Ever notice how things wander into your life and connect?

Someone I know has just found out they are living near a putative paedophile. They were astonished, as they’ve been friends with this person for quite some time, been to dinner with them and their family and done all the sorts of things normal friends do. It’s been quite a shock: police have been crawling all over the area, neighbours have been talking about moving to protect their children and no-one really knows if it’s actually true or not.

Setting aside all the implications that has, I read in the paper today about a 50+ twice divorced male that had met a girl of 15 (in church) fallen in love and after a couple of years got married. The tone of the article was a little along the lines of “isn’t it incredible that despite pressure from the church, parents and the difference in age that they are still married and in love a couple of years later”. My thoughts were “You bastard – you pulled here from her parents, against all good advice. You took a vulnerable 15 year old from the church and family for your own pleasure”. Again, who knows the truth and reality behind the story?

And so to the third set of thoughts that ran on this line.


Anna Nicole Smith. In 1994 she married a Texan oil billionaire. She was 27 and he 85.

Isn’t it funny how just a few short years extra and the roles of victim and predator are reversed in our minds.
I wonder who was the more vulnerable in this situation? Or was it a fair trade, her youth and beauty to pleasure an old and dying man? Sheesh – that must be some of the most expensive live-in home help ever!
Would it make you feel any different if you knew one of the putative fathers of her daughter (according to her sister) was her long-dead billionaire husband, with fertilization using frozen sperm?


I’m not going to draw any conclusions here from this lot. Look through and see what crawls out to challenge your vision of normality, decency and right thinking. Fallen society can get itself in a helluva mess, but sometimes we draw some curious boundaries too.