Why men shouldn't volunteer with children
Amy Alkon: "You're a guy and you want to "give back"? Keep away from the kiddies or you could lose everything you have." Amy says this because of a post by Wendy McElroy:
I must say it makes me both sad and angry that this is the case. Having worked with numerous kids and teens over the course of my career, many could have used some male influence. But this is the sad new reality.
I haven't been able to get Anthony J. Tripoli out of my mind. He is the 69-year-old man I wrote about in a July 19th blog post. He was a volunteer who tutored children one-on-one in reading skills at a public school in Florida. Based on the testimony of an 8-year-old girl and without any supporting evidence whatever, he was given a life sentence for allegedly touching her in an inappropriate -- that is, a sexual -- manner. In reading the news story, I thought the man was probably innocent and a victim of the public/legal hysteria that surrounds the issues of children and sex.
I must say it makes me both sad and angry that this is the case. Having worked with numerous kids and teens over the course of my career, many could have used some male influence. But this is the sad new reality.
Labels: men's rights (or lack thereof)
posted by Helen at 12:50 PM
44 Comments:
Nothing new here. Even on the odd case where our so called "justice system" does its job and tosses out a case for no evidence the accusation alone is enough to ruin you. Best bet is to just stay as far away from kids a possible.
Good job Helen. I know of other accounts like this. Funny how hysteria takes control.
I was in the far back of a big video store kind of hidden by shelves and a 4-year-old kid wandered back alone without her mother. She stood right next to me for whatever reason. I IMMEDIATELY got the hell away from her and went out to the front of the store.
I have a feeling that many or most men feel that way. I wouldn't go near small children for any reason.
At our church, if you are a parent of a baby in the nursery, you have to take a turn helping in the nursery. You volunteer as a couple. Imagine my surprise when they told me that my husband wasn't allowed to help change the diapers of the 12 to 15 babies we had in the nursery that day. It seems there's some sort of law.
I also worked at the YMCA about 8 years ago and there was a rule that males cannot work in the day care. I'm not sure if that's true for all day care facilities or not.
I had some business this morning in a place where I occasionally volunteer. I saw the volunteer coordinator who was supervising a group of children. She admonished me for not getting involved with supervising the kids with their volunteer activities. I looked at the kids, then I looked over at the prison guards guarding the kids, then I looked over at the prison vans that drove the kids to the location and then at the work release schedule. I told the volunteer coordinator that she was out of her mind.... Um, yeah, sure, hon....Either these kids were going to kill me with no remorse or accuse me of some sort of wrongdoing for looking at them the wrong way. There is no way I'm signing up for that.
I'm am wondering what the cost will ultimately be for the village having to abandon the kids. We can thank the money-grubbing paranoid parents who all think their little darlings are angels and the rest of us are pedophiles.
"Jury" and "Florida" are the key words here. Odds are that the jury was composed of Bible-thumpers, elderly, and shut-ins who cannot accept (1) the reality of the wholesale sexualization of today's children and (2) the knowledge today's children have that such an accusation is a great way to get back at some unliked adult, or simply to get attention and sympathy. The rugrats don't fully comprehend the ramifications of making a false accusation of molestation, but they know they can hurt someone with one. I also suspect that adults with ulterior motives coach children to make such claims.
Google the Aleck Carpitcher case in Virginia sometime: he received a 38-year prison sentence for molestation on the uncorroborated testimony of a 10-year-old girl who later recanted. There was no physical evidence. The girl said later that she was jealous of the time Carpitcher was spending with her mother (his girlfriend), and simply wanted him out of the house. Under Virginia's strict laws, however, the poor guy is out of luck and he has lost every legal bid to date. The trial was in western Virginia, i.e., born-again hillbilly country where they believe that "children can't lie about sexual matters". (I'm from eastern Virginia. I know how many of the people from that part of the state have such attitudes.)
