As a child I moved sixteen times between kindergarten and graduating high school, and my parents divorced when I was too young to remember it. I have one memory before they did. It is of me being put out on a back deck of their one and only house together as a small child.
My parents were inside arguing. As they argued, I remember putting my head through the deck railing and looking down at my next oldest brother playing in the yard below me. There were six of us in total, and I was the youngest. All I had on was a diaper, and the memory only lasted long enough to remember where I was, what I was doing, and why I was there.
Perhaps my parents thought it was best to spare me the violence of their fighting, so in their mind I was better off out on that deck than inside with them. It wasn't the first time I'd be left alone as a child though. Many times after that incident, I would be playing alone or with my younger siblings. There was never an adult watching over us.
We would roll through the neighborhood on our big wheels.
No one bothered us, and we even trespassed on other people's property regularly without any complaints. My Green Machine had a lot of miles on it before the wheels literally fell off from too much wear. During all that time riding it, I was alone without adult supervision.
By the time I was nine, I was riding a 90 Kawasaki motorcycle on my own around the town and into the woods. No one thought it was unusual when they saw me either. Children roamed as they pleased, and parents didn't seem to have any concern for their safety.
There was only one place my father took me that we were not allowed to wander alone. That place was my uncle Tommy's cabin. My uncle Tommy was a Huey helicopter door gunner in Vietnam, and he had a badly scarred arm from being shot there and an even more scarred mind because of the horrors he had witnessed and committed.
When we went to his cabin in the woods, it wasn't him that my father feared. It was a large black cat, probably a leopard, that roamed the woods. My uncle's dogs and livestock were regularly killed by the cat, and we could hear it in the woods at night as we attempted to sleep.
If it were not for hearing it's hissing and growling sounds during our overnight trips, I would have thought it was just something my father and his brother made up to keep us from wandering off into the woods and getting lost. I knew it was real though because of something my father said to me one day.
We were riding the same 90 Kawasaki through the woods between the cabin to my oldest brother, who was out at a particular place practicing hill climbing with a far more powerful dirt bike, when the motorcycle stalled out and would not start again. My father was doing everything right, but the motorbike would not kick start as it should.
He stopped and nervously looked around. The bike had been "flooded." Too much fuel had been put into the engine, and he needed to give it time to clear. My father wasn't angry or frustrated though. He was afraid and scanning the woods for something unknown. I had only seen him afraid once before, and that was from a tornado that almost hit his home while I was there.
While still seated on the motorbike, he turned around to look right at me. He said, "If anything happens, you run back to the cabin. Don't wait for me no matter what happens." I already knew about the cat and nodded in agreement.
It's strange as a child to see fear in your parent. They are not supposed to be afraid. Some things deserve to be feared however. My father couldn't defeat a tornado, and he knew he didn't stand a chance against a big leopard either. He certainly didn't fear any humans though, and I had always felt safe under his protection.
He continued to scan the woods while we waited, and I did my best not to look at anything. I pressed the side of my face into his back, wrapped my arms tightly around his waist, and closed my eyes instead. After what seemed to be an eternity, my father's next kick made the small engine roar. It was a welcomed sound, and we quickly rode off to meet the rest of our family.
Unfortunately, things have changed in today's society.
Most of us are parents. We all share a common worst nightmare; It is the loss of our child. As the parent, we are responsible for the safety of our children. If they are harmed or kidnapped, we must share some of the blame. No, we didn't commit the evil act, but we were responsible for our child's safety.
I've been thinking about this topic and researching it for weeks now, and it being so disturbing is why I've not posted anything in all that time. Kidnappings do occur however. Child sex trafficking rings do exist. The days of leaving your children unattended to roam the neighborhood are long past. Any loving parent wouldn't allow it.
The topic is way too involved to share everything in one post, so I will split it up into different sections. In each section, I will share positive tips and suggestions to balance out the negativity of the topic. Consider this the introduction to a series on child safety and what we can do as parents and relatives of children to protect them.
