Search Results : paul elam

Maine Gov. LePage is Misrepresenting the Problem of Domestic Violence

May 162013
 

To Coach John Wolfgram, Portland, Maine

Paul Elam
May 16, 2013
Dear Coach Wolfgram, Cheverus High School football team.

Your young players recently visited with Governor Paul LePage after winning your state’s football championship. He gave your young men a lecture about men and domestic violence. He told them that domestic violence was men’s problem to solve. He told them that their masculinity and their ideas of manhood were the problem. He told them, in so many words, that they were not just the solution, but that they were also the problem.

Nearly everything he told them was a lie.

I realize this may be a bit of a shock, as I am sure you can’t imagine why a state governor would stand before a group of impressionable young men and attempt to poison their minds with disinformation. Nonetheless, that’s what happened.

His motives were purely political, and it is very important for you to understand those motives because what the governor did was not a one-time stunt. He was forecasting an oncoming assault on the budding masculinity and the self-image of your players and all future young men in Maine schools. His lecture was also an attempt to manipulate you into helping with that agenda.

So far, it is entirely plausible that you stood back with nothing to say while Governor LePage deceived your players, simply because you did not know any better. It is my hopes that by the time you finish reading this article that you are able to see what is going on, and that in your position of trust with those students you will not let it happen again.

Allow me to start helping you to understand by taking a look at this as presented by the media in your state.

There are several recent op-ed pieces and interviews published by the Bangor Daily News that attack boys and heterosexual masculinity. In one piece, titled “When will men stand up to violence?”[1] a man named Drew Wing openly echoes and expands upon the sentiments conveyed to your players by Governor LePage; that there is something inherently wrong with masculinity; that boys are innately defective, and that they need to somehow be fixed, re-engineered into something more socially acceptable and less dangerous to the society around them.

Mind you, he is ignoring the ways we, though fathers and men such as yourself, have historically encouraged and mentored young men to be productive members of society. He is pointing directly at men like you as part of the problem, because it is masculinity itself that is the problem. That includes you, sir, though you may not have even paused to consider it.

What is worse is that if you examine the plans Wing already has in place, they are much more far reaching than simply telling boys they are born bad and need to be fixed. A more thorough examination of his work reveals an unthinkable agenda. He actually promotes a program of bullying and emotionally abusing boys in order to get them to become enforcers of his political ideas about men against their smaller, weaker male peers.

If that seems unlikely to you, please finish reading and investigate the all the links provided.

Drew Wing and his “Boys to Men” organization are actively engaged in promoting programs to re-define boys “masculinity in terms of violence, harassment, apathy and sexual conquest.”[1] In his Bangor Daily News piece he defines rape as a “men’s issue” and demands men help stop “rape culture” by changing the “male culture” which he says “degrades women and supports sexual violence.”

Of course, all decent human beings condemn rape, and want to put an end to it. However, let me stop for a moment here, Coach. There is much more to come but I cannot move on without asking you some questions, with the hope that you will stop for a moment and answer them for yourself.

How many men do you know who belong to a “male culture that degrades women and supports sexual violence”?

Please take a moment to answer that. Does this statement apply to your father? Your brothers? Your sons? Your players? The other male coaches on your team? The male teachers at Cheverus High School? How about to the fathers and brothers of your players? How about to Governor LePage?

Do we have a criminal minority of people who commit sexual assaults, or do we have a culture that is responsible for this, including you and your football team?

Again, do you really see an entire culture of men around you that support rape and the abuse of women? Because if you don’t sir, then how can you stand by while a state official creates such a destructive and patently false notion in the young minds under your care?

But let us get back to the work of Drew Wing for now.

He further declares that:

“men are conditioned to believe that women are inferior and exist solely as sexual objects for the pleasure of men [and] that sexual violence is a legitimate means of establishing power – a highly coveted commodity in male culture.”

In case you missed it, Coach, Drew Wing and the Bangor Daily News just openly declared that the basis of male culture ‘covets’ power through rape which he says men consider as “legitimate means”. He wants men to stop “rape culture” and “speak and act in a way that reinforces our respect for women…[and by] modeling respect for girls and women, working for full equality, challenging elements of male culture and holding perpetrators accountable.”

