Pedophiles Beware!

This weekend I saw the movie "Hard Candy"... I would think it might speak to pedofiles as screamingly loud as "Fatal Attraction" spoke to adulterers. Actually, louder. I hope they all rush out to see it.

I have seen so many disturbing things lately about pedophiles, and in particular how easy the internet has made things for them. Dateline has done a couple of "exposes" tracking these snarly, sleazy men who meet underage kids in chat rooms or on myspace and then "hook up"... It is so sad and so scary.

And I've had a few conversations lately about how if a man hooks up with a underage girl (or boy) he is SICK and deserves nothing but torture. However, if a woman does the same with an underage boy, it is judged on an entirely different scale. For example, Mary Kay Laturno... She's the lady who was a teacher and started an ongoing "love affair" with one of her students, who I think was around 13 when it first got started, although he had also been her student when he was in 2nd grade. She ended up having a child with him. She also ended up serving some time in prison. Once she got out, they got married. He is now an adult, by the way. When I heard of this story, I felt sad for her. And I felt sad for him. It seems to me their love just came at the wrong time...a little too early. But if she had been a man would I have felt this way? Why do I have sympathy for a woman but none for a man in this predicament? Well, for one, in the cases of the women I've heard of, like this one, the woman isn't preying on lots of boys. It makes it seem more emotional, and therefore, forgiveable. Okay, but still... it seems unfair of me... But I know I am not alone in the way I feel about it.

Anyway, back to the movie, "Hard Candy". The movie begins with a man in his 30s chatting with a 14 year old girl on-line and they arrange a meeting. So of course the viewer, ME, is thinking...."Oh no...this poor girl and this sick, evil man." Well, this girl is NOT some poor victim. He becomes the victim, although not one you wish you could save. I was squirming throughout his pain and suffering, and if you are a guy, that empathy will at least double. OUCH!!! One word of warning here...CASTRATION...but I won't give it all away.

So I wonder, how would that movie and the charactors in it have come across if the gender roles were reversed? Would I have seen the teenage boy as the villan, and felt any kind of sympathy for the adult woman? In this movie however, there is no hero, or even slightly good guy in the story- Both of these charactors are evil regardless of any explanation of how they got that way. So it's interesting, I wasn't rooting for either of them, but I was on the edge of my seat trying to figure out what was going to happen next. Well, not really on the edge of my seat as much as hiding behind the hood of my sweatshirt...I was scared of what I was going to see next!!!

When you go see this movie, allow a lot of time afterward to talk about it with whoever you see it with. And you will HAVE to talk about it. And by all means, please encourage all the pedophiles you know to see it too.