Why are we blind to 99% of Child Abuse?

  Blender Dumbass
August 16, 2025

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#abuse #childabuse #politics #freedom #freerangekids #kids #paternalism

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Child Abuse in on my mind right now. I have written a screenplay for a feature film that I'm already in early talks to produce. The bad guy in the movie is a child-rapist / child-killer. His presence alone justifies the anger of the heroes and creates the tension in the film. Yet I don't think I can make a movie that is a shlocky exploitation film. The subject matter is a bit too strong for something that careless.

And yes, I am trying to produce it through normal means. I have talked to people and strategically this makes a lot of sense. The movie by itself already touches upon the evils of non-libre software world ( which also has a lot of connection to Child Abuse, because politicians like to be lazy with their excuses ). And it will be my chance to infiltrate the system and maybe argue for some much needed change to it from within. Hopefully I will not lose the sight of what I'm doing.

Speaking about the atrocious laws that countries like the UK and Australia are putting into action today, you can already see how complex this kind of movie could become. You are making your bad guy the boogieman those people are talking about when trying to promote their Orwellian state. That means, in a way, you are agreeing with all those laws. Yet I don't. Which means I have to be careful at how I make this movie as to both show that those laws are bad and both agree with that the bad guy is bad too.

I have a "Schindler's List" level of assignment here. As Spielberg could not make fun of the Nazis yet he couldn't by mistake glorify them. I shouldn't make fun of child-abusers yet I disagree with the laws that are set to "catch them". As Spielberg could not show a lot of the atrocities because it will be impossible to watch, but could not be too light, so as not to risk down-playing the holocaust. I both cannot show the bad guy doing his bad things ( because it is likely illegal ) and risks turning the movie into a sadistic porn-film, and both I cannot downplay his badness.

So I had to think ( and still am thinking ) a lot about the subject matter. And I believe I wrote a descent attempt at balancing everything. Still though, this whole thinking about it makes me see that we have a much larger issue in the world that is absolutely inexcusable, yet is so hard to solve that it is probably inevitable. Which makes it that much more depressing.

We are blind to most of Child Abuse.

And therefore we are not even trying to fix most of it.

What are we, as a society, afraid of exactly? Are we afraid that our little girl will wonder around a place and meet a stranger that will kidnap her, rape her and then kill her? That seems to be what people are actually afraid of. That is why people are overprotective of their kids. That is why parents who want their kids to end up independent don't allow the kids to go to a different aisle in the supermarket. What if the boogieman is there?




A 100 or so years ago we allowed out kids to go all the way to the other side of the town, sometimes into the woods, unassisted. Today a mother is being arrested for neglect because her son wondered off a few blocks away from the house. We are afraid of the boogieman so much we literally start to abuse our own kids in the process of trying to protect them from abuse.

In my country girls that have romantic feelings toward a person older than them are being taking away by the social workers and put into "foster homes" where the social workers and psychologists work tirelessly to brain wash out of them any romantic feelings. They take her freedom away, sometimes they put her under total surveillance, they take any ability for her to learn about the world on her own, because God forbid she will return to that guy who they think might possible be the boogieman.

Parents also do that sort of thing themselves. We have tracking apps. Real tracking apps that access the entire phone of the child like a virus and scan everything for a potential intrusion of potential possibility that some stranger is talking to the child. Those apps send to the parents the exact GPS location of the child at all times. It allows the parents to read messages the child is writing and receiving. It gives them remote access to other things. While in the same time probably selling all this data to data brokers. Let's not get distracted away from the financial incentive here. And the funny thing is, those technological tools don't even solve the underlying anxiety. They just make both children and parents way more anxious.

So we create a total surveillance state, with the Big Brother and concentration camps, for our children, because we afraid that they will wander off, meet a stranger, that will kidnap them, rape them and kill them. Yet in the same time, the statistics on the matter show that most cases of child abuse happen within the family.

This is both scary and stupid. I want to laugh and cry in the same time. What the fuck is wrong with us?