A good place to start being proactive as a protector of children is to check Family Watchdog on a regular basis. The site will email you when changes are made to the database that affect your local area also. Any local child predator, the ones that have a record at least, will be known to you in advance.
Please keep in mind though that the main threat to your child is often not a local predator. Child sex traffickers will collect from far away places. Still, you should keep an eye out for the local predators, and that webpage makes it easy to do.
I find it interesting that this morning I woke up to three people at once unfollowing me. They were all people overseas too. I suppose some folks don't like the idea of keeping children safe from predators. Or maybe it was the hidden camera post I made, and they were peeping toms? LOL
This is a very important message to get out to parents and I agree that children are not as safe these days as they were outside of their homes and away from supervision.
It's sadly also true that some children are not safe inside the family and I recently wrote a post for @olaat called "How Safe is Are Your Children within Your Family?" to share this important topic.
Some people are willing to listen, others are not. For either situation, when it's too late - it's too late and regrets will stay regrets forever.
I look forward to reading your posts on this subject and thank you for doing this work and research.
Thanks and very true! My first girlfriend lived with her uncle. Him and his friend sexually abused her. Family members not only sexually abuse. Sometimes they are the ones that sell relatives to sex traffickers. It boggles my mind how such people exist.
So sad and so much more common than people think.
I watched some documentaries on a young girl who was ritually abused, raped etc and it was her grandmother that was putting her into these circles. Unbelievable.
Chatting to Andrea Sadegh, she says it's victim under mind control then acting on younger victims - definitely needs stopping.
As a new father, this makes so much sense to me. Fear for my child's safety is the greatest concern to me. Thank you for the informative post @finnian. I'm so glad I am following you.
Thanks! It is a pleasure to help people by sharing knowledge from my areas of expertise. The next post in this series will be about what to do when your child does go missing. I haven't even started putting fingers to keys, but I'm writing it in my head. ;-)
@finnian I am one of your followers. You have some catchy titles, and interesting and varied subject matter. You write very well.
On a couple of your recent posts, I feel a little let down. The article didn’t seem to reach its conclusion. This was one of them. Another was the one on hidden cameras.
On this article, for example, I was left hanging. You were on a lonely road, there’s a big black leopard, your father is frightened, and tells you to run if anything happens. He’s afraid of the leopard.
I can’t wait to read what happens next.
I am expecting to read more about your childhood experiences.
But suddenly the story seems to stop, and you seem to start writing an article or a warning about child sex-predators. Ok, so now I am expecting you to link the child predator warning to another childhood experience. But sadly, I was left dangling, wanting more from you, and didn’t get it.
What happened?
It’s like the beginning is a childhood story, - interesting and exciting, but unfinished.
The end is like a public warning to watch your children against sex-predators. I can’t see the link between the start and end.
I want to read more of your articles, so this is to encourage you to write more. Thanks very much for your wonderful contributions to steemit!
I may not have made that transition as well as I had hoped. Sometimes I try to start my posts with a story, and the best stories are true. When I was a child though, my parents didn't have to worry about human predators. They did have to worry about natural dangers like tornadoes and being lost in the woods. There were animal predators too like the leopard. I'll work on this more though to finish the story and make the transition better. Thank you for the great feedback!
Hi Finnian, I resteemed this post and support your work in liberating children being trafficked today. When I was young, my close friend lost her close friend to child trafficking-- a black van pulled up, grabbed her friend, and the girl was never seen again. It affected my friend enormously and traumatized me, even though I lived in a different city. The Deep State has been stealing children for 60 years or more....LETS STOP THEM!
Thank you for commenting and the resteem! I completely agree that this predator activity needs to be stopped. It is one of the reasons I became a PI. I am going to focus on this topic in particular and also become a Certified Missing Persons Investigator. As you said though, it is usually too late once the child has been collected. I'm researching tips and good advice though for parents to avoid having their child taken. There are a few categories to explain as well from what you described, to run aways, to amber alerts, and non-custodial parent "kidnappings." I want people to understand the differences between them, and we need to focus on the collection, sex trafficking, and actual predator kidnappings the most.