He wants men and boys to “model respect” for women and punish other men and boys who are deemed to do otherwise — in the name of “full equality” of all things. He ends his op-ed with “Will the “real men” please stand up?”

Coach, are you able to see how the demonization of young men is wrapped around ideals that are designed to be unassailable? Are you, like so many, going to be blinded by the righteousness of “holding perpetrators accountable” to the point that you cannot see or hear that men, as a class, as in you, are being accused of supporting rape?

You may wonder at this point (and I surely hope you are) what makes Drew Wing an authority on masculinity, psychology, early childhood development, human sexuality and/or causes of violence to issue such open declarations against men and masculinity.

Well, he did do some real estate development consulting and studied theology — which apparently qualified him to be the best new front “man” for the already well-established and feminist governed “Boys to Men” organization. It started out as a “community coalition” against domestic violence in 1998 and is now in the business of re-enginering programs for male children designed to correct their masculine condition.

Boys to Men administers a “treatment program” which is apparently a variation of the Ludovico Technique. They are not kidding about “reshaping” boys. In Maine they are spending community dollars on what they term “preventative programs” which they are refining for nationwide promotion.

The program, as we soon shall see, is designed to “eliminate” and replace boys’ “masculinity” and self-confidence with what they call “Gender Justice”[2].

Again, Coach, I have to stop and ask you to consider a question. This time a single one. What do you think about an effort to take impressionable young men, already going through the painful process of self-discovery and individuation and attempt to replace their sense of masculinity with someone else’s political ideals?

It is just one question, Coach, but I really hope you don’t neglect to answer it, if only for yourself.

Moving on we get a clearer idea of some of the male re-engineering programs through yet another recent article at Bangor Daily News, which states:

“[...]Boys to Men Executive Director Drew Wing says the same male athletes who take the field or ice in violent sports can be key to reshaping what he thinks have become destructive preconceptions of manhood in today’s society[...]In a nutshell, the most masculine in what Wing called the “culture of masculinity” are often also the most self-confident, and they have more social currency with which to reject domineering or violent social behaviors. There’s some research that men who live in those masculine worlds [of sports] are in the best positions to defy those worlds,” Wing said.”

What Wing and his front organization is actually engaging in and promoting is a program of accessing schools to shame, bully, and indoctrinate aggressive and violent leaning Alpha-male jocks to serve as muscle to coerce and abuse other boys into compliance with their pro-feminist political worldview.

Wing calls these groomed Alpha-male boys “positive bystanders” and specifically seeks to exploit their Alpha-male “social currency” to bully the rest of the young boys to accept and conform to feminist doctrine.

Wing rationalizes this orchestration of abuse by stating “Really this is about empowering them, giving them tools to stand up and be leaders in tough situations, be the activists that change the culture on campus.”

“… activists that change the culture on campus.”

Coach, we have an ideological feminist group gaining access to schools and campuses to indoctrinate the most confident, outgoing, and socially influential young males to serve as enforcers and “activists that change the culture.” To change it to radical feminist core values. It is a program specifically aimed at oppressing all boys. I am sure, Coach, as you are also likely a teacher, that you are familiar with historical efforts to indoctrinate and use young Alpha-males to enforce ideology on school campuses?

On their website, Men to Boys’ mission statement lists a core value belief that the responsibility of raising healthy boys falls on the community—a core value explicitly against family and parental rights and responsibilities concerning their own children. By “community” they are asserting new rights and responsibilities to public institutions such as the education system, where Boys to Men is now coincidentally gaining a foothold.

They go on to state another, more familiar core belief — that boys and men are responsible for preventing violence. Again, one has to stop and consider what they are saying. Their position is that violence begins and ends with boys and men. This is their claim despite the fact that it is patently untrue, and in a way that disparages them and every male in their life.

