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Post by archer17 on Jul 4, 2010 0:09:05 GMT -4
Okay, and someone who doesn't change their behaviour after they know it's suspicious, which indicates something seriously wrong in their thought processes, a fact you don't address. How about that he wasn't going to let anyone or anything intimidate him into doing what he knew was innocent. He wasn't going to be robbed simply because of the perverse twisted minds misinterpreting him. Robbed of what exactly? Sleeping with children? Doesn't that get your spidey-sense tingling? It should. His behavior wasn't normal. Would you have let your little boy sleep with him? Are you really equating "normal" parenting with the behavior of Michael Jackson?  It doesn't matter if he slipped under the covers with little kids or not, sleeping with them at his age is not normal (to be kind) and is not the least bit analogous to the point you tried to make. |
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Post by laurel on Jul 4, 2010 0:51:48 GMT -4
It's crazy, society is now rife with paranoia and fear over the issue. And the children suffer because, robbed of natural affection between them and parents which has been twisted into being unnatural, they fall for the first guy or girl that comes along. That's why they have sexual relationships so young and end up pregnant etc before they are emotionally ready for it all. You come across crackpot alarmist conspiracy theories like the Amero and Chinese armies hiding under New York City and you post them here when there is no real evidence to support them. But when people worry about sexual abuse of children, a genuine problem that occurs every day, you consider this paranoid? |
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Post by PhantomWolf on Jul 4, 2010 2:23:29 GMT -4
Okay, and someone who doesn't change their behaviour after they know it's suspicious, which indicates something seriously wrong in their thought processes, a fact you don't address. And what you have failed to address is why someone should stop behaviour that is innocent just because others can't see past their own bigotry and narrow mindedness. I did consider it, but it was shown not to be the case when the DA's evidence fell apart like wet tissue paper when presented in court. When you stand up and claim that 5 boys were abused and three say they weren't, one refuses to testify, and the other is shown to be a total fabrication, your evidence doesn't stack up. |
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Post by PhantomWolf on Jul 4, 2010 2:26:19 GMT -4
Oh, yes, that's it exactly. It's not just that it's something being discussed now which never was before. Do you think that all parents should stop taking pictures of their kids in the bath, or in their PJ's or underwear because it's suspicious? |
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Post by PhantomWolf on Jul 4, 2010 2:32:17 GMT -4
How about that he wasn't going to let anyone or anything intimidate him into doing what he knew was innocent. He wasn't going to be robbed simply because of the perverse twisted minds misinterpreting him. Robbed of what exactly? Sleeping with children? Doesn't that get your spidey-sense tingling? It should. His behavior wasn't normal. Would you have let your little boy sleep with him? What is normal, and why should everyone have to be normal? Also how about avoiding the emotive language. "Sleeping with" has different conotations to "Sleeping in the same room as" As to would I let him, it depends on how well I knew him. Given what has been said in court, that they didn't share a bed, but that Michael slept on the floor, and the size of the room itself, If I knew he well enough to confirm all of that, I doubt it was much more than a slumber party. How would you react if you found out that while staying over with a friend, that your young son had, had a nightmare and spend the night in the same bed as his friends parents? |
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Post by archer17 on Jul 4, 2010 16:35:34 GMT -4
