It doesn’t surprise me that the Roman Catholic child sex abuse crimes and cover-ups go all the way up to the Pope. That seems to be how child sex abuse works in so many dysfunctional families, communities, and institutions. The entire community (or family, or institution) folds in on itself to cover and protect its most powerful members, even if that means throwing its most vulnerable members to the wolves. The more sinful the secret, the more taboo the transgression, the more likely it is that the abuser will garner protection from the people both above and below him in his institution’s hierarchy. The people above him will protect him because they’re protecting the reputation of the institution (or the reputation of the family or the community), and the people below him will protect him because they need to stay in the good graces of the institution’s more powerful members.
Child sexual abuse victims tend to lack power, and rank pretty low on the hierarchy of credibility. It’s easier to silence such a child by calling him a liar than it is to make a pedophile stop abusing children.
I used to have a friend who spent several years of his childhood in the Alfred Reformatory, under the control of the Christian Brothers. He told me some chilling stories.
“Why didn’t you tell anyone?” I asked.
“I did.” he replied. “Most people already knew.”
I think about that sometimes. An institution full of kids being physically and sexually abused, while their families and communities pretended not to know. I think about that same scenario playing itself out in communities and churches and residential schools and families across the country and around the world.
I don’t know how we let things get this bad, but I agree with Milan about what needs to be done about it.
Last night CBC’s Sunday Edition hosted a community forum called “Tough Justice: Is the Harper agenda a phony war on crime?”
It drew a full house at the Gladstone Theatre. The first hour consisted of questions and answers posed by Michael Enright to the six panelists. The second hour was questions from the audience.
The panelists included: Michael Jackson (a law professor at UBC), Charles Momy (Canadian Police Association) Heidi Illingsworth (a victims’ rights advocate), Dan Gardner (an Ottawa Citizen columnist, blogger and author of the book Risk), Vince Westwick (Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police), and Kim Pate (a lawyer, professor and executive director of the Canadian Association of Elizabeth Fry Societies).
Several notable Conservative proponents of the tough-on-crime bills were also invited, including the Minister of Justice, but they declined to participate.
Much of the discussion focused on the discrepancy between public perceptions of crime versus actual crime rates. Many Canadians feel crime is a growing problem, despite the fact that the crime rate has been falling for decades.
Dan Gardner suggested that politicians should be addressing the discrepancy between public perceptions and actual crime rates, by telling the truth about what’s happening with crime rates over time. Instead, Conservative politicians are dealing with the discrepancy by “getting tough on crime,” and opposition politicians don’t have the guts to push back. (He also said that ‘getting tough on crime’ is nothing more than a superb marketing slogan devised by American politicians.)
I think it’s like when your kid is crying at night because he’s scared of the monster under his bed. Do you tell him the reassuring truth – that there’s no monster – or do you make a bunch of noise and pretend to kill the monster?
The Conservative government actually nurtures the misconception by trying to convince us that there are monsters under our beds. Despite solid evidence to the contrary, they want us to believe crime is raging out of control. Worse, they intend to spend billions of dollars of our money to protect us from our own imaginations.
Most of the panelists agreed that while the problem of crime in general is exaggerated, there are particular types of crime that are increasing, such as gang-related crime and violence against women. But it would be more effective to address these types of crimes in a targeted way.
Kim Pate pointed out that women are the fastest growing segment of the prison population. She attributes this to cuts in social services and mental health services, which leads to increasing criminalization of the mentally ill, poor and marginalized populations.
Michael Jackson talked about some of the fallacies surrounding incarceration. For example, the whole “Club Fed” myth of what prisons are like. And the fallacy that locking more and more people up for longer and longer periods under harsher and harsher conditions will somehow deter more crime. And the fallacy that if you respect the human rights of prisoners, you take away from the human rights of victims.
This is a rather significant anniversary week for me. A year ago on Tuesday the lump in my breast was discovered. (I didn’t start blogging about it until May, when it was officially diagnosed, but it was a year ago I learned I might have cancer.) A year ago tomorrow I lost my job of 18 years, and everything that went along with it. Three years ago Monday my dog, Sam, died.
Usually when I look back at what I was doing a year ago, I think time’s flying. Not this year. I can’t believe it was only a year ago that that nurse found that lump. I can’t believe it was only a year ago that I cleaned out my cubicle.
The whole year passed by in a surreal sort of haze. A lot happened. A lot changed. There wasn’t much for me to do but put my life in the competent hands of several highly skilled doctors, hang on tight, and hope for the best. Somehow there was something comforting about that.
