It happened again.

This is one of the things that makes me craziest.

In my town, a guy (I'm not gonna call him a "man") was arrested for allegedly molesting one of his girlfriend's kids. The police have put out a request that anyone else who might have had "contact" with him to come forward (allegedly, there are up to 7 kids he's abused).

There's a lot of culpability to go around. The child-molestor, of course, is the primary guilty party. (I wonder: are there people out there who have desires they know are wrong, they know they should not act upon, who DON'T act upon them? And what do they do? Avoid being around kids? Get treatment? But surely there are people with self control....I know there have been men I have been attracted to, where as soon as I found out they were married, I was like, "Okay, that's a big No-Fly Zone right there" and I took steps never to be alone with him, to only socialize with him when his wife was also present.)

Anyway. The primary blame falls on the molestor, but what about the mom? This is something I don't get. When you're a parent, isn't the safety of your kids supposed to be paramount? Aren't they your first priority?

There have been so many cases here of "mom's boyfriend" abusing (physically, emotionally, or sexually) her kids....in a few cases a kid even died. I wonder - are there women who are so desperate to have a man around that they will be willing to put their kids in harm's way just for a bit of fun? I've read about how hard it is for a woman to leave an abusive relationship, but is it also that hard to avoid getting into one in the first place?

Is it really that necessary to have a man in your lie that you're willing to let some guy into your home that you know so little about, that you're not 100% sure he's safe with your kids before you let him share your bed?

I mean - I won't go out on a second date with a guy if he's rude to the waitress and drives like he has a chip on his shoulder. I just don't want to deal with it - being alone, as much as society tells you you're a loser for that, is better than being with a guy with an anger problem or who could get abusive.

It just makes me so sad. It's such a waste. Probably the molestor will go to prison, he might meet the fate that I hear child molestors tend to meet there, but that makes no difference, really - he already stole something from those kids that can never be put back, he damaged them in a way that's very hard to overcome even with good counseling and lots of hard work.

I'm generally not an enormous fan of the death penalty, for both practical and philosophical reasons, but if we're gonna have a death penalty, I wouldn't have too much trouble including "serial child molestor" within those who are eligible for it.