Robbed of what exactly? Sleeping with children? Doesn't that get your spidey-sense tingling? It should. His behavior wasn't normal. Would you have let your little boy sleep with him? What is normal, and why should everyone have to be normal? Also how about avoiding the emotive language. "Sleeping with" has different conotations to "Sleeping in the same room as" Please. You know "normal" is an arbitrary term, or should know that. Maybe you walk around your neighborhood wearing nothing but a lamp-shade and think that's normal or know it's not but don't feel you have to be "normal." That's one thing, and as long as you stay off my street, more power to ya. It's another thing when those questions are asked in an attempt to lessen the abnormality and potential danger of a grown "man" sleeping with kids, kids who aren't his. Splitting semantical hairs about what "sleeping with" means doesn't make it OK. It doesn't matter whether it's the same bed or same room or if MJ actually touched any kids or not, his actions were inappropriate. It doesn't matter. Grown men don't have "slumber parties" with little kids PW. I would find it inappropriate. Now ask me how I'd feel if, instead of a hubby & wife, my little boy climbed into bed with a lone adult male who, obvious problems with his masculinity aside, had Peter Pan for a role model and an queer attraction to little kids. Want to split hairs over what "queer" means next? |
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Post by gillianren on Jul 4, 2010 19:19:44 GMT -4
Do you think that all parents should stop taking pictures of their kids in the bath, or in their PJ's or underwear because it's suspicious? Apples and oranges. The fact is, it's one thing to behave a certain way toward your own kid and another to behave that way toward someone else's. Now, I'm not enormously fond of pictures of kids in the bath for a lot of reasons, not least that the kind of parents who take that sort of picture are almost inevitably the kind who show the pictures to their dates when the kids are teenagers, but leave that aside. The fact is, unless I were a very good friend of the adult in question--I can probably count examples on one hand--I wouldn't let my kid spend the night with a non-related adult, and if I had any reason to suspect they wouldn't be safe with that adult, like a previous allegation of misconduct, they wouldn't spend the night with that person, either. It's not that I suspect all the adults around me of being molesters. It's that there is a responsibility issue involved. I certainly wouldn't trust my child to someone who dangled his own infant off a balcony. |
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Post by PhantomWolf on Jul 4, 2010 19:36:08 GMT -4
What is normal, and why should everyone have to be normal? Also how about avoiding the emotive language. "Sleeping with" has different conotations to "Sleeping in the same room as" Please. You know "normal" is an arbitrary term Exactly, it's created by society, but just because someone doesn't accept those creations does not equate their behaviour to wrong or criminal, merely different. But hey that is humans for you, anything that is different is a threat and therefore must be destroyed. Actually it does matter. At the moment all I'm getting is emotional "but it's wrong". I want you to give a good rational reason for why it is inappropriate for an unrelated man and child to sleep in the same room, without infering that every male on the planet is a child abuser. In fact looking at the stats, the "single male abuser" is actually rare, most abusers are partners of family or family friends. Many single abusers are children themselves, perhaps it should be wrong or inappropriate for kids to have sleep overs at any friend or relative's place because according to the stats that's where they are in the most danger. Again, why? Where is the rational argument for this rather then the emotive "but they could be an abuser" one? So, let's switch the senario to the friend staying with your son, and after a nightmare wants comfort and secutity by sleeping in the same bed as you and your wife. Do you allow it and why, or why not? Except that according to the witnesses that isn't what happened. |
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Post by PhantomWolf on Jul 4, 2010 20:03:10 GMT -4
like a previous allegation of misconduct And that's getting back to the start of this discussion, and pretty much the DA's entire argument: "He's been accused of it before, therefore he must be guilty!" |
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Post by gillianren on Jul 4, 2010 20:53:04 GMT -4
I note that you trimmed all of my discussion of how asking what parents do versus what not-parents do is a false comparison. It is true that I did, realistically, trust my daughter to utter strangers. (Having met her mom and dad a couple dozen times before her birth isn't usually enough to trust kids to an adult.) But that is, to me, a major part of the issue. Yes, I'm perfectly aware of the statistics which show that children are more likely to be abused and/or abducted by family members, but that doesn't mean you let your kid spend time alone with an adult you don't know very well.
