If you are outraged about the child that was raped, here is what Congress did:

[Are_grits_groceries]

<snip>
Whose Pain Will They Feel?
On May 20th, PROTECT National Campaign Chairman David Keith testified before the U.S. Defense Appropriations Subcommittee. He asked that the House make room in its $83 billion war/disaster funding bill for $14 million in funding to combat child exploitation in the military and on the homeland security front.

Prior to and following the hearing, numerous members of Congress pledged their support. Now, they've been silenced by House leaders, who say there's no room in the budget. Our opponents say that funding anti-child exploitation work is not, strictly-speaking, war or disaster spending, so the children will just have to wait.

Here are the facts about what we're asking for:
$2 million for 4 military criminal investigation organizations who police child exploitation in the military.

$10 million for ICE's Cyber Crimes Center (C3), a front line of cybersecurity for America's children. C3 has taken crippling internal budget cuts and desperately needs resources.

$2 million to create the long-delayed National Internet Crimes Against Children Data System (NIDS). NIDS was mandated by Congress in 2008, and needed by military and law enforcement agencies combating child exploitation.
So, if the House leadership thinks that's not military spending... and it's not disaster spending... they must have extremely strict standards, right?

Well, here are just a few things they did find room for in their budget:

$15.9 million for a U.S. Capitol Police radio system
$23 billion to save teacher jobs
$2.8 billion in Haiti earthquake relief
$1.1 billion for the COPS program (community policing)
$1.2 billion for the State Department narcotics control programs
$10 million in El Salvador hurricane Ida assistance
$700,000 for the Public Defender Service for District of Columbia
$500 million in staffing assistance to local fire companies
$200 million: Assistance to Mexico (judicial reform, etc)
The problem is not entirely with the Democrats. The Republican leadership is telling their members to oppose spending on principle, making many conservatives in Congress gun shy about supporting PROTECT's plan.
<snip>
http://www.protect.org/tools/articles

Visit PROTECT.org to help fight for children: http://www.protect.org/home


If we can't protect the kids, what good are we?
Those jackasses can find money and put it anywhere they want in any bill if they so desire.

[Hannah Bell]

1. if you're talking about the child supposedly raped in the dollar tree,

one aisle over from the parents, during christmas shopping, by a crazed rapist who with 20 seconds tackled a two-year-old & whipped off her diapers --

nothing being suggested can protect anyone from rapists who operate in the aisles of stores in full view of security cameras during the middle of the christmas shopping season.

such rapists obviously are insane or mentally retarded, as they chose to commit crimes in full public view with near-certain odds of being immediately apprehended.

if the US wants to prevent child exploitation in the military, all it has to do is stop funding armies that gang-press children into their militaries.

that's not going to happen; we will continue funding those militaries. they're the ones running our dirty wars in africa.

[Are_grits_groceries]

3. If you check on what the Cyber Crimes Center and NIDS will do,

They are applicable to domestic child abuse as well.
<snip>
One article on CCC:
http://articles.latimes.com/2009/oct/14/nation/na-napolitano-cyber14

NIDS was supposed to be set up to help these people:
http://www.icactraining.org/

[Hannah Bell]

4. the majority of child abuse is committed by parents & rises & falls with the

economy.

child abuse hysteria is ginned up in the interest of the security/surveillance state.

[WildEyedLiberal]

8. "Child abuse hysteria" - wow

Your empathy for the child who was "supposedly" raped is overwhelming. Brings a tear to my eye.

You are a great example of someone who is so wedded to an ideology that you can no longer manage to give a damn about individual cases of tragedy if they don't neatly fit into your narrative worldview.

[Hannah Bell]

12. yes, child abuse hysteria. hysteria is what it is when you have shows like

"predator" & nancy grace on 24/7 ginning up the fear, & child abuse stories all over the country described in graphic detail on the national news while the details of government policy are kept secret.

i realize that opinion doesn't make me popular with knee-jerk types who'll buy into any surveillance scheme so long as it's supposedly undertaken to attack nasty child rapists.

which it's not. and doesn't.

[Are_grits_groceries]

13. PROTECT has been involved in

fighting child abuse for a long time. I support their efforts. You can call me kneejerk and whatever you want. People need to jerk their knees into those who don't care.

We are surveilled to the high heavens anyway.

