Turning Sons Into Monsters

I read last night that a young man in our community was arrested on child porn charges.  It was a small article, I’m sure many missed it.  But when I read it and saw his photo, his eyes sunken, and his skin sallow, a weight fell to the pit of my stomach.  I knew that young man; I had met him when he was a boy.  His parents taught gymnastics and I had been intrigued by their circus background, their close brush with Olympic fame, and their Russian accents.  Their son was just around ten then, and used to run fearlessly toward the mini tramp, allowing his body to soar and then just at the right moment, tuck, flip, and flip again, before landing and walking away, as if nothing remarkable had just happened.  He seemed to me a wunderkind, and I told his mother as much.  His mother, in her prime, had flitted and flipped across the balance beam.  She had had a special knack for making walking a fine line look effortless.  When I met her, dark circles had begun to form beneath her eyes, and no wonder.  It’s exhausting work, teaching children to stay atop a skinny beam.  But as difficult as it is to teach balancing on beam, it is even harder to teach children to maintain a moral balance in a world so rife with pitfalls.

No child is born with the kernel of pedophilia in their soul.  Head to the nursery of a maternity wing and look at the sleeping babes.  Of the twenty or thirty that might be there, not one is destined for a child porn addiction.  Not one.  Child porn, like so many other negative things, is an acquired taste.  The trouble is, in our society, certain things are forgivable—drug addiction, prostitution, tax evasion.  For such offenses, a person can serve their time, pay their fine, and eventually reenter society.  But we do not tolerate child porn addicts.  They are labeled monsters and cast out.   It doesn’t matter if they could once sprint toward a mini tramp and fly and flip in the air.  It doesn’t matter that they were once a soft-faced young boy with a shy smile.  All that matters are what they chose to do, chose to look at.

The rest is cast aside.

Child porn is one of the slipperiest of the serpents attacking children today.  We’d rather not consider that in the click of a button child porn can present itself to our kids, but it can.  This is a terrible reality.  It feels not unlike having to come to terms with living in a house where, if you’re not careful, the floor can give way and reveal the depths of hell, allowing fiendish flames to shoot forth and lick at the ankles of the children inside.  We’d like to think that sort of foundational problem couldn’t exist in our home, but if no child is born with a propensity for child porn, if it truly is an acquired taste, then our home is just as vulnerable as the next, and it is our duty to talk to our children about this danger that is lurking, lying in wait to destroy their lives.

But when do you talk to your child about child porn?  I think the answer is sooner as opposed to later.  The young man who was arrested was fourteen when he saw child porn for the first time.  Part of me wishes that while the he still clung to his mother’s skirt, his mother would have said:

My darling boy, come sit here on my lap, there’s something I need to tell you.  No, we’re not going to the Zoo.  Yes, I know you love the lions.  Sh, sh, listen to me, sweetheart.  You see, I need to let you know that there are pictures that can pop up on the computer, naked pictures of children, and they’re called child porn.  Ew, yes, you’re right.  It is yucky.  But you have to understand, look right at mommy, right at me.  You see, sometimes people look because they’re curious.  But you have to promise me to never do that, never look.  Why? I’ll tell you why.  If you do, it will be as if your feet turn to cloven hooves, and horns protrude from your heads, for, rest assured, you will have more than one.

Do you understand me?  You can never look at child porn.  Not once!  No, I don’t think I’m reaching you.  Your eyes, my love, they will multiply, your teeth will turn to fangs, and your breath will hang like a foul cloud about you.  You will become a monster.  Do you hear me, my sweet boy!  You will become a monster, and you will have to go where all monsters go, and that is in a cage.  It is terrible to be a monster in a cage.  Just the other day, an actor of some acclaim walked into a river and didn’t come out, because he had become a monster and was about to be put in a cage.

And once you’re in a cage, you will not see me or your father, not for a long time.  And when others ask me about you, we will say little, because it is difficult to admit you have a monster for a son.  Do you hear me boy!  Like Narcissus of old, if you look, you will not be able to stop looking.  I’m sorry to shake you by the shoulders, but you have to hear me!  You have to!  I love you too much!  Do not look!  Not ever!  I know, I know I hug you too tight, but it’s hard, so hard letting go, letting you find your way in this world with its snares set in place to destroy you.  But I will have to let you go, and you will be held accountable for the choices you make, whether terrible or good.  There now, dry your eyes.  You see, how lovely it is, you only have two.  Go and play, my love, and remember what I’ve said.  I won’t have my beautiful boy turning into a monster.

My husband tells me the young man will likely get seven years in prison.  Seven years is a long time.  Maybe by the end of it I will have forgotten the soft-faced boy who could fly through the air, the boy with the shy smile. Maybe.