me, BACA, and the quiet ones you don’t see coming exist and will never go away. We have to pick up the slack, even if it means giving up things people take for granted – like a restful sleep free from images of child and infant sexual torture. We are okay with that but don’t call us names and jeer us just because you don’t have the balls to do it.

It’s been said that these convictions of mine and even the drive to do the work I do comes from hatred and anger I can’t let go of from my own survival. That is quite an inaccurate understanding.

To be perfectly honest, what I survived as a child victim is not nearly what I survived later in life. I was molested for a year between 6 and 7. I don’t recall everything he did, just enough to know the parts I talk about in my personal stories posts. I know of what happened to my niece and nephew when they were between the ages of 2 and 10, which included child prostitution and child porn, and what I survived was not much compared to that.

Since I started researching child sexual abuse and joined the child sexual abuse awareness and prevention movement a few years ago, I learned and am still learning that children are being forced to endure the very things that almost killed me as an adult. And THAT is why I do this.

The sexual abuse and torture I survived after I turned 16 and for years later would have completely destroyed most. It all almost did me in and to this day I have suicidal thoughts. When I learned that children were going through what I went through as an adult, my stomach turned and I was in shock for weeks. Especially when I found out it happens to infants as young as a few days old, that children are actually bred for sex, that children are used in BDSM scenarios, that children under the age of 10 have as many as 100 counts of sexual intercourse in one day in child sex slavery operations, and that even mothers rape.

No child should EVER have to go through what I went through as a grown up. NEVER! And THIS is what drives me. Knowing that the physical pain and mental torment I suffered is inflicted upon little children infuriates me to no end and drives me to do whatever it takes to keep any child from going through it, even kill the bastard.

I am not a law officer and a lot of people cannot understand why anyone would come to me and people like me rather than straight to the police. It is because people like me can keep a line of communication open; whereas, the police department and the FBI’s NCMEC have limited resources and can only take complaints – not continue to follow up with the complainant. There isn’t more I can do than pass on the information, other than add my experience in the complaint, but I CAN offer that support and the piece of mind that the situation IS being handled. That is what I do and that is why anyone who cares about children can do this job.

You don’t have to have a badge to care or a degree to lend an ear. You just have to be that someone a victim needs to speak up when everyone else is silent. A friend when that child is told he is only worthy of being a toy.

I may be taking a break from the blogging, but rest assured I am not taking a break from this fight. Monsters never sleep so neither will I. I can still be reached in the usual way. Leave a comment anywhere (with instructions to keep it private if you so wish) and I’ll do what I can with what you need.

*********VACATION MODE IS ON BUT THE FLAME IS STILL BURNING!*********