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ANDREW VACHSS
To say that Andrew Vachss is a man on a mission is an understatement. For nearly forty years, Mr. Vachss, a 1965 graduate of Adelbert College, has worked relentlessly for a single cause: the protection of children. The Manhattan-born Mr. Vachss has committed his life to this cause. His early career included stints running a reentry center for ex-convicts and a juvenile prison, a period in which he came to the conclusion that has directed the rest of his life: “Child protection and crime prevention are inextricably intertwined.” His New York City law and consulting practice, which he founded in 1976, is devoted exclusively to representing children. His acclaimed fiction, including the “Burke” series of novels, and nonfiction and textbook writing shine a bright light on the realities of child abuse—all the while advancing strategies to combat it. His lectures and website (“The Zero,” at www.vachss.com) are additional methods in his fight against people who hurt children. His ultimate goal, says Mr. Vachss, is a broad change in the attitudes toward child abuse and the laws meant to prevent it.
The biggest single drive force in my life is anger. And the genesis of that anger is the abuse, the exploitation, the commercial trafficking, the—there is no other name for it—the torture of children. Without the anger, there’s nothing.
People have got a lot of excuses for not acting.
I never claimed that I do what I do because I love children. I admit freely I do it because I hate the people who prey on them.
What’s given me the most satisfaction is watching a perpetrator taken out of action.
My job is to get the child in the hands of healers. And what that feels like is not more complicated than this: I did my job.
If you could put all the people who hurt children for pleasure and profit in one room and give me a weapon big enough to blow that room into ashes, I would personally carry it in there and detonate it, laughing. But I don’t have any such delusions. The only way there’s going to be lasting, substantial change is if the entire system changes.
Unless and until there is a lobby that says our single issue is child protection, and how you behave toward that issue will determine our block of votes, there will not be substantial, fundamental change in child protection in America.
The first time I encountered an infant with a sexually transmitted disease—and I don’t mean congenitally transmitted; I mean transmitted by forcible sex—those little red dots that dance in front of my eyes, those little red dots of hate, they have never actually gone away.
Tenacity is what wins fights.
If I had to pick a piece of technology that most significantly impacted child pornography, I would take the Polaroid camera way before I’d take the Internet.
The myth that a male who has sex with a male child is a homosexual—as opposed to a predatory pedophile—is endemic.
People don’t like the word “evil,” because, to them, it has a religious context. And also it’s overused. But you have to distinguish from “sick,” because a sick person doesn’t plot and doesn’t plan and doesn’t profit. Plot, plan, profit. If you see those words, you’re not dealing with somebody who’s sick. You’re dealing with somebody who’s evil.
The most long lasting, deepest scarring form of child abuse is, without question, emotional abuse.
Of the cases that I’ve been the proudest of—the ones that change the way we do business—is one in which I brought an action against a pregnant woman while she was pregnant, asking the court for an order that, upon the birth of the child, the child be taken into state protective custody. Because I could prove, and I did in fact prove in court, [that there existed] beyond-overwhelming imminent danger to that child based on her conduct with all her previous children.
Children have been property since time immemorial.
You could completely eliminate child sexual abuse and there would still be a cornucopia of horror inflicted on children every single day—again, for pleasure, again, for profit.
There are manuals published on how to beat your child.
If I had to sum up the most important lesson of my life, it would be that behavior is the truth.
I work pretty much all the time. But I’m not complaining about that. It’s what gives me the greatest pleasure. And what I always hoped to be able to do.
After I’m gone, people can come up with their own assessments [of my efforts]. But they will say this: I died trying. 
As told to Ken Kesegich
Photograph by Mike Anderson, RedDoorStudio.com
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