Yeah interesting story, I remember those days when I went to roam around out in the woods myself, and it's interesting you were talking about a leopard, and I firmly remember in Arkansas when we lived Out in the Country, out in the woods we would hear what was referred to as a black panther and that Panther would scream like a woman in distress, it was very odd. The story that you brought up made me remember that, and i'll never forget it I remember seeing the leopard one time just crossing the the field and in the dark, but anyway it was very interesting and yeah. I completely agree with this it seems like those days are gone where your kids can just kind of roam around I mean sure they can roam around in the neighborhood a little bit but for the most part you're not going to leave your child unattended and not know where they are, not like the good old days so to speak. But thank you for your story I really thought it was quite interesting and yes we need to be careful these days thanks for the reference also to the site. @finnian
Thanks! Yes, I wouldn't dream of letting my children freely roam as I did. It's just not a risk I'm willing to take. It's worse because I'm a PI too. My spouse has enemies as well from putting people in prison as a witness against them. I've been a witness against people as well. They did the crime, so I'm not responsible for ruining their lives. Still, I have to wonder if one of those people may seek revenge one day.
I live in a pretty crowded suburban neighborhood. There are tons of different families with young children. Of them all though, there's only a single family that lets their children roam free. That family doesn't give a crap about their kids though, so maybe they don't care if they go missing or get hurt? I'm not sure but will never understand it. We let our children play, but an adult has to be present. It doesn't have to be me or my spouse either.
It just has to be a neighbor we trust who'll actually be watching them.
When I was around 8 years old though, I would be gone all evening after school. We had a rule to be home before dark. That was it. I roamed all over on my own. That's not going to happen with my middle son of the same age. Nope. Never.
A family close to mine, this past week in a VERY astute neighborhood after school had a man try and lure their child to the car with a candy bar. At first they said no, but the man persisted. He started walking forward to the car but an observant older girl ran over to him screaming and said no. The man then followed them.
Being an active watching parent isn't enough. Kids need to know, and kids need to be given tools and be empowered to say no. If you teach them saying no to adults is wrong, they will think so about strangers as well. They must be taught, upvote for awareness. And not even as a parent but as an active member of society I will sign up for this site for edification of environment.. :)
Agreed. My children are taught to fight to the death before being forced into a vehicle. Once they are in the vehicle, they are as good as dead. We use code words. If someone other than myself, my oldest son, or my spouse need to pick up a child of mine from school, they are given the code word. My children know to ask for it. Don't know the answer? Fight to the death.
Also, we have a serial young woman predator in Charlottesville, VA. He has not been caught either in my opinion. He'll strike again in the future without a doubt, and he kidnaps, rapes, and murders the girl. Why any parent sends their daughter to UVA boggles my mind. There are numerous reports by young girls of a guy trying to force them into a vehicle too.
I'm not very knowledgeable about this, but I'm not so sure it was actually much safer back then, I think there was just more ignorance about it. Most people probably didn't even know what the word paedophile meant nevermind worry about it. Unfortunately there are tales of abuse within my own family among uncles and great uncles. It happened right under the nose of the people responsible for them and they had no idea. And jeez, I mean, I'm from Ireland, to be honest it's only really now that many of the stories are coming out of what went on in the religious institutions...
Thanks for the post! Kate
You're very welcome! I'll get the next post in this series done sooner than later. A break from Steemit was needed for various reasons, but I'm definitely not going anywhere. :)
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Yes, the dangers to children in today's society are horrifying, and the pedophile community are trying to do everything they can to make the disgusting behavior "normal".
http://galacticconnection.com/pedogate-normalization-plot-through-pizzagate-marketing-campaign-directed-at-little-boysv/?utm_source=Newsletter&utm_campaign=d4089ea921-The+Daily+Alternative+News+Source+Jan+6%2C+2018&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_aebd2bb672-d4089ea921-146545717&goal=0_aebd2bb672-d4089ea921-146545717&mc_cid=d4089ea921&mc_eid=bbe08a806c
They'll never get away with it. Victimizing children will always be seen as predatory.