Christopher Barrios Remembered

It's been ages since I cried myself to sleep, but that's exactly how I spent Tuesday night, inexplicably sobbing into the early morning.

The crying was a release from the pent-up anguish I've felt about the death of a 6-year old boy I'd never met. The death of Christopher Michael Barrios was so hideous and sickening that it should have been the catalyst for societal outrage, yet his story has already faded from the headlines, and Christopher has become just another forgotten victim in a war against children. Shame on all of us.

Tuesday started off as a wonderful balmy day spent on the boardwalk of South Beach with my husband and granddaughter. The lunch at South Fin Grill was delicious, but as I looked out the window at the children running on the boardwalk, all I could think of was a silent warning to parents to watch their children. Don't let them out of your sight. Monsters are lurking everywhere.

Christopher was sexually assaulted by a convicted sex offender, George Edenfield, and his father, David Edenfield, while his mother, Peggy Edenfield, watched. Then they choked the boy to death. While this horrific incident occurred in Georgia, no child anywhere is safe in this sexually overcharged society.

Last week, a man with a knife handcuffed a Staten Island teenager to a tree in Grasmere. He stripped him of his clothes and performed a sexual act on his body. Fortunately, the boy was rescued, and the assailant, who is accused in another incident, was captured by the police. Several attempts to grab schoolchildren on the island have been made during the past year, and parents should be wary. Their children are no longer safe.

How many times do we have to read about teachers having affairs with their underage students? Television programs are full of sex-saturated reality shows aimed at our youth. In Indianapolis, sixth-graders at Warren Middle School reportedly had intercourse in the classroom while a teacher had no idea what was happening. I am sick to death of those commercials on erectile dysfunction. I voted for Senator Dole for president in 1996, but after hearing him on these commercials, I'm rather glad that he lost.

Sexual crimes dominate the headlines, and one has to wonder how much the Internet has to do with this. I love the World Wide Web, as I couldn't do my job without it, but it is no place for unsupervised children. However, legislative efforts to control the Internet have been thwarted by judges and the American Civil Liberties Union.

Federal Judge Lowell Reed Jr. of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania threw out the Child Online Protection Act on the grounds that it was "impermissibly vague and overbroad." Judge Reed issued a permanent injunction against enforcement of the law, which he said violated First and Fifth Amendment rights. Naturally, the ACLU rejoiced. A senior attorney for the civil rights group, Aden Fine, said: "In the name of protecting children from harmful material, [the law] would have stopped adults from receiving a great deal of speech that is constitutionally protected. The court once again made it clear that Congress cannot do that."

Anyone who seriously believes that pornography is constitutionally protected free speech is either in severe denial or is a serial porn downloader. These porn advocates say it is up to parents to monitor their children's Web surfing. If parents were omnipresent, that might be conceivable. But children can surf in libraries, schools, the homes of friends, McDonald's, and any number of locations, and become vulnerable to sexual predators.

Where's the outrage? If you can read the details of Christopher's last moments of life and not cringe, then try to imagine your children or grandchildren spending their last hours with these animals.

What is most depressing about all this is how quickly the news of these crimes disappears, unless a Roman Catholic priest is involved. Then the story will last for years.

If ever there was a time to pray to the Lord to deliver us from evil, it's now. For Christopher Michael Barrios, it's too late. The least we can do is remember his name.