TRANSCRIPT
Last night, I was watching a re-run of the television show Law and Order, and it was a show about some children who had been sexually abused. It was actually a fairly good show. It was pretty realistic. It was showing how horrible some children can be victimized and how the legal system can be very confusing for them, how their parents can be very screwed up in dealing with it.
But what hit me almost immediately while watching the show was I was extremely troubled by listening to these child actors talk in somewhat graphic detail about being sexually abused. I thought, I don’t want to watch this. I had to turn it off. I couldn’t listen to these children—four years old, five years old, six years old. One girl was like 13, talking about being sexually abused. I thought their parents, these children’s parents, these actors’ parents, are letting their children learn about this stuff and talk about it in front of cameras with adults listening for money.
And the producers of these shows, the show, are letting these children talk about this stuff and be introduced to this material, and this is for public consumption. I’ve had this experience now many, many times over the last, I don’t know, a couple of decades, where once I became aware of my own history of having been misused, even abused in various ways, sexually by primarily my mom, my dad, things like this, I realized how being introduced even to some of these concepts—not necessarily without even being touched by anybody—but just being introduced to concepts that too young in age was sexually abusive of me.
And now it clued me in to the idea that how much this harmed me. This opened me up and made me aware of stuff long before I was really ready to deal with it in any healthy way. I had no concept of what this even meant. So it, it like it perverted me. It was wrong what happened to me.
And now I see these television shows doing this to children under the guise of being kind of educational television shows in a way, even though technically it’s entertainment. It is entertainment. It’s also presented sort of like educational. I think of this actor, the main actor of Law and Order, Mariska Hargitay. She has a foundation—I’ve read about it somewhere or other—that helps children and women who have been sexually abused, sexual assault survivors, and it helps them, I think, in the legal system somehow, helps provide them support. And she’s a big supporter of people who have been abused.
And yet she is the lead actor in this show. She is sometimes interacting with these children and setting them up, probably participating and help even casting them, so they are in a position to learn about this stuff and talk about it. And I think that’s hypocrisy to me. It’s very troubling, and it’s for the same reason that I wouldn’t want children to watch my YouTube channel. This isn’t stuff that I feel is remotely appropriate for children to know about. This is for adults. This is for adults who are independent and mature enough to be able to begin to process this information in a way that they can handle.
That have enough adults, who have enough experience, people who have enough experience about the world to understand who they are, who other people are, what adult sexuality is, what healthy adult sexuality is, what adult sexuality shouldn’t be, what inappropriate sexuality is, what good boundaries are, what bad boundaries are. These are things that children inherently are not ready for. This is why it’s better to protect children.
And so when I see this television show, I’m just calling out Law and Order right now, it sickens me because it really is hypocritical to present a show in a sort of educational way for something that’s supposedly for victims’ rights, for help. And I know a lot of people who like this show who say, “Oh, this show is very good. It really fights for the rights of victims,” and it, you know, fights for the rights of people who have been sexually abused, and it shows a strong legal system, and it takes the side very strongly of they were abused and they are victims, and the perpetrators need to be brought to justice or should be brought to justice.
And yet in presenting this framework, they are harming people because I know that those children shouldn’t be knowing this. They shouldn’t be talking about these things. It’s wrong for a little boy or a little girl to be talking intimately, even as an actor, about these things. Because what happens to that little boy, that little girl, that little actor who thinks about, “Why did I say those things? What do those things mean?” Those lines that those children have to learn and say with emotion, they have to cry and look scared. That would beg questions in their mind, questions that they’re really too young to be asking.
And who are they going to ask these questions to? Their parents? What will their parents say? Their parents set them up to be in this position. So I really cannot support a show, any show, Law and Order, or a movie, or things like this that use children that way. They’re supposed to be for the good but are harming people in the process.
Do those shows do long-term outcome studies to see the effect on those children? Of course, they don’t do that. And now I wonder, does that mean television shows shouldn’t use child actors at all? Should there be no child actors used to make shows? Should there be nothing? I mean, how should we deal with this? I think probably yes, it’s probably a good idea not to use child actors at all. And maybe there just have to be other creative ways to bring up this subject in a healthier way that doesn’t harm children in the process.
I don’t have the clearest answers, but this is what I come up with when I analyze this problem. Children shouldn’t be used in this way. Children shouldn’t be given lines to talk about this kind of stuff, especially in television, public television, for public consumption by strangers. Such that ten years later, when the little boy who was four years old who was talking about this, ten years later he’s 14, he’s going to look on television and see himself talking about that. And you know, who knows? Will he get money from it? Will the money even be there when he becomes an adult? It’s like, I don’t think that’s a good setup for a healthy adult life in those children. I really just don’t feel it.