If that is not radical enough, then consider their core values concerning “Gender Justice”:

“Gender Justice:• Traditional media and cultural representations of masculinity and femininity are too narrowly defined and contribute to destructive and damaging behavior towards individuals of all genders and ages. We are committed to eliminating the inequalities and institutional injustices that result from these traditional media and cultural representations of masculinity.”[2]

In other words they have essentially declared war on masculinity as it is, Coach; the same masculinity with which you coached your team to a state football championship, the masculinity that your players played through pain with, and the masculinity that lent them to working together as a team. They want to subvert that masculinity and make them political enforcers, leaning on their brothers to effect the cause of “inequalities and institutional injustices” which they “are committed to eliminating”. And they are shrouding all this in a term as misleading and disingenuous as “healthy masculinity,”[2]

How ironic that while Boys to Men is “committed to eliminating” masculinity, and programming bullies, their slogan is “Building True Strength”.

For all the doublespeak and euphemisms, it is an open program of human rights abuse and violence against generations of young men and boys through threatening, shaming, bullying, and terrorizing tactics. One has to wonder what the fully informed parents would say about an organization such as “Boys to Men” being allowed access to their children in order to make political alterations to their masculine identity? Does that really sound like “building true strength,” to you, Coach? Or does it sound like political operatives maliciously tinkering with the minds of impressionable children?

Does Governor LePage’s lecture to your players sound the same now as it did then? If it does, your players are in deep trouble.

Coach, this is child abuse hiding behind the banner of domestic violence prevention. It is a program aimed at targeting and preemptively shaming only male children for gender profiled crimes of which “Boys to Men” say all men are guilty; all men are responsible. There’s your “Gender Justice”.

We now see ideology, not concern for children, driving school policies across the country which attack natural male development, terrorizing and punishing boys for crimes such as “sexual harassment” — for telling someone they think their teacher is “cute.”[3]

When we see 7 year old boys being terrorized, harassed and harshly punished by their schools for pointing pencils at each other and making shooting sounds, we are witnessing an attack on their healthy development and their self esteem.[4]

“Boys to Men” in Maine is a program of interrupting and attacking boys and it is being continuously promoted by the likes of Bangor Daily News—one of the largest newspapers in Maine, while the governor parrots their propaganda to the children.

For his part Maine Governor LePage has made “domestic violence” the central part of his administration with initiatives to force accused men to be held without bail, to force accused men who have unsubstantiated protection orders filed against them to wear ankle bracelets, to creating a domestic violence offender registry, to passing out 911 panic alarms to women, and to shame and blame school boys and their masculinity and for not putting women ahead of their own interests.

In his first State of the State address, LePage called domestic violence “a men’s problem”.

And let me be clear coach, just in case nothing like the truth has every reached your ears. Domestic violence is a complex problem with a wide range of causes. Domestic violence is an alcohol and drug abuse related problem. Domestic violence is a poverty related problem. Domestic violence is a family dysfunction related problem. Domestic violence is a problem committed by both sexes, against both sexes with children being the primary true victims in almost all cases. Domestic violence is NOT a problem rooted in masculinity. The idea that it is nothing more than political fabrication.

You can drag a thousand champion football players into a room with a lying governor and nothing will change that.

Paul LePage will travel to other schools in Maine to address groups of boys, blaming them for domestic violence, blaming them for not doing more to stop it, and teaching the boys to get confrontational and perhaps even violent with other boys to keep them in line. He weakly admonishes violence, but then leaves the door open for it when he counsels young boys about intervening on abusive men.

“I’m not advocating to use violence, but you do what you’ve got to do to resolve the issue,”
Coach, as someone who spent 20+ years counseling people with life problems, I relied on a saying regularly to address this kind of doublespeak and denial in my clients:

Everything behind a “but” is bullshit.
When Governor LePage says “I’m not advocating to use violence, but…” he is knowingly and intentionally leaving the door open to that very thing. He even waxes nostalgically about getting into trouble with law enforcement for intervening physically in the affairs of others, and states emphatically that he would do it again. He is glorifying his role as a physical enforcer and passing that message along to the students most likely to emulate it.

