Why Is the Shoals Home to So Much Child Porn & Sex Abuse? Part I

 

Almost every day in the week leading up to Thanksgiving, there was a local news report of either an arrest for possession of child porn or child sex abuse. Is there an epidemic in the Shoals?

Looking first as child porn, many fail to realize how serious this is. Most think of images produced somewhere in a God-forsaken Slavic country that have somehow made it to northwest Alabama. Look again.

At least one local arrest involved a Florence man who made child porn involving a local child. If guilty, he wouldn't be the first local to have produced such images. At least four other cases come readily to mind.

In 2014, Patricia and Matthew Ayers pleaded guilty to producing scores of erotic images of Patricia's young (pre-school) daughter. The couple, who resided just north of Florence, are now serving decades in prison with little hope of ever seeing freedom. We trust no one feels sorry for them.

In 2017, Marcus Paul Smith of Russellville was charged with producing pornographic images of his girlfriend's daughter.

In 2019, Jeffrey Dale Hunt was charged and later convicted of creating child porn in his North Florence home.

In 2022, Michael Tays of St. Florian was convicted of videoing a small child whom he forced to engage in sexual acts.

The above is not an all-inclusive list, but it covers those whose victims were very young children. How did this happen? In at least one case it was the child's own mother. In another, it was a grandfather. In others? We have to ask what the parents were doing when this abuse occurred.

Make sure your child knows who should touch him and who should not. Keep the communication lines open - yes, that means to grill him for information if necessary. 

Next: A local bad boy's trove of child porn...

Thought for the day: In a world of Yugos, be a Cadillac!