I couldn’t agree more. Anybody who tries to harm a child (physically, sexually or otherwise) has automatically forfeit their right to life in my book.
One day in 1980, I received news that a local pirate clan (led by a pirate named Kabiraj who believed that he was a God in human form) had attacked a large Catholic Christian mission in Satkhira (the region bordering the Buri Goalini Forest Range of the Sundarban mangrove forests). When my men & I went to the Christian mission in order to survey the situation, I was absolutely filled with complete repulsion at what I was seeing. Over a hundred men, elderly women & children had been brutally murdered. The others had been mutilated but still left alive. We saw many villagers there with all four of their limbs hacked off. The pirates did all this to ensure that they would be facing no retaliation while they were kidnapping the young girls from the village. 37 girls had been kidnapped from the village. The Ministry of Forests were not taking the pirate attacks on the Christian missions around the Sundarbans seriously at all, because (at that time) Bangladesh’s CCF (Chief Conservator Of Forests) was a man named Abdus Sattar… A radical Muslim who viewed people from non Muslim faiths as inherently morally inferior.
Being a father myself of a two year old little girl (and having countless non Muslim friends who were extremely dear to me including my Catholic best friend Veronica)… I was extremely disgusted and reminded of certain incidents which I had witnessed during the Indo-Pak War of 1971. But this time, things were very different. I was in a position where I could actually do something about the matter due to my post as DFO. The Ministry Of Forests perhaps could not bring themselves to do something about the pirate attacks on these Christian missions, but I could. My governmental post basically made me a King in the administration of the Sundarbans. I swore that day that I would never let another child (or indeed, any person) under my charge get hurt ever again. I would protect them as if they were my own children. And I vowed to make an example out of Kabiraj (and all others like him). I did succeed in giving Kabiraj a taste of his own medicine and getting rid of him for good. I can’t openly admit to everything (for obvious reasons), but I think that you can get the idea…
Are you in Corrections ? It’s truly a noble but underappreciated profession.