Now that the worst is over and my cancer is in remission and my spine has been more or less fixed, it’s time to rebuild my career. My life is back in my own hands again. I don’t know why, but I find it a little unsettling.
Mayor Larry wants to move the Voyageur/Greyhound bus station out to the east end, where the train station is. He says it’s because “a transportation hub combining train, buses and the city’s proposed light-rail transit would be good for all parties and would benefit Ottawa residents and visitors.”
This explanation doesn’t make sense to me.
People take either the bus or the train on a single trip, not both, so I don’t see any advantage to having them in the same place. Having “a transportation hub” with all of the modes of transportation located together in the east end makes as much sense as having an “education hub” with all the city’s schools located together in the east end.
When I travel, I usually take the bus because the bus station is more accessible and cheaper to get to than the train station. Those of us who travel by bus tend not to have cars, so keeping the bus station in a central, accessible location makes sense.
In Owl News:
When Phoebe the hummingbird abandoned her nest, I started watching Molly the Barn Owl instead. It was a weird transition from watching a sweet little hummingbird who eats nectar and hovers and lives in a nest the size of a golf ball, to watching a big freaky owl who eats rats and lives in a box lined with regurgitated rabbit fur and keeps a stack of half-eaten carcasses beside her. But Molly has grown on me, and now I think she’s adorable.
I love it when she stands up on her spindly legs and looks around. An owl’s eyes can’t move, so they have to turn their head in order to look around. GC does a hilarious imitation of Molly the Owl.
Molly the Owl’s first owlet hatched a couple of days ago. It’s name is Max and it’s pretty cute with its big floppy head and cute little wings. There are four more eggs, and I think the next one is due to hatch today or tomorrow.
The first owl egg has pipped, so we should be getting an owlet within hours. You can watch the miracle of life here. (Right now Molly’s eating a rat.)
I keep the big computer on the owl cam all day long, in full-screen mode, and use the laptop for everything else. I keep a close eye on what’s happening in owl world. Duncan was watching on the big screen the other day, and Molly was making some interesting owl noises. Duncan got up on the desk and inspected behind the screen to see what was going on. I thought that was very clever of him. I remember when I used to think all the people on TV were actually inside the TV.
I used to have two cats – Mr. Jones and Catastrophe – who would watch TV. The TV was on the floor and they’d both sit in front of it and watch. Their favourite shows were hockey and wildlife documentaries. Both their heads would swing back and forth in unison as they followed the puck or watched the cheetahs running across the screen.
What else is new? I had insomnia last night. I got slightly more than no sleep.
I really like this ballet-dancing tree at Turnbull School.
Remember I was thinking about doing the Social Service Worker program at Algonquin? Well, it seems I’m ineligible for funding for retraining from the government. Actually, that’s not quite accurate – I’m eligible, but I’m not suitable.
It seems the Second Career program has three levels of assessment to determine whether someone qualifies to receive funding: eligibility, suitability and financial need. Eligibility is easy: if you were laid off, you’re eligible. This is how the government can make such claims as “80% of unemployed Ontarians are eligible for retraining under the Second Career program.”
But once they’ve established our eligibility, they disqualify most of us in the suitability assessment.
Apparently very few people in Ottawa are deemed suitable. The suitability assessment is based on scores in six categories, including the career and sector you’re coming from. If they’re not on the “declining list” in your region, you don’t get any points. And very few careers and sectors are deemed to be in decline in Ottawa.
So that’s that. I’m disqualified.
Oh well. It was just an idea, and there are other ideas where that one came from. Bigger and better ideas even.
Wednesday we stumbled across porn at the Experimental Farm, and Thursday we stumbled upon a crime scene. It was tucked in amongst a few outbuildings over near Cow Lane. There were four marked police cars, three paramedic vehicles, one fire truck and a couple of unmarked vehicles.
Emergency personnel were swarming around a vehicle with Quebec plates which had all its doors and trunk open. There was an inner door panel lying on the ground, along with some contents from the trunk. Everybody seemed very interested in this vehicle.
We watched from a respectable distance of about 30 feet. A cop looked at us pointedly and said, rather icily, “Can I help you?”
We cheerfully told her we were just watching, and kept right on watching. I think she thought we had no business watching.
CBC arrived on the scene a few minutes after us, and they couldn’t get any answers. The cops just told them they were in the middle of an investigation.
A man was led past us to an ambulance, and he told us to stop filming. CBC asked him what was going on, and he said there was nothing going on. Which, you know, wasn’t very believable since obviously something was going on.
Anyway, we have no idea what was going on, but it was definitely something. Remember, you heard it here first, whatever it was. Ha.
