Cw: non-specific discussion of CSA, discussion of dismissal of victims and mental illness
Its worth noting that nothing they demand would help children in any way. Child abuse overwhelmingly happens at home, from family members. To protect more children from abuse the entire system needs to be restructured to actually prioritize child welfare. Better funded better educated households generally correlate with better outcomes for children. I mean abusive parents exist no matter household income of course, but a lot of child abuse and neglect is correlated with parents and family members who are stressed, mentally unwell and struggling to make ends meet. If child and family welfare was actually a priority in any way they would be funding social services and social assistance, as well as ensuring that good public services exist to support people and ensure good, and free, access to mental health care. They don’t do any of these things.
In the context of CSA specifically, believing children who come forward would be a good start. I’ve met a lot of people who weren’t believed when they came forward. Who’s family members actually protected their abusers and consistently dismissed that the abuse was happening at all, even when parts of it were happening in plain sight. Another crucial and extremely important part would be properly educating children about abuse. In order to know that youre being abused you have to understand what is happening to you. Comprehensive and early sex education gives children the language and understanding to explain what’s happening to them. It is legitimately proven to be correlated, poorer sex education correlates with higher rates of abuse and lower reporting.
Republicans oppose both of those things. They actually apply disgusting levels of dismissal to all victims of sexual abuse, child or adult. They entirely dismiss that adult female predators exist and that boys can and do fall victim to them. They treat the whole concept of CSA as something that happens in dark alleys, far away from god fearing nuclear families. But the reality is that sexual abuse in the majority of circumstances happens at home with people who are well known to the victim. Republicans are entirely unconcerned with those victims though, and are only interested in the ones they can exploit to further their white supremacist agenda. Hence they are very likely to dismiss victims of CSA by saying that theyre lying, especially if the perpetrators are politically useful to them.
They also oppose sex education of any kind. Its sickening honestly. They are aware of how important it is. They do not care if more children will suffer silently because of this decision. They’re at best indifferent and at worst see this as a benefit of the policy.
Given all that I stated above, you can see that attacking migrants doesnt do anything to protect child welfare. Nor does attacking queer people. Nor does vigilante style pedophile catchers. Policy change and systemic restructuring is what would help children. Caring about their welfare would help them. Republicans just know that “protect the children” can give them cart blanche to do whatever they want to whoever they want.
Copyright is mind numbingly stupid.