General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: So I have a story for you: [View all]EYESORE 9001
(25,927 posts)My circle of friends and acquaintances has always been small, but it takes more than one hand to count the church youth ministers with whom I have been acquainted over the years who were caught engaging in inappropriate activities with children in their charge. In my particular experience, the perpetrator was always male and the victims always female. One avoided prosecution by agreeing to a shotgun wedding.
I'll grant that many people with purely altruistic motives enter fields that place them in positions of authority over children, but we must recognize that many others with predatory motives are drawn to those fields. With all that science knows about these predators, there surely must be tests and indicators that can be used to effectively weed them out early on. Are we, as a society, so mercenary that we are willing to overlook some percentage of predators just to make the educational system or other institution work? I don't really want to know the answer to that question; the truth may be too depressing for consideration.