It's been ages since I cried myself to sleep, but that's
exactly how I spent Tuesday night, inexplicably sobbing into the
early morning.
The crying was a release from the pent-up anguish I've felt about
the death of a 6-year old boy I'd never met. The death of
Christopher Michael Barrios was so hideous and sickening that it
should have been the catalyst for societal outrage, yet his story
has already faded from the headlines, and Christopher has become
just another forgotten victim in a war against children. Shame on
all of us.
Tuesday started off as a wonderful balmy day spent on the
boardwalk of South Beach with my husband and granddaughter. The
lunch at South Fin Grill was delicious, but as I looked out the
window at the children running on the boardwalk, all I could
think of was a silent warning to parents to watch their children.
Don't let them out of your sight. Monsters are lurking
everywhere.
Christopher was sexually assaulted by a convicted sex offender,
George Edenfield, and his father, David Edenfield, while his
mother, Peggy Edenfield, watched. Then they choked the boy to
death. While this horrific incident occurred in Georgia, no child
anywhere is safe in this sexually overcharged society.
Last week, a man with a knife handcuffed a Staten Island teenager
to a tree in Grasmere. He stripped him of his clothes and
performed a sexual act on his body. Fortunately, the boy was
rescued, and the assailant, who is accused in another incident,
was captured by the police. Several attempts to grab
schoolchildren on the island have been made during the past year,
and parents should be wary. Their children are no longer safe.
How many times do we have to read about teachers having affairs
with their underage students? Television programs are full of
sex-saturated reality shows aimed at our youth. In Indianapolis,
sixth-graders at Warren Middle School reportedly had intercourse
in the classroom while a teacher had no idea what was happening.
I am sick to death of those commercials on erectile dysfunction.
I voted for Senator Dole for president in 1996, but after hearing
him on these commercials, I'm rather glad that he lost.
Sexual crimes dominate the headlines, and one has to wonder how
much the Internet has to do with this. I love the World Wide Web,
as I couldn't do my job without it, but it is no place for
unsupervised children. However, legislative efforts to control
the Internet have been thwarted by judges and the American Civil
Liberties Union.
Federal Judge Lowell Reed Jr. of the Eastern District of
Pennsylvania threw out the Child Online Protection Act on the
grounds that it was "impermissibly vague and
overbroad." Judge Reed issued a permanent injunction against
enforcement of the law, which he said violated First and Fifth
Amendment rights. Naturally, the ACLU rejoiced. A senior attorney
for the civil rights group, Aden Fine, said: "In the name of
protecting children from harmful material, [the law] would have
stopped adults from receiving a great deal of speech that is
constitutionally protected. The court once again made it clear
that Congress cannot do that."
Anyone who seriously believes that pornography is
constitutionally protected free speech is either in severe denial
or is a serial porn downloader. These porn advocates say it is up
to parents to monitor their children's Web surfing. If parents
were omnipresent, that might be conceivable. But children can
surf in libraries, schools, the homes of friends, McDonald's, and
any number of locations, and become vulnerable to sexual
predators.
Where's the outrage? If you can read the details of Christopher's
last moments of life and not cringe, then try to imagine your
children or grandchildren spending their last hours with these
animals.
What is most depressing about all this is how quickly the news of
these crimes disappears, unless a Roman Catholic priest is
involved. Then the story will last for years.
If ever there was a time to pray to the Lord to deliver us from
evil, it's now. For Christopher Michael Barrios, it's too late.
The least we can do is remember his name.