How to stop child molestation? Try addressing the actual predators for once | Opinion

The author is a licensed clinical social worker with 22 years of experience working with survivors of childhood trauma.

As I saw the recent mass arrests in a Greenville, SC, pedophilia sting, I noticed none of the offenders were transgender or immigrants. It perfectly highlighted the dishonesty of the movement to “protect children” that has been led by the Republican Party over the last decade.

A decade ago, North Carolina Republicans passed HB2, dubbed by many “the bathroom bill,” under the guise of “protecting our daughters from transgender people in bathrooms trying to molest them.” I remember being in a barber shop in West Charlotte in a group of fellow Black men where someone parroted the pitch and said it was “important that we protect our daughters.”

For the past 22 years, I have worked with survivors of sexual, physical, emotional, and psychological abuse. I chimed in, noting that in my 22 years of working with survivors, what I know is that most people sexually abusing children are cisgender men, just like most of us here, living as straight men. I have heard about abuse from fathers, mothers, uncles, aunts, brothers, cousins, scout leaders, coaches, pastors, and priests among others.

You know who I have not heard as the culprits of this child sexual abuse? Transgender people. In my professional experience, they are simply trying to go to a bathroom that is safe for them, as they are more likely to be a victim of harm than to carry it out.

After I raised this point and the room fell silent, another customer chimed in, noting he had recently finished serving 10 years in prison. He responded, “He’s right. In prison, the people who messed with kids looked like regular dudes. The ‘sissies’ just kept to themselves and tried to stay safe.”

I explained that the GOP dangled fear and ignorance most of us had about transgender people and sexual abuse to pass a law that prevented counties from raising the minimum wage, prevented everyone including us from suing in cases of workplace discrimination, serving the interests of the elite, while not making a single child safer.

Nearly a decade later, our current president campaigned by bombarding us with anti-transgender ads during football games, after previously campaigning on building a wall to keeping out “Mexican rapists” while using ICE to target immigrant families. More broadly, Republicans successfully campaigned against transgender folks and drag queens, pretending that they were protecting children. Key word: Pretending.

Whether we are looking at the largely white male elites trafficking minors in the Epstein files, a president successfully campaigning against every Republican member of Congress who broke rank and pushed for full file release, or the six people including former law enforcement busted in the child sex sting in Greenville, know this: immigrants and transgender folks trying to safely use the restroom are not who’s been molesting and trafficking kids. According to the US Sentencing Commission, of the people charged in child pornography cases, 99.1% were men, 71% were white, and 95% were US citizens. So, targeting transgender folks and immigrants does nothing to protect children. But in a country literally built on African human trafficking by the same subgroup, child protection’s never been the goal.

Ultimately, the Republican agenda of defunding public education and taking away food and healthcare while protecting actual child abusers does little to protect children. Protect the economic interests of the elite? Yes. Protecting toxic theology of Christian Nationalism? Yes. Protecting patriarchy? Definitely. Protecting the perceived value of whiteness? Absolutely. But protecting actual children and survivors who’ve been sexually abused? Ask Marjorie Taylor Greene, Thomas Massie, and Nancy Mace what happens to you politically as a Republican doing the bare minimum there.

Justin Perry MSW, LCSW, LCAS, CSI, is founder of Perry Counseling Healing and Recovery in Charlotte.

This story was originally published June 19, 2026 at 5:00 AM with the headline "How to stop child molestation? Try addressing the actual predators for once | Opinion."