Sex Offender Registy: The Unintended Consequences

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
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As many of you know my wife and kids were killed by a drunk driver. Some of you don’t believe me and that’s fine. Considering the trolling that this board had seen just prior to my posting of that news it’s understandable. But that’s not what this thread is about.

This thread is about the kid who killed them. He was a registered sex offender.

Since the accident I’ve been angry. I’ve tried to control the anger by staying busy. I finished building a wooden boat. I built an electric bike. A whole lot of smaller woodworking projects, more than I ever thought I would do. All in an effort to keep from going over the edge, so to speak. But even now, months afterward, as soon as I stop moving, stop being busy, the rage resurfaces. It’s slowly killing me. It’s making me bitter. I’m almost 40 and I feel almost 70. The anger is not doing anyone, especially me, any good. I realized a few months ago that it’s time to make an effort to stop being angry and start forgiving.

The kid who killed my family is 20 years old. Even though we live in a small town where most everybody knows most everyone else, I didn’t know him prior to the accident. I’ve done quite a bit of digging and talking to people to find out what he was like. According to the state he is a sex offender. When he was 18 he had sex with a girl who was 15. Actually he had just turned 18 and she was almost 16, so the age difference was closer to 2 years than it was 3. It was consensual. Hardly anything that I would call deviant behavior. But the law is the law and he became branded as a creepy deviant who had his picture posted in the elementary school. Someone who mothers had to watch out for because he was “dangerous.” (Yes, I used scare-quotes there. Sue me)

From what I’ve been able to find out, before the incident with the girl he was an honor student and had never been in a bit of trouble. The kind of kid my son probably would have ended up being. He was a leader type and everyone knew he was headed for great things. Then he had sex as an adult with a minor with an age difference of more than 2 years (barely) and everything changed. He was branded with what is the modern day equivalent of a scarlet letter. Once headed for college on a scholarship, he found his scholarship yanked and his employment limited to a laborer working for a landscape company. Tragic, if you ask the people who knew him before he became labeled. he stopped caring about the laws of a system that had screwed him. I guess I can understand that. I can also understand trying to drown your frustrations with alcohol. I’ve been guilty of that myself a few times since the accident.

I need to say that the concept of a sexual offender registry I totally agree with. I am certain that we need to know about those among us that are truly deviant. But I am equally certain that having sex with someone who is slightly over 2 years age difference does not even come close to the crazed deprivation that one assumes when the words “sexual predator” are spoken. From the moment he was convicted, this kid never had a chance. In some stated there is a greater age difference allowed, and it wouldn’t have been a crime at all. My opinion is it should not have been a crime here.

Now for the butterfly effect. I say that had this kid not not become a convicted sexual predator, I would be crawling into bed tonight next to my wife. Right now my son would be playing video games and my oldest daughter would be chattering and chattering about whatever crossed her mind. My youngest daughter would be in her pajamