The Disappearance of Madeleine McCann

The Disappearance of Madeleine The ongoing grim story of Madeleine’s disappearance will have touched the private feelings and fears of millions. But that does not explain why so many now make such a song and dance of demonstrating their feelings of sorrow for a family they have never met and of bitterness towards an invisible abductor. Mick Hume

It has seemed as if everybody wants a piece of the action in Portugal for their own purposes, with child protection experts and policemen and lawyers flying out from the UK to stake their claim. Many have sought to seize on the abduction inquiry - and prey upon wider fears about children - in order to promote their own agendas. This has prompted a lot of ugly point-scoring and finger-pointing.

Yes indeed. The disappearance of this child is an absolute goldmine for many groups of people. And the tabloids will be making many extra millions.

They love this kind of stuff.

And, if you can believe it, one tabloid newspaper was actually decrying the fact that some enterprising chancers on the internet had set up websites - with surrounding adverts - simply in order to make money from the high traffic being generated by the huge publicity surrounding this girl's disappearance.

Yep; pretty sleazy; but talk about hypocrisy!

Most mainstream newspaper and magazine editors have always sought to make money from spinning out tales of 'abuse' - especially if sex has had anything to do with it. Indeed, for some of these publications, sex - particularly 'inappropriate' sex - is their main selling point.

"50 year old priest seduces single mum!"

"Politician found in bed with hooker!"

"Grandmother of nine children wearing miniskirt discovered in nightclub!"

But, of course, what really galls me about all this phony hoohah about this missing girl is not just the truly sickening hypocrisy, it is that our children will actually be less safe from paedophilic predators as a result of it, and that all men will be further demonised. In other words, it is lose-lose all the way for the rest of us - while these sleaze merchants make millions.

Indeed, it also seems that most of those who exhibit particularly overblown outrage or who engage in aggressive vigilantism against those who have been accused of engaging in sexually-abusive activities against women or children have very little real concern for the victims at all! And they mostly seem far more concerned - almost desperate - to portray themselves as highly moral beings. 

And yet, the very opposite seems to be true. There actually seems to be a negative correlation between the moral behaviours of such people and the amount of professed outrage and clamour that they make over sexual issues.

One only has to look at how the editors of tabloid newspapers that are riddled with salacious tales and titillation - often involving teens - seem to set out to fuel paedophile hysteria, and at how the most violent and anti-social of prison inmates are the very ones who tend the most to encourage brutal assaults on those inmates who have been accused of sex-assaults.

In other words, the greater is the exhibited outrage expressed by people over such things, the more it seems that they, themselves, possess some rather deeply unsavoury characteristics that they are desperately trying to hide.

Indeed, in my view, the same even applies to organisations such as the NSPCC. This organisation seems to care nothing for children, and its main aim is clearly to make money. And, in my view, it tries to hide this fact by trying to overwhelm the nation with abuse hysteria in order to cover up what it is really up to - money-making - with part of the idea being to make people too scared even to question its motives. And the sordid depths to which it has sunk in order to rake in the money range from promoting the idea in children that their fathers cannot be trusted to telling those who have, in fact, suffered from sexual abuse that they will be damaged for life!

I can hardly think of anything more disgusting than telling child victims of abuse - or child victims of anything - that their lives, henceforth, will be 'ruined'. But given that this notion helps to bring in the money, this is exactly what the NSPCC has been telling our children over recent decades.

This is such an appalling thing to do to children that there can surely be no question in anybody's mind that the NSPCC is far more concerned about filling its coffers than it is about child victims.

And, of course, if all these different people were really concerned about children, then they would surely make a far greater fuss about the truly terrible problems that millions of children around the world have to face - e.g. hunger, poverty, disease, forced labour and, of course, death. They would also make a far greater fuss about the high number of serious road accidents that take place in their own countries which maim or kill thousands of youngsters every year - something which occurs hundreds of times more often than is the maiming or killing of youngsters by paedophiles. Indeed, nearly 400,000 young people under the age of 25 are killed in road traffic crashes every year. Millions more are injured or disabled. And, of course, these people would also demand that their governments implemented those policies that would protect children the most; such as policies encouraging marriage and two-parent families.

And the fact that these people rarely do these things, but are quite prepared to exhibit huge outrage over matters sexual, clearly suggests quite strongly that their true concern is not the welfare of the children at all, and that other, far less salubrious, motives are at work.

The prurient tabloids are saying, "Oh yes, we might publish numerous pictures of young girls scantily dressed, together with salacious sexy articles that are designed to titilate and to arouse sexually, but we are so pure in thought that we are outraged by inappropriate sexual situations." The truth, however, is that they are hypocrites and that they make most of their living by selling sleaze.

The thugs are saying, "Oh yes, we might rob people, beat them up or even kill them, but we are so manly, so chivalrous and so pure in sexual thought that we are outraged by inappropriate sexual situations." The truth, however, is that they are just nasty violent thugs who are desperate to conceal this fact.

And the NSPCC is saying, "Oh yes, we might be precious little more than a money-making enterprise that demonises all adults and parents while damaging hugely the social fabric of society as well as the well-being of children who have, in fact, been abused, but our motives are so noble and lofty when it comes to 'abuse' that you simply cannot fault us." However, in my view, the NSPCC has done far more damage to our children in recent times than have all the paedophiles put together.

Indeed, I shall attempt to summarise below the huge damage that is caused to our children and to our nation by those who engage in what is nowadays described as paedophile hysteria.

Firstly, however, it is important to state that most 'sexual abuse' by those often described as 'paedophiles' is precious little more than the clumsy fumblings and fondlings by intimates who are of inappropriate ages. The figures that are commonly touted about by those in the abuse industry and the media, however, purposely conflate these relatively benign circumstances with those of a far more serious nature. (I shall give a recent example of this later.) And this tactic by the abuse industry, coupled with the outrage that it tries to engender in the public, leads to a number of serious consequences which, in fact, lead to more child abuse, and to more psychological problems arising from it.

None of this is to say that there are no serious paedophiles around. There surely are. And they have probably been with us since the beginning of our time on Earth. However, as I shall point out below, in recent times, they have probably increased both in number and in terms of their dangerousness as a direct result of the hysteria that has been continually generated over the matter.

1. The notion that the lives of children will necessarily be 'ruined' or 'irreparably damaged' as a result of abuse is absolute rubbish. But persistently indoctrinating the minds of both children and adults with such a view will almost certainly cause them irreparable damage - e.g. see NSPCC - Children's Charities Sued for Millions? and Tea Abuse. In other words, in most cases, if children are going to be 'irreparably damaged' then this will most likely be caused by those very people who are alleging that this is the inevitable outcome, rather than by any abuse that they have experienced.

2. The research clearly shows that that one of the main reasons that most youngsters do not report sexual abuse is precisely because they do not want their intimates punished severely for what they, themselves, often see as relatively trivial. The upshot is that these children then continue to be abused.

3. And, of course, if abusers continue doing for longer whatever it is that they are doing, then their predilections with regard to youngsters is likely to be ingrained even further into their sexuality.

4. With the exception of sadistic paedophiles - of which, thankfully, there are few - most 'paedophiles' have no intention of harming their victims. On the contrary, they are mostly quite attached to them. However, as the fear of being caught increases (as a result of the hysteria) then all 'paedophiles' - just like anyone else would - are going to end up responding to this fear by increasing the levels of threat or violence against their victims in order to discourage them more strongly from spilling the beans. Indeed, many paedophiles have ended up killing their victims - often through panic - simply because they were too frightened of being exposed for their far lesser crimes. 

For the most part, however, the hysteria leads to child victims of sexual abuse being far more badly abused, manipulated and intimidated than they would otherwise have been.

And, of course, in the case of young Madeleine, if you were her father, what message would you - at this point in time - want to send to her abductor? "Please send her back unharmed. I don't care what you've done. I'll turn my back while you deliver her back to me." Or. "You wait till I get hold of you, you bast*ard. I'll f*ck up your life forever."

