Available on Amazon Prime until June 30 is a really amazing cop show. I think the show is from Belgium but I’ve never even thought about Belgium TV before so it seems I must be mistaken. The main character, Professor T, is a mentally ill Criminology Professor who is approached by a Federal Police Detective who had been his student. He has serious OCD and hallucinates occasionally as he is struggling with what looks like unresolved grief over his Father’s Suicide.
So, speaking of unresolved grief: the show occasionally discusses divorce and crime. It could do more. In the U.S. family court is the most violent court there is.
Criminology, apparently, is connected with Sociology and Sociologists will study pretty much anything. There is a Sociology textbook called The Family written by Philip N. Cohen which has a chapter on Divorce. It references some studies but, as usual, doesn’t really handle the topics with much interest. I took a class on Families with this textbook and did all my projects on Divorce but the teacher often corrected me on my negative (realistic) attitude about Children of Divorce. If you simply combine the words Children and Divorce you are conjuring up negativity.
So, in a very sick sort of way, I was thrilled to hear that Sex Offenders, at least in terms of Belgium TV, are highly likely to come from a family which divorced before they turned 16. They don’t give percentages and I don’t know if this is a statistical fact. The detectives mention Divorce as a motivating factor in a couple of other episodes. Although, I would prefer to hear about Children of Divorce in a more constructive way than just knowing that we all grow up to be criminals, it’s great to know that someone out there can at least speak the truth openly in public. Divorce is so stressful for a child that it makes the child much more likely to be a sex offender. Why is this? Is it Mommie’s boyfriends? Is it Daddy’s boyfriends? It is molestation by Mommy’s husband or by step-siblings? Is it just being left to be taken care of by strange adults because no one is home? Is it because divorced parents are more likely to engage in addictive behaviors?
Spoiled Children of Divorce 