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Dear George,

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Sex crimes are rampant in society. Rape is the number one of all major crimes in the world. It is increasingly employed against civilian populations in armed conflicts.

Psychological causes are multiple. Sociological and religious attitudes are aggravating factors. Justice is largely inoperative due to the intimate nature of the crimes - no witnesses, no material evidence not attributable to other causes, no proof of lack of consent on the part of the victim.

Most crimes are committed in the home of either the aggressor or the victim. They are either relatives or close acquaintances. A large percentage do not involve physical violence. Many crimes are never reported.

In the case of very young children the aggressor abuses of his position of influence and authority in order to plant the seeds of desire in his victim, progressively bringing it to fruition until the victim finally does whatever it is the aggressor wants him or her to do, without having to take the slightest initiative himself. There is no violence or physical force, nor is there any evidence of psychological coercion.. The victim is persuaded that it is he or she who is the depraved one and the sole person responsible for whatever occurred, the aggressor being the victim. This is called child "grooming".

The sacrosanct principle of presumption of innocence is an effective means of guaranteeing legal immunity to sex offenders and denying justice to the millions of victims it was designed to protect. In its present form justice is counterproductive. It achieves exactly the opposite result from that for which it was intended. Instead of preventing and punishing crime it encourages and facilitates it.

Misplaced ideology is at the root of the problem. The logical cure consists in reversing the burden of proof for sex crimes, at least in the case of young children. Perhaps also for adults but with the obligation to produce at least one or two circumstancila evidences.

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Dear George,

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Cohn-Bendit was one of the leaders of the student riots in France in May 1968. He gave me a special "press" pass to help me get through the lines of riot police and students blocking the entrance to the Odéon Theatre in Paris, occupied by the students. My wife was a newspaper reporter and she had to cover the student occupation of the theatre day and night.

We had been married a couple of months previously and I used to buy some sandwiches and join her after work so that we could see each other and share a meal together.

I certainly do not approve his paedophilia activities cited in your post. If he was "boasting" about it and not simply being honest, I find that even worse.

It is a unique characteristic of French culture that it has what I can only describe as a mature attitude to sexual relationships. Its strong Catholic tradition outlaws deviant sexual behaviour ... in theory. In practice it is much more liberal, if not libertine. Dominique Strauss - Kahn is no exception. France was home to the Marquis de Sade. French heads of state since the revolution of 1789 have been notorious "lovers". One of the presidents, Felix Faure, died in the arms of a prostitute. His aides had to cut off her hair to release her from his dying embrace.

This is significative of French culture at all levels of society.

Frederic Mitterrand, the nephew of François Mitterrand, was Minister for Culture under Nicholas Sarkozy. He wrote a book entitled "The Bad Life" in which he declared “I got into the habit of paying for boys ... The profusion of young, very attractive and immediately available boys put me in a state of desire I no longer needed to restrain or hide. All these rituals of the market for youths, the slave market, excite me enormously. One could judge this abominable spectacle from a moral standpoint, but it pleases me beyond the reasonable.”

His book became a best seller. He remained in office until the following election.

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Dear Banjo,

Sorry to take so long to thank you for the three posts.

As to the first, we apparently share many things, e.g. I also appreciate and support the work of Salvation Army. I also came closer into contact with Buddhism during my sabbatical at UC Berkeley (CA) in 1976, and later through friendship with a Malaysian Chinese, living in Australia, a Buddhist monk who converted to Catholicism, even studied theology in Rome but then married (his son attended kindergarten with my daughter). He was very much in favour of Catholicism learning Buddhism. Unfortunately, he passed away relatively young. It was his inspiration that made me read the Buddhist:

“before you study Zen, mountains are mountains and rivers are rivers; while you are studying Zen, mountains are no longer mountains and rivers are no longer rivers; but once you have had enlightenment, mountains are once again mountains and rivers again rivers”

as

“before you study philosophy (of science and of religion), the concepts and propositions of your Christian beliefs have absolute validity; while you are studying philosophy (of science and of religion), the concepts and propositions of Christian beliefs are loosing their validity; but once you have had enlightenment through philosophy, they regain their validity as symbols modeling reality underlying your faith”.

As to the second post, I see pedophilia in the same light as you in your very accurate description (my distinction between hard and soft - I think the technical term for it is statutory rape - was rather artificial, as Tony Lavis aptly pointed out). Including the difficulties you hint at re “presumption of innocence”. As there are innocent “rapists” falsely accused by alleged victims of “adult” rape, (a fact cleverly exploited by actual rapists' defense attorneys), so also in the case of pedophilia there are innocent “pedophiles” when the alleged child victim’s “testimony” is wrongly (or even tendentiously) interpreted by the child psychologist.

Even cases of intentional false accusations happen, as this example from an exCommunist country illustrates:
(ctd)

(ctd)
(In 2009) the Bratislava I District Prosecutor's Office decided to halt criminal prosecution of three members of the Franciscan order charged as accomplices in the sexual molestation of two boys. The office later halted the proceedings, concluding that the alleged offence did not happen.(http://spectator.sme.sk/articles/view/37219/10/slovak_police_wont_apologise_to_accused_franciscan_friars.html).

As to your third post, Daniel Cohn-Bendit is a well known political personality also in Germany. He si actually a German Jew, and I think his French is as flawless and free of foreign accent as is his German.

I agree with what you wrote about the French “mature” (I would add "and morally relaxed") attitude towards sex, however pedophilia or other cases of rape are not just about sex (as the cases of Mitterand, Strauss-Kahn probably are) but also about violence, where I do not think a relaxed approach would be appropriate, bringing me back to where I agree with Tony Lavis that one should not distinguish between “hard” and “soft” pedophilia.

By the way, I think that in general, the Eastern civilisations (China etc) have a traditionally more natural and relaxed attitude towards sex than the more Western ones underpinned by the three Abrahamic religions. Both sexual drive as sin, and pornography, are western "inventions".

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Dear George,

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Yes, it's good to have cleared the air on that one, George. Now we know where we both stand. Not too far from each other, apparently. It makes life easier and facilitates communication.

According to the latest statistics, a woman is raped in France every seven minutes and only 10% lodge an official complaint with the police. The reasons given are that they do not want it to be known; police are often very sceptical of their declarations and consider they only got what they were looking for; very few criminal cases actually succeed; the whole thing is too traumatising and they just want to forget it.

Justice needs a very serious overhaul indeed if it is to address these problems effectively.

As regards Buddhist philosophy, it seems there are various schools of thought and I am certainly no expert on that. One of those which strikes a common note with me is the Theravada which I understand says that insight must come from the aspirant's experience, critical investigation, and reasoning instead of by blind faith.

I think you will recognize me in that one, George.

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Dear Banjo,

Thanks again. I am not sure what “blind faith” means, and how it is to be distinguished from “non-blind faith”. “Critical investigation and reasoning” underlies modern science, and it was not a Buddhist but a Christian culture that gave birth to it, as painful as this birth was, including the screaming mother-Church.

As far as Buddhism is concerned, from what I know, Theravada Buddhism - in distinction to Mahayana and Vajrayana to which the Dalai Lama belongs - is the oldest surviving school of Buddhist thought. So if one is allowed a crude analogy with Christianity, Theravada is the “Catholic” and the others the “Protestant” branches. I do not understand very much the differences. For me the most comprehensible Buddhist thinker is Dalai Lama (c.f. http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=9368#152712).

However, I am afraid, we have drifted very far away from the original topic of this thread.