Well, it seems fairly obvious to me that the public is giving out the latter message and that, as such, Madeleine's abductor is far more likely to want to destroy any evidence that her living presence might provide.

In other words, the current hysteria is probably doing Madeleine no good at all.

But who cares, eh? So long as the bucks roll in and so long as people can publicise with ostentatious grandeur their alleged concern to all and sundry in order to demonstrate to everyone else what grand people they must be, Madeleine McCann's name will continue to be heard.

(Of course, not everyone whose concern has impelled them to some kind of overt action over the demise of this poor girl is a phony, but there are thousands who are exactly this. And I am happy to say that, at last, many journalists and commentators - such as Mick Hume above - are beginning to expose what is going on.)

5. Furthermore, while, for most of us, what happens in so many of these tragic cases is truly sickening, and it makes us almost ashamed to be a part of the human race, the same is not true when it comes to those who get turned on by such things. And the amount of public attention given over to such situations probably increases the likelihood that such situations will occur, because, quite simply, in some people, this publicity will fuel even further their unwholesome desires. Worse still, it might well fuel the desires of others who were not initially so inclined - e.g. see my piece Torture Rape and Murder.

In other words, the hysteria and the overblown publicity are likely to generate more similar incidents.

6. There is little doubt that the hysteria over the years has alienated most of the male population from children to a greater or a lesser extent, and yet the more that people are alienated from each other, the less do they understand each other, the less do they care about each other, and the more likely are they to mistreat each other.

Indeed, we see this happening over and over again. For example, when different racial or religious groups do not intermingle enough when they occupy the same living space, they do not get to know each other. And when this happens, it does not take too long before they are at each other's throats. 

Well, the same sort of thing is true when it comes to adults and children.

To demonstrate this, ask yourself if we would ever permit, for example, a charity like the NSPCC to continue trying to bombard the nation with the view that blacks are too dangerous for whites to be with. That they are not to be trusted. That they might abuse your children.

Our societies would be torn apart by such an appalling message.

But this, in fact, is exactly the type of thing that has been happening as a result of 'abuse' hysteria.

Instead of setting blacks and whites at each other's throats, it is adults and children who are being pitted against each other - to a truly horrible extent.

7. Furthermore, how are men supposed to learn what to do when it comes to children?

If men do not interact with children then they cannot possibly get to know them or to understand them - and vice versa. Indeed, many western men nowadays feel completely unable to associate with children at any level so effective has the demonisation of men been. They do not know what to say to them, how to say it, and what to talk to them about. They do not know what concerns children, what amuses children, what makes them feel safe, and they do not understand their problems and their way of thinking. For many men - and, indeed, for many women - children are just like aliens from another planet - best avoided at all times.

And this is exactly how many children, therefore, begin to behave!

And if the men are actually being demonised, then matters become even worse.

The girls grow up not knowing men, but, instead, are indoctrinated with the view that men are horrible - something that is clearly evident in the young women of today.

The boys grow up believing and accepting that they are turning into beings who are likely to be worthless, abusive and untrustworthy; which is what many of them will, therefore, become.

And millions of men have no clue about how to deal with all of this. Indeed, the best that millions of men can do is to turn their backs on children, and to become the very cold and distant uncaring human beings that the hysteria portrays them as being!

Once upon a time, the Nazis threw Jews into ghettoes, and then they said, "Look at how dirty they are. They are unclean and non-human."

Nowadays, men are forced into emotional isolation and the feminists say, "Look at how distant and uncaring they are."

And, of course, if men know precious little about children, then how on Earth are they ever supposed to be good fathers?

8. And this alienation has occurred not only socially but also professionally. As just one example of this, men have fled the teaching profession. And this has impacted very negatively on the education of our boys (and, probably, the girls) which, of course, incurs costs on all of us - not only socially, but also when it comes to the economic well-being of the entire nation.

9. Millions of men (and women) have also largely washed their hands with regard to taking proper responsibility for the poor behaviours of even their own children as a result of all the abuse hysteria - which has now led to large numbers of ill-disciplined and poorly behaved children and, now, young adults, blighting the lives of everyone else.