I worked in corrections for several years. My institution became the geriatric facility for the state. I saw several new inmates with new inmate numbers--meaning they had just been convicted, not in the system for years--who were feeble, wheelchair-bound, could not feed or dress themselves, etc. All too often we would hear through word of mouth that such inmates were in for "child molestation" or a related crime. Hey, what better way to avoid taking care of Grandpa and to divvy up his property and money than by his adult children coaching the grandkids to say that he molested them?
It is time for society to become a lot more skeptical of molestation claims. We've gone far too far in the direction of believing children all the time and being willing to prosecute and imprison men based on one person's testimony alone with no physical evidence. That was a tactic of Stalin's Soviet Union. Many of us men feel nearly as unfree as a citizen of that unfortunate country, thanks to the current hysteria that paints all men as sex-crazed pederasts. And I'll be damned if I'm going to have anything to do with helping children myself, either. Screw volunteering.
I would NEVER be alone with a student. I did however volunteer at the after school program that my ex wife put my son in. (The court thought that that would be better than his being with me, his former stay at home dad, because, well I Am a man right?) The school was actually exited to have "a male influence".
I will also never again try to surprise him by buying him a pack of iCarly trading cards without a female or child companion. That was not an experience that I care to repeat.
i have, occasionally, coached my children`s soccer teams. as an ex-professional player i felt i had something to offer children begining to learn the game. a benefit i recieved as a child growing up.
i was explaining my enjoyment to a friend and he said, why would you want to do that? only pedophiles want to be around groups of children.
i guess even men themselves feel some guilt even imagining doing something like that.
shame.
I decided some years ago that I don't ever to have anything to do with anybody's children, and I regret deeply my involvement in years gone by.
Every day I fear the knock on the door preceding the news that somebody has "recovered a memory" from 40 years ago.
A man is a fool to have any involvement with children.
(Until a while back I would have said "A man is a fool to have any involvement with somebody else's children." But now it seems that your own can be used against you, it you are a male.
Doc Helen,
This pedophilia hysteria is one reason why I didn't go into teaching. It's sad, because I would have been good at it too; I used to be a TA in college, and my students always seemed to like my style. I would have loved teaching high school math & science, but I can't take the chance on an accusation.
If I were to see a kid in danger, I don't know if I'd stop & help, either. I've heard of a case where a man didn't stop to help a child who later drowned; he was afraid of having his actions misinterpreted. Can't say I blame him...
MarkyMark
though...it has struck me that there are some strange people out there wearing coaching uniforms....
....but none as strange as the very large man in the boy scouts uniform with shorts and the neck scarf with the little plastic toggle.
he reminded me of fatty arbuckle from the silent screen, except that he was in colour.
K-man says:
"Jury" and "Florida" are the key words here. Odds are that the jury was composed of Bible-thumpers, elderly, and shut-ins who cannot accept
The odds are you do not know what you are talking about. The whole sequence of events occurred in Port St. Lucie, Florida, which is on the Atlantic coast three counties north of Miami, as can be seen here.
http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/maps/florida_map.html
The demographic and commercial statistics on this locus can be seen here.
http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/12/1258715.html
This small metropolis is stupefyingly average for the State of Florida. If you examine the advertisements for the local churches, you see a jumble of Catholic, Anglican, Lutheran, Methodist, and evangelical outfits.
The life sentence he was given was specified in the statute. It was not imposed at the discretion of the judge or the jury; blame the Florida legislature (which likely is not a hotbed of holyrollers).
The trial was in western Virginia, i.e., born-again hillbilly country where they believe that "children can't lie about sexual matters".
In K-man's imagination. The Shenandoah Valley (i.e. 'Western Virginia') actually has a string of small metropolitan centers off I-81 (Winchester, Harrisonburg, Roanoke) with interstitial territory occupied by small towns and countryside like most any other place in America. The signature confessional population is not evangelicals or pentacostalists (though they are there, like anyplace in the South), but Mennonites and Brethren. You would have to make quite an effort to find any hillbillies. The cities are all crapped-up with mall development, just like any other place in America.
