Parenting & Family Quote by Jim Ryun

The line lands like a public-service alarm, not a politician's flourish. Coming from Jim Ryun - a celebrated middle-distance runner turned public official - it trades on a particular kind of American credibility: the clean-cut, disciplined athlete as guardian of youth. The intent is straightforward: frame sexual abuse and exploitation as an escalating crisis that deserves urgent attention, resources, and likely tougher policy. The word "growing" does heavy lifting, turning individual crimes into a trendline, a systemic failure that can't be dismissed as isolated scandals.

The subtext is about moral authority and coalition-building. "Our children" is a carefully chosen pronoun: it recruits every listener into a shared responsibility, while also nudging the issue into the realm of family values and civic duty. It sidesteps partisan specificity - no institutions named, no perpetrators described - which keeps the statement broadly wearable. That vagueness is also strategic: it allows the speaker to signal seriousness without committing to a contested diagnosis (church cover-ups, school systems, online platforms, trafficking panics) that would force clearer accountability.

Context matters because Ryun's identity is part of the message. Athletes often function as cultural stand-ins for innocence and aspiration; when one speaks about protecting children, it echoes the idea that sports and community spaces should be safe, formative arenas. The sentence is built to travel: short, quotable, morally unassailable. Its power is less in what it specifies than in the permission it grants - to treat child protection as an urgent public problem, and to demand action from institutions that too often prefer silence.