Replies

Selara : My original question on the whole thing, was how could a lifestyle that parents felt compelled to hide or conceal from their children, be defensible?

HamiltonJay : Quite frankly the fact you ask this question makes me think you are one of two things, 1) a person who has never had children or 2) very foolish.

You went on to state that a parent who gives their children intimate details of their sex life, would not be a good parent, and I agree with that.

The keyword in my posts has been lifestyle. Lifestyle means the typical way of life for an individual, couple or family. For instance, when a medical professional, who resides in Chicago, spends a week camping in Alaska, without electricity, phone, etc...it would still be said that his lifestyle is probably urban professional. The week of roughing it in the wilderness was an event, but it was not TYPICAL of his way of life.

A single woman, lives in a crack house in New Orleans, along with her two small children. The lifestyle of this family unity will be much different from the lifestyle of the married, non drug using, monogamous couple with two children, who live but a few blocks away from the crack house.

The lifestyle of swinging, by it's very definition, involves a revolving door of various persons, entering the lives of the couple, and possibly the family, who have sexual appetites differing from the average person. This is a different lifestly from a couple who commits to a monogamous marriage. Can you see that?

Children do not need to be told the details of anyone's sexual life, to see and experience the fruits of a chosen lifestyle. The child living in the crack house does not need to be told the details of drug use, to experience the results of that lifestyle.

There are a variety of reasons why swinging parents attempt to hide this lifestyle from their children, they know it is extremely difficult to instill values of commitment, loyalty, faithfulness when they live the opposite. It is fairly well known and established that children who are aware of multiple sexual partners with parents, often experience emotional problems, as well as feelings of betrayal and anger. Children do not like to be very different from their peers. If they wish their children to be involved in a religion, this lifestyle is in opposition to most religions

There are a multitude of reasonings, but the bottom line is that swingers DO attempt to hide their lifestyle from their children. Monogamous couples do NOT attempt to hide their lifestyle from their children.

Incidentially, I have children, and I am not foolish. My children have no desire to hear the details of sexual intimacy with my husband, but they do experience a security from observing our obvious affection and love for one another. They have no fear that any arguement may lead to one of us leaving, because they know..they know..we are faithful to each other.

I hope that I have shown that events may come and go, but a lifestyle is a way of life...the typical and usual way of life.

In this particular case, the lifestyle of letting comparative strangers, who are intoxicated and have heightened sexual appetites, while the parents are intoxicated, into one's home with sleeping children could have contributed to this tragedy.

Danielle van Dam — Victim of "Alternative Lifestyles?"

FrontPageMagazine.com | February 13, 2002

MAYBE, JUST MAYBE it was a total stranger who abducted seven-year-old Danielle van Dam from her San Diego home almost two weeks ago. Some thug could have picked her parents’ house at random and snuck in during the middle of the night, evading detection despite the home-security system. Somehow, the intruder could have found his way up to Danielle’s bedroom and removed her against her will—again, without being noticed.

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Then again, maybe not.

The practical realities and crime statistics—less than 1 percent of the 800,000 children reported missing in the U.S. last year were abducted by someone unconnected to the family—suggest otherwise. Yet to judge by the initial coverage of Danielle’s disappearance on national TV, one would think her kidnapping had to be the exception to the rule.

The story, as first told on The Today Show, Good Morning America, The Early Show, Larry King Live, and America's Most Wanted, mirrored the account of Danielle’s parents, Brenda and Damon: Brenda was out partying that Friday night with friends at a San Diego nightspot. Damon put the kids to bed around 10. Brenda and her pals showed up around 2:30 and joined Damon for some pizza. The friends then left, and Brenda and Damon went to bed without first checking in on their daughter. They didn’t discover that she was missing until 9 a.m. Saturday morning.

As usual, the story behind the story has been available mostly outside the establishment media—on the Internet and talk radio.

Last Friday, San Diego talk-show host Rick Roberts presented his listeners with an alternative scenario for what might have happened. According to his "reliable" source "high in law enforcement," the van Dams are "swingers," and not in the dancing sense. They engage in "lots of wife-swapping," and reportedly did so in their garage the night Danielle disappeared. According to rumors circulating like mad on local talk shows and Internet bulletin boards, the van Dams lock their garage from the inside during their swingers’ parties to make sure Danielle and her two brothers don’t stumble in on the festivities.

That would explain why the van Dams might have failed to notice an intruder breaking into their home and walking off with their child. It also provides a motive for neighbor David Westerfield, the only suspect thus far identified by San Diego police. According to the rumors—which are, it should be noted, only that—Westerfield was a frustrated, would-be swinger who wanted to attend the van Dams’ soirees, but was denied admission for lack of a partner.

