Debate Guide: Blame game

Individuals look for easy scapegoats on whom to blame their problems, and the state are willing to oblige. The blame game is far easier than any honest analysis of the deeper social problems and fundamental flaws in any one family or community.

At the societal level

The child molester/pedophile is used as a folk devil:

• In cases of widespread prostitution of adolescent girls in working class communities. The prostitution is willing, and pays for drug habits. A scapegoat class (in Britain, "Asian Men", i.e. Pakistanis) is always identified and blamed for the social consequences of poor parenting and multi-generational drug abuse. This is far more convenient than asking why certain communities (often white working class) are creating the supply side for street prostitution.

At the personal/family level

Consider a court trial we were informed about in the 00s:

• A man has been accused of having sexual relationships with teenage boys. The boys who engaged in sexual acts with the older man concerned, have violent parents who have raised them in a dirty, abusive environment. In reality, the parents have lost all faith in their children who are growing up with almost identical antisocial tendencies to their own. The parents have to project a better image of themselves in court; it's a matter of pride. So what do they do? The parents have been given an opportunity to ascribe blame for the consequences of their abusive and neglectful parenting. They have been given the opportunity to be the "good people", and just for a day, their delinquent children are the victims - and most certainly under great pressure to act as such.

Knowing this, how exactly would we expect the boys to behave in court?