February 24

Events

• Current events

• 1956 - What next? Intergenerational dating services? - On this date in the city of Cleveland, Ohio, police invoked a 1931 ordinance barring people under the age of 18 from dancing in public unless accompanied by an adult. It is unclear just what they were trying to prevent and how they thought it might actually work, but local pedos were overjoyed to here that kids who want to dance would need their help. The police could not have done a better job of handing them an aid to grooming if they tried.

• 1998 - "Don't stand so close to me" - USA Today published a story on this date about the broadcast of a controversial storyline in the primetime teen soap Dawson's Creek. It seems that the sexual shenanigans between a lustful English teacher and her love-struck student were too much for some parents and teachers to take. In the show, 30something teacher Tamara Jacobs who had the hots for 15 year old Pacey (played by Joshua Jackson). In one episode the couple discussed the possibility of making a lasting relationship of their attraction for each other. One actual teacher complained of the show that the teacher character was not portrayed by the stereotypical "profile" of a pedo. Another teacher said, "The writers missed an opportunity to show how a mature professional might deal with such an attraction. Instead they’ve got the seductress flipping her hair around like a teenager." The article also reported parental apprehensions. One said of her daughter that after seeing that show she "might think she could fall in love with her math teacher and it would be all right because if it’s on TV, it must be." Another parent said, "I hope they take that filth off the air." At the time Dawson’s Creek was the season’s top-rated show for females ages 12-17. This story helped it start to grow a pedo audience as well.

• 1998 - Unbelievable and massive abuse of children - by their "protectors" - The injustice perpetrated by authorities in Wenatchee Washington in the mid 1990s was so dramatic and extensive that the Seattle Post ran a week long series of articles about the events and their impact. Sixty adults had been arrested on 29,726 charges of child-sex abuse involving 43 children. No actual abuse ever occurred. The case was entirely the fabrication of police, social services workers, and lawyers. On this date, in part two of the series of reports, the Seattle Post reported that "it's clear the lives of many children here were devastated not by rape or molestation, but by the actions of the very people sworn to protect them from harm. Vivid accounts of the sweeping investigation that resulted in criminal charges against 43 people show that people with badges, state credentials and mental-health licenses pursued convictions with a damaging zeal, sometimes exceeding their authority and expertise. Hired to provide treatment, they cajoled and coerced damning accusations from terrified youngsters who often later recanted." years after these events many of these children had still not recovered from the devastation done to their families, as dozens were separated from their families and even put up for adoption in the name of "protecting" them. "It was the system - CPS, the police and counselors, that really hurt all those kids the most," said Sarah Doggett, one of the children victimized by the scandal. "It hurts to be a young girl all of a sudden ripped away from her family, all that she has known and loved, told that her parents did horrible things to her, shoved in a mental hospital, given drugs, told by police and CPS - people she'd been taught to trust - that she's lying when she won't say something happened that didn't." In all, 29 children were sent to a psychiatric hospital based on fabricated abuse cases.

• 2002 - Cleaning up his own back yard - The Pope ordered an inquiry on this date into allegations that a Roman Catholic archbishop in his native Poland sexually abused seminarians and priests. A Polish newspaper claimed that Monsignor Juliusz Paetz, the Archbishop of Poznan had been banned from a seminary after failing to heed complaints about his behavior. The Archbishop denied all allegations of impropriety. "I have asked you to come here today to say that I have never, I repeat never, molested our seminarians and priests," he told a gathering of senior clerics. A month later, Paetz resigned. He said he was resigning "for the good of the church" but protested his innocence, saying that "my kindness and spontaneity were misinterpreted." Oh, so that's what he calls grooming!