| Topic Name: |
Sex Offender Hysteria |
| Message Name: |
Agree with blond#2647 |
| Date Posted: |
05/04/2005 |
| In Reply To: |
We've done a few of these stories in the Northeast. We have many offenders here. You don't have much if they're "rehabilitated" and moved into the neighborhood... only the NIMBY people. There's no killer story unless you catch them fishing for kids. You need an insider, someone who knows the publishable - and unpublishable - name lists, who has a head up when these guys find work in schools, camps, toys stores, etc. and lie about their history. You confront them when you catch them in the act for the evils they're doing NOW, not the past. That's what makes a journalist. Otherwise, you and your station can get sued. |
| Message: |
I'm in the Southeast and had to do several of these stories, some tied to local events and of course to the Lunsford case.
After I got over the initial shock of how many sex offenders there are out there, period, let alone in my own zip code, I questioned how far these stories should go and what purpose they really serve.
I don't have kids, but remember there are more kinds of sex offenders out there than just pedophiles..so as a single woman it did concern me that more than two dozen lived within streets of me (and I'm in the "good" section of town.)
Besides the fact that sex offenders are generally not thought to be curable I find the whole thing indicative of a much larger problem once I looked at a number of things:
1. The number of offenders who were related to their victims--fathers, uncles, brothers, stepfathers seemed to be most common.
2. Some gray areas...statutory rapes when the offender is say 19 and the victim say 15. I'm not saying its acceptable...but our thinking on such things is relatively new. It was not uncommon for many years, epsecially in rural areas for 15 or 16 year old girls to have husbands in their 30's.
Along the same lines of gray areas...vast majority of teen pregnancies are teen girls and twenty-something men. What good is prosecuting them for sex crimes? They can't get a good job with a record and then society pays for those kids in many more ways.
Just some things that crossed my mind.
|
|