Winchester, Roanoke and Harrisonburg are populated with a bunch of hillbillies. I travel there quite often. Winchester isn't so bad but it gets much worse as you go south. Although the Virginia hillbillies are not nearly as extreme as the ones you may find in West Virginia or Kentucky they are still pretty rednecky and definitely not my cup of tea at all. I always fear for my safety when I am there. Oy!
No, they are not.
i`ll take cham for a thousand alex.....
....i live in a rural border town just nort-west of toronto that is a mix of dutch, german, lithuanian, british and the like. new immigrants mixed with rural farm types with the pre-requisite turbo-diesel pickup trucks.
rednecks.
the further north you go, the more likely you will find rednecks mixing with the affluent and the golfers and weekend campers.
the thin veneer of upper middle-income suburbanites rest primarily around lake ontario and down as far as niagara falls to the south and pickering to the east. this is known as the golden horseshoe.....income and the depth of the gene pool drops off sharply as you move away.
i would hazzard a guess that this is true of most, if not all, of the urban/suburban centers in north america.
K-Man, Cham, dr. alister:
Reading the three of you, I am reminded of a line from the film David & Lisa:
"If you're normal, who wants to be normal?"
You may fancy yourselves class acts. You are not.
I can just hear Cham now in her Mrs. Milburn Drysdale voice: "Oh, those disGRACEful hillbillies."
I always fear for my safety when I am there. Oy!
Seriously?
Its comments like this that remind me that calls for diversity and multiculturalism are just a white status game (see the disdain that diversicrats hold for a different white culture.)
I am a psychologist who has considerable experience and training in working with sexually abused children. It happens, on occasion, that they try to sexualize their relationship with me. It is typically putting their hands too near my crotch, or occasionally trying to press their genitals against my knee.
I cannot tell you how easy it is to not be aroused by this behavior. It is done by little children, and comes across as sad, not at all erotic.
My response is always the same, "You do not have to do that anymore" as I move them away from me in a gentle manner. The kids smile, and it typically does not happen again. It has never happened more than twice.
If I put this in a report to the Department of Children's Services, some woman with a B.A. in sociology or social work inevitably recommends that the parents take the children to see a woman. It happens about once a quarter. Never mind that it is practicing psychology without a license, never mind that they never discuss the matter with me, never mind that I have been doing this job for so long and have more training and experience than they ever will. I am a man, so they recommend that the child gets taken away from the therapist that they formed a trusting relationship with, who they disclosed to, and the child is injured and has to start all over. Just because the DCS worker has an uncomfortable feeling.
The last time it happened, the custodial aunt told DCS that she had taken the child to a woman and the child got nothing out of 6 months of therapy. She decided to keep the child with me, and the termination of parental rights to the parents who abused her was recently finalized.
But because I am male, and have the plumbing that goes along with it, DCS will continue to recommend that children be transfered out of my care when they get sexually reactive. I have spoken to my femal colleagues who go through the same thing, except for the recommended transfer part. It is simply because I am male and the women at DCS do not feel comfortable with that.
Trey
TMink, I don't know how you do it. My admiration meter is pegged.
I had a hell of a time getting and keeping my kids way back when. They are grateful, as am I, that it happened that way. It was expensive and happened with no thanks to the system, though.
I was born and raised in coastal south east VA. I spent many years in upper east TN. I miss it and would love to be back there. The statements made above about parts of western VA surprised me. I will admit there are pockets deep in the hills where "outsiders" are not trusted. And there are pockets of people (again, deep in there) where people don't want their kids to "get above their raisin'. Prejudice comes in all sizes, shapes, and colors. I wonder how those who said what they said would fare in foreign countries where an average American might see very different cultural norms as really weird.
