To go or not to go, that is the question....

[3'sDad]

Our DD's team does a week of Spring training @ ESPN Disney every year. They fly down, stay & play the week & fly back. There are 4 chaperones with the team - 3 coaches and another faculty member.

Rules are strict - any out-of-line behavior & the player is taken to the airport and sent home with the parents paying the additional cost as we pay for this trip anyway. Once back they would either be suspended from school or expelled - no exceptions.

This is private school - rules may be different for public schools.

Best of Luck.

 

[SCDad]

We are a public school. The folks in charge here take every precaution to make sure the young ladies are in an environment most beneficial.

It is their #1. I realize others have a more haphazard coaching situation when you don't know whether they are coming or going.

However, in today's softball environment, and society in general. I would rather my DD be on the softball field, under a softball coaches care, or with a group of softball players on a sleep-over whooping it up ... than just about anywhere else.

I watch, I listen to DD's every word. My goal is her safety, but I will give, and do give her, plenty of room to spread her wings when she is doing so many thing right in her life and gives me very little reason not to set her free.

 

[Greenmonsters]

Assuming that this trip will take place over school break, the stark reality is that there's probably a much greater chance of something "bad" happening if a kid stayed home unsupervised while mom and dad were out/at work than if they went on the trip w/ the high school softball team. Just something to think about.

 

[cmustangsfp]

So of the 714,000 all time offenders about 7,100 out of hundreds of millions of people in the US are predatory.

I am of the opinion that the media doesn't know squat about what goes on in the criminal world. Yes they do sensationalize some things but they largely ignore what really goes on. It would be too depressing if they really showed what goes on, so they cherry pick their stories for maximum impact. They also ignore a lot of stories that have (in their eyes) very little public interest.

Now to your "statistics". That is just the ones who have been caught and SUCCESSFULLY prosecuted. It does not take in to account the large number who have gotten off due to sleazy lawyers, bad police work, or unreported events due to the victims unwillingness to have their lives ripped apart by lawyers while the accused life and past history is off limits. You really ought to go and sit through a trial with one of these victims. To see what the victim has to go through (to include reliving the events, being abused by the abuser again through verbal, non-verbal and other methods) and the S#*! they have to put up with by the sleazy lawyers who try very ruthlessly to get their clients off, if they are guilty or not. If you witnessed that process you would understand why more events do not get reported and even less get successfully prosecuted. And Heaven forbid if you accuse someone successful or famous. Read the recent news about the hollywood child actors and the book by Corey Haim who tells of blatent sexual and drug abuse by famous people in Hollywood. None of them were prosecuted but they continue to repeatedly rape and molest many children for many years and it is swept under the rug. His parents ignored it because they didn't want the money train to end.

I can bend statistics too. Statistics are not facts. Do not get them confused. The one thing I learned in statistics classes in college is that you can justify just about anything using statistics, depending on how you present them.

 

[cuzmail]

and political environment

Careful mentioning the p word or anything p related , certain self appointed police speak officers will ask and/or demand to have your post deleted.

 

[sluggers]

I was a criminal prosecutor for four wonderful years doing sex abuse/child abuse cases. So, I have witnessed many trials. Cmust seems to me to have watched one too many movies about sex abuse. It just doesn't happen that way.

The vast majority of sexual assaults are performed by relatives and "friends" of the victim. If a sexual assault is not reported it is usually because the victim's parents do not want to disrupt the relationship. The most common sexual assault is the mother's boyfriend or husband assaulting the child...so the mother doesn't want the boyfriend/husband arrested.

The kidnapping/sex assault cases get the headlines, and those are terrible tragedies. But, thankfully, there are an extremely small number of those.

The best way to avoid having your child assaulted is to have frank discussions about sex and "appropriate touching" and "inappropriate touching". The most important things to teach a child is to scream like bloody murder if she is being assaulted and never go with a stranger into a private place (such as a car or bathroom), no matter what the stranger says or threatens.

Obviously, there are risks. At some point, the child is going to leave home and be on her own. The parents are supposed to teach the child how to protect themselves. These supervised trips on outings with groups is actually a great way to teach the child what to do.

 

[cmustangsfp]

Cmust seems to me to have watched one too many movies about sex abuse. It just doesn't happen that way.

No, not much of a movie watcher. Just lots of experience with victims. Hearing about the cases that don't make it to prosecution. So you may have seen the ones that actually made it to prosecution, I saw the other side, the therapy side. The cases where they never told anyone until years later. The cases where there just wasn't enough "evidence". You also forgot one important category of offenders and that is people in authority or power positions. People like police officers and police chiefs (not picking on the police or saying that they are all bad) who get moved around from city to city because of "the whispers" of "bad or inappropriate" behavior, clergy members who people would never think would do such stuff, Adult volunteers (yes it does happen from that group too). People in positions of power or respect often are not questioned enough and have an implicit "trust" placed on them. Those who are offenders know this and use that to their advantage. So while most of the successful prosecutions seem to happen to family members and "friends" of the victims, it is usually because that person has had enough victims that people begin to believe the victims and enough of them step forward.

He was trying to equate number of convicted perps to number in actual population, which is very misleading.

I do agree with your statement about how to protect kids from being assaulted. I am also not so naive to think that I will be able to be there for every situation in life, nor would I want to be. But they sure will be prepared for it. But to have someone tell me the only way is their way and I have to explicity trust them because they are the "coach", I have a problem with that.

 

[KCPRK]

All I was trying to say Cmustang was lets not blow this all out of proportion with fear and paranoia. Your even reading too much into my intent. Lets dial everything back a notch and ease up on the anxiety.

You keep focusing on explicitly trusting the coach and no one in this thread has said anything about blindly trusting the coach. We are all agreeing with taking precautions and making sure we know the adults in charge and trust them yet you continue to argue with the brick wall.

Sluggers-that is the reality I was attempting to portray. Some of us deal with this world for a living and knowledge puts things into persepctive as the human mind left with incomplete information tends to lose control of the reality of the situation.

 

[JJsqueeze]

we have reached the violent agreement point...everyone agrees that sexual assault occurs by people known to the victim and girls should be taught to protect themselves, everyone agrees that kids need to spread their wings and fly at some point, everyone agrees that we should not blindly trust those in a position of authority.

No one thinks we should lock up our girls in safe houses for their entire lives, nor that they should be taught to fear the world, no one is blowing anything out of proportion.

Some think that the time for an out of state trip with the parents left at home is 14 years old. Some think it is 16 or 18. Some think the threat is really small, some think it is small but not really small-This is much ado about nothing.

 

[SCDad]

Careful mentioning the p word or anything p related , certain self appointed police speak officers will ask and/or demand to have your post deleted.

Thanks ... fixed !!