Cruelty towards seducers means a mercy towards children

Speech at a Parliamentary hearings concerning the Bill - the project of a federal law "On additions and modifications of the Criminal Code of Russian Federation"

Protopresbyter Vladimir Pereslegin, priest of  the Church of the village Prohorovo (Chekhovsky region of Moscow's area)

Dear participants of Parliamentary hearings,

Tolerance to evil, as a norm of social life, has almost been formed in our country. This pathological mutation of our society has made the life and the innocence of children and teenagers its victims. The innocence of children is a national property of any people who has got a will for living, but now in Russia it is protected by nothing except the God-given instinct of self-preservation which belongs to the children themselves and which is now oppressed by the policy of massive corruption. But God, providing this self-preservation of a child, meant, that he/she would not resist the evil's aggression alone with his/her weak and immature soul, but, instinctively struggling for innocence, would lean on the adult's force and morality.

Alas! At the end of 20th century there happened a national betrayal in Russia, there occurred an unprecedented mortal sin. In favour to the so-called human rights - that means the rights of the fallen nature of the adults, which had been upraised up to a new religion - the integral rights of children and teenagers were rescinded. This means the following rights: the right for virginity before the matrimony (the Russian word "невеста" conserved the direct sense of the notion of bride: the "bride" is "she who has not been known" - that is, sexually used); the child's right of protection from the suicide, and the like. A society that bears the responsibility for its children must preserve these rights. The Russian society of the end of 20th and the beginning of the 21st century has become defective so deeply, that it just does not realise its loss of this responsibility. The leading layer of Russian society shows the attitude for child's seducing that only the defective persons may show, and it never notices that the West, which it admires so, looks at it with the bewildered contempt for it.

In historical Russia, not only the family and the Church, but also the State - its priority was defending the victim from the criminal, not "human rights" - preserved the social and national morality. Russia's Criminal Code, which had significantly kept the legal norms of old Russia, until recently saved these principles of helping those who are helpless and weak, which were substantially Christian. We have seen an unprecedented moral revolution, and one of its central points was the cancellation of prosecution of some of actions, which every normal person would judge criminal. For the people of Russia are always mainly oriented towards the authority and their enemies have learnt this feature quite well. So when the authority claims that the debauch is normal, it is very difficult for the people to resist the authority and to defend their children from the seducing, because of a rudimental patriarchality and infantilism. That is why the decriminalising of homosexuality, pornography and prostitution played a terrible role not only in the enormous increase of criminality and AIDS infection, but, most important, in the tragic fall of morality, in the destruction of family and in the extinction of the Russian people.

How do you like the hypocritical formula of the Russian Criminal Law, article 240, that provides punishment only for involving in prostitution using violence, blackmail, deceit. This means that if, say, blackmail has not been used, an involving in prostitution was quite legal, even if a child was involved ¹⁾! The article 242 provides punishment only for illegal selling of pornographic material, which is equal to legalising porno production. But no matter how hard Professor Kon works, pornography remains pornography: an extreme immodesty, something ribald and obscene, a break of the soul. The word does not need any translation, it has a firm emotional tone, and it is been used as a swearword. There can be no "scientifically valuable pornography", there can be only corrupted people who reckons themselves to be educated and intellectual. If we undertake the way of discussing the meanings and endless expert analysing of this notion, we will come to discussing the things, we shall come down to the notions that are obvious for any unprejudiced man: the notions of defilement, murder, cannibalism. And we indeed are very closely to it.

¹⁾      This norm has been preserved in redaction of article 240, which is proposed by the Bill (the Project of the Law)!

The Article 135 in its current edition does not provide any responsibility for intellectual actions of seducing. The official Comment to the Criminal Code only extra-judicially recommends qualifying such actions as criminal. This is also the reason why it is impossible to sentence guilty neither the editors of the sexual journals for children, like "Molotok" ("Read under the desk, they advise to children, it was cool if there was a place for sex in the school wasn't it?" There are also headings like "position No 5", "Examination on sex", letters of twelve-years-old-children, description of the coitus...), nor the seducers from the television, nor the seducers who instruct children according to the programs of  "outfit trainings", nor those who recruit teenagers for striptease clubs. These crimes are very heavy, and the new edition of the Article 135 must reliably provide their criminal prosecution.

Beside this, there are in the current version of Criminal Code the clauses that have been formulated correctly, but that are never been used in practice, the article 241, for example. Was any one of Russia's bawdy-houses of the end of 20th century closed? Was any one of their owners sentenced? Who can believe that an "Erotic club 911", having a slogan "Come in if you want", is not a brothel? This article, forbidding the dens of prostitution, is ready to be abrogated by the advocates of legalised debauchery, by Masha Arbatova and others foes of morality and shame, who, by some unknown reasons, call themselves "right".