After all that we went to Mexi’s for Half-Price Fajitas and we ran into Rita, who was on Mexi’s deck with some friends who read my blog and who actually seemed pretty happy to be meeting us. Linda-Ann asked GC if he was GC, and Chris asked me if I was really Duncan’s owner. We felt like celebrities! It was so much fun.
They told me they’ve been watching Phoebe the hummingbird too. Since Phoebe abandoned her nest and its non-viable egg, I’ve switched channels to the barn owl cam, where I watch Molly having sex with McGee, devouring rabbits, and tending to her eggs, which are due to start hatching any minute. Barn owls might not be as charming as hummingbirds, but the rabbit-eating is a sight to behold! Holy cow. She doesn’t have any teeth, so she has to eat them whole. The process looks a lot like throwing up in reverse.
One day back in the mid-90s, my friend Cynthia and I were talking about internet porn, since she was writing a paper about it. I was absent-mindedly surfing the net while we talked.
“I think it’s blown out of proportion,” I said. “I never accidentally stumble across porn on the internet.”
The instant I uttered those words, I got hit by a porn bomb. A multitude of porn windows started popping open on my screen. For every window I closed, two more popped open. There was porn EVERYWHERE. I hadn’t seen that much porn since I snooped in my step-father’s closet as a child.
I immediately added the Internet to the list of places you might expect to stumble across porn, along with porn shops,under your teenager’s mattress, or in your parents’ closet.
Yesterday I added another place to that list: hanging in trees at the Experimental Farm.
Duncan had his annual checkup yesterday, and guess what? He’s lost three pounds! He’s down to 19 pounds now. The vet says good for him, but he could still stand to lose a few more.
“He’s a big cat,” she said.
He’s also got some tartar on his teeth, so she gave us a toothbrush and toothpaste for him, as well as some dental food. As soon as she pulled out the bag of dental food, Duncan perked right up. He remembered it from last time. He loves that stuff. They must put catnip in it or something. Last time he broke into the bag in the middle of the night and ate all his dental food in one sitting. This time I hid it in the fridge.
Lizard at the Hummingbird Nest
Things were so dramatic at the hummingbird nest yesterday. I was watching the web cam, feeling sad because it looked like the eggs weren’t going to make it. Suddenly all this crazy drama exploded as a LIZARD crawled up to the nest and peered inside. Tiny Phoebe mustered up the full fury of her maternal instincts and dive-bombed the giant lizard over and over again, forcing it away from her precious eggs.
It was an epic David-and-Goliath style battle, and all over the world people were watching with their hearts in their throats. There were whole classrooms of children watching, and knitters, and little old ladies, and ornithologists and cubicle-dwellers, all suddenly drawn into this horrifying battle, all rooting for sweet little Phoebe and her tiny, questionable eggs.
After she’d driven the lizard from the rosebush, she snatched up the bad egg in her beak and discarded it. The 5,000 Phoebe-watchers speculated that she knew the smell had attracted the lizard, so she got rid of it. She spent the next few hours on high alert, very agitated. And then she abandoned the nest and the second egg. So we’re not getting hummingbird chicks after all. Sigh. (I cheered myself up a bit by watching barn owls having sex.)
Here’s the recording of the lizard attack. Amazing stuff.
I just spent half an hour wandering around the interwebs and learning all kinds of interesting things. Like, for example, liberals are smarter than conservatives (average IQs of 106 vs 95 respectively, according to a British study at the London School of Economics and Political Science). Also, atheists tend to have higher IQs than religious people. I’m not sure I agree entirely with the methodology, but I’ve always suspected that people on the left are, on average, smarter than their right-wing counterparts. (The lead researcher, incidentally, claims to ‘despise’ Liberals.)
I also learned that lactating women can make cheese from their breast milk, and serve it with figs and Hungarian pepper.
And finally, I learned that the scariest part of a scary experience is the anticipation of it. This is based on studies of the psychodynamics of fear in skydivers. Their heart rate is highest immediately before they throw themselves out of the plane, and then it rapidly drops while they drop rapidly earthwards. I tried skydiving when I was 25, and that’s how I remember it too: Jumping is hard, but falling is easy. Forcing yourself to jump out of the plane is both physically and psychologically demanding, because you’re weighted down with equipment and the wind is pushing you back, away from the door, and every fiber of your being is telling you not to jump. I jumped. My helmet tipped over my eyes and I couldn’t see a thing. I was so high on the adrenaline rush I thought I’d literally gone blind. Interestingly, I went back a couple of weeks later for a second jump and chickened out.
Things aren’t looking so good for the hummingbird nest. The eggs are taking too long to hatch and there’s speculation that at least one of the chicks has died.
Popular Posts