This is another engrossing article in the news today: From the LA Times, on tracking down child abusers. Horrific work, horrific realities for the “unsmiling girl” and other children caught in this web of evil, child pornography. But thank goodness there are good folks who are on the trail. Witness, for an example:
Almost every investigator in the office has a talisman to ward off the ghosts that haunt the workday. For Gillespie, it’s a Christmas card from the mother of a 3-month-old boy who had been raped by his uncle, thanking Gillespie and encouraging him to keep going even when he wants to give up. Gillespie tells a bit of the child’s story, then swivels his chair to face the window when his eyes begin to well up. He turns back, recomposed.
“I look at that sometimes,” he says simply. “It makes me feel good.”
But the same detective, Det. Sgt. Paul Gillespie of the Toronto Sex Crimes Unit, also points out: “We’re doing a terrible job,” he says in his office at police headquarters. “Five hundred kids of 50,000? What is that?”
Here’s to many more successes…’till every last abuser is behind bars.
And I suspect after reading the piece, they’ll be more than a few folks praying for the protection of these guys’ souls.