So yesterday afternoon I was hurredly called down to the Direct Energy Center because there was a public consultation on the EDM Ban at the Ex and by extension all city property.
CITYNews, CP24, Global and CBC interviewed me because I'm in the industry. You can find a small clip here.
I was forwarded a press release that Toronto City Councillor Giorgio Mammoliti had circulated. In it, he continued with his strawman arguement that there are pedophiles lurking in the corners of raves, ready to pounce on our kids.
This is wrong and dangerous. Councillor Mammoliti is actually spreading Mis-information about child sex abuse to further his politically driven agenda.
The fact of the matter is, upwards of 80% of the victims KNOW their attackers and are groomed by them. Pedophiles are all about access. That access isn't found in giant raves with 20,000 people around. Pedophiles can be anyone and most of the time are in positions of trust and power and are close to the victims. This kind of ignorance that people like Mammoliti and Ford thrive on in order to "divide and conquer" is exactly why children who are abused doubt themselves and what's happening to them. Tonnes of people I know who were abused had family who didn't believe them because "friends and family" don't do that...they do and are the most likely to do it.
They can be your doctor, lawyer, police officer, aunt, uncle or the person sitting across from your dinner table. By using the boogeyman of "Pedophiles" to attack the people in nightlife and the community of Parkdale, he skips over this fact & in my opinion makes it harder for children to speak up or members of the public to pay attention to what could be going on in their own homes.
Pedophiles are a very specific thing. They are attracted to pre-pubescent children. If there were / are unsupervised pre-pubescent kids at these places...the problem isn't with the promoters or the events themselves, but with the parents.
Hebephiles are attracted to young girls that show signs of sexual maturity. We live in a country where the age of consent was 14 yrs old...and only got raised to 16 recently.
Mammoliti heard all this yesterday, but it doesn't fit his narrative, so he lied and continues to lie. When he keeps saying 28 Children went to the hospital from Avicii, that's a bold faced lie. EMS couldn't give the age of the people, because they didn't have the info and even if they did, our laws prevent them from revealing that info to Mammoliti.
The guy is a manipulative liar, who's fear mongering. The reality is, there are pedos watching kids at the park, at school and at concerts all the time.
This is a very constructive debate to be had on how we can increase safety, but that's not what Mammo wants. He wants ppl at each others throats and he wants to be "right", when he's very, very, wrong.
The election is October 27th. Just ask yourselves this: do you really want someone who would sink so low as to use the very real problem of child sex abuse to further his own agenda? Regardless of the FACTS that tell him he's wrong? That's disgusting. We deserve better and he deserves to no longer be in office.
KB