How much sense does it make to you, Coach, that we would identify violence as a male specific problem to be fixed, and then advocate its use to address it?

Governor LaPage is following in lockstep with the intentions of groups like “Boys to Men,” which is to turn young athletes into political enforcers, rather than hold responsible adults to account for the problems we face as a society, or to find solutions that can so seldom translate into sound bites and votes.

Coach, this is the most disgraceful exhibit of its kind that I have ever heard of from a state governor. And I remind you, without blaming you, that you are now a part of it, either as the problem or the solution.

And just a couple of more items for your consideration.

The Maine Domestic Violence Coalition in a related program gets promising male athletes to stand in front of a camera for public service announcements and recite as if they were confessing that domestic violence is a “huge issue” on college campuses and that it’s up to them to stop it:

Coach, In Maine the war on boys is very much mainstream with radical programs by organizations such as “Boys to Men” being tested for national expansion. In future articles, I will continue to examine the unfolding society of hate where male human rights are being abolished by radical feminists and their sycophants in elected office.

But for now, I just wanted you to know what is happening, and why there is a need to do something about it. If you value those young men in your charge, you will.

Drew Wing is the executive director of Boys to Men, a Portland-based nonprofit that seeks to reduce interpersonal violence. He is a former business developer and holds a theology degree. He may be reached at drewwing7@gmail.com.

[1] http://bangordailynews.com/2013/04/15/opinion/when-will-men-stand-up-to-violence/?ref=relatedBox

[2] http://www.maineboystomen.org/about/

[3] http://www.foxnews.com/us/2011/12/04/boy-suspended-from-school-for-sexual-harassment-after-calling-teacher-cute/

[4] http://shine.yahoo.com/parenting/-two-boys-suspended-for-pointing-pencils-like-guns-165811733.htm

Source: http://www.avoiceformen.com/feminism/feminist-lies-feminism/to-coach-john-wollfgram-portland-maine/

Beau Biden Supports Criminal Women?

Aug 312012
 

Beau Biden Supports Criminal Women?

Dean Esmay
August 31, 2012

Despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, and the fact that even Delaware’s own officials admit that women commonly use false allegations to gain an advantage in family law cases, or for simple harassment purposes, Beau Biden, Delaware Attorney General and son of the Vice President of the United States, not only denies that false allegations are a serious problem in Delaware, but continues to campaign on how much he’s doing to protect women and children (as if women and children are the same thing) and to say nothing about protecting fathers or men of any stripe.

In the meantime, one of the most horrendous cases of false allegations ever documented has been ongoing in Delaware for two years. I and my associate Paul Elam have done a meticulously documented series of reports on the egregious human rights violations against Mr. Gordon Smith by the State of Delaware, and the proven criminal activities of Tiffany Marie Smith in Delaware. We have worked extensively to uncover documents and interview multiple parties and to get the attention of the mainstream press and Delaware law enforcement authorities, to limited but growing effect. You may read how the drama has been unfolding over the last two years here:

Injustice in Delaware, Part I.

Injustice in Delaware, Part II.

Injustice in Delaware, Part III.

…and, while I am still working on finishing up reporting to conclude everything of significance that’s transpired in the last two years in a Part IV, recent events involving another unwarranted arrest of Mr. Smith, on still more allegations now absolutely proven to be false, have been reported here:

Letter to Delaware State Police and State Attorney General.

…with yet another even more astonishing abuse of Gordon Smith’s human rights here:

Cop 101 Lessons for Delaware State Police.

We’re up to 9 arrests on 14 false allegations against Mr. Smith. 5 of the false allegations simply discarded by police as having no credibility. Multiple misdemeanor charges and one felony charge were made. This morning, the phony felony charge was dropped, and attorneys believe that the remaining misdemeanors are also likely to be dropped soon. The judge may also be recusing himself from the case. Though after two years of this non-stop brutalization of Gordon Smith by criminal psychotic Tiffany Marie Smith, a proven perjurer who has also now made multiple proven false police reports, there is still no word on when or if she will answer for those crimes.

