Nobody knows

The Future Is In Our Past -

Oh what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive! For some reason, that phrase that keeps popping into my head whenever the story of Col. Russell Williams is on the news.

Col. Williams has been charged with serial rape and murder. If guilty, this clean-cut, good-looking, mild-mannered (if you believe the reports) high-ranking officer in the Canadian Armed Forces is a metaphor for deception. He doesn't fit the usual profile of a serial killer.

Perhaps some readers will remember a popular radio show, the Shadow, and its opening words, "Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows."

Did a Shadow know the real Col. Williams? Were there warning signs? Will an investigation uncover that there were people who knew in their hearts that Col. Williams was troubled? Did people choose to give him the benefit of the doubt because he was someone difficult to suspect?

The story of Col. Williams raises a tricky issue. How far can we go with our suspicions? Individuals have the right to privacy. There is an old adage "better that 10 guilty people go free than one person be falsely accused." That is cold comfort to the victims and their families, which leads to the opposite philosophy, "better a few people wrongly accused that one person raped or murdered." Where is King Solomon when you need him?

As the Williams story is playing out in Canada, another baffling story is unfolding in Haiti. Amidst the reports of starving children being raped and attacked on the streets, an American missionary group was arrested and charged with kidnapping 33 children.

Callers and commentators to radio programs and online news stories were reluctant to condemn the missionaries. Children are unsafe and hungry. Isn't it better to do something to feed them, even if it stands foul of the law? The missionaries insist that they simply forgot the paperwork.

But now there is disturbing news from Haiti. The police in El Salvador have begun an investigation into whether a man suspected of leading a trafficking ring, involving Central American and Caribbean women and girls, is also a legal adviser to the American missionary group.

And that leads me to Hanlon's razor: Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity, but don't rule out malice. It's more than sad to have to admit that just because someone calls him/herself a Christian missionary is not proof that they are what they claim to be. And even if they are bona fide missionaries that don't mean that they act as Christians. Why are we quick to believe that a rank of any sort, earned or self-imposed, carries with it a halo?

For the most part (there are exceptions), women and girls get the short end of the stick when it comes to abuse. We close our eyes to the evil that exists around us. Unless a woman close to our own station in life is murdered or subjected to sex trafficking, we tend to ignore the fact that this type of treatment of women is rampant throughout the world. Prostitutes and women from Aboriginal communities have disappeared across Canada, and we exhibit a laissez-faire attitude. The anti-woman indoctrination has been complete.

My mantra has always been openness and transparency. But have we gone too far? Today, girls don't have the chance to be children. They are mini adults schooled from the moment they are born to be sexual objects for men, to exist only as much as they can seduce men. No wonder they are subject to abuse if they follow this subservient road.

Recently, in Rio de Janeiro, a seven-year-old dancer was named to the coveted Carnival role of drum corps queen, a role normally reserved for barely clad sexy models. What message is this sending our children - girls and boys? Of course, we mustn't forget the aspiring child models and actors on our own doorstep, as portrayed recently in the program Toddlers and Tiaras.

The resounding question is: why has the philosophy of independent self-assured women been left by the wayside? Surely our mothers were better off. The philosophy, at least, was to treasure women for their maternal role. Feminism aspired to shed the role of enticer only to have that role become more firmly entrenched, without the former perks.

As long as we send the message to girls and boys that the role of the female is to please men, as long we accept that girls are not worth anything in their own right, we will continue to have men who rape and murder women and children. We will have child and adult prostitution rings operating under the guise of religion. We will have men in authority who abuse their position. We will continue to have sex-obsessed troubled men who live tortured lives.

Feminism has achieved a more open society but that society has enslaved, rather than empowered, women and men. Is there a better answer? Could it be to recognize that there is no independence for men or women? Surely, we all depend on each other in some way? Who knows?