Recently some measure of justice for women was achieved when the Congressional testimony of USA Gymnastic’s women was quickly followed by convicting R. Kelly for decades of sex trafficking and firing U.S. Women’s Soccer League coaches for sexual abuse.
These stories exposed our historic indifference towards abusing women. New York Times guest columnist Kimberlé Crenshaw said that the abuse of Black women and girls has become just “background noise”.
So it is with children. Whether it’s putting child murders on the last page of a newspaper’s Metro section, or tolerating Facebook Messenger’s policies that shield distributors of child rape videos from prosecution, children’s suffering has also become just background noise.
These women spoke out, and we salute them for their courage. But children don’t have a voice. Unless we stand up for them, their turn at justice will never come.