A daggering of the mind

Daniel Thwaites, Contributor

Superintendent Merrick Watson is reporting that over in St Thomas, some parents are pimping out their daughters. "They are literally making money off the innocence of their daughters," he said.

The superintendent says he had no statistics about boys, but worried that it could be the same. I hope he returns with that data. Two videos I've seen recently lead me to suspect that they may be equally under pressure.

I had first seen the offending videos last Sunday when it disturbed my little rice and peas and chicken. Then THE STAR carried a story called 'Daggering kids - video anger viewers', focusing on one from a day party in Gregory Park, Portmore. The Gleaner then reported in its Thursday edition that 'Police investigate boys 'daggering' grown woman'.

Basically, some sizable older women position themselves as receptive to the advances of some very young boys. I don't know if it's a new trend, but older women seem to be assaulting young boys. I don't want to guess and say that it's recent because surely somebody will emerge to tell me that it's been going on forever and that there is nothing new under the sun. Well, however that may be, I hadn't seen anything like it before, so mi shock!

STAR writer Curtis Campbell's colourful description of the video is better than any I could concoct:

"The video ... shows two scantily attired women positioning themselves in doggy style, while two minors stroked them as if their lives depended on it. One of the boys was only wearing underwear ... . [T]he shock value in the event came when a grown woman and her friend walked into the view of the camera and positioned themselves on all fours as the boys began stroking away ... . Several adults were also spotted at the venue. However, none stepped in to separate the minors from the adults ... . 'Gwaan back, mi boss, watch him bloodnuh. Lock yu mouth, mi boss,' the videographer shouted as the tiny-figured boy proceeded to plunge his boyish frame on the woman. An older man later walked into the path of the video and poured a bottle of water on the boy as he continued his disturbing daggering onslaught."

'Slaughteration'

You know how a picture says more than a thousand words? This one says more than a million if you see how this child is enacting some major 'slaughteration' upon the woman. She is roughly 10 times his size and wearing a thong that the little boy could lay down in like a hammock.

Any comedy only lasts until you realise what this is likely doing to the little boy. The effect is ultimately degrading, and you see that the child is just a prop for the amusement of adults. Pretty quickly it dawns on you that you're witnessing a great wickedness: child abuse. Even the dashing of the water on the child is like something that might be done to dogs hitched up on the roadside. The child is reduced to a mere animal, to meat.

I pity the teacher who has to try to tell that young boy about mathematics or geography on Monday morning. When the teacher starts to talk about the Grand Canyon, only one thing will be on that boy's mind. Or imagine the guidance counsellor who has to explain why he shouldn't approach one of his female peers and "attack it from de back"? After that experience, who can tell him nutten?

The Cybercrime Unit of the Police Force says it's looking into the matter. We need to hear more. Then a Mr Greig Smith from the Office of the Children's Registry expressed concern "about the number of videos being produced with our children engaged in gyrating activities or explicit sexual abuse". I'm hoping that's a misprint or a misrepresentation of what Mr Smith is saying. It's not the videoing that's the problem; it's the daggering and dry-humping and skinning out that's the problem.

I'm sure if the genders were reversed, there would be more public hue and cry. At least, I hope so, but who knows anymore? Just the other day The Gleaner carried a story about a woman who first got pregnant at age 13, but there was no mention of it being another virgin birth, or, alternatively, of a prosecution.

Sad reality

But the sad reality is that the community is encouraging the behaviour. There is nothing the little boy could accomplish, except perhaps beating Usain's records, that might again win him as much social approval as he's being given for trying to mount de mampi.

I'm not uncommonly squeamish or delicate. In fact, it's quite the opposite. So if the child was even of a slightly more advanced age, I wouldn't see the aggressively sexual displays as so outrageous. But these were really small children, and any way you take it, these were public sexual acts between a child and an adult. That cannot be right.

Social historians will sometimes tell you that childhood is a recent social invention, meaning that the idea that our biological young need and are entitled to an extended period of protection and nourishment is a result of bourgeois society and the Romantic intellectual tradition. It's true: we like to imagine childhood as a time of innocence. In previous times, the argument goes, children were just considered small adults, mostly useful as additional labour.

Well, childhood is one of those bourgeois institutions that I happen to like and even took some benefit from. As prejudices go, it's relatively harmless. So although it was very fashionable for a time to say that hatred of the bourgeois is the beginning of wisdom, and that destruction of bourgeois civilisation would herald real freedom, I kinda like this piece of cultural detritus. Could it be that these videos, and the pimping of children in St Thomas, are just the first daggerings of the revolution?

Daniel Thwaites is anattorney-at-law. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com.