What are parents doing?

So, Superguy has a thing for the FoxNews website. I would link to it, but I don't know how. Anyway, as it was just sitting on the computer screen, I read an article about "special needs" twin sisters who have gone missing. The headline was horrifying -- twin girls, both gone? I pictured three year olds in pink frilly dresses and an estranged relative who had decided to simply take them off so he/she could be in charge of the little sweeties...

But no. These girls are 16, and the picture shows them to be beautiful and ordinarily dressed teens; their father describes them as "mentally slow" and that they both still play with dolls but want to "meet boys."

It turns out they have been using their computer(s?) a lot lately. The father was unaware that they had seven MySpace sites -- he thought they were using the computer for homework.

Then it also turns out that they have "run away" before, but had always been back within a day. But on the day they went missing, they went out near the road, clearly hanging around, waiting for someone. Sure enough, someone drove up, the girls got into the car, and that was the last anyone has seen of them.

There are SO MANY THINGS wrong with this situation, even aside from the fact that vulnerable young women have disappeared. Here are my questions:

1. These girls are mentally slow, so much so that they were in the special program at their high school, yet their relatives were not at all alert to their frightening habit of "running away"? When they went out toward the road and stood there, looking for somebody apparently, why didn't someone go out and ask them what in the world they were doing? Why didn't someone make them wait in the house, and tell them their "ride" could just jolly well come on in and meet the parents?

2. Since when could young women with mental challenges be expected to be safe on the Internet? Having an Internet connection is like having a miniature Mall of America right in your own home, except without the security guards. Anyone could be there, anyone could persuade a vulnerable youth to reveal information she shouldn't.

3. What are parents today thinking? How trustworthy is our culture? Every other magazine, billboard, and pop song reveals our cultural attitude toward young girls. They are to be sexually desired, displayed, egged on toward immodesty and lack of restraint, given "freedom." In other words, young women are basically beautiful animals, to be cultivated for the purposes of the use and pleasure of others. They are to be taught that this is normal and that they will enjoy it a lot -- after all, look at all the young beautiful female rock stars and movie actresses and how much they end up enjoying what they become (B. Spears, the Olsen twins, etc etc etc). Parents who attempt to take their teenage girls out of this altogether deserve, according to popular thinking, the scorn and contempt of almost everybody but definitely of the girls, who are to have the "freedom" to go out and suck up the poison and lick their lips while they do.

So many times when I get into conversations about this topic, I invariably hear from people that "you can't make a girl live in a bubble" and that "you can't protect them from everything." That's true. And certainly even mentally challenged girls have free will and consciences, to the degree that they have understanding. But let's just put it this way -- my children aren't going to face the culture without their parents right by their side. We are not going to just put them on the rowboat and wave goodbye while the sharks swarm around, just because that's what somebody who has written a book says is best. When, God willing, my girls (and boys) are teens, they are going to have to work a hell of a lot harder than these missing young women did to get that "free."

And quite frankly, I don't care if it makes them despise me for a while. My children aren't animals. They aren't objects. They are enfleshed souls -- shining, awe-inspiring, immortal, and deserving only the purest and highest that we can offer them. I won't allow someone to hand them a snake when they're asking for bread. And if, as children, they reach for the snake, I am going to grab their hands and hold them, really tightly if necessary.