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Old 04-02-2008, 03:23 PM   #126
G DiPierro
Location: Ohio
Join Date: Mar 2002
Posts: 365
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Re: Very Disturbing news about Clint George

Quote:
Toby Threadgill wrote: View Post
Previously mentioned was Gavin de Beckers book "The Gift of Fear"

I think this book is a fantasticly presented and illuminating "must read" for every individual concerned with self defense and the behavior of predators. Less well known is his latest book "Protecting the Gift" a work specifically concerned with children, and the dangers they face in our modern society.
Protecting the Gift: Keeping Children and Teenagers Safe (and Parents Sane) was his second book, published in 1999. While not as good overall as his first book, it is more relevant to the issues discussed in this thread:

Quote:
amazon.com wrote:
In this valuable, even necessary, book, he shatters many myths about the typical profiles of regular offenders and the prevalence of such problems as sexual abuse and kidnapping. He also deconstructs the wisdom of traditional maxims such as "Never talk to strangers" and "If you are ever lost, go to a policeman." Without offering a compendium of every conceivable danger, he identifies warning signals and real risks that are often easy to spot once you know what to look for. He offers practical advice on recognizing signs of sexual abuse, choosing a baby sitter or nanny, how to prepare kids for walking to school alone, and how to teach children about potential risks without making them afraid to venture out of the house. And he continually stresses that denial and ignoring intuition are the biggest mistakes that parents make in protecting their kids from those that mean them harm.
His latest book, published in 2002, is called Fear Less: Real Truth About Risk, Safety, and Security in a Time of Terrorism.

Another excellent resource on this subject is the 2006 documentary Deliver Us from Evil, which chronicles the story of Oliver O'Grady, a Catholic priest who raped (physically, not just in the statutory sense) and otherwise abused "potentially hundreds" of children -- 6 to 10 year-olds, not adolescents -- over several decades. Although the allegations raised in this thread are troubling, in my opinion they do not even come close to level of evil that was perpetrated from within the Catholic church, both in terms of the acts themselves and in the church administration's handling of their aftermath, which mostly consisted of covering them up and moving the priest in question down the road to another parish and putting him in a position of power over an unwitting congregation so that he could commit the same offenses again.
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