An Anarchist Addresses the Mark Foley Scandal

I've made my first essay contribution to the Center for a Stateless Society press outreach project. I'm not too interested in the whole Foleygate scandal, but I figured anarchists should have a response. The essay is entitled Child Exploitation and the Myth of Moral Management. Here's an excerpt:

Child exploitation is an evil that has plagued humanity throughout its history. Social awareness of child welfare and consensus on its definition is relatively recent but on the riser. Following this trend, many in Congress work continuously to address this issue, creating new legislative prerogatives for the State to interdict predators and protect children. How, then, do we reconcile these goals with the case of Mark Foley, a Congressman recently caught engaging in sexually explicit conversations with a minor? Perhaps those who seek to protect us from the nameless, faceless criminals out there have completely misunderstood the problem. The body empowered with enacting nationwide laws, creating criteria for punishing people, and directing the full power of the State contains the very corruption it seeks to root out among us. It makes one wonder: whom can we trust?