The greatest irony of all? It is only through state violation of Gordon’s own basic civil rights that he has been able to prove his innocence. Let no one be confused: if you are a male who stands accused by a female in the United States, you have no civil rights. You do not have the presumption of innocence, you have the presumption of guilt, thanks to the deranged state of various “violence against women” (but not men) laws at the state and Federal level which subvert all basic principles of American jurisprudence and enable female criminals to escape justice. This needs to end. Will Beau Biden be the first politician to step up to the plate and say it needs to end? Will Delaware continue to be part of our nation’s flagrant violation of basic human rights of innocent citizens? Or might Delaware lead the nation in restoring justice to men in this country? Only time will tell, but Beau Biden has an opportunity to let the world know which side the plate Delaware wants to stand on: on the side of human rights, or against?

Time will only tell. But in the meantime, after all our work, we are starting to see the mainstream media reporters finally calling us and taking an interest in the criminal rampage of Tiffany Marie Smith. When you finally do read about it in the news, remember where you read about it first.

And one other troubling question remains, for Attorney General Beau Biden and everyone else: how many men are rotting in jail now, have had their lives ruined, or have outright killed themselves, in response to human rights abuses similar to what Gordon Smith has been put through?

Source: http://deanesmay.com/

Rape is a 1970′s Mood Ring

Feb 062012
 

Rape is a 1970′s Mood Ring

Pierce Harlan
Feb. 2, 2012

Paul Elam and I recently wrote a piece called “Colleges push anti-male sex policies to the edge,” about how colleges are bending, stretching, twisting, and pounding the definition of sexual misconduct to include all manner of things that, by any rational measure, are not sexual misconduct. We explained that this stems from an extremist feminist tradition of rape advocacy that encourages purported victims to engorge the definition of “rape” and “sexual assault” to include all manner of alleged violations that are neither “rape” nor “sexual assault.”

The past few days have given us stellar examples of how that extremist tradition has become the norm.

First up is Lauren R. Taylor of the Washington Post, who defends the sexual violence study conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That study, in the words of Christina Hoff Sommers, “suggests that rates of sexual violence in the United States are comparable to those in the war-stricken Congo.” How does the new study arrive at the conclusion that sexual violence is rampant? By “careless advocacy research,” Ms. Sommers explains, and by asking respondents if they had sex while inebriated or if someone pressured them by by repeatedly asking, showing they were unhappy, telling them lies, or making false promises. In short, the study defines sexual violence “in impossibly elastic ways,” as Ms. Sommers puts it.

Well, impossibly elastic is just fine by Lauren R. Taylor, thank you very much! She proclaims: ”The questions [in the study] are vague and broad, because the reality of sexual violence is vague and broad.”

The statement is as inane as it is dangerous. The sine qua non of sexual violence is the absence of consent. Either there is consent or there isn’t, and there’s nothing “vague” or “broad” about that. While some manifested assertions of assent are so tainted by impropriety that our law does not consider them legally operative (an example is a promise obtained by duress), nagging for sex and the other things asked typically aren’t among them.

Next up, a Harvard student named Emma Wood, who pooh-poohs the prevalence of false rape claims. Emma is in a class by herself. Aside from slinking into the easily-mouthed clichés of radical feminism, Emma lobs the following bomb, presumably with a straight face: “I am convinced that no umbrella definition of sexual assault can exist. Just as each person defines his or her sexuality for him or herself, each person defines sexual assault on a similarly personal level.”

There you have it. Rape is in the eye of the beholder. In Ms. Taylor’s and Ms. Wood’s world, sexual assault isn’t a crime that needs to be defined with sufficient due process specificity to put the accused on notice of the conduct it proscribes. It is a free-floating clearinghouse to redress any sexual encounter deemed unsatisfactory at the caprice and whim of a self-anointed victim.

For eons, rape had a widely accepted, horrific meaning. Now, according to the people who dominate the public discourse on it, it means nothing — because it means everything. Carefully crafted criminal laws, honed by centuries of thoughtfully constructed judicial decisions, have been scrapped in favor of a 1970′s mood ring.