The "south" has been getting beat up by the intellectually and culturally superior "north" since the civil war days. I've spent time there also. Still do. I don't see the people there as having swell opinions of minority groups in general. The hypocrisy drips like a leaky oil pan, staining the streets.
tmink, being sensitive to the process of children sexualised at an early age is a matter of training, awareness and compassion....as you well know.
in my work with families i run across behaviour of this nature and casually "call the game" and move on to other things.
my girlfriend is a social worker who suprisingly, in the cult of msws, has a degree in psychology and deals with children from infants to 19 and tragically has to deal with cases of all manner of abused children from neglect to extreme violence.
i don`t know how she does it other than that she cares about them.
and i have to say, more so than the typical msw as biased bureaucratic cultists.
and regarding rednecks...some of my best friends are them folks...
..but i wouldn`t leave my children with them for the week-end. thier values regarding everything from the women-folk to animals to well, pretty much everything actually is vastly different from mine.
i know these guys as musicians. some of the most talented pickers and craftsmen i know.
rednecks though....lord`n tunderin`
i was married to a girl many years ago who`s father was from rural new brunswick. he was raised by the priests.
our relationship failed as she and her sisters began to face thier issues regarding thier father`s pedophilia.
his acting out was hidden by the community in a small village in suburban ontario. he was the janitor of the local public school and for years there were rumours of his tastes...and people just avoided the man and certainly never let thier children visit his home.
but he had his victims, incliding his own children.
for all the faults of a modern affluent society, i believe we are more sensitive to the behaviour of this type of person and with police checks and a closer attention paid to our children`s movements we avoid all but the most clever of predators.
do we go too far though?
we would certainly have capped my wife`s father before he was given access to young children.
and i have to state the obvious for the critics...not all men, and certainly not all rednecks are pedophiles...and niether are all catholic priests.
it is a matter of the values of groups....and our comfort level within whatever group we find ourselves.
the most stressful situation i have ever found myself in was while on holiday in mexico in `92 during the chiapas rebellion. we were escorted off a bus at machine-gun point while visiting the caves at tulum, for what reason i`ll never know, by these tiny little men in military uniforms, no more than five foot two or three...grinning as they poked us with the barrels of thier guns.
security purposes?
nobody made a statement, or apology or anything. we just got off the bus and went into the compound to see the dolphins and the ruins.
the tension level was high from the moment we landed in cancun. similar little men with machine guns wandered about the airport, except none of them were grinning.
speaking of foriegn counrtries and different customs and practices.
The Puritans of Salem would be proud.
dr.alistair comment about Boy Scouts illustrates why working with children is risky. All you have to do is work with boys and they think you're weird. The bigotry against men in this country is ever growing.
Cham - I would argue with you about the hillbillies but it's probably best you just stay away from them. Even though they're lower animal forms, like a dog, they sense when someone doesn't like them and are more likely to bite.
One could say the same thing about the maleducated dimwits that dominate the middle class, DADvocate. How many members of the middle class fancy themselves to be bourgeois when, in fact, they're only different in degree from the rednecks and white trash (two different groups to those who know them) than they care to admit? Too many, in my experience.
Say what you will about the working class in general, but it tends to be a bit more grounded in reality than the middle and upper classes. Moral panics are primarily the domain of the middle class.
Being an equal opportunity misanthrope, I see plenty over which to roast the middle and upper classes. The reasons for making fun of them are as many as that of the lower class.
Sorry, MikeT, I was being facetious. I've lived in Appalachia my entire life, currently in rural Ohio. I wouldn't trade it for the city. I love the real people here with their feet solidly on the ground.
TMink, don't get worried or anything. I wasn't referring to experiencing a tingle up my leg like our boy over at CNN does when he thinks about Obamsky.
Your work with children can't be easy. My heart would be in pieces on the floor. Some adults would be pushing up daisies, and I'd be rotting in a cell. Like I said, I don't know how you do it.
It's a sad fact that no man is safe dating a divorced or single mom with small kids. Divorced is worse, since you have the dad in the background who can bring charges against the interloper.
