Rosebud wrote:I was having a conversation with someone about this the other day (who may end up reading this post.... idk).
I brought up child protection policies and Douglas Soverign Smith Jr., convicted for child porn, being in charge of child sexual abuse prevention and education when the 2-deep policy was first put in place.
His response was that just because Smith was a bad person, that doesn't necessarily mean his work was bad.
I had two interesting and immediate responses to that argument. First, define "bad person." Who is 'bad' and who isn't?
Second, and more importantly, what is is about humans that gives us a propensity to defend Smith's work when we know he was convicted of child porn while it was his job to educate others about child protection, and to simultaneously criticize Snow for her imperfections in her work when we know she was coping with a crisis in a new field and was trying to help children in the worst of circumstances.
Ideas and concepts can be evaluated on the basis of their attributes. The goodness or 'badness' of the person who came up with them is completely irrelevant to that evaluation.
rosebud wrote:We use thinking that's open to the possibility that the "bad guy's" work is better than he is and the "good guy's" work is deficient, fraudulent and destructive.
You are the only one creating that meaningless dichotomy.
rosebud wrote:My answer as to why humans have this tendency is that we don't want to face that this is possible. We'd rather defend Smith and criticize Snow than allow ourselves to be open to the possibility that some small children might actually have to face this kind of thing alone. It's too terrible to believe.
First of all, you are comparing two entirely different things. Smith's character is irrelevant to a discussion of his idea. Snow's behavior as a therapist, however, is central to discussing the ritual abuse scare.
Next, no one is defaulting to character deconstruction to avoid discussing the issues except for you. You've offered no support for your interpretation of how therapists behaved during that time, except to insist that the 1995 report concludes things that it does not. And please stop saying people don't care, or are afraid to acknowledge, or are scared to admit child abuse exists. NO ONE has ever said or implied that.
Rosebud wrote:But doesn't that make it all worse? Isn't the answer to stop completely discrediting all the reports and to listen and try to figure out what pieces of the story might be accurate despite all the sensationalization?
People have been doing that all along, what isn't working is your refusal to accurately assess the details that do exist, such as the 1995 report, and your alternate version of defending and protecting therapists for which you have provided no evidence.
Rosebud wrote:And that includes thinking through why predators might intentionally use sensationalization to get away with their crimes.
Think this through. The sensationalization happened after the alleged events, and was clearly shown to be based on false events. You are attempting now to use the false sensationalization to show that the events did happen. That's nonsensical. It's like saying a rumor of smoke that turned out to be false implies there must have been a fire. It's an illogical premise.