Wrapping up 2023, a multi part series, looking at the universality of states deliberate failure in the face of child sexual abuse. This first part covers Switzerland. Over the coming days until the year end come Belgium, United Kingdom, France, and European institutions.
Swiss Child Sexual Abuse ~ 2023
The public prosecutor
When wanting to hand over to the Jura Bernois prosecutor recordings of evidence of children being sexually abused, including in detail how Swiss authorities are actively involved in the international trafficking of children and keeping those children in situations of abuse at all cost, the on standby police was trigger happy for arrest. But not for the arrest of perpetrators!
The prosecutor could obviously guess there might be a recording handed to him of how corrupt social assistants decide what, when and how he, the prosecutor, should act. How the recordings would show incompetence and omission to act to standards set out in international executionary law, and would turn him, as prosecutor, into a key child sexual abuse facilitating component.
Instead, the prosecutor refused to take possession of the evidence handed to him, refused to request protective measures for the child victims, and refused to provide any protection of the whistleblower.
Contrary to his mandate, the Swiss Federal Prosecutor claimed repeatedly he is not competent to handle cases of transcantonal or international reach, or of severe human rights violations and corruption.
The omnipresent church
In the fall Switzerland discovered ever so briefly that child sexual abuse in the church existed. Mind the past tense.
The published research was only funded and allowed to be published because historians focussed on archives of old, so called cold, child sexual abuse cases in the church.
The tone in Switzerland is clear, child sexual abuse is only allowed to be spoken about for its past, historical interest. It can not be looked at from the present day where it is still subject of complete taboo. It triggered the post Switzerland is the Auschwitz of child sexual abuse.
The silent fourth power
Swiss journalists admit being afraid of the known systematic persecution anyone speaking up against child sexual abuse faces in Switzerland.
In private, journalists talk about the explosiveness of the subject. Everybody knows, yet in true “Wir haben es nicht gewusst” fashion none of them is ready to face the harsh consequences exemplified by the few who dared to speak up: prison.
There are indeed Human Rights Defenders in prison in Switzerland for daring to work on disclosing child sexual abuse in the country, and everyone in that country is scared of even thinking about child sexual abuse.
When I recently called the Swiss national radio to propose a live intervention in one of their programs, the first concern of the editor was censorship. I was explicitly asked to not speak out any names of people of authority, or they would have to immediately take me off the air.
During the 15 minute live broadcasted interview the presenter warned for the legal repression in Switzerland. I was all too happy to confirm the persecution is already in full swing with a variety of SLAPP’s to make sure silence prevails, and perpetrating authorities are left unchecked.
The presenter spontaneously proposed his team could find a solicitor and a journalist willing to investigate. Two weeks on it has yet to substantiate, it is the holiday season of course …
I am sure on the personal level they are all concerned and personally touched. Yet, their job, livelihood and “personal freedom” is on the line, and the interests of the Swiss national broadcasting corporation are also at stake. Indeed, they might get prosecuted simply on the grounds of live broadcasting testimony of wrongdoing by the state in child sexual abuse.
A glimpse into the future
The forecast for 2024 is grim. In a society with a deep rooted culture of systematically and dictatorially imposed fear of persecution for daring to even look into child sexual abuse, there can be no remedy.
This January the researchers will resume their research into child sexual abuse in the church and look at more cases of historical value. The Federal Councillor Elisabeth Baume-Schneider responsible has been reshuffled to the ministry of interior and replaced with a fresh newcomer Beat Jans who will just as readily refuse to allow for present day systematic state failure in the face of child sexual abuse to be a public topic of discussion. Swiss parliamentarians will keep running away from the subject as they always have.
Their incentive is collegially staying out of … prosecution for speaking up.
Until such time the Swiss public stands in the thousands in the streets, demanding accountability for the failure of the state, Switzerland will remain the Auschwitz of child sexual abuse. Remain a heaven for perpetrators on the back of state organised corruption.
If survived, early-life child abuse left unhindered typically causes the brain to improperly develop. It can readily be the starting point of a life in which the brain uncontrollably releases potentially damaging levels of inflammatory stress hormones and chemicals, even in otherwise non-stressful daily routines.
It can amount to non-physical-impact brain-damage abuse: It has been described as a continuous, discomforting anticipation of ‘the other shoe dropping’ and simultaneously being scared of how badly you will deal with the upsetting event, which usually never transpires.
The lasting emotional/psychological pain throughout one’s life from such trauma is very formidable yet invisibly confined to inside one’s head. It is solitarily suffered, unlike an openly visible physical disability or condition, which tends to elicit sympathy/empathy from others. It can make every day a mental ordeal, unless the turmoil is prescription and/or illicitly medicated.
Still, too many people will procreate regardless of not being sufficiently knowledgeable of child development science to parent in a psychologically functional/healthy manner. They seem to perceive thus treat human procreative ‘rights’ as though they (potential parents) will somehow, in blind anticipation, be innately inclined to sufficiently understand and appropriately nurture their children’s naturally developing minds and needs.
As liberal democracies we cannot or will not prevent anyone from bearing children, even those who selfishly recklessly procreate with disastrous outcomes. We can, however, educate young people for this most important job ever, even those who plan to remain childless, through mandatory high-school child-development science curriculum.
For example, contemporary research reveals that, since it cannot fight or flight, a baby stuck in a crib on its back hearing parental discord in the next room can only “move into a third neurological state, known as a ‘freeze’ state … This freeze state is a trauma state” (Childhood Disrupted, pg.123).
Also known is that it’s the non-predictability of a stressor, and not the intensity, that does the most harm. When the stressor “is completely predictable, even if it is more traumatic — such as giving a [laboratory] rat a regularly scheduled foot shock accompanied by a sharp, loud sound — the stress does not create these exact same [negative] brain changes” (pg. 42).
If nothing else, such a child-development-science curriculum could offer students an idea/clue as to whether they’re emotionally suited for the immense responsibility and strains of parenthood. Given what is at stake, should they not at least be equipped with such valuable science-based knowledge?
After all, a mentally as well as physically sound future should be every child’s fundamental right — along with air, water, food and shelter — especially considering the very troubled world into which they never asked to enter; a world in which Child Abuse Prevention Month [every April] clearly needs to run 365 days of the year.
The wellbeing of all children needs to be of great importance to us all, regardless of whether we’re doing a great job with our own developing children.
But, largely owing to the Only If It’s In My Own Back Yard mindset, the prevailing collective attitude (implicit or subconscious) basically follows: ‘Why should I care — my kids are alright?’ or ‘What is in it for me, the taxpayer, if I support social programs for other people’s troubled families?’
While some people will justify it as a normal thus moral human evolutionary function, the self-serving OIIIMOBY can debilitate social progress, even when social progress is most needed. And it seems this distinct form of societal penny wisdom but pound foolishness is a very unfortunate human characteristic that’s likely with us to stay.
Still, we can resist that selfish OIIIMOBY. If I may quote the late American sociologist Stanley Milgram, of Obedience Experiments fame/infamy: “It may be that we are puppets — puppets controlled by the strings of society. But at least we are puppets with perception, with awareness. And perhaps our awareness is the first step to our liberation.”