Letter to the Editor -
Dear Editor,
On the front page of the July 13 issue of The Gulf News is an article that states that a Ramea man has pleaded guilty to various charges. Although I am a resident of Ramea, I do not know that man and would not recognize him on the street. I have no association with him, and I do not know enough about some of the charges against him. What bothers me very much is that the man was entrapped by an American policewoman who posed on the internet as a 14-year-old girl.
It seems to me that police are prone to use entrapment. This is true for Newfoundland, where I know of a case of entrapment that upset a whole community. That a policewoman there would spend her working time on the internet, trolling for foolish men, seems to be a gross waste of tax monies and police resources.
The argument is that children have to be protected. And, as a father of 10 children of which five are girls and two of these girls are adolescents, I agree fully that such children ought to be protected from any adults who would use intimidation and force to obtain some sort of sexual gratification from such children. But in contacts over the internet, any child has the power to end such a contact simply by pressing a key.
A recent item in the Ann Landers column indicates that teenagers exposing themselves to others over the internet is now quite common. There is also the fact that girls receive in school a lecture on human sexuality, in which a wooden dildo is used. There are moreover suggestive shows on television and local gossip among teenagers.
Our adolescents are generally not such innocents that an approach by an older man over the internet would traumatize them. And it should not be that way. We should not raise our girls is in a way which encounters the seamier side of life scars them psychologically for the rest of their lives. A healthy and happy life can be lived only if one is able to laugh about the foolishness of people, and is able to forgive human weakness.
Randy Lieb
Ramea
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