Korean Job Discussion Forums

[idonojacs]

Some of you are too young to remember the child abuse hysteria that occurred in the U.S., Canada and New Zealand during the 1980s and 1990s.

Remember the McMartin preschool trial in California?

Read and weep for the victims, the staff who's lives were ruined:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McMartin_preschool_trial

Others may not have paid close attention. Although the stories of the accusations and trials often led the evening news and generated sensational headlines, the subsequent events where the accused were eventually acquitted or exonerated after spending years in jail did not get the same prolonged attention.

In the West, law enforcement officials have learned the hard way to be skeptical of accusations of child abuse, especially from very young children. However, they have also learned that, incredibly, even the most trusted adult figures, such as the clergy, have been guilty of child abuse.

If you did not know about these events, what are the chances that Korean officials are aware of them?

Korean officials need to read about these cases before they get too far along into prosecution of ESL teachers for child abuse. If they don't, by the time the truth comes out, it could be too late. If the truth ever comes out.

With so many ESL teachers in Korea, it is statistically likely that there is a potential child abuser among them. This, however, does not mean this person will abuse his or her own students, as the CPN case seems to show. It is also statistically probable that false accusations will be made.

One of the problems in the West is that the media were not skeptical enough in the early phases of the stories. Would the Korean media be any more objective and impartial?

One reason why it is difficult to get a fair hearing when accused of child abuse is that not many people are willing to speak out in defense of such a person. It is like defending child abuse, itself. Of course, child abuse is wrong, but so are people who make false accusations, even if they are small children or schizophrenic parents.

The pattern seems to be that once accusations of child abuse are made public and a person goes to trial, other accusations are made. This can snowball into a state of mass hysteria. And when mass hysteria occurs, people can lose sight of reality. Witness the 1938 broadcast of "War of the Worlds."

http://members.aol.com/Jeff1070/wotw.html

A key problem, as I see it, is that many Koreans do not seem to have as clear a conception of the difference between allegations, arrest and conviction.

Another problem is that these false accusations were made by children in the 1980s, long before the Internet. Yet somehow these children, mostly pre-adolescent, came up with details of child sexual abuse. Today's kids are far less sexually naive, and a malicious kid could find plenty of material on the Internet to fabricate a story with.

On the other hand, there really are child abusers. And sometimes they are people you would least expect, such as politicians. One was Congressman Mark Foley, who solicited sex from underage male pages at the same time he was proudly pushing stronger laws against child sex abuse:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_foley

I hope I am wrong, and that there are neither false allegations of abuse, nor any actual abuse of children by ESL teachers in Korea.

Child abuse hysteria in Korea is not inevitable.

As George Santayana observed, "Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”

Here are some links to information about the child abuse hysteria. There are undoubtedly more to be found with a little searching.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Day_care_sexual_abuse_hysteria

http://pedophileophobia.com/day_care_sexual_abuse_hysteria.htm

[hari seldon]

As I've posted elsewhere, I think we ought to try to temper our paranoia and be reminded that most of the sex crimes in Asia are committed by Asians.

[R. S. Refugee]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wenatchee_sex_ring

Doing just a quick search on Amazon deliered a book by a Wall Street Journal editorialist about the child abuse witch hunts of the 80s and 90s. Wall Street Journal editorialists are not generally thought of as warm and fuzzy do-gooders or bleedling heart liberals as you probably already know.
----------------------------------------------------------
Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
Wall Street Journal editorialist Rabinowitz has collected her stories on false accusations of sex crimes into one harrowing account of failed justice. Though readers may be familiar with the court cases she details, which took place in the 80s and 90s, coming upon them all together is nonetheless chilling. Rabinowitz devotes the most attention to the Amiraults, a woman and her two grown children who ran a successful preschool in Malden, Mass., and who were all sent to jail on charges of child sex abuse. No scientific or physical evidence linked them to the crimes; rather, the courts relied on the testimony of children who appeared on the stand after lengthy coaching sessions in which counselors had used anatomically correct dolls and leading questions to encourage them to accuse their teachers. At times the author's careful documentation begs for interpretation. Why, for instance, did the public buy the increasingly bizarre accusations of teachers tying naked children to trees in the schoolyard, or of anal penetration with knives that left no physical mark? Rabinowitz leaves such speculation to others. But she presents her cases expertly-so well that her stories helped reverse the convictions of five people, which in turn helped her win the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for commentary. She writes clearly and for the most part resists melodrama, letting the facts speak eloquently for themselves.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
From the Pulitzer Prize-winning Wall Street Journal reporter comes this unsettling look at some of the sex-abuse cases of the 1980s and 1990s that saw innocent men and women convicted of charges that, in hindsight, seem absurd. Take the case of Wenatchee, a smallish city in Washington State, where an overzealous police detective, acting largely on the allegations of his two foster daughters, led an investigation that resulted in the arrest of more than 40 people on thousands of counts of sex abuse. Long after countless lives were destroyed, the "victims" admitted publicly that none of the "crimes" ever happened. The book is full of stories like this about ludicrous allegations that were taken seriously by people who should have known better. The last two decades were the heyday of the sexual-abuse witch-hunts, and this book provides a valuable record of that dark, bizarre time. David Pitt
Copyright � American Library Association. All rights reserved

More on prosecutions by hysteria . . .
http://www.amazon.com/No-Crueler-Tyrannies-Accusation-Witness/dp/0743228340/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1200716960&sr=1-3

I wonder if this book has been translated into Korean. Probably not. But maybe some of you culturally and linguistically advanced folk could check online to see.