How does the Orthodox Church consider it? What are its proposals for legislators? In the Church canonical Law, the corruption is in a very good occasion equal to murder, but usually worse than murder, because it encroaches not only the body, bur the soul as well, the very mystery of man's personality. The Church announces saint those who preferred the death to the corruption. ²⁾ Our Saviour said, Whosoever shall offend one of these little ones that believe in me, it is better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he were cast into the sea (Mark 9:42), and these words are a universal norm for all the Christian people. The 6th Ecumenical Council announces an anathema for all those who have dens of debauchery and for those who produce indecent images leading to the excitement of lust in mind (See Articles 86 and 100, accordingly).

All the debauchees, paedophiles and men of pleasure condemn Christ and His Church of cruelty. But the cruelty towards seducers means a mercy towards children, it is an action of love. God claims that those who love the Lord should hate evil (Psalm 97:10). Those who use children for their own pleasure - the "service" offered by hundreds of companies, quite openly advertising themselves on the pages of newspapers "Centre Plus" and "MK" - are real murders of our children. The Church calls up for the mercilessness towards the children's seducers for the good of the mercy for children. And the Church considers the Criminal Code to be one of the tools that refrains the society from the fall, from the "exposing the secret of iniquity". That is why we address to the legislators, pleading them to make the formulas of the Criminal Code crueller, solider, to convert them into the real means for preventing the death of children. For who will protect the children, when the Government surrenders them, cowardly referring to the advocates of the rights of their gigolos? The parents will lynch the seducers (this has already begun!). And the Church, and its clergy, will be forced to bless it, because the Christ Himself forbids us to be neutral when our children are defiled. The best of Russian writers, by the way, shared the same position. Chekhov called the brothels "damned places". Kuprin once said that prostitution is worse than war or plague.

²⁾ The Saint Martyr Antonine (her day is 10/23 of June).

Our opinion is that it is necessary to add to the Bill (which is quite good in its whole) the following:

1.                  To add to the Article 110 a second part: bringing a minor to the suicide. Involving him/her to a sect or a club where suicide is appreciated must be considered as particularly aggravating the guilt.

2.                  The penalty for the raping of a child must be the capital punishment, the death. The current Penal Code provides the death only for murder and genocide. The dispatch - the capital punishment - is not being executed because of a moratorium. But the fact that it exists in the Code is of great moral significance. God only can judge a man, the earthen law judging only the actions, the crimes. The penalty for the raping of a child must be the death, for the sake of other children and other criminal: for making them avoiding it. Only God, however, remains the judge for all the people.

3.                  The article 134 must have the special name: "paedophilia", like the article 105 is called "murder". It will read like following: "Article 134. Paedophilia". And the following line there will be all that is in its current title. This will result in the stopping of the debates round the pregnancy of 14-years-old girls and their marriage the criminal, which now have led to the adding of a special Appendix. There is a choice between only two possibilities: either you are a paedophile or a potential husband, who has really decided to purge the guilt by making family and by bearing the responsibility for the child. The court is obliged to consider such things. The conviction for the seducing a 14-year-old girl (even if she has finally become the wife) is a good measure for edifying, and, additionally, at last the conviction is removed. The amendments proposed can help the Article to have a more articulated goal. It will prosecute the seducers of hundreds of young boys, who are now being released according to the amnesty. All this has nothing to do with an early marriage. Paedophilia must be regarded as a particularly heavy crime. The paedophile's entire asset must be confiscated.

It is absolutely necessary not to qualify any sexual actions with children as "voluntary", "without violence" and the like. It is another very sly hypocrisy! The fact that a child does not resist during an intercourse must aggravate the adult criminal's guilt, not extenuate it. The child is not completely aware of what is happening, he/she does not know how it will come out later. A child can be persuaded, seduced, talked into anything - a suicide, for instance! Only hopeless blackguards can amplify on the child's "free choice", expatiate upon its rights and argue that these rights are equal with those of an experienced and hard-headed adult.

4. The article 135. This article must cover all kinds of massive defilement. The Prosecutors must not examine the victims while qualifying some actions as intellectually defiling, only the nature of the actions must be the reason.

5. I have already mentioned the article 240. The involving in prostitution must be punished without considering the way the victim was involved. It is the same thing as the "voluntary actions". What do we consider dearer for us: our children or abstract notions?

6. It would be better if the word "den" would not be omitted in the title of the article 241. The word reflects the nature of the crime very adequately.

7. The article 242. I have also already mentioned pornography. All the TV and radio programmes must be prosecuted for the porno texts and images, without references to the proportion of the materials of such character, and without references to the character of the programme. Weather the main topic of the programme is sports, music or erotic, must not mean a thing. Anything containing indecency is essentially pornographic and criminal.

I feel it necessary to conclude with something of political character. To be liberal towards the seducers means to be kind for the another's account. It hides the murder and destruction of the children behind the humanistic words. The society must sacrifice everything to its children's sake. After all, it appeals to the legislators' will. There is a choice: either the State politically encourages or resists the children's defilement. Tertium non datur. Woe is Russia, if it regards the rights of adult egoists and its own membership in European Union more valuable than preventing the destruction of its children. In this case the bill will certainly not be approved.

If it still is approved, and if it works against the seducers, than Russia will have some hope for the future.

Moscow, February 4th, 2002

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