8-16-2012 Global:Are you a man? You might be a pedophile - at least according to Virgin Airlines. An upstanding male passenger was asked to move seats on a Virgin flight from Australia recently and was informed it was because of the airline's policy prohibiting men from sitting next to unaccompanied children. Virgin is not alone. Apparently many international airlines, including British Airways, have this policy in effect because according to their reasoning, the "overwhelming majority" of sex offenders are male.
"We're trying to prevent child victimization. We know the overwhelming majority of sex offenders are male, so by removing that situation you're lowering the risk," said John Shehan of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children in the United States.
At first I tried to figure out the problem with a man next to a kid on a flight. How do you molest a stranger in public? It seems like the same risk of getting randomly stabbed - should we all be seated four feet apart on flights? And if men can't sit next to kids on flights, should they be banned from sitting next to them at restaurants or passing by them at the mall? Should we put blinders on all men, bind their hands and cover women and children in beekeeper suits? Sarcasm, of course. When I first heard of this story I was confused about what, exactly, was the risk of a man sitting next to a child in a highly regulated environment like a flight. No one has lighters or blades on flights anymore, shall we worry about letting men carry candy? And what is a good pedophile when stripped of his scary white van??
