Children of the corn

In 1977, thriller novelist Stephen King published a short fiction titled, “Children of the Corn” which later was adapted for film in a sequel of nine versions and plot variations.

Despite the variations to the suspenseful plots and gory conclusions, the story always boils down to the same reprise, namely, vengeful children forming themselves into a cult that drives them crazy and diabolically possessed whose obsession was to murder the adults in their vicinity.

In short, as one critic averred, it is about the children getting back at adults for whatever wrong the latter have done against the former.

It is a movie about children but has always been rated “restricted” — for adults only, since children viewers may develop the idea!

In reality, however, they are beginning to be metamorphosed into such little monsters capable of doing horrific criminal acts. Hence, many countries have already lowered the age of the criminal liability of children as low as seven years old, for instance, in Singapore and Thailand.

The Philippines has followed suit by pressing the panic button on a seemingly uncontrollable situation of juvenile criminality becoming no longer a concern but a real peace and order situation. Ongoing are the debates and deliberations on the age of criminal responsibility.

The House, going against the recommendation of President Rodrigo Duterte to pin it down to nine years old, approved on second reading a 12-year-old age of liability for children in conflict with the law. The continuing discussions on the bill would still warm the benches of the halls of the Senate plenary.

But, of course, we never asked the opinion of the children themselves.

Can we have as resource persons some representatives from the children sector, not those coached by social welfare caretakers or by advocacy groups? I am pretty sure there would be a perspective totally different from the lawmakers and adults themselves.

If the legislators are inputting criminal liability to as low as nine years old, then it is implying that they possess a reasoned and deliberate disposition, hence why not view their minds on the issue that directly affects them.

Unable to articulate their plight, the children may have been sending subliminally their message to the world of grownups that they are getting back at the adults for being wronged, abused, abandoned, manipulated, traumatized especially by those people who are supposed to shield them, such as parents, school, church and society in general.

Most of these kids are outcropped from dysfunctional families, mostly broken marriages and abusive or neglectful parents.

In one of my counseling sessions, a single mother complaining about her 14-year-old son’s stubbornness chided her son in front of me shouting, “I should have choked you to death when you were an infant!”

Such unsavory remarks could trigger in the puerile mind some sinister action that the mother may regret in the future!

And there is the school that is supposed to protect the children from rampant bullying and discrimination.

The church has its share of traumatizing the children when altar secrets reveal untold stories of clerics feasting on the innocence of the juvenile altar boys.

In the same vein, government and society in general have continued to allow the children to wallow in poverty, neglect, illiteracy and abuse where they become more of victims rather than perpetrators of criminal activity.

The “children of the corn” are taking their revenge against the adults in our society today.

And they are doing it in the most insidious but devastating manner, namely, destroying their own future and, of course, the future of this country, since the youth are the future of society: but, sadly, are now becoming the despair of the present.