From time to time an instance comes to light involving well-organized abuse at an almost unimaginable level. Children from a very young age are trained to provide all manner of ****** services to meet the demands of deviant and sadistic clients. Contrary to what people may think, this happens not just in so-called 'third-world countries,' but in more prosperous lands too.
Even where there is significant corroboration for the veracity of such accounts, survivors can suffer the further indignity of not being believed. There is some movement and improvement in knowledge but more needs to be acknowledged and understood, not only by colleagues and other professionals providing care, but society at large.
It all makes one ponder what leads a perpetrator to act this way. Whilst it helps to understand some act out trauma they themselves received, it is unacceptable behaviour, is still a criminal offence - and it hurts others. We all have choice to decide ahead what we would do if offered an easy way to cross that line. Decency requires we resolve to remember who we want to be in essence and retain this reality check: how would I feel if this was my wife, my child? Refuse to abuse another.
Some boundaries simply should never be breached, even if one is promised immunity from repercussions, e.g. told 'the child won't remember – it won’t hurt them.' Many victims do remember and either way, such incursions rob them of a normal life, something many take for granted. The truth is they are massively, negatively affected on one level or another, often in multiple ways, at whatever age such incursions take place.
The reality is that transgressing on another's boundaries on any level not only harms the recipient but also those violating others. It alters and destroys something in the offender, immediately recognizable or not, and by extension the wider community is affected.
On looking in the mirror an offender may see at best a deluded half-life. As my poem concludes, who would want to be meeting that inner witness to their corrupt and heartless behaviour, their real character looking back at them through the 'man* in the mirror...'
*(either gender can offend - some women sexually abuse too. When a perpetrator takes a good look in the mirror of reality, they may well find themselves confronted with the enormity of what they have done, and who they have become)