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Post by PhantomWolf on Jul 5, 2010 6:09:56 GMT -4
I note that you trimmed all of my discussion of how asking what parents do versus what not-parents do is a false comparison. Mostly because I thought it was getting too far off-topic. It wasn't even really close to the point I had been making, after all we know that 40% of sexual abuse is by direct family members, so a parent taking photos of a suspicious nature should be highly suspect too, and since they have been reported and charged in the passed, then shouldn't that mean that parents should stop that sort of behaviour. You seem to be of the opinion that strangers should mitigate their behaviour to avoid suspicion, even though they are only responsible for 10% of abuse, while those responsible for 90% of abuse don't have to because they are well known or related. |
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Post by gillianren on Jul 5, 2010 13:11:35 GMT -4
Yup. Yes, they should. But it's not just molestation. (And, again, if people have already suspected you, isn't that even more reason to avoid the behaviour which made them suspect you in the first place?) When I gave up my daughter, I gave up all claim to decide how she was disciplined, for example. However, her mom and dad are responsible for that. Where were the parents?
You seem to think I believe what I do out of some kind of personal malice or something. The fact is, when the man died, I was floored. I didn't know how to handle the news. Okay, I didn't care much for 99% or so of his music, but I have quite clear memories involving him, greater than my memories involving most pop culture figures from the same time period. A friend of mine broke her arm in first grade around the same time Michael Jackson burned his hair off. She got all weird about it, because "he knew pain!" It's not possible for a person to grow up when and where I did without his having serious impact on their life.
But you know, his sister thinks he's guilty. And, yeah, maybe he's not and the whole thing was innocent. But are you seriously trying to say to me that, once you're suspected of something in part based on certain of your actions, you shouldn't continue doing the thing which makes people suspicious? Are you seriously saying he has the unmitigated right to sleep in the same room with little boys who aren't in any way related to him? (And, again, I never heard of his being a close friend to any of the parents; when and where did he encounter these kids? Did he have any friends his own age?) Sure, only 10% of molestations are by "strangers," though if he's sleeping in the same room as them, you'd rather hope he isn't a stranger, but that does mean that, if people are already suspicious of you, yes, you should mitigate your behaviour! The first time, sure, that was just his not knowing people thought it was creepy and weird. After that, he needed to stop doing it.
The man believed, I know, that there is no such thing as bad publicity. That informed a whole lot of bad decisions he made over the course of his life. Apparently, he's the one who fed the tabloids the stories about, say, wanting to buy the Elephant Man's bones and then wondered why it made everyone think he was some kind of freak. His family life warped him, and I do have intense pity for him and anger at his father for how he was raised. (Angela Bowie tells a story of how, when she and David visited the house in the '70s, she still didn't realize that he had any sisters.) I think he was trying to regain some sense of his lost childhood, but the fact is, he didn't have any normal relationships. There are more suspicious behaviours than just the "slumber parties," and why you don't find those odd, I don't know. If the "slumber parties" had included more than just him and a kid, one-on-one, maybe it would have looked better.
Oh, and you'd best believe that I'd still keep an eye on my kid's interaction with friends and family, too. However, by letting my kid hang out alone with an adult, I would be abdicating my parental responsibilities in all sorts of ways.
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Jason
Pluto
May all your hits be crits
Posts: 5,579
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Post by Jason on Jul 5, 2010 15:37:20 GMT -4
One definition of "normal" behavior might be "behavior that doesn't cost you several multi-million dollar out-of-court settlements."
It is generally best to avoid even the appearance of evil.
And I will never attempt to make a child star of my daughter, no matter how well she sings or acts. They always seem to have problems resulting from their early fame.
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Post by lazarusty on Jul 6, 2010 0:19:06 GMT -4
The problem with avoiding even the appearance of evil is that it can get to an extreme, such as you can't go down to the corner shop because, you know, it might be misinterpeted that you are scouting for little boys.
We shold not give into a spirt of fear but live in freedom. False allegations by others should not be allowed to intimidate to change our innocent behviour just because they are misinterpreting it.
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Post by gillianren on Jul 6, 2010 1:46:55 GMT -4
Yeah. Not going to the corner shop and not sleeping in the same room with kids you've brought into your life for the express purpose of hanging around with despite the radical age difference is totally the same thing.
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