Dear Standly,
I'm afraid things are not going to change. They are probably going to get worse. Why do I say that? Because many men go to prostitutes. This is not only so in North America. It is so all over the world. There are countries where pedophiles go for access to children or boys, or very young girls. It isn't only because the parents or those in charge sell them or make money from them. It is because just as men go to prostitutes, also too many men in families abuse their own children. Not all men. Not most men. But too many men. Unfortunately, more than you or I would ever want to imagine. That teaches their kids to do it. It teaches them to allow it. It causes them to run away from home and have to earn their money through it. In Canada things used to be very quiet. If this was going on it was not known. I guess some went on. But in recent years it has become much more.
I am watching even formerly staid news papers and magazines adding sex to many kinds of articles where you wouldn't expect it. I think many people are becoming worried about it. This may lead to a new Victorian age where people become very prudish and go to the kind extremes as they did before whenthey even hid the "legs" of pianos with skirts. A complete and major swing away from depravity. However, it would still go on, just in secret, as it didduring the Victorian times.
I am very open and truthful on this forum about these things. I hope none of you think I talk about it this much in my daily life. I don't. Why should I? I don't have children at home. Everybody reads and sees the same news, so why should I? I do it here to help any of you who need to be safe to remain safe. I also do it to help anyone who comes to the west to understand what they may meet and how to avoid it. A third reason is so that you do understand the west. You shouldn't feel superior to the west, though. It is happening where you are, too,and anything that is illicit and profitable brings in the gangs, and the exploiters. If there were no customers there would be no market. But there are, unfortunately.
It used to be simpler here, as you described in your post, Standly. However, the world has changed and rapidly. As you said, many must prostitute themselves even to feed their children. This is the case for many in Eastern Europe and Russia who wait along west European highways near their countries for cars and truckers.
Now there are women smuggling rings who snatch women and ship women from Eastern Europe and Russia all over the world. These women become slaves who find it very hard to escape. They didn't in any way consent to what happens to them. Some are from universities or highly educated. It is because they were kidnapped for shipment to be used in stables of women in other countries.
There are men in ---no, I can't bring myself to write it here where there are young students, since it won't help them to be safe. Until human beings become good there is no hope for true improvement. In fact, things are getting worse and worse in regards to drugs and prostitution, and gang murders, too.
I think as there is more money in China more of it will be spent on illicit things, as everywhere else. There is a lively and thriving market for everything and anything illicit. This is borne out by the widespread porn and kiddy-porn on the internet and the number of men the police are catching with large caches of photographs for distribution or private interest. Men who fully appear to be decent men.
Someone I know of had a family website. The father noticed too many hits on thesite all of a sudden. He knew something about computers and investigated. It turned out that his site had been linked to a porn site that mirrored his but had different words in place of the family's words. It had pictures of his son in his bathing suit, since swimming is his hobby, and made the son say how interested he was in men, and so on. Then they linked that site to the original site.
We all need to think about our privacy issues and how to make sure we don't have our identity stolen, and many things. The world is becoming so complicated. We need to consider where we go, who our associates are, who they may bring to us or do to us, and whether there are times not to be in certain places because then is when there is trouble. And which places we should not go at all, like parks at night, even if beautifully well lit. This even in little cities like mine.
Some parents we know quite well told us what happened to their daughter. This young woman came out of the bar of a local hotel, (a decent hotel where she had some drinks with friends,) to go home in her car. In the parking lot she was grabbed and shoved into the back of a van. This was before 9-11 so they had no trouble taking her across the border into the USA. She escaped when she said she had to use a toilet. They had to let her out to go into the edge of a wood for the purposewhile they kept watch, but she managed to ran away and in the forest atnight they couldn't find her. Finally they left. She eventaully made her way to a town and the police who got in touch with her parents, who had to go and get her and bring her home to our city by plane. This was at least ten years ago. A very nice family. What about that? What were they going to do with her?
If you drink, take certain kinds of drugs, go to certain kinds of places or to certain kinds of house parties, or with certain kinds of people present there is great danger. You must always keep your glass in your hand or a sharp eye on it all the time almost anywhere, (except with your family at home, of course,) in case someone puts a date rape drug into it. Unfortunately this is quite a common occurence. The girl awakens in the wrong place with no memory of what has been done with her, but medical examination will prove what she doesn't know. Unfortunately. Too many diseases out there for that, let alone the personal defilement. I am not overblowing things. These are true. It may seem like a lot because it is all in one post, but these things happen on a fairly regular basis.
About twenty years ago I knew a woman who moved too close to a car that stopped to ask her for directions one night. She just wanted to help. She was pulled in, taken to the nearest church parking lot and raped. She had a girlfriend call me to her house the next day. She was a person I only knew because I had met her casually as she passed my house, but I went. (We lived then near a good high school where our kids went.) This woman had two children of her own and was a single mother taking night school courses to better herself, poor soul.
In colleges and universities here girls and women are told to call to be escorted to their cars at night by a security guard. I have seen college reports of women menaced or sexually assaulted in the stairwells. There is a person on each campus to receive reports of such difficulties and to make reports and make sure the situation is investigated and the person gets counselling to overcome psychic trauma.
I hope China won't go in this direction, but I believe it will. We would never have believed it, either. When I was a young girl I could go anywhere. We girls often went on long bike rides into the countryside with our lunches for picnics. We never had trouble, and never for a moment did we fear, or did our parents fear for us. As children I let my children go out to play, come home for meals, and go back out again, until supper time. This I could do from the time they were four years old. They played, were happy, got lots of healthful exercise, and there was no danger. Now you don't see children on the streets or even often even in their yards playing. Parents pick them up from school. The relatively few children who have been kidnapped by strangers and found violated and dead is not that great, but there is a steady little trickle. There are disappeared young women and a child I can think of in our little city. This is sufficient so that all parents worry for their children. Children walk to school in pairs. Parents drive children to and fro from school. Parents encourage children to come to each other's houses. They get to know the other parents to assess them and their standards. Parents take their children to skating, swimming, dancing lessons, music lessons, and so on to try to make up for their confined lives. But you don't see children on the street unless they are coming home from school. If you say "hello" to them they don't want to reply because they have been taught not to talk to strangers. We used to talk to anybody and everybody. Men building houses, anyone who interested us. Not now!
I am sorry I have gone on so long about this, dear Standly. Joan Blue's boss's remark and Joan's wonder about my cautioning her and whether Panpanpan would think the same way, set me off. Of course there are now two mass murderers of womenbeing tried in court, too. Your hope that China will not have this problem is one that I hope will be true, but I am afraid I believe it will. The signs are there.
With friendly good wishes and warm respect for you dear Standly, and all friendshere, and with regret to have to tell you this.
Mary
