I am sick to my stomach.

‘Outraged’ does not even begin to describe my anger.

I have a 10 year old son. Big, beautiful brown eyes, and a dimple when he smiles, which is often.

I have a 10 year old niece. Freckles, fiery and all girl…who also plays a mean soccer game.

Two stories in the news made me do a double intake of breath when I heard and read them.

When Jerry Sandusky was seen in 2002 violating a 10 year old boy in the coaches’ locker room at Penn State, no one called the police.

Called the police????

Maybe its the ‘mom’ in me, but I’d like to think that if I walked in on that, I would have gone ‘Mama Bear’ on the supposed adult, and made him go limp in more ways than one!

An article by Bill Phillips explains the possible reason the assistant coach, who actually witnessed the violation of the 10 year old boy, chose (on the advice of his father) to report the incident to Joe Paterno only, and not the police, was because psychologically,

“Men are still socialized to not show vulnerability, so it’s easy for others to make us feel like we’re being too emotional, that we’re big babies.”

Men still know right from wrong. A man having sex with a boy is a scene very few people would find ‘normal’, so I wonder how long it took the memory of that 10 year old boy’s face to cause that assistant coach to start suffering from ulcers.

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I then read another article about a 10 year old girl giving birth to a baby boy in Mexico. The girl was only 31 weeks along when she gave birth, so the baby stayed in the hospital, while the girl was released to go home. She visits the hospital daily to breastfeed.

Breastfeed? A 10 year old is breastfeeding a baby?

Here again, my small, naive mind cannot conjure such an image. The article went on to say that,

“The Puebla state Attorney General’s Office is now investigating whether the girl could have been raped and who the father is…”

Could have been raped?

Since the article also points out that the minimum ‘age of consent’ is 12 (which also sickens me), is there any other option besides rape?

I will not accept an excuse like, “she looked much older than she was”, because once she opened her mouth to speak, SHE WAS 10!

Seeing a parent discipline a child in the grocery store using corporal punishment is one thing. Seeing an adult sexually violating a child, or the obvious result of such an act is quite another.

Why are there still adults allowing the abuse of our most precious gifts ~ our children?

As Edmund Burke once said: “All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.”

Why is anyone upset that Joe Paterno was fired?

Why?