Stop asking why children stay quiet. Start asking why predators are still so loud.
The world keeps asking the wrong questions.
They sit in courts and panels and living rooms with knitted brows and curious hearts, wondering why the little girl in the pink socks didn’t scream. Why the boy with the Lego in his hand didn’t run? Why the child didn’t speak when they should be asking why the monster was allowed to grow teeth in the first place?
It’s not about the silence of children.
It’s about the roar of unchecked evil.
Why do they walk freely?
Because society builds bridges for their return and walls for the wounded.
Why do they smile in church and mosque?
Because sanctuaries have never been safe for everyone.
Why are their names protected while her story is dissected, piece by painful piece, for proof?
Because the comfort of the predator has always mattered more than the truth of the victim.
She whispers her pain and they demand a microphone, a lie detector, and a time machine.
He stares into nothingness and they ask if maybe he misread a hug.
They ask if maybe she invited it, if maybe he misunderstood, if maybe, just maybe the wound is exaggerated.
But they never ask why the wound exists in the first place.
They never turn their gaze to the man who lingers too long at the edge of the playground.
Never to the woman who tells a child, “Don’t tell your parents or they won’t love you anymore.”
Never to the trusted friend who becomes a shadow in the night.
Instead, they ask the child to explain.
They ask her to relive.
To remember every breath.
To describe the pattern on the ceiling and the exact weight of shame.
And when she cannot, they call it fiction.
So no, it’s not silence that sustains the cycle.
It’s the dinner table where an uncle’s hands are ignored.
It’s the family that chooses reunion peace over a daughter’s panic.
It’s the teacher who turns away.
The pastor who prays but never acts.
The neighbor who heard something but "didn’t want to get involved."
It’s not silence. It’s complicity.
The comfort we give to the ones who deserve none that’s what keeps this darkness alive.
It’s in every laugh they share without consequence.
In every handshake they receive after the storm.
In every time we look at the child and say, “Are you sure?”
This is a world that forgets children’s pain.
This is a world that also remembers predators too kindly.
Let the questions change. Let the stories be heard without dissection. Let justice be weightier than reputation. Let healing begin not with the child’s confession but with the predator’s removal.
Because until the answers change,
the cycle continues.
The next child learns silence.
The next predator learns confidence.
And history keeps calling it coincidence
when it’s actually complicity.