window on our ugly world

Amongst other cheerless headlines on MSN's newspage, such as "Maddie case: Police search pet crematorium" and "Man forced to dig own grave, court told" come these two gems of humanity:

Student 'gave teacher oral sex on bus'

Riley, a teacher at the 17-year-old's school, had a two-month affair with her involving not just oral sex while he drove a minivan and chatted on a mobile phone with a colleague, but supplying her with cocaine as well, because apparently "sex and coke is mind-blowing." He told her this at the beginning of what ended up being 400 pages of emails, text messages and internet messages they exchanged during the course of the relationship, which reportedly started after the pair did mouth-to-mouth Sambuca shots during a drinking game at the high school.

Teen jailed over brutal rape of grandmother

A 15-year-old boy has been sentenced to 13 years in prison (non-parole period of only 8 years) bashing, raping and threatening to kill an 83-year-old woman. He dragged her off a path into a nearby creek bed and raped her. He punched her face so brutally that her own daughter (who had gone looking for her mother after she didn't return from her walk as expected and ended up hearing her cries and rescuing her) could not recognise her. The judge said:

The violence with which you attacked your elderly and vulnerable victim is simply beyond the comprehension of any decent person.

Exactly.

But decent people are getting a little thinner on the ground. People say the world is getting better. I don't think so. These are just two stories that made it to the press. What about all the abuse going on that we don't hear about, families where 'disfunction' is a pseudonym for cruelty and manipulation, teachers/scoutmasters/clergymen who use their authority to seduce and attack. And when you extend that to the world at large, with its 'shame' killings, child sex trade, human trafficking, websites where pedophiles get together to exchange tips on trapping children, female genitalia mutilation, sweat shops, drug mules, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc till you want to throw up just thinking about what exists outside (and for some people inside) your own four walls, some days it's hard to even see that good exists.