This is a response to a previous post on this blog by Themis, titled ‘ “Sorry” to all the little children’

Themis, I know you are waiting and hoping for the next round of apologies to come out of the mouths of professionals, bureaucrats, adults. Heartfelt apologies and acknowledgements that the community did the wrong thing, keeps doing the wrong thing, by not listening to children.

But I think you are going to be waiting a while for that apology.

We live in a world where adult rights are paramount. Adults are bigger, stronger, craftier, have more possessions to lose, more responsibilities to shoulder, they know how to navigate the legal system. Adults must be protected, especially against the conniving claims of children.

That’s the conclusion I take from this most recent article about a child gang-rape case in the US.

‘Investigators said soon after arriving, the older girl took money to have sex with several men at a party, including Leary. The teen then gave some of the money she had collected to the younger girl to let the men start touching her. It soon escalated to rape, police said, and the men threatened to kill the child if she screamed or told anyone. The girl later put on her clothes and left the apartment; her older sister stayed, police say. Two women found the child crying outside the apartment and walked her home, where police were waiting because the girls’ parents had reported them missing. Leary’s lawyer suggested on Thursday in court that the child had been pressured to make up the story. “She was not raped, was not gang-raped,” [the lawyer] Robin Lord said. “I’m 100 per cent certain that the seven-year-old was not sexually assaulted”.’

Seven-year-olds are liars. Seven-year-olds don’t know what they are talking about. They make these elaborate stories up. Maybe even for fun. Cause, isn’t it fun for a child to joke about being gang raped? Or maybe the seven-year-old wasn’t raped, maybe the men just ‘had sex’ with her?

Obviously “sorry” isn’t going to come soon. We haven’t screwed things up enough yet. There’s still more damage we can possibly do, so let’s do that first. Don’t be silly, we can’t apologise yet, we need to rub salt in your wounds a little bit more instead.

Adults’ rights are paramount. It is important that this news story is splashed all over world media, because we must protect adults’ interests. Let us publicly, internationally, insinuate that a seven-year-old rape victim is a liar.

Oh oops, is that not a good strategy for protecting a traumatised child’s mental health?

Sorry will come, but later.

Sorry that this apology is coming 15 years too late.

Sorry that we broadcast to the world about everything that happened to you.

And then denied that it happened to you.

Sorry we took away your childhood.

Sorry we took away your faith in humanity.

Just for the record, if it’s of any worth, I would like to say that I am sorry. I am sorry that this keeps happening to little children everywhere. I am sorry we keep treating victims like this. I am sorry that this is the community we live in. I am sorry that we can’t seem to get our act together enough to prevent these occurrences. I am sorry that when a child rape case is broadcast all over the world – is that not humiliating enough? – it is still accompanied by adult denials that anything ever happened at all.

Sorry will come, eventually. But it will clearly not come today.

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