10. And one of the main consequences of all this is that millions more of our children are now actually far more vulnerable to abuse - sexual and otherwise - than at any time in recent history; e.g. see The Damage Caused by False Accusations.

In a nutshell: As a result of the hysteria and the way in which it is manufactured, children who have been abused will suffer more psychologically from their abuse, they are less likely to report abuse, and their abuse will likely continue for longer. Those with paedophilic tendencies will, therefore, have such tendencies more firmly engrained in them, with them being more likely to aggress violently against their victims in order to dissuade them from reporting them. The ongoing publicity over such issues will likely fuel more inappropriate fantasies and, hence, more inappropriate incidents, while most adults and children will end up being more alienated from each other and, hence, more hostile and uncaring towards each other. This has serious ramifications not only for the children when they are children, but also for the adults that they will finally turn into. In the end, the whole of society is damaged badly by the hysteria, and the children themselves, far from being protected by it all, are actually more likely to be 'abused' - not only sexually, but in a whole host of other manners; mugged, robbed, beaten up, bullied, intimidated, drugged, poorly educated, etc.

And then, of course, there is the hugely negative impact that all men have to endure as a result of all the hysteria - which tends to demonise them horribly; e.g. see NSPCC Needs To Be Stopped

So who, exactly, benefits from all the hysteria?

Well, it is certainly not the children. Nor the adults.

So who benefits?

Well, the answer is the abuse industry itself; the tabloid editors, the abuse 'charities', the abuse 'experts' etc etc etc.

And, of course, in the case of Madeleine McCann, if she had been a boy rather than a girl, and/or if she had possessed skin that was either black or brown, most of us would never even have heard of her.

(Also see Vehicular Abuse)

Finally, simply because it has been sitting in my in-tray for the past few weeks, and it now seems relevant, I am going to give an example of how those in the abuse industry distort the truth. It is a fairly trivial example in the scheme of things - but it is a good example nonetheless!

Online Child Porn Reports Increase Reports of websites that contain images of child abuse have continued to climb in the last year, a report has shown. 

(The different levels refer to the levels of 'seriousness' of the images.)

However, as is typical, the media coverage concerning this finding is very misleading. And this is partly because the IWF report does not really make clear the distinction between 'websites', 'webpages', 'images' and 'URLs'. Neither does the report make any attempt to indicate how many images found at different URLs are simply duplicates of images. The consequence is that any real meaning behind its figures is somewhat obfuscated - which is not unusual when abuse figures are produced by organisations that need to justify their funding.

But the figures seem to boil down to this.

There were around 10,500 unacceptable images discovered by the IWF during 2006. How many of these were simply duplicates, we do not know. But given that hundreds of millions of images exist on the web - billions probably - this does not seem to be as great a problem as the media would have people believe.

Furthermore, these images were distributed across some 3000 websites - or 'webpages' - which really suggests that the offending images simply turned up on legitimate picture websites - individually or as pairs - within the context of numerous other images. But many in the media have twisted this finding to claim that there are 3000 websites containing child porn - which is very misleading indeed because it gives the impression that 3000 websites are devoted to such material.

And so, for example, the suggestion that a site like YouTube is a website that 'hosts child porn' simply because an image uploaded by a member of the public remained on view for some time before being taken offline would be ridiculous. But this is the kind of claim being made. And it is simply designed to inflame more paedophile hysteria.

Furthermore, occasional 'illicit' images of youngsters posted on sites by members of the public do not necessarily indicate that the posters are, themselves, paedophiles. One has to remember that many, many millions of people use the internet. And a significant number of them will not even be aware that certain (non-sexual) images of youngsters are classed as 'porn'.

For example, imagine an image of a group of toddlers playing naked in a paddling pool. Most normal people would not regard such an image as particularly sexual or pornographic. But the IWF would certainly regard it as such - particularly if this image ended up being copied and posted on to a pornographic site; hence all the hoohah about taking any photographs of children.