There’s more to the Westerfield angle: He saw Mrs. van Dam at the bar earlier in the evening, where, he claims, they danced (which she denies). He also high-tailed it out of San Diego and into the desert the next morning, which was enough to make police suspicious. So far, they have searched his home, where they found child pornography, and seized two of his vehicles, but they haven’t sought his arrest.

It’s easy to speculate by connecting the dots: At the nightclub, Westerfield might have learned about the orgy planned later in the evening. Mindful that Danielle’s parents would be distracted, he could have used the opportunity to sneak into their home and take her, thereby satisfying his perverted sexual appetites and exacting revenge against the van Dams for not including him in theirs.

It’s just a theory, and it’s rooted purely in conjecture, but it’s also the best lead available so far, which raises a worthwhile question: Why have so many in the press, the national TV media in particular, been reluctant to pursue it?

Surely it’s not just that the stories are unsubstantiated. That, after all, never kept the media from investigating claims of Nicole Brown Simpson’s drug use, the basis of O.J. defenders’ absurd charge that drug lords were "the real killer."

For their part, the van Dams have yet to deny the innuendos categorically. Asked about the alleged swinging on a San Diego TV station, Mrs. van Dam replied that "rumors are rumors," and "they have absolutely nothing to do with this investigation." Newsweek, one of few national media outlets that’s questioned the van Dams’ telling of events, quotes their spokeswoman, Sara Fraunces, as issuing the classic non-denial denial: The van Dams "do not lead a perfect lifestyle," she said, but that’s immaterial to the matter at hand.

Fraunces no doubt chose her words carefully. In the last 35 years, the term "lifestyle" has become not only the code word for any sort of sexual deviance, but also the quick way to claim a certain immunity from inconvenient questioning about it. This is the same logic Bill Clinton and his defenders used to rationalize perjury and lying to the American public, because it was "just about sex." For Gary Condit, it justified denying his affair to Washington police. His lifestyle took precedence over their duty to find Chandra Levy, dead or alive.

Like the "right to privacy" (a term invoked almost exclusively in sexual matters), the "lifestyle" claim is an appeal to the sexual revolution and its promise of an uninhibited sex life free of all responsibilities and moral judgment. It supersedes even laws, justice, or, in the case of Danielle van Dam and others, human life. To many of the reporters covering the van Dam story, the couple’s right to privacy similarly transcends the need for a complete and thorough investigation of their daughter’s disappearance.

But the couple’s "personal life" is a legitimate subject of inquiry, and not just for investigators. With their appeals to the press and calls for volunteers to help look for Danielle, the van Dams have made the investigation into their daughter’s kidnapping a very public affair. Privacy concerns should keep neither police nor reporters from pursuing all viable leads—certainly not when there’s a chance Danielle may still be alive.

It may be, as Mrs. van Dam claims, that Danielle’s abduction has nothing to do with her parents’ sexual predilections, but at this point, there’s no way for the van Dams to know that for sure. If they are lying about that Friday night’s events, then their credibility on all matters must be called into doubt. And even if they are telling the truth about that night, but they hosted sex parties in their home on others, that could yield a long list of potential suspects—people with unhealthy sexual behaviors who know the lay of the house.

The fetishization of "privacy" shouldn’t keep the van Dams from being forthright, or preclude the press from doing its job. The life of a little girl is at stake.

So, when Mrs. Van Dam went out for the night the people she left with are called, in every account of the story, her friends. Yet, when the same people come back later that night home with her, they are "strangers"?

How do you figure?

"In this particular case, the lifestyle of letting comparative strangers, who are intoxicated and have heightened sexual appetites, while the parents are intoxicated, into one's home with sleeping children could have contributed to this tragedy."

According to the police statements, the people who where in that house both Friday and Saturday nights have been cleared of any involvement, so your point is moot.

The fact is that children are kidnapped by sick, perverted a$$holes who get sexually aroused by little kids. The overwhelming majority of swingers are adults who enjoy sexual contact with like-minded adults. If that was not true, and considering just how many swingers are out there, we would be reading this story constantly, wouldn't we?

Look through the thread and you'll see all the FReepers equating pedophilia with adultery. What a bunch of crap. Pedophiles are sick people, and in a class of their own.

The person who kidnapped Danielle, has probably murdered her by now. If we catch the SOB, the Van Dams are going to be put on trial for their lifestyle. There's nothing illegal in what they do, mind you, but the scumbucket who killed this child will take a clue from those who are placing blame on the parents here and elsewhere, to try and get away with his inhumane crime.

I tend to disagree with your assessments, lifestyle is a term that is thrown about and rarely means the definition you interpret. Is a person who swings part of the "swinger lifestyle"? Can simply sex outside of your primary relationship by itself even be considered a lifestyle? If so every person that has ever committed adultery of any sort is part of the "swinging lifestyle". Something that I highly doubt most people would agree with.

