Letter to the Editor: Child predators don’t 'abuse' —they destroy

Let’s stop pretending, let’s stop softening the language, let’s stop wrapping this horror in legal jargon and bureaucratic politeness. When an adult commits a sexual crime against a child, it is not “abuse.” It is not “misconduct.” It is not “a tragic situation.” It is the deliberate destruction of a human being at their most defenseless stage of life.

And yes — I get it. Adult CSC is equally serious, equally traumatic, equally deserving of justice. Adults who are violated suffer deeply and deserve every ounce of support and protection. But child CSC is a different category of evil. Adults have context, vocabulary, agency, and the ability to seek help. Children have none of that. A predator knows this. That’s why they choose children. It’s not confusion. It’s not impulse. It’s not a lapse in judgment. It’s target selection.

A child’s innocence is not symbolic. It is structural. It is the psychological scaffolding that allows a human being to grow into a functioning adult. When a predator violates that, they don’t just “hurt” the child — they destroy the foundation of their development. They steal safety, trust, autonomy, identity, and the basic belief that the world is not engineered to harm them.

And what do we do? We negotiate. We compromise. We reduce charges. We talk about “second chances” for the offender. We worry about their job prospects, their future, their rehabilitation — as if the child’s future wasn’t just ripped apart by someone who made a conscious decision to inflict irreversible damage.

Let’s be brutally, uncomfortably honest: A child cannot consent. A child cannot comprehend. A child cannot resist. The predator knows this. That’s the entire point.

Predators thrive because our systems are built to protect institutions, reputations, and convenience — not children. Schools bury reports. Churches shuffle offenders. Families are pressured into silence. Communities whisper instead of confronting. Everyone wants the problem to disappear quietly, so they don’t have to face the truth that the threat isn’t “out there.” It’s here. It’s local. It’s familiar.

Meanwhile, the child loses everything that makes childhood possible. They lose the ability to trust without fear. They lose the belief that adults exist to protect them. They lose the version of themselves that existed before the predator decided to take what was never theirs.

And yet we still act like the predator deserves leniency.

Why?

Why do we tolerate systems that bend over backward to protect offenders while victims spend decades trying to rebuild a life that someone else shattered?

Why do we allow predators to reenter communities with little more than a registration requirement and a warning?

Why do we pretend that “closure” is possible when the victim is still carrying the weight every single day?

A society that cannot protect its children has no moral authority. None. And right now, too many communities — including ours — are failing catastrophically. Child sexual crimes are not administrative issues. They are moral emergencies. They demand outrage, not excuses. They demand consequences, not compassion for the offender.

Children do not get their innocence back.

Predators should not get mercy!

Joseph B.D. Arriola

Dededo

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