There is some kind of sense to this, but I cannot help thinking that the more removed are children from the consciousness of people the more alienated from them must they become. And the more alienated from each other do groups of people become, the more likely are they to treat each other badly or with indifference. Indeed, while airbrushing away the visual aspects of children might well help to reduce temporarily the pleasures that can be obtained by the relatively small number of paedophiles who dwell amongst us, it also diminishes very greatly all the other positive emotions towards themselves that children inspire - and were designed to inspire - in the vast majority of ordinary people. And, in my view, the latter is likely to be far more detrimental to the well-being of both adults and children than is the former.

The dilemma, of course, is that images of children can have different meanings in different contexts and in different minds. And given that the internet provides a relatively easy mechanism for shifting the context and for placing the images into different minds, it is extremely difficult indeed to find a solution that does not involve excluding almost all images of youngsters. 

For example, if the photograph above was a picture of my grandmother in her youth and I placed it on a family website, most people who turned up at the site would not view it as being sexual. But if it was copied and placed on a porn site, not only would it more likely be viewed as sexual, but it would also likely encourage connections in the minds of viewers between 'children' and 'sexuality'.

Similarly, the picture below is, I imagine, of three 14 or 15 year-olds fooling about with a camera ...

... but there were others in the 'series' that were slightly more revealing.

Once again, pictures such as these mean one thing when placed on one type of site (e.g. Myspace) but they can mean something else when placed on a porn site, or on a 'girlie' site.

Here is another example - this time of two brothers fooling around with their sister.

And there are many pictures on the internet that are far more 'unambiguous' than those above, but which are, nevertheless, decidedly non-sexual in one context, while being clearly sexual in another. 

An added problem is the fact that adults with youthful features can often be made up to look like youngsters, and so it will always be very difficult to draw any lines. Do we ban all potentially salacious images of all women who look under 18, or if they happen to look under 18 in certain postures and clothes? And even if we did, where would this lead us? After all, fifty years ago the following pictures would have been more than enough to incite extremely lusty thoughts!

It might be hard to believe, but I can assure you that the above images were more than enough for men to climax with relative ease.

And 100 years ago, the sight of a woman's ankle was good enough to incite the same thing!

And so, for example, should images of the following type be banned? After all, a paedophile can see an ankle - and almost a whole leg!

Where does it end?

Anyway. The media also seem to be highlighting the increase in the number of reports made to the IWF about child images, but this number of reports correlates with the number of people visiting certain websites (pornographic or not) and it might say very little about the number of illicit images that exist. For example, one illicit image on a website like YouTube is likely to give rise to many thousands of 'reports'. As such, an increasing number of reports does not, in and of itself, necessarily suggest an increase in the amount of illicit content. And yet, it is the increased number of reports about such images that most of the media seem to have been highlighting.

Why?

Well, as far as I can ascertain, the answer is obvious. The number of reports has increased quite dramatically in comparison to the increase in the number of images; and so the focus has been on the former rather than the latter. 

And there is nothing better than the suggestion of a 'dramatic' increase in something when somebody wants to fuel alarm.

But, surely, if anything, the number of images is far more relevant than the number of reports!

In conclusion, MRAs who are concerned about the way in which men are so often horribly demonised by the overblown exaggerations that emanate from those working in the 'abuse industry' need to pay very close attention to the evidence lying behind any claims and conclusions that they make. And if they look closely enough, they will usually find that these claims have far more to do with generating funding, growing empires and furthering agendas than they have to do with describing reality.

And it is particularly important to scrutinise the claims given that so many thousands of innocent western men every year have been, and are, horribly mistreated by systems of justice that have been corrupted through and through simply in order to gain convictions - and often when there is no valid evidence whatsoever standing against these men.

And in the case of the IWF report, there seems to me to be a deliberate attempt to obfuscate the truth in that, firstly, it attempts to highlight the number of reports of illicit images and, secondly, it gives the impression that the 3000 'websites' that allegedly contained illicit images were porn websites when, in fact, they were mostly non-porn websites to which occasional images ended up being loaded; with some of these images being completely innocent - given the context both of the images and of the websites on which they appeared.