It happened to a friend of mine, who spent two years in the slammer, sent by uncorroborated testimony of a young girl whom he couldn't even cross-examine on the stand. He is now disqualified from working in two professions, Law and Teaching, for which he is eminently qualified.
jimbino, without wanting to blame the victim (truly.) there are a series of dynamics at play in any situation involving people.
the dad in the background has to get by the ex-spouse who he`s dating. if she`s unsupportive and shows unreasonable bias in situations, one may have cause for alarm.
if you are heading for a situation, have the conversation.
and, don`t parent other people`s children. refuse to do it.
it takes discipline, but if the woman you are with is worth it, take the time and explain your position.
i have a girlfriend who has an 18 year old daughter who lives with us on and off. she mostly lives with her father two miles away.
she is an absolute nightmare. she wrecked he mother`s car, parties all week and demands things on the phone or the minute she walks through the door...and yells at her mother if she doesn`t immediately respond.
oh yeah, and she pretty enough to twist the boys around 24/7.
in the four months i`ve lived here i haven`t said one word to her about her behaviour. i just treat her as if i`m meeting her for the first time.
her mother admitted the other night that even though she loves her dearly, she can`t stand who she is.
this relationship is important enough to me that i`m willing to endure the occasional hammering on the bedroom door or trashing the kitchen and leaving, because i want to be with her mother....and i can walk the line and not get in the young girl`s face like some idiot step-dad.
this young girl has some difficult issues to work out between her mother and father and her own new life...and so my investment in stoicism is in some ways my gift to her.
and i have two children who`s mother has had boyfriends, and is now bringing another one around.
i don`t care much to know thier relationship. i watch to see how my boys are.
they mostly want to be up here with us and recently this has been more the case, as this man has come around.
he may choose to parent them. that`s his choice, if he wants to live in misery. they`ll eat his lunch and laugh.
he heeds to not touch them though.
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"this relationship is important enough to me that i`m willing to endure ..."
----
Why?
Because she's got one of those "vagina" things?
I'll bet if she didn't have one you wouldn't be so hepped up and putting her up on a pedestal.
But feel free to rationalize away now.
It does appear dr.alistair is treading a dangerous path.
you guys are funny. true, my girlfriend comes equipped as you indicated....and that is one of the reasons why i am in a relationship with her...though certainly not the only reason.
i could provide an inventory here, but suffice to say, she shares a long list of values that i hold as important.
values that the hair and nails girls this region is populated with sneer at as a matter of course.
interestingly, i share many of these values with a number of my male friends also...but i`m not physically intimate with them.
i am of the belief that we all have a soul-mate, a partner in life, a woman to age with,and i believe i have found her.
i`m not here to bash your position, but it does seem prejudiced and generalised toward all women....
...and while you have a case for thier being some substantial psychopaths out there in $500 hair and heels, they are not all like that.
can i be quantitative here?
no.
hazzard a guess?
85% or more.
but that means at least one in ten is reasonable and willing to share.
if you are ok enough yourself.
i read somewhere recently that men are net tax earners and that women are net tax consumers.
this is a situation in law, and as such shapes how we interact meta-physically.
most men and women are unaware of such legal differences between the sexes....until, of course, they are married, and then summarily divorced.
much of what we have to deal with in our forties and older flows through this metaphysical process.
it`s painful, but doesn`t have to consume us entirely, does it?
my girlfriend and i are selling her house and moving to a rental property to start afresh. her batshit daughter is going to college 50 miles away in september and will visit as a guest in our new home.
this is an agreement my girlfriend and i have consciously made together and we see as the only way to survive the gauntlet of her daughter`s next few years.
her son, who is 23, may join us, but is joining the police force and may be transferred away.
my boys will join us when they visit. i don`t have custody, i gave that up along with a paid up $320,000 mortgage and two year old jeep.
i got to keep my genitals though, and the love and companionship of my children...and a good woman.
i rid my life of parasites called lawyers and those who subscribe to thier dining habits.
