Vigilance against predators cannot rest

The child sex abuse scandal that has shocked Penn State’s Happy Valley has an all-too-familiar and unfortunate ring for our own Cape community.

News of the scandal in State College came barely days after bulldozers and other demolition equipment leveled the scene of the Earl Bradley crimes outside Lewes.  The enormity of those crimes numbed this community. Many lifetimes will pass before the impact on the victims is forgotten.

The Penn State scandal nonetheless serves as a wrenching reminder that sex abuse is not going away, even though Earl Bradley is behind bars and Jerry Sandusky has been outed.

Their crimes against children reveal how deeply seated these illnesses are and how brains gone haywire can initiate, sustain and rationalize behavior that most of the rest of us find inconceivable.

The Bradley crimes and allegations against Sandusky reinforce other disturbing aspects of these perpetrators: they so often are in positions of authority and trust that their victims, often underprivileged children, may feel an even greater willingness to not question their actions.

As a community, we learned the pervasiveness of sexual abuse of children.  One in four girls and one in six boys under the age of 18 will be subjected to some sort of sexual abuse. That’s not just here or in State College, but everywhere throughout this country.

Keeping in place the boundaries that make for a healthy society is also being challenged by the unprecedented access to pornography due to the internet.

Delaware Attorney General Beau Biden was early in the game of understanding the threat to our children by predators on the internet, and the threat to our social order by those trafficking in child pornography on the internet. His office is doing a good job of tracking those criminals and keeping us aware of that threat.

In the end though, all of us must understand that child sex abuse is not going away, and the best way to limit its victims is by maintaining an active vigilance that gives these pitiful perverts as little opportunity as possible to act on their impulses.