There definately are persons who engage in acts as part of a lifestyle... However, I don't consider those who go to the bar weekly to be of the "Bar Lifestyle" so I certainly am not going to consider everyone who had sex outside their marriage to be part of the "swinging lifestyle".

You are making a big jump from the still unsubstantiated allegations that these two were swingers, to now are also part of the swinging lifestyle. I own a motorcycle, a Harley in fact, but I don't consider myself part of the Biker lifestyle... I have friends that are, but I am not.

If my memory serves the last studies they did on swinging by any reputable group found that in general swingers engaged in their activity on average of around once a month, and as such could not classify it as an obsession or compulsion. They also found that most of them were pretty ordinary in every other way.. Now with that being said there are the "lifestyle" folks who live it 24/7, just as with bikers etc. But as I have said, somehow we have gone from unsubstantiated allegations of swinging, to now being lifestyle swingers.... This may all be true, though as of now none has been proven (though I suspect they likely may have been swingers) and we still don't have a link as to how this contributed to their child's disappearance even if it is true.

As to children's adjustments regarding lifestyles in general, I have seen poorly adjusted children who come from stable homes as often or as not as homes where the parents engaged in some other "oustide the norm" activity... Nudists, Swinging, BDSM etc... I may not agree with the parent's picadillos, but I have been around and seen too much to jump on this bandwagon that because these parents had sexual secrets they must be bad parents... this is ludicrous.

The lifestyle of swinging, by it's very definition, involves a revolving door of various persons, entering the lives of the couple, and possibly the family, who have sexual appetites differing from the average person. This is a different lifestly from a couple who commits to a monogamous marriage. Can you see that?

Your definition of "lifestyle" and mine are a bit different. As I have stated before, in the studies I have read on this topic do not support your whole assumptions. An average of doing something once a month is hardly a lifestyle.

Children do not need to be told the details of anyone's sexual life, to see and experience the fruits of a chosen lifestyle. The child living in the crack house does not need to be told the details of drug use, to experience the results of that lifestyle.

Ok, now here is where you really lose me, yes living in a crack house definately has adverse affects on all living there, however, your attempt to draw a parrallel between growing up surrounded by people shooting up, and the fact your parents go out once a month, are completely different beasts. Even if the parents during that time do engage in sexual activities outside the norm, I fail to see how you draw a conclusion. It seems to me that you definately have a preconcieved notion of the typical swinger not based on research but on Pornography.

There are a variety of reasons why swinging parents attempt to hide this lifestyle from their children, they know it is extremely difficult to instill values of commitment, loyalty, faithfulness when they live the opposite.

Ok, now stop right here... this is where you REALLY are out of line. Commitment, loyalty and faithfulness cannot be instilled by persons who engage in sex acts outside of their primary relationship? Well if that is true at least 70% of the people walking the earth will never understand those concepts. Your assume first of all that the marriage involved vows regading sexual relatoins, which is not neccessarily the case. Number 2 you assume that simply by the fact the couple for whatever reason chooses to engage in sexual activities with others that they are not loyal or committed to each other... as though simply because they have had sex with others they will walk away from their spouse or family... This is a HUGE leap of logic. Divorce is no higher among swingers than the general population from what I have read, in fact I believe it is slightly lower.

It is fairly well known and established that children who are aware of multiple sexual partners with parents, often experience emotional problems, as well as feelings of betrayal and anger. Children do not like to be very different from their peers. If they wish their children to be involved in a religion, this lifestyle is in opposition to most religions.

Again we return to the question of a parent exposing a child to their sexual activities. Since we both agree they should not be exposed to the details, why do you then condemn those who deviate from the norm for exposing their children? IF they don't expost their children because it is ADULT in nature, you condemn them for hiding it.. no parent should be talking about the intimate details of their sex life with a young child, no matter how wild or prudish their sex life may be. I personally believe more kids have found out their parents were having sex with others through finding them cheating than finding them swinging... but I suppose that isn't important either.

There are a multitude of reasonings, but the bottom line is that swingers DO attempt to hide their lifestyle from their children. Monogamous couples do NOT attempt to hide their lifestyle from their children.

Again we return to the lifestyle question, I suggest honestly that your impression of the typical swinger is quite skewed. Just as the average homosexual is not down in soho with 25 partners or more a night, the typical swinger from what I know is not either. I fail to see how as I have said, a couple going out once a month is a lifestyle, or how the activities they engage in in those adult settings away from their kids somehow adversely affects their family lifestyle. Pick up some human sexuality studies, you might learn a thing or two.