First may I say that I am not a defendener of child molestors/abusers/offenders. I believe that they are the bottom feeders of society. Victimizing our most vulnerable in society.

I was involved in family counciling for many years and found that almost ALL of the clients were sexually abused at one time or anther. And in more cases than not, they were sexually abused by a family member or a close friend.

We all choose to think that it is the faceless stranger lurking in the background that will be the sexual preditor. We do not want to entertain the thought that it may be our own beloved family member or our dearest friend. When in fact, that is usually the case. Thinking of a faceless, unemotially attached stranger is easier to accept. Easier to send the lynch mob after.

The family member that abuses, is hardly ever brought to light. It is a highly emotional and extremely hurtful trauma. It is in most cases brushed under the rug and becomes the family secret. Sexual abuse as with all abuses are generational. They are patterns that in most case are repeated.

Parents need to be educated and empowered to know that it is them and them alone who are the protectors of their children. The residency restrictions in the sex offender law will just give a false sense of security.

I also see that the law for sexual abuses are clearly not the same for all. Educators are suspended with pay. The religious leaders are in more cases than not defended not only by their peers but also from the people who share their denominational belief.

What we call a sex offender today, in some cases, was the norm hundred of years ago. Or as resently as 50 years ago. My mom was married when she was 17. My dad was 21. In todays society, my dad would have ended up in prison and labled a sex offender for life with a residental restriction.

And although I appreciate all of the time and effort our elected officals are spending to find a resolve to this law, I feel it was initially initiated for a personal, political agenda that failed. But since it is the hot topic, I agree with David and hope that the powers to be come to a resonable, well thought out resolve minus the hysteria.

Unlike other advocates of strong sex offender residency restrictions, you speak in a calm voice, and I appreciate your demeanor. I have also tried to avoid using the word “hysteria” when talking about proponents of such laws, because the word connotes uncontrollable laughter or crying or raised voices. But, calmness doesn’t necessarily mean that the fear behind the residency restrictions isn’t excessive and perhaps irrational. I don’t deny that “the reality on the ground in the affected neighborhoods” is one of great fear and concern with sex offenders. But, public policy can’t be based on overblown fears of some members of the public, and the desire to “do something” can’t possibly become an excuse for doing something that is likely to be ineffective and counterproductive.

I believe that a fair reading of the literature on this topic makes it clear that your preoccupation is far greater than is warranted by the facts, by experience, and by common sense. The materials cited and discussed in our series of f/k/a sex offender posts convinces me that there is virtually no connection between the block or neighborhood where a sex offender lives and whether he/she re-offends or who the victim is likely to be. (The only connection seems to be that the sex offender is not likely to choose a stranger for a victim who lives nearby.) Furthermore, banishing sex offenders from society and treating them like a group of sub-humans with no rights seems far more likely to increase tendencies toward recidivism than to reduce it.

When a child has an irrational fear — bogeymen under the bed or in the closet, for instance — the parent’s job is to reassure the child that he or she is safe and to provide an emotional comfort zone. It surely isn’t to underscore the fear and to take drastic, unnecessary actions to banish the bogeymen. When adults have excessive fears, they actually make things worse for their children, who perceive that fear and their parents’ powerlessness, and feel especially vulnerable.

You seem to be asking your political leaders, and the rest of the public, to take the fears of your “peers” as an unchangeable given and to overact-in-kind in order to placate those fears. My hope is that — for the sake of your children and your own peace of mind — you and your highly-concerned neighbors take another look at the facts and realize that your fear of the stranger-predator living on your block is miss-directed and excessive (see for example, this, this and that posting). The fact that the Constitution won’t let you permanently banish them should be another factor helping you to “learn to live with it” — to realign those fears and instead focus (as Patty Wetterling suggests) on things that a family can do avoid sexual abuse. In addition, the reality that sex offenders live in every neighborhood (and always have) should help reduce the fear that your property values are going to plummet should one of them move or continue to reside near you.

Sexually abusing a child is a dreadful crime. But, we know that the crime is perpetrated far more by relatives and acquaintances with access to children than by the stranger — especially the stranger next door. Our children are far more likely to be harmed by the driver on a cellphone or the addict seeking funds to buy drugs than by a registered sex offender who lives in the neighborhood. Talking about keeping “them” away from society will get the Sex Offender Council nowhere. You are not doing “the Community” a favor by suggesting unconstitutional, impractical, highly expensive “solutions”. For a voice to be listened to, it needs to be much more than calm and unhysterical. It needs to be reasonable and well-reasoned.

If he were living right next-door and had only been out of prison a short time so that you had no idea whether he will be law-abiding or not and if the sentencing judge described the crime as the most brutal he had seen in 26 years would you be so unconcerned?