[This is from a posting I put on Fanstory.com for the "Fanstorians Against Child Abuse!" open community book that was put together a few years ago. I don't know if it ever got published, but it was a well put together presentation.] CHAOS ON A TINY GLOBE

I'm not sure if this will become a rant or a dissertation on world ethics. I've never been keen on the abuse that transpires around this tiny world of ours or even understood why it occurs in the first place. I just know that I am horrified by the things I hear on the news. Of course, the news focuses on mostly negativety, but even one story of abuse bothers me. I'm not so much tortured when a death occurs, it is generally more merciful than a lifetime of the abuse in which no one seems to give a damn. It's those instances when you know a monster is lurking. When the law fails and allows the animal to walk our streets. When a young girl is raped, abused, battered, and buried alive. It is enough to want to find the animal and rend him limb from limb.

I don't believe in the death penalty, or an eye for an eye. But I do believe in dispensing swift justice. If one lunatic is caught in the act and immediate and resolute penance is enacted, should it end with said individual's death then oh well, then I have no qualms. It's only when they drag it out with no certainties and then become as vicious as the villain in retribution, that I am disturbed.

I have a five year old son, and I know I wouldn't want him to fall victim to predators who seek out children to satiate their sick sedations. To know that these people, and in my city of Dayton there have been numerous ones found, live near our schools, our homes, our lives and that they get off on desecrating a small child, disheartens me to no end. Why does the law tolerate it? Are the rights of the criminal superior to the rights of the law-abiding citizens? Do those freedoms we all take for granted really apply to those that would rob us and our children of theirs? Whose decree makes this so!? What political partisan found it justly so to heap upon himself rewards so as to satisfy himself in the eyes of his supporters!?

All I know is that this torturous routine of decay and petulance has plagued our kind since they first crawled from the darkest seas. I suppose we should consider ourselves lucky, for our laws do at the least ATTEMPT to address the issue whereas so many other nations turn a blind eye. A small child broken in Mexico, a legion left hungry in Ethiopia-whose government couldn't care less, the depraved conditions of what constitutes 'family' in China, (That of course, being the ideals of one child, a boy, and the like where the government determines family), and a host of those who would exploit them for cheap labor.

I worry for my son, growing up in a callous and uncaring world. A tiny globe that concerns itself with profits and won't lift a finger until those profits match their cause. I worry about his next visitation with his mother, who couldn't care less for him, for he is nothing more than an image for her. An image to uphold in the face of those she considers family. And what am I to say? What concerns should I express? But they will say 'what proof have you'? NONE! For it is only with a CORPSE does the law truly act!

It is a cruel world full of swine. Yet, I once heard it said that, whereas the dark is all-consuming, it only takes the flicker of a small flame to hold it back. And so long as there are those who will stand up for those children in need, always will there be hope. Always will at least one life be spared.

But, my thoughts always wander to the young girl buried in the dirt...left to face oblivion very much alive. And the rage that boils within will never subside and it will be doubly so should I ever have a daughter. On second thought, I do believe in a death penalty. But not one that comes years after; one that is swift and absolute. In the act, let them be torn down like the rabid dogs feasting on the carrion that they are.

~T S Purvis