Spare Room Be our guest…

Now’s a good time to remind ourselves that not every man is a paedophile. In fact the vast majority aren’t.

Anyone who has had experience dealing with cases of paedophilia or child pornography through the courts, the agencies or the media will understand the sad reality: pictures of naked children at a swimming pool don’t really cut it in their market.

The Christchurch pool which has a ban in place, to stop parents from changing their children poolside, claims they had “concerns about lurking paedophiles” and that some other pool users had complained that they find child nudity offensive.

And although the majority of Herald readers thought this stance was ridiculous, a few paranoid souls didn’t.

“Are these women all idiots? I have children and I would never think of changing them in public with all the perverts and sickos around these days,” says Stacy.

Annette Ashley says: “agree with the pool rules to ban child nudity. The woman who is surprised to be advised by an attendant not to change her children by the pool cannot be 100 per cent certain her children weren’t recorded and pictures published on paedophile sites. Naivety is not an excuse not to protect our children’s innocence in every way possible.”

To illustrate how this child sexual abuse terrorism mentality can get so out of hand, I would like to direct readers to a story I found on Salon.com.

“I took some photos of my kids naked on a camping trip. A drugstore employee called the police — and my family’s life became a living hell,” writes freelance journalist Jody Jenkins.

Read it here.