Sexual exploitation and the limits of freedom

Quote
“The only freedom I care about is the freedom to do right; the freedom to do wrong I am ready to part with on the cheapest terms to anyone who will take it of me.”  Thomas Huxley (atheist and defender of Darwin’s theory of evolution), 1870.
 
News
Seven members of a paedophile gang based in Oxford were sentenced this week, having been guilty of grooming and then sexually exploiting a number of vulnerable girls as young as 11 over several years.  This is the latest in a string of similar cases around British cities.

‘How can this be happening?’ is a phrase cropping up in the media.  Accusations of blame fly in all directions: staff of care homes where most of the girls were living; police and social services who didn’t respond sooner; religious or cultural differences; apathetic members of the public who didn’t speak up; or the girls themselves, for their risky behaviour.

The underlying problem in society is the dilemma between maximising freedom and choice (especially in the area of sex) and the responsibility to protect the more vulnerable members of society.  The reality in our culture is that individual freedom holds the trump card.

Now freedom is all very well, provided there is a way of restraining ‘free’ people from exploiting and abusing others.  There can be three mutually reinforcing sources of such restraint: moral discipline, the cultural consensus, and the law of the land.  What has happened over the last 50 years?  Morality has become highly individualised, and the cultural consensus is no longer influenced by those religious values emphasising the importance of doing right and avoiding sin, on the basis of being accountable to God.

So that increasingly leaves the law and various government agencies, such as police and social services, with the job of stopping people from sexually exploiting vulnerable children.  Is that realistic?

There is something deeply flawed with our culture of individual liberty, as the freedom of some will always be at the expense of the vulnerable or poor or small or disabled.  We cannot delegate their protection to the state.  Instead we need a decisive shift – culturally and personally – towards valuing our relationships and responsibilities one to another, even if that involves some loss of individual freedom.

Read on...
For more details on the actual extent and nature of child sexual exploitation by gangs and groups in Britain, read the Executive Summary of this recent report by the UK Children’s Commissioner.

Walk the talk
What steps could you take in your home, workplace or community to encourage people to develop a greater sense of responsibility towards members of more vulnerable groups?

The last word
From the Bible, Luke 10, verses 30-32: ‘A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he was attacked by robbers… A priest happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the man, he passed by on the other side.  So too, a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side.’