Perhaps the Most Unpopular Post I’ll Ever Write
The shortest line in America these days: people willing to stand up for sex offenders. Well, I’m not sure I’d qualify as being in that line, but I am in the line for “having a tad of common sense when it comes to the problem of dealing with sex offenders”. Common sense is something that is sorely lacking in discussions on the subject, and evidence of that comes from this article:
Iowa Residency Laws Pushing Sex Offenders to Live at Campgrounds
Yeah, that’s exactly what we want: sex offenders living in campgrounds. Make you want to get away into the great outdoors this summer for a camping trip in Iowa? But many have, apparently, been pushed there by the hysteria that most of us have managed to get caught up in in 2006 America regarding the subject. Look, a sex crime is pathetic, can we all agree? Fine. It hurts people, often very innocent people. The perpetrators of such should face punishment. No question at all with that.
That said, we treat sex offenders as the lepers of modern society, more so than even murderers or people who perpetrate other violent crimes. I don’t want a sexual predator moving in next door, sure, but neither do I particularly want Freddy the Knife moving in either, nor some guy jailed several times for stealing from the neighbors (but there isn’t a “National Theft Offenders Registry”, is there?). The truth is that the vast majority of sex offenders are not predatory, and yet they’re all lumped into one big category. The supervisor quoted in the article has some good, common-sense comments to make, including the fact that 77% of sex offenses take place in the home. Statutory rape is a sex offense, and should be punished, but can we not all agree that there’s a significant difference between a sex crime taking place between two consenting people, one of whom might be underage by a few months or a year, and a guy who stalks little kids? And the truth is that the first is a far, far more common crime than the latter, which is the exception to the rule. It’s just that when we hear “sex crime”, we think of the latter; our minds run to the guy who kidnapped the little girl at the carwash in Florida, not the 21-year-old guy messing around with his underage girlfriend.
Now this is a distasteful subject to talk about, and I don’t mean to sound like I’m taking up for people who commit crimes that turn the stomach. But I do think that on this subject, we’ve lost a good bit of sanity. And further, we hurt a lot of other innocent people. Let’s say that a sex offender gets released from prison, and since he’s got to live somewhere, and since I live in an area that isn’t near a school or a park, he settles next to me. And let’s say that he’s not predatory; he’s a guy that made a bad mistake with a relative or his underage girlfriend. He finds a home in my neighborhood and settles in quietly, intent on getting on with his life, but he has to register, and so his mug goes up on the internet, with his next-to-my-house address posted prominently. Question: what happens to my property value, and the property value of everyone in the neighborhood? You got it, bub, irrespective of whether this fellow presents any more real threat than the guy on the other side who gets drunk and rowdy every Saturday night. Hence, because somebody goes insane with fear, I suffer needlessly. See my point?
What needs to happen is that folks who are deemed “predatory” need to be placed under strict, severe post-release conditions, and those who may be sex offenders, but not “predators”, need to serve their time fully, and then be free to get on with their lives once they’ve paid their debts to society.
In other words, sanity…
This phrase comes from the 1978 "Jonestown massacre" in which most members of the Peoples Temple cult, blindly following their leader Jim Jones, committed suicide by drinking cyanide-laced Kool-Aid.
Osborne: A Contrarian's Guide to Knowing God
Schlossberg: Idols For Destruction
3 Responses to “Perhaps the Most Unpopular Post I’ll Ever Write”
The above trackback should be to The SHEEP’S CRIB … the link is good just the name is wrong, a problem with having too many blogs.
Sorry!
John Gillmartin ~ Jul 24, 2006 at 5:12 pm
Difficult topic.
Last weekend, I went back to my parents’. I noticed a new family had moved in next door to them, and asked what had happened to the man who had lived there before. My dad explained that that man had gone to prison for “kiddy-fiddling”.
And then today, I sit on my train to work, open a newspaper and read all about how a local evangelical church pastor (now ex-pastor) is facing life imprisonment for crimes including grooming children for underage sex, rape of a boy and making pornographic images of children. I felt quite sick just reading it.
Go back a few years, and 8-year-old Sarah Payne was murdered by a paedophile. Rebekah Wade, then editor of the trashy Sunday newspaper “News of the World” launcher her “For Sarah” campaign. “For Sarah”, Ms Wade would aim to publish details of every man convicted of sexual offences. Of course, Ms Wade took the high-and-mighty stance that she was simply a humble, public-spirited journalist seeking to inform the public of what they have a right to know. And in her morality, she could not be help responsible for what happens- she just gives information as a good, decent, public-spirited journalist whose only concern is for the children of Britain. Yes, there might be a rise in circulation from panicked parents buying “News of the World” just to check that there were no paedophiles in their area, and she might get a bigger bonus as a result, but how could anyone with a soul believe that these had any influence in Ms Wade’s decision?
Incidentally, fast-forward a few years, and what is Ms Wade up to? Editor of “The Sun”. Why is “The Sun” so popular among men? Is it the news reports? The weather report? The sports section? Agony aunt column? Surely, it cannot be the “Page Three Girls”- scantily clad young ladies. The feminist Ms Wade, opposed to sexual exploitation of women, was happy to allow the “Page Three Girls” to continue, and was able to have 16-year-old “models” proclaiming that they looked younger. I wonder how many of the paedophiles that Ms Wade railed against were buying “The Sun” and drooling over Page Three?
Of course the obvious happens. Mistaken identities- and malice.
Not too far from me is Portsmouth, with its run-down Paulsgrove estate. The Paulsgrove demonstrations a few years back were headline local news (and sometimes national). These ladies decided that certain men were paedophiles and held protests outside their homes to drive them out- despite the police confirming that the men in question were not. It was interesting to see some the ladies interviewed- their evidence was often no more than “Of course, he is”, “Everyone knows he is”, “Sharon heard a bloke in the pub say that his mate thinks that John is..”. Any journalist foolish enough to challenge these would normally get a mouthful of foul language. The supreme irony was that this was done “to protect our children”. One single mother was leaving her 3-year-old daughter alone at home while she went out to demonstrate against these men “to protect her daughter”. Said 3-year-old got out of house and was found wandering the streets.
Now “Megan’s Law” hits headlines again. This is mainly due to internal Labour party politics, as media speculation as to when Tony Blair will go is intense (he has backtracked from his “a full third term” and is now “enough time before the next election to allow my successor to settle in to the job”), and a few days ago, John Prescott, the Deputy Prime Minister, dropped a very heavy hint that in September he and Blair will announce just when they will step down. Hence, the Labour party would have to elect a new leader whom the Queen will invite to become Prime Minister. Hence, a bit of jockeying. And John Reid, the Home Secretary, is exercising the traditional right of every Home Secretary- namely, to rush around seeking populist, knee-jerk policies, that won’t work, but will get him good editorials in lowbrow newspapers that will lead to him being portrayed as a man in touch with the people. Hence his dabbling with the idea of a “Megan’s Law”. Wait for “Vote for John and protect your children from your worst nightmares.”
For once, the police are right. A sex offenders’ register with limited access (i.e. police, social workers and anyone with a “need to know”) is the effective- but not a populist- system. It keeps the vast majority of such men on the radar, as it were, and helps to ensure proper treatment is available (am I sounding like a mushy liberal here?). Very few sex offenders disappear. The police fear over a “Megan’s Law” is that it will give such men an incentive to disappear and be untraced.
Graham ~ Jul 25, 2006 at 1:09 pm