Gene writes:

Awareness is essential, if we, as a society are going to change.   We cannot remain silent and complacent about disturbing trends in our world.

I'm not convinced that there is a trend. The statistics I've seen indicate that child abuse is way down. The time for people to stay silent or complacent about child abuse has thankfully passed.

The awareness you claim is essential for change can easily be construed as the problem - because such isolated events quickly make the front-page nationally they feed into the hysteria. Just because you don't remember hearing of such horrific events as much in days gone by does not mean they didn't happen. With the Internet and other improvements in mass communication, suddenly every market in the country picks up on all the worst from every community.

The media feeds on it, and the public buys into it. There were those stories in the news earlier this year about child abductions, and from glancing at the headlines one could easily be led to believe that there was a sudden epidemic of murderous rampaging pedophiles. Turns out there were actually fewer cases during that period than in most years. Remember a few years back the stories of all the shark attacks? You know, that year where shark attacks were trending toward a record low? Hysteria. Hype. Fear.

So kick back, pop in a little Cry of Love, and relax.