In another article written in the National Post on July 19th 2007, a man by the name of “Donald Martin” was arrested and jailed for what police say “[was] the biggest seizure of child pornography to go through the courts in Canada.” (p. A4.) The result of the seizure of pornography was the rescue of a 13 year old child who was seen in one of the offender’s videotapes. Donald Martin however was only sentenced to twenty-one months in prison.

In a third article read, an abusive mother who “physically assaulted her four-old-daughter and did nothing to protect the child from the sexual assault perpetrated by her boyfriend” (Abusive mother gets house arrest. (2007, July 13th). National Post, p. A4,) received what the judge called “a draconian conditional sentence” (p. A4) of two years house arrest. The boyfriend was “found guilty on nine charges and will be sentenced July 31st.” (p. A4.) The article also does not mention whether or not the child will be taken from the mother. Furthermore the article seems to make the mother the victim as it blames her actions on her “sad life plagued by physical, emotional and sexual abuse” (p. A4) also stating that the woman suffers from “border line personality disorder and major depressive disorder” (p. A4) and finally mentions that her parents were “drug addicts” (p. A4.)

In the article referring to the abusive father, “[d]octor’s suspected the child was being abused when she was brought to the hospital for what the father called a bad case of diaper rash.” (Man jailed eight years for sexual abuse of daughter. (2007, July 13th). National Post, p. A4.) Two days later when the father admitted to abusing his daughter he blamed his actions on alcohol saying that “he doesn’t know what made him think that way” and that “[m]aybe because (the little girl) looks like her mom” (p. A4.)

What is wrong with people in this day and age? But more to the point, what is wrong with the system that punishes these people? How can an abusive mother only serve two years of house arrest after what she has done to her child, who will now most likely suffer with social and emotional problems and will have trouble functioning in everyday society. And the father who abuses his daughter to the degree that doctors said “it was one of the most horrific cases they have ever seen, and that the internal injuries could have been life-threatening” (Man jailed eight years for sexual abuse of daughter. (2007, July 13th). National Post, p. A4,) serves eight years! Why not 25 to life? And finally the man who had “more than 26,000 images, 131 movies and 704 stories depicting incest and adults having sex with children, some as young as two years old” (p. A4) gets a sentence of 21 months!

The difference in this day and age is that they are actually doing something about it, as opposed to former days and ages when it went unreported and unactioned.

We need a cultural change that stops sexualizing everything especially children. Turn on the TV look at billboards, look at the Internet. Sex and children are being exploited together everywhere. We need to desexualize our children in our mass media. We also need open dialogue on the effects of sexual abuse and lots more money into treating the effects of the trauma.