Yes there are scary strangers. There is human trafficking. But still with all this stuff most cases of child abuse happen within the family. It is much more likely that it will be the child's father, or uncle ( uncle is even a soft of cliche at this point ) or a brother. Rather than it will be some stranger.

And yet with this statistical fact, we still have a society that allows those same parents to take full control over the child's existence, with a total and utter Orwellian abuse, so that the child will not meet some highly unlikely boogieman. While the actual boogieman ( statistically speaking ) is the one who knows where the child is, and who he talks to and has remote access to the child's life.

This is scary! Truly scary!

It looks like even though we know that most of it is happening within the family, we still make every wrong decision. And we are blind, both to the fact that it happens within the family and both to the other fact, that we abuse kids in the first place, to avoid abuse.

We are blind to 99% of child-abuse!

It is 1%, 1% that is the boogieman we are all collectively afraid of. The other 99% is the symptom of us trying to stop it.

The extra terrible thing about this whole situation is the fact that statistically speaking abuse in the family is a way higher predictor of trauma, than it happening outside of the family.

Based on the 2019 study on the subject, using an unbiased sample from Finland, researched found a few interesting correlations. Now make sure you understand those are just correlations and not proven causations yet:

- Most child sexuality happens within families.
- Most traumatic ( perceived as highly unpleasant ) experiences happen also within family.
- Most non-traumatic ( perceives as pleasant ) experiences happened with people that were considered by the child as a proper boyfriend / girlfriend. Even with a large gap in ages.
- Girls have a higher risk of unpleasant experience than boys.

This correlates with the few examples I know from people I personally know. As I told many times I know a girl who had to fight the system when she got pregnant as a teenager ( below the age of consent ) to make her boyfriend ( who was at least 10 year older ) be released. And she even married him. And I personally had a crush on a 42 year old woman when I was about that young myself.

A nuanced movie on the subject matter should not undermine the experiences of those people who find it pleasant or even would go to great lengths to protect that experience from being taken away from them.

So how do I think we got to that point?

A hundred years ago when kids could live lives because they were not yet in concentration camps, things like child-adult relationships were not seen as that much of a problem. Yet a few bad cases created a somewhat of a social panic. This social panic, slowly but surely morphed into today's society. Kids were allowed to wander on their own less and less. Therefor they were allowed to meet strangers ( and form relationships with them ) less and less. And we ended up with the statistic that we have today. Most cases are within families and therefore most cases are highly traumatic.

We fucked up!

For a hundred years we were focusing on the wrong thing. We were focusing on the wrong boogieman. And that in the end of the day let us into a place from which we might not be able to escape. We are trying to do something against child abuse more than ever, yet we have the most terrible type of it be still there and pretty much be the only one that still survives. And that is all because we give power to solve the issue to the ones causing the issue in the first place.

What we needed to do is the opposite of what we've done. We should have gave kids more opportunities to forms meaningful friendships and relationships. So at the very least if something terrible happens in the family they could speak up. We should give kids meaningful encryption and security so parents are not able to control what and to whom the child is talking. And when something happens, the child would be able to contact somebody for help.

That CSAM claim, that compels governments to install bugs in every conversation is the wrong claim. CSAM is a violation of the child's privacy. Reducing privacy makes things only worse.

We need to reverse the algorithm! We have to give kids the freedom and the power that they need to prevent it from happening. We have to teach them that its okay to talk about it. And we have to teach them practical things about how to talk about it safely if they actually need to talk about it. We have to establish channels for that sort of conversation.

All this ageism bullshit about "child safety online" or whatever should not happen. It will only make things worse. Let them access whatever they want. That is not where the trauma comes from. The trauma comes from too much parental control.

Happy Hacking!!!



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c:0 @Troler
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  Troler c:0


My former classmate, age 19, has to ask permission from her mother to go outside. Her mother is single and is raising few girls with a minimum-wage job.

My other former classmate, age 19, has both parents. But his dad is a trucker, so he rarely sees him. His mother did not allow him to go kindergartner and instead spent time with him. That is good, problem is she kind of spoiled him. The kid did not learn the ropes.

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