K-man fancies that 'hillbillies' 'cannot accept' the 'sexualization of children' so are liable to dispatch innocent men to prison on the basis of uncorroborated testimony. 'dr. alister' fancies that 'rednecks' are latent pedophiles. Why don't the two of you work out a consistent set of slurs between yourselves and get back to the rest of us later?
Dr Alister is just a felon still thinking he's a free man.
Here's the scenario: your main squeeze's 18-yr-old daughter shows up with a 2-yr-old kid in tow. "Oh, I forgot to tell you ...." She & kid spend the night with the two of you. Kid's dad cries "sex abuse" and the 3-yr-old keeps repeating the phrase, "He touched me." And she's not referring to Jesus.
Away you go!
I almost responded for a Craigslist for a math/physics tutor. I will teach; I won't serve time for it.
The sad thing is that kids, both boys and girls, I suppose, will now be deprived of private tutoring in things like math, science, economics and chess, which, in our society at least, only men seem to do well. Few women achieve high honors in math, science or chess, and no woman has ever won the highest honor in Economics.
Depriving kids of education for the stupidities of parents and society is perfectly reasonable, I guess. Reminds me of the fable of the Pied Piper.
While I hear what you guys are saying, I am not sure I could marry into a family and not be a dad. I do not know how you guys do it. Honestly.
Trey
Life in prison. Unbelievable.
How long are we supposed to take this shit?
Doctor Alistair sez: "i am of the belief that we all have a soul-mate"
--------
You're easily brainwashed.
I hope you aren't also paying for your "soul mate" (most men who talk like that ARE).
She's a person, a human being, and that's it. Not a goddess up on a pedestal in a white flowing dress.
When societies get this maudlin, naive and downright fat and stupid, they probably deserve the downward spiral that is inevitable.
I also tend to be suspicious of the soul mate approach to marriage. It makes more sense to me that there are multiple areas of compatibility and that succesful marriages are made by more compatible people who work harder at keeping their marriage.
A little luck and a lot of prayer don't hurt either.
The trick is how to figure out the compatibility aspect. How long does it take and what to look for, that is the tricky part I think. Infatuation is powerful and fast. So it clouds the issue.
Trey
jimbino, i get what you are saying, but....you have to add a few "extras" into your scenario to make it fly.
my situation as it is doesn`t contain that sort of three lock box.
tmink, our values are what make this thing fly. my idea of a soul make includes the shared values, work ethic, goals, interests and plans for the future.
i saw the picture of the godess up on a pedestal and that made me laugh....sort of a kotex commercial image....or yogurt aimed at the female market.
paying?
she holds a mortage on the property we live in which we are selling as soon as renovations are complete and then we are going to rent a townhouse near the lake for a year and see where we are at that point.
y`know, i do agree with the tiara and dollhouse type women being dangerous, but i give my girl more credit than that.
Dr. Alistair, I was not disagreeing with you or your post, just riffing on the concept of a soul mate.
And I can see that shared values make it fly. I hope it flies on pal.
Trey
@TMink said... I also tend to be suspicious of the soul mate approach to marriage.
____________
I think the "soul mate" concept is actually destructive. Sure, it sounds romantic, but that is more movie or novel than reality. It leads people to believe there is something magical about a "soul mate" and that a relationship that is "meant to be" will blossom and thrive outside of ones efforts.
To quote Michelle Langley in her book about Women's Infidelity, it is "less about finding the right person, and more about treating a person right." Amen.
Trust, I can see where it would move the locus of control away from the couple's choices, putting the emphasis on the match rather than the work.
On the other hand, maybe the soul mate crowd works harder to find the right person. The cynical part of my brain says that they look for a special feeling of infatuation rather than the signs of a good fit with a healthy person.
Still, I knew my wife was for me after 6 weeks, so it is easy to get all logical now!
Trey
tmink, the match is the beginning...not the destination....though i think many confuse the two positions.
it is the work that makes it...work.
i do some couple counselling and it`s always the values that make it work or not...though values are mostly choices...and sometimes people can decide to shift or drop values for the betterment of a valued relationship.
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