Does the name Joseph A. Wallace mean anything? How about Edwin Garcia? Nothing, right? But I’m sure you’ll recognize Michael Vick, the NFL star whose face and name have been all over the news and on the Web for the unspeakable crime of killing dogs used in a dog-fighting gambling ring. His multimillion dollar sports career appears to be over and his story has been the subject of debate for weeks. Wallace and Garcia were just a blip on the radar screen for a couple of days and they’re accused of unspeakable acts. What’s wrong with this picture?

The travails of sports stars gone wrong bore me because they’re all so predictable since thugs became the primary recruits for professional spots. Given their obscene salaries and abuse of their talent, it’s really only a matter of time before a punishing fate pops up. I’m more concerned with the health and well-being of the innocent.

Joseph A. Wallace, a Port Richmond, Staten Island, resident, was arrested last week and charged with the manslaughter death of his two-month-old son who died in May. The city medical examiner ruled that the baby’s death was a homicide, but that’s not the worst part of Mr. Wallace’s alleged crime. A post mortem found that the baby suffered lacerations and bruising of his rectum. May I remind you that the boy named after his father was only two months old?

Beautiful Hailey Gonzalez was just 21 months old when she was battered August 7 by her mother’s boyfriend, Edwin Garcia. She succumbed to her injuries days later and Garcia was charged with second-degree murder. Her mother, Marlene Medina, was also arrested and charged with second-degree manslaughter and several charges of child endangerment.

Both Garcia and Medina were under investigation by the city’s Administration for Children’s Services for a prior beating by her biological father. What? The newspaper carried a photograph of poor Hailey while she lay comatose in the hospital, her head swathed in bandages with breathing tubes in her tiny nose. She looked like my beautiful granddaughter, and I don’t care what excuse their lawyers come up with, these brutal acts against these babies are just plain evil.

It’s strange how books written by atheists are all the rage. Christopher Hitchens’s “God Is Not Great; How Religion Poisons Everything” is a best seller, as are books by Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins. They all debunk belief in God while casting religion as the cause of world troubles. How, then, does one explain evil? If God does not exist, presumably neither does Satan.

But how else to explain what is happening to the youngest of the young? I will never forget Christopher Barrios, a 6-year-old who was raped by sex fiends then slaughtered.

It seems as if every day, someone is arrested for having child pornography on their computers. The victims can be only months old. Evil, evil, evil.

In one of the cleverest films, “The Usual Suspects,” Kevin Spacey says, “The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist.”

Sex has supersaturated our society. There is no escaping its stimuli, and children are becoming innocent bystanders in the stampede for sexual pleasure. Purveyors of pornography are a protected species sheltered by civil liberty groups inveigling their rights under the First Amendment. Does anyone think that our Founding Fathers meant the Bill of Rights to protect lewd and lascivious voyeurs rather than children in libraries? Yet libraries throughout the country are erecting privacy screens so that porn surfers can indulge themselves on the free computers. This is madness. Maybe it’s time for a conservative Supreme Court to set the proper boundaries that will protect our children. Our nation is crying out for another society, and the message is going over everyone’s head. Look at the recent ratings for the Disney Channel’s made-for-TV movie, “High School Musical 2.” It broke all cable movie ratings ever with 17.2 million viewers and it was good-clean entertainment for the entire family. Yet Hollywood studios are still producing R-rated and NC-17 films that produce a much smaller box-office return than what’s made by decent films. Who’s making them do it, Church Lady?

Too bad children don’t have a PETA of their own, because right now, animals get more protection.