[Hannah Bell]

15. we are surveilled to high heaven precisely because people buy into every "crisis" the ptb

throw at them via media.

and if we're already surveilled to high heaven, how is it that drugs, crime, child porn, child abuse, terror, etc. (if you listen to popular media) seem to do nothing but increase?

why isn't all that surveillance helping?

[Recursion]

16. As an analogy, I'm obviously against school violence

But any analysis that doesn't address the fact that schools are less violent places now than they were 20, 30, 40, and even 50 years ago smells like moral panic to me, and being skeptical of them doesn't mean I don't care about kids.

Now, if you look up the CDC's numbers, they estimate that in 2008 approximately 1% of children were victims of sexual abuse. Compare this to their 1995 study which found 4% (in fairness, the 1995 ACE used a different instrument, but, that dramatic drop is consistent with the contemporary drop in all other classes of crime over the same time period: we are currently living in the least criminal period of American history, for a variety of reasons).

None of this excuses the monsters that do abuse children, but unfortunately responses to child sexual abuse have a history of becoming moral panics. Remember the day care center accusation fiascos in the 1980s? With the caveat above, we have managed to cut child sexual abuse significantly in the past 20 years, just like all other types of crime. In short, what we're doing is working, and we don't need to run around like chickens with our heads cut off lamenting the end of civilization as we know it.

[Recursion]

2. All those things you listed sound like good ideas

$15.9 million for a U.S. Capitol Police radio system
$23 billion to save teacher jobs
$2.8 billion in Haiti earthquake relief
$1.1 billion for the COPS program (community policing)
$1.2 billion for the State Department narcotics control programs
$10 million in El Salvador hurricane Ida assistance
$700,000 for the Public Defender Service for District of Columbia
$500 million in staffing assistance to local fire companies
$200 million: Assistance to Mexico (judicial reform, etc)

Are there any of those you're against? Hell, I'd double #'s 2, 3, and 7.

[Are_grits_groceries]

5. Of course I'm not, but

14 million would be 1.4% out of 1 billion dollars that was spent in any program.

That couldn't have been accommodated for protecting children?

And if you google, you will find that these types of crimes against very young children aren't as rare as you would think:
Father Charged with Rape of 8 Day-Old Baby
http://www.abc24.com/news/local/story/Father-Charged-with-Rape-of-8-Day-Old-Baby/gWsjkpvEAUSWeDaSwofKRA.cspx

There are a lot more stories like that one. Read some books about child abuse. I don't see how people who fight this type of crime deal with it.

[Recursion]

6. The programs you mentioned were to prevent child pornography

Which is a vanishingly small part of the abuse of children (for that matter, the single largest distributor of child pornography is currently the DoJ). As Hannah points out above the (far too) vast majority of child sexual abuse happens within the family. How would any of this have helped?

What would help would be getting more people jobs, expanding access to mental health and particularly substance abuse programs, and state-level education programs for children and first-level responders like teachers and clergy (programs the GOP cynically blocks as "teaching sex to kindergarteners"). But, sadly, even those aren't going to be able to do very much.

[Are_grits_groceries]

9. here is a link to programs

that PROTECT is trying to get funded:
http://www.protect.org/campaigns/current

And what is your evidence that child pornography is "vanishingly small?" I don't care how miniscule it is in terms of numbers. It should be stopped period.

And silly me. I thought efforts to protect kids would be supported no matter where they occur. ANY child is worth the fight.

[Hannah Bell]

14. lol. it's not going to be "stopped". it's too valuable a weapon to the ptb.

for locking up & disenfranchising the poor & discrediting opponents.

[Hannah Bell]

7. and that data system is going to prevent fathers from raping their children -- how, again?

answer: it's not.

and "child porn" is a tag which can be used to immediately discredit anyone the gov or other actors wants to. it's not about protecting kids.

[Are_grits_groceries]

10. It will help protect kids from

habitual sexual predators and others. I guess that doesn't matter huh?

PROTECT has had to fight continually to reform incest laws because they are so light in many places.

[Are_grits_groceries]

11. 'child porn' is a tag

that is thrown out in a lot of places. It is all too common in bitter divorce cases involving child custody.

Do we just sit around and discourage any effort to protect kids? People can't do it own their own.

AND I'm out because there is no use trying to argue with you. NOTHING seems to be of use or good enough for you. I'd post more info and efforts, but they wouldn't meet your lofty standards either.

[WildEyedLiberal]

17. That's because this poster doesn't care about child abuse "hysteria"

Because it distracts from her effort to push Marxist talking points about "the man."