The Real Victims of Fraud

It’s closer to home than you might think

The Calumny of Apelles by Sandro Botticelli, 1495 (Wikipedia - public domain)

“The poor man is ruined as soon as he begins to ape the rich.”— Publilius Syrus, c. 50 BC

When we talk about “the innocence of babes,” we tend to assign children an honorable persona, as if corruption doesn’t reach their angelic souls until some time later in life.

Most children begin to form full sentences when they’re two or three years old, and recent studies have shown that this is the same time they start to lie — usually to avoid punishment.

“When grown people speak of the innocence of children, they don’t really know what they mean. Pressed, they will go a step further and say, Well, ignorance then. The child is neither. There is no crime which a boy of eleven had not envisaged long ago. His only innocence is, he may not yet be old enough to desire the fruits of it, which is not innocence but appetite; his ignorance is, he does not know how to commit it, which is not ignorance but size.” — William Fau…