Sex offenders: monsters, humans or both?
Today’s article in the Sacramento Bee demonstrates a need to clarify the way we as a society feel about convicted sex offenders.
I’m not defending sex offenders - but I don’t necessarily think running a person out of town is a dignified way to behave either. They’re still human beings, despite having committed a monstrous act. In fact, their human-ness is the reason we’ve said that after x number of years and y kinds of treatment, they can come back and live with the rest of us, despite what they’ve done, and despite the risk they used to pose (still pose?) to our children.
If we design our laws to assume that sex offenders can be “made safe” to live amongst the rest of us, they why, when they do reenter society, should they be confronted with angry mobs and public outcry from residents who “don’t want that in my neighborhood”? Almost makes the rest of us look like monsters.
Just dropped by to say hello from Atlanta Metblogs! Welcome!
Interesting post. For what it’s worth, I do see your point that if our laws supposedly “make it safe” for child molesters to live amongst us, then when they return to society, it should be with the freedoms afforded the rest of us. Unfortunately, I think it is our laws that are lacking. Child molesters, in my humble opinion, should never again see the light of day. They cannot be rehabilitated.
Anyway, great job. Welcome to the Metblogs family!
Now that I call controversial post. ;-) While I understand the need to re-integrate, just have a look at the countless statistics where sex offenders just do it again, and again, and again.
I don’t believe there is a cure for everyone per se, so I rather wouldn’t want anyone like that near my kids.
Over here, this has been a huge issue in the last couple of years. Especially since many doctors said, “he’s ready to be re-integrated”, and then they just do it again.
I guess you also have to take into account if the person raped someone, or did something else, like run naked in public (does that count as a “sexual offense” as well?).
In any way, no matter what you think, your government set up a database that everybody (not just from the U.S.) can use.
While of course this makes people paranoid, all things that I perviously mentioned aside, I also believe that this database violates the person’s privacy.
Interesting take. However, we must ask ourselves, is it reasonable to violate the rights or liberties of the few to the benefit of the many? As I new parent, there’s a big part of me that screams..YES YES YES. However, as the acquaintance of wrongly accused sex offender, I can realize the long lasting damage that such a system can cultivate.
Perhaps the answer lies somewhere in the middle. Cases need to be revisited and re-evaluated on a consistent basis to determine if the application of the proverbial “scarlet letter” is indeed just and necessary.
Dave
As a person whom was sexually molested for years as a child by my own step father, I know first hand how this kind of act ruins lives. We are in epidemic proportions of this crime. When I lived in the philippines they do not have this kind of thing because if one is guilty of sexually molesting a child or raping a woman they are taken to a rice paddy, shot and left to the rats for food. So it just doesn’t happen there. We are not tough enough on people who do wrong to others, especially innocent children, the very people we should be protecting most. Child molesters should be shot so they cannot harm again, period.