Sexual Offenders

You bring up a good point. When I heard on the news that these laws will be put in place, I do feel safer. And you are right, it's almost impossible to enforce these "laws".
Just like the random search in NYC subways after the London bombing. I personally think that won't stop any terrorists. But people say they FEEL safer. :roll: With millions of people riding the subway everyday, there's no way you can stop one or two terrorists out of a million normal citizens.


Scott

 

I think the best thing we can do (as you point out) is to be as informed as possible, and to be careful -- don't assume that we're in a "safe zone".

On the other hand, don't be paranoid -- use common sense, and judge what things are more likely to occur. I.e., driving and crossing the streets are the mostly likely ways (by far) to get killed.

I'm a block watch captain for my neighborhood; our local police department sends me a flyer when a registered sex offender moves anywhere within a 15 mile radius. I then forward these notices to people in my neighborhood.

The main thing is, we keep an eye out for one another -- if we see somebody we don't know handing around a house, we call the neighbor at work, and check; if need be, we then call the police.

This works surprisingly well, though it's not a panacea. And I think that, knowing who your neighbors are, and saying hello to them every day, makes for a more pleasant neighborhood.

(Now if the Mayor doesn't cut funding for the police's neighboorhood watch program. He wants to fund a streetcar to Paul Allen's BioTech wonderland at South Lake Union instead. :cussing: )

 

Just how bad is it? Enter your zip code here:
http://www.registeredoffenderslist.org to see how many live nearby [you].

Most people will be surprised just how many have broken some law that requires them to be registered.

 

I would completely agree Scmika with your thoughts. Even in Lubbock they are building a "sex-offender free neighborhod" in which no registered sex-offender can live.

All of these laws I agree are meant to make us feel safe, but do little to actually help our safety. Especially as you mentioned that a person is much more likely to know who assaults them rather then a complete stranger (which makes it worse for the child). I think laws like the ones in Florida and the neighborhood in Lubbock stems from an subconscious need to rationalize that sex offenders are abnormal, dirty, people that are inherently bad, rather than face that fact that they are your family members, friends, etc, etc. What they do is wrong, but to cast them as a creature far different from the rest of society puts society's children at risk because we can't face our shortcomings and educate about them.

I won't even get into the punishment with little or no attempt at rehabiliation.

You also had a good point that not all sex offenders have the same pool of victims. They are many different types of sex offenders and many reasons why they do the things they do. Until society understands this and starts to really learn why this happen (versus these types of knee-jerk reactions), the prevalence will get worse and worse.

I have a unique position from many in that I have a family memheiber that is currently in prision for a sex crime and will have to become a registered sex offender when they get out. Conversing with them, I see the impact that hearing about these types of things has, and how it can taint their view on society. This person is trying to get help through therapy and admitting their wrongs, but being treated as an outcast/outsider makes it harder for them to make a successful recovery.

(Note: It makes recovery harder, not impossible. While this IMO makes them more likely to reoffend, it does not make them, offenders make a choice to do that.)

 

I think there should be sex offender free zones (buffer zones around high risk areas - schools, etc). There are plenty of other places to live. They showed a sex offender (children) that lived across the street from an Elementary school here on TV, but there is not law against it here.

Nothign is fool proof and if he wanted to do it again there is not much to stop him, but every little bit helps. It is better than doing nothing. It is still the responsibility of the parents to keep an eye on their child (and be involved with them so you know what is going on in their lives).

 

As much as I might feel for Michael and his family member, the stories are too far reaching and horrific. This is definitely, to me, an area where we must be incredibly careful to protect the innocent as much as possible. In my view, the sex offender should bear the moral equivalent of the scarlet letter. If this appears to be a violation of the offenders rights, so be it. In spite of the many contentions that recovery is rare if not non-existent, I believe in recovery. Nonetheless, the offender has done something that demands that the public is forever protected from as much as we can. I am respectful of what Schmika says as well as disappointed to find out what some of what he is telling us. But our vigil must be universal and include as much as possible.

 

Thanks Schmika for bringing this up. In terms of Homeland Security and airplane safety, I personally feel we are wasting tons of money to make planes safer. Some of it is well spent, but most of it is wasted.

I think the single biggest reason that a plane has not been commandeered again since 9/11 is not the billions of dollars we have spent, but because of what happened on United Airlines Flight 93 in Pennsylvania.

I am not a particulary brave man, nor am I at all suicidal. And the last time I got in a fist fight was the 4th grade. But there is no way in hell I would ever let any plane I was on be taken over by anyone. I'd rather die trying to take it back, or die driving that plane into the dirt. But NO WAY would I let that plane be used as a weapon. (And that includes protecting GW -- in Washington OR Crawford -- and most FHOP readers know how I feel about him.)

And there is no doubt in my mind that the overwhelming majority of passengers on any plane would join me.

The terrorists know this.

I wonder if there is a way to teach child molesters a similar lesson, but that gets into vigilantism which has no place in a civilised society.

 

I'm a "Guardian ad Litem", a volunteer that is appointed by the Court to be the advocate for the child in cases of abuse or neglect. We suspect many of the cases we deal with involve some sort of sexual abuse but we can rarely document it.

One topic not adressed here in any depth yet is the sexual abuse of children in their homes by their parent(s) or relatives. I read once that 1 out of 4 young girls have been sexually molested by a parent or relative. If true, that's a shocking statistic.

The most unfortunate part of this terrible crime is that the biggest part of them go unreported due to the childs' reluctance to speak out or, worse yet, an adult not believing them if they do talk about it.

Coincidentally, I recently viewed "The Woodsman", a 2004 film dealing with a sex offender (Kevin Bacon) just released from jail. My impression was that it was a reasonably accurate depiction of the struggles that these people face once they have been "rehabilitated" and returned to society.

 

IMO, these stories do an injustice because they lead the majority of people to assume that as long as they tell their kids to stay away from strangers they will be okay. Yet in reality, to keep our children safe we need to first look at our immediate family members and friends. This doesn't preclude us from keeping an eye on those that are sex offenders. I'm not sure where we are disagreeing on as I never said they should be allow to roam free without any restrictions or guidance.

Rather, my post was to get people thinking about how society could focus on how to help heal them, instead of just making sure they don't reoffend). Because if you help heal the person (since so many of those that are sexual offenders were victims themselves) then they won't reoffend, either.

 

[font=Comic Sans MS:ed6222bbab]FWIW...I have one question, sort of. And I am not trying to start a flame war here.

But what did we do, as a society, before all of this information about potential sexual offenders was available to us?
This is not a new crime by any means. So what did we do? I think we had better neighborhoods. For one, people knew each other better...We knew our neighbors.

But I still wonder, what did we do. How did we get by. Was this a crime that had no punishment until recently? I'm not trying to be flip. As a former victim my self, I know at the time, I kept it to myself. Now as an adult, I think about it a lot. And I often wonder, if I had been a child today, and the same thing happened to me...what would I have done.

Sorry. Don't mean to drag this OT.

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