“For nothing is hidden that will not be brought to light, and nothing is secret that will not become known” (Luke 8:17).
This warning remains valid today: suspected child abuse cannot be silenced, nor can it be turned into a political issue. And yet, in Parliament, we saw precisely the opposite.
Zsolt Semjén’s speech on Monday was a sad example of how the protection of children can be reduced to a political back-and-forth. What should be one of the most sensitive and serious issues for any society was, in a single move, redirected by government communication into a fight against “foreign intelligence services” and “Commie tactics”. The script is familiar: the Kaleta case, the Völner–Schadl scandal, the bailiff system — the same logic applies every time.
Instead of guilty silence, there was loud self-defence. Semjén had not consulted, had not prepared; he spoke out of anger. Instead of making it clear that every suspicion must be investigated, and that the interests of every child come before party politics, he took offence at the “Beelzebub accusation”. In doing so, he himself brought the rumour onto the official political agenda. We saw the same in the Kaleta case: those in power chose silence, not investigation. Now there was noise, but the same thing happened: defence instead of substance.
It was no coincidence that Antal Rogán stared rigidly ahead. Viktor Orbán and László Kövér also watched in shock. And when the statement was made that “there has been no such vileness since the regime change”, Lajos Kósa simply said: “there has.” But looking across their faces, one thing was clear: the Fidesz communication machine knows exactly that what had been whispered until now has become national news. And this was not done by the opposition, but by the Deputy Prime Minister himself. Instead of political self-defence, it became a political own goal — just as in the Völner–Schadl case, where, after the exposure, all that remained was damage control.
Instead of responsibility, the search for enemies. Bence Tuzson produced a report and declared that foreign intelligence services could be behind the whole matter. This framing is nothing new: whenever there is trouble, there is always an “external enemy”. But what message does this send? That child protection is not a matter of internal responsibility, but of external attack. This logic suggests that the child is not what matters — preserving the image of power is.
Retaliation and threats. Máté Kocsis’s chilling words were that “unprecedented retaliation” awaits everyone who took part in spreading the matter. This sentence is not about child protection; it is about the fear of those in power. It evokes the darkest moments of history and reveals the reflex of the system: not to clarify, but to silence.
And what does Viktor Orbán say? According to the Prime Minister, the whole thing is “dark insinuation and cheap lies”, which he described as “Commie tactics”. But is it not precisely a form of “Commie tactics” when those in power push every sensitive issue into the framework of enemy-seeking, and use this to avoid a genuine investigation?
In today’s interview on Kossuth Radio, Orbán said: “if someone accuses others of paedophile offences without facts, they are committing a crime.” I ask: where was this strictness when, for years, government communication blurred the LGBTQ community together with the paedophile narrative? Did the lack of facts not matter then? Did the gravity of the accusations not matter? And then, after five minutes, he closed the whole matter with a laugh: it cannot be easy now for those living in Szőlő Street.
Where is the confrontation? Where is the child in all this? Where is the genuine reckoning with the fact that if even the shadow of suspicion arises, it must be treated with the utmost seriousness? Child abuse is not a political issue. It is not communication damage control, not enemy-seeking, not a question of party loyalty.
“But whoever causes one of these little ones to stumble, it would be better for him to have a millstone hung around his neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea” (Matthew 18:6).
The message is clear: sin, and the covering up of sin, bring the gravest judgement. The child comes first. Not power. Not party interests. Not communication strategy.
Semjén’s speech, and the governing parties’ reactions to it, show that political interest has once again prevailed over human responsibility. And so the question remains: who will truly protect the children?
It is no coincidence that my thoughts return to this again and again. As a writer, I have recently been deeply preoccupied with how children live in the world of children’s homes, and what protection means to them — or what its absence means. Perhaps this is why I hear it even more sensitively when politics tries to reduce an issue to a game, when in reality every sentence should be about the most vulnerable.
David Dorosz
Featured image: Ksenia Makagonova on Unsplash