That tells us all we need to know about the people who dominate the public discourse on rape.

Source: http://www.avoiceformen.com/mens-rights/false-rape-culture/rape-is-a-1970s-mood-ring/

Holder Needs to Retract False DV Statement

Mar 052011
 

AG Holder Needs to Retract False Statement about Domestic Violence

Carey Roberts
March 5, 2011

In ringing prose, President Barack Obama underscored his March 9, 2009, memorandum on scientific integrity with this promise: “Under my administration, the days of science taking a back seat to ideology are over….To undermine scientific integrity is to undermine our democracy.”

As luck would have it, Attorney General Eric Holder issued a statement a few months later designed to spotlight the issue of domestic violence. In Holder’s own words, “Disturbingly, intimate partner homicide is the leading cause of death for African-American women ages 15 to 45.”

Turns out this statement is not one-sided or misleading. It’s flat-out wrong.

Go to the website of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control. There you can fire up the WISQARS (“whiskers”) search engine to glean the leading causes of death for any age group, race, sex, geographical region, or year:

So I entered the data to match Holder’s proclamation — African-American women in the 15-45 year age range. In 2007, the women’s leading causes of death were:

1. Cancer

2. Heart disease

3. Accidents (unintentional injuries)

Thinking something must be wrong, I fiddled with different years — same result. Domestic violence homicides didn’t make the list.

This factual boo-boo came to light in a February 4 USA Today column by Christina Hoff Sommers. Calling on Holder to remove the misstatement “immediately,” the essay enumerated the harms wrought by such wrongful assertions.

“Misinformation leads to misdirected policies that fail to target the true causes of violence,” Dr. Sommers declared. “Worse, those who promulgate false statistics about domestic violence, however well-meaning, promote prejudice. Most of the exaggerated claims implicate the average male in a social atrocity.”

What’s more, these claims are exploited by dictatorial regimes to buttress antiquated human rights policies. “In Europe almost 70% of housewives are beaten by their husbands,” Iranian President Ahmadinejad once asserted, absurdly.

Columnist Paul Elam highlighted another cause for worry: “The danger here, of course, is that by telling African American women that the leading cause of their death is IPV [intimate partner violence], we are minimizing and helping them ignore the things that really are killing them.”

Eric H. Holder was sworn in as the 82nd attorney general of the United States on February 3, 2009. Four months later, I happened to attend a speech by the newly confirmed law enforcement head. Still basking in the afterglow of his controversial confirmation, Mr. Holder spoke condescendingly about how the Bush administration’s Department of Justice had been reflexively smitten by a narrow ideology.

And under his leadership, Holder pledged to the crowd, the faded luster of the DoJ would soon be restored. That was two years ago.

I cannot fault Mr. Holder for his factual hiccup. After all, public officials make statements every day, and they can’t be expected to fact-check each jot and tittle of every speech. And I am not going to suggest that Mr. Holder was intentionally thumbing his nose at President Obama’s Presidential Memorandum on scientific integrity.

But now the truth of the matter has come to light and the harm caused by this intellectual flim-flam cataloged. Mr. Holder needs to assure the claims and policies of his department are rooted in scientifically verifiable fact, not ideologically driven cant.

Act now, Mr. Holder, to protect the integrity, the professionalism, and the good name of the Department of Justice.

Source: http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/ag-holder-needs-to-retract-false-statement-about-domestic-violence/

March 8: Radio Program on Female DV

Mar 022011
 

Upcoming Show: 3/8/2011 9:00 PM .

Call-in Number: (310) 388-9709

Host Name: AVoiceforMen
Show Name: Violent Women and Government Lies
Date / Length: 3/8/2011 9:00 PM – 2 hrs 30 min
Length: 2 hrs 30 min

Description:

 Join host Paul Elam and listen while he strips the sugar coating off the problem of Domestic Violence in western culture. Find out who is lying to you and why, as well as learning a lot about women’s capacity for violence that you probably didn’t know. This show will hit you right between the eyes, with the truth!

