Schoolyard predators
This text is part of: "I would never send my kids to school" by Piotr Wozniak (2017)
Safety at church
In the wake of the Catholic Church sex abuse scandal, I wonder about the degree of amplification or mis-information that is added by people with anti-Catholic, anti-church, anti-clerical, or perhaps even anti-religion agendas. Having no agenda myself, I naturally want to see the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
As an ex-altar boy, in the course of 4-5 years, I have never seen anything remotely approaching improper behavior at church. Just the opposite, I always felt at home at church. I am not the only one with such follow up feelings. The only thing I abhorred was early waking. In addition to my reading in evolution, that early waking, and coercion might have been my main reasons why I quit the church at the age of 10 or so.
Safety in schoolyards
However, my young life was not so perfectly sheltered. There are many dangers awaiting those who hang around schoolyards without supervision. My mom clearly did not see the problem. In her mind, all kids need to play, all kids need to socialize, and all kids want to be free from parenting for a while. My thinking is that no loose cannon like myself should ever roam around unsupervised. In addition to usual teenage problems like running on high roofs, falling of trees, fighting, or stealing, I was a show off. To impress my peers and older kids, I would take risks that could end up in death or serious injury for me or for others. When we found a stash of medicines in garbage, I serially swallowed several packages of pills without reading labels. Soon my urine turned blackish purple. I recall no other consequences. The number of crazy stunts was too long to list here.
Today, all my friends would label me as risk averse. I do not even like to travel. I haven't been inside a car since 2011. However, this all comes from reason rather than temperament. To prove it, consider that I love swimming in the sea during worst winter storms. This is the type of risk I enjoy. When my life is in my hands. When it depends on my skills and stamina. Inside a car, on a busy road, my life is in the hands of other drivers and technology. Most of my childhood dangers came from my risk-taking and adventurous nature. This is the exact type of a person who should be under doubled supervision. However, the same kind of personality might have saved me from a case of child abuse.
Encounter with a pedophile
There was a soft-spoken pedophile hanging around the schoolyard. I will call him Smith. Smith befriended me by just being nice. He had nothing interesting to offer. Despite his aura of authority, all he could talk about was religion. I would quickly put his authority to a test by revealing his ignorance: "Do you know the biggest mammal in the world?". I expected a blue whale, he gave me an elephant and lost his credibility. His presence would quickly become a nuisance. He kept claiming that he got a great collection of religious pictures that he would gladly share. These were just pieces of paper with some biblical imagery printed on it. He invited me to his apartment, and after bugging me incessantly, he succeeded in getting my lukewarm ok. However, he blew his plan by revealing his evil intent prematurely. While still talking about religion, he was betrayed by some story that lead to an "indecent touch". I was too deep in my promise to visit him, and I like to keep my word. That's a good part of schoolyard socialization.
The day I went to see Smith, I left a note for my mom on the fridge: "I was killed by Smith!". My goals was to make sure justice was served in case I did not return home. My plan was to visit the guy, but never to put a foot across his doorway. He lived in a 4-storey block of apartments. That felt pretty safe. I rang the doorbell. For a few minutes, Smith would try all the tricks of the trade to get me inside his apartment. I would resist and ask him to just show me his cards. At some point, Smith got a bit hot, grabbed my hand and tried to pull me inside his apartment. I grabbed the handrail on the staircase and resisted. He tried harder. I warned that I would make noise and alert the neighbors. He gave up. Years later, I googled his name with a few pedophile keywords but Smith is too generic to bring up any meaningful. Back home, I destroyed the note to my mom and erased Smith from my life. She never learned about Smith. It is the first time I openly speak about the episode.
Today, Smith would probably be around 80. My schoolyard socialization makes me resist snitching. I liked him just enough to never consider putting in here his real name. I am just too nice.
Freedom for kids
My free learning hero, Dr Peter Gray quotes statistics that suggest unsupervised trust in letting kids out. I usually agree with Gray, but my own case makes me uneasy about such recommendations. John Taylor Gatto goes even further in his reasoning about stress resilience (see: Richard Branson case in Stress resilience).
Perhaps my teen freedom helped me develop? But it was a touch-and-go life. It could have gone wrong on many occasions. My encounter with the pedophile went under the radar and has never been reported until the moment of this writing. I say "low probability but a huge write off".