For some time now, Maslins Beach has been the venue for the annual Nude Olympics organised by Debbie Pillar from the Pilwarren resort near Swan Reach here in South Australia.
Apparently South Coast Police have been in contact with organisers and have advised it may be better for children to wear clothes to deter would be paedophiles from taking advantage of the event.
In addition, Debbie Pillar also advises that unauthorised photography will be banned from the beach on the day. However, in a later paragraph says they cannot control what people photograph and actually have no power to stop people from taking photographs or video. If 'so called' authorisation is needed, who controls the authorisation? It's a public beach, a public event - if the organisers and police are that worried by the possibility of paedopohiles, maybe it's better not to hold the event?
To this end, I'm sure there will be a number of parents who will be taking photographs of their kids in a particular race or two, or even just on the beach. What if one of those photographs accidentally (or deliberately) contains a kid or two from another family. What if an adult just wants to photograph the 'fun' of the day and that photo contains naked children, or clothed children, for that matter?
The point of my rant is that it's a sad state of affairs when a public family event is marred by the apparent need to bring paedophilia to the forefront. I'm all for the protection of children, AND, I can see the 'benefit' of advertising police presence at the event, but in my opinion, it's just sad that the first thing on the agenda is 'how will we keep the paedophiles away?
I think it's also a sad state when bystanders - who may want to photograph the days activities - risk a run in with the law because they innocently take pictures of events which may contain kids, clothed or not. You may even have budding photographers who deliberately don't take pictures of kids in case they're questioned over it. Is that what we want? People afraid to do perfectly innocent things because of what they may be accused of?
Will we get to a point where a man will no longer want to to say "I love kids", because he will be viewed suspiciously?
It's no different to a man taking his dog for a walk in the park. He dare not not stop in front of a playground to innocently watch the kids playing lest parents see him and call the police. "Oh my god, there's a man looking in the playground - call the police".
You will notice I've only mentioned men when I've referred to paedophilia. It seems that society doesn't consider that women can be paedophiles as well. You see this all the time in media reports. When a news story reports of a man having sex with an underage person, he's a paedophile. When a woman has sex with an underage person, she's reported as being a child molester? Why the difference?
As a society, it seems to be deemed worse when a man has underage sex with a girl, but it's not as bad when a woman has underage sex with a boy. Why? Is it media reporting that biases us?
It's interesting that in law, a person is innocent till proved guilty, yet, with much of the population, a person is guilty till proved innocent. It's presumed that he must be a paedophile because he's looking at kids in a playground. The fact that the person is walking a dog and may take joy in seeing kids having fun doesn't seem to enter into it.
Is this really the way we want to go as a society?
Get Real
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