In an article in The Republican, a Massachusetts man was sentenced to 15 years to life in prison after pleading guilty to numerous charges of raping and assaulting five children while making pornographic videos of his victims.
The 44-year-old man, Rene Lagrenaye, pleaded guilty to 51 crimes. The man apparently wouldn’t have ever been caught if his wife hadn’t gone to police and told them Lagrenaye was having an “inappropriate relationship with a young teenage boy,” The Republican reported. The evidence against Lagrenaye included still photos and videos of each of his victims.
Recently, a former priest of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese in Los Angeles was sentenced to prison for molesting a boy 20 years ago. Investigators are still looking into the mishandling of sexually abusive officials by the institution’s Cardinal Roger M. Mahoney.
Why are children the targets of sexual abuse by those who should be their protectors, and why is America teeming with sexual offenders and child abusers?
In many cases of molestation in the church, elders and priests were charged with either possessing or creating pornography of sexual abuse on video. There seems to be a progression that occurs between first viewing an act to committing it.
Have we become a culture obsessed with image and sex simply because it is constantly being sold to us by the media? It is safe to say that discontent may be triggered by pornography, television shows and movies.
The United States is the highest generator of pornography in the world and 47
percent of American families state that pornography is a problem in their households. More than 70 percent of men ages 18 to 34 visit a pornographic website each month and the majority of children have viewed pornography online, although most were by accident.
At an American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers meeting in 2003, two-thirds of the divorce lawyers stated that the Internet was a major factor in divorce and that pornography played a large role in more than half of those divorces.
In the book “Treating Sexual Offenders: An Integrated Approach” 86 percent of rapists admitted that they watched pornography on a daily basis. The U.S. Department of Justice reported in 1985 that there were approximately four million child molesters in the United States, which makes the total around twice the population of Arkansas.
In a recent visit to Meganslaw.ca.gov, a website that lists registered sex offenders in California, I was shocked to see just how many sex offenders have been convicted in this state alone.
The website gives the location of convicted sex offenders, their addresses and the crimes they were convicted of by marking each sex offender with a blue square. As you zoom out to view a bigger picture, entire counties are covered in a sea of blue squares, which makes it impossible to distinguish individual offenders.
It is disgusting to see how many innocent human beings, many of them children, were targeted by sex offenders.
With the Internet quickly advancing, people are accustomed to having what they want when they want it. The same instant gratification applies to sex offenders. If they want to view pornography it is only a click away.
In their quest of a self-gratifying experience, they rob defenseless individuals of their innocence to satisfy their lustful desires — treating victims as objects rather than as human beings.
As long as the media keeps selling pornography, people will commit acts that allow them to pursue these dark and offensive experiences. The many avenues of available entertainment do not solve the problem; they only serve to keep fueling the fire.
Becky Yeh is a junior journalism major and a contributing writer for the Daily Forty-Niner.