Source: http://www.blogtalkradio.com/avoiceformen/2011/03/09/violent-women-and-government-lies

Open Letter to Congressman Ted Poe

Jan 202011
 

An Open Letter to Congressman Ted Poe of Texas

By Paul Elam

Congressman Ted Poe
2nd District of Texas
Washington, D.C.

Dear Congressman Poe,

Over the past few days I have become aware of some very disturbing events taking place in the state of Texas. A radical left wing organization, change.org, has undertaken a campaign to promote egregious disinformation about child abuse happening here and is targeting the upcoming Super Bowl, characterizing it in no uncertain terms as a gathering of pedophiles that will be raping children over the Super Bowl weekend. As shocking and incredulous as that sounds, it is exactly what is happening.

The front organization for this effort, called Traffick 911, which ostensibly operates as an educational program geared to prevent forced childhood prostitution, has been disseminating information that is characterizing men generally, and male football fans in Texas specifically, as disproportionately populated with child sexual predators. They are doing this with outrageously inflated and fraudulent statistics which can be seen prominently displayed on their website at traffick911.com.

Now, with the direct and active assistance of change.org, they are attempting to coerce the Super Bowl Host Committee into supporting and endorsing their activities. I personally received an email from change.org containing a petition to be presented to, among others, the committee. That message opened with the words, “Every year, children as young as 11 are trafficked to Super Bowl cities. There, football fans – usually men, often inebriated – will pay traffickers to have sex with them.”

Digging further into the information provided by Traffick 911, I found that they claim that “300,000 U.S. children are forced into sexual slavery.”

What I have learned, Congressman Poe, from the report from The Texas Human Trafficking Prevention Task Force, paints a picture markedly different than that claimed by change.org and Traffick 911. The task force report indicates that since January 1, 2007, there have been 554 human trafficking investigations, which is roughly 11 investigations per month to date (48 months). Those investigations led to the arrest of 132 people (2.75 per month). In total, 29 suspects were convicted of a human trafficking-related crime.

This represents little more than one conviction every two months by the efforts of four federally funded task forces, as 5% of cases investigated resulted in a conviction. Of sex related crimes deemed to be an extension of human trafficking, “24 were charged with prostitution-related charges, 15 were charged with rape,” says the report.

If those charged with sex related crimes were all convicted, it would add up to less than one conviction a month over the 48 months.

And this is justification for characterizing Texas football fans as a collection of pedophiles?

No, Congressman Poe, it is not. And it makes this patently disingenuous approach to the problem an obscenity against the truth—proffered by left wing ideologues that are attempting to extort support and funding, indirectly from the football fans in your state.

So I am sure you can imagine how dismayed, how utterly shocked I was to see that you, sir, a supposedly conservative representative of the citizens of Texas in Washington D.C. are scheduled to speak in support of Traffick 911 and change.org’s disgusting agenda to play politics with abused children at a “Tailgate Rally” scheduled for February 5th of this year in Mansfield, Texas.

Anyone would agree, Mr. Congressman, that we all need to work together in the best interest of children everywhere. And of course those efforts should be bi-partisan. But this campaign of lies and slurs against innocent, hard working citizens who happen to attend a football game is so far beyond the pale that it defies decency. I urge you to please consider what your public support for this group and organizations like change.org implies about your allegiance to the honest voters who have entrusted you with your office.

At the same time I am sending you this letter I am also posting it to my website at avoiceformen.com, where we get tens of thousands of visitors per month. We have readers from all over the world, with many from Texas. And while we do not endorse or oppose particular candidates, most all of us share a concern for what has happened in our society from a tide of toxic left wing politics. This particular set of circumstances is about as toxic as it gets.

So again, I urge you to investigate what and who you are choosing to affiliate with in regards to Traffic 911 and change.org. There are much better ways for you to advocate for our children, and serve your country, than this.

Sincerely,

Paul Elam
Houston, Texas

Congressman Poe’s contact page:

https://poe.house.gov/contact/contactform.htm

Source: http://www.avoiceformen.com/2011/01/19/an-open-letter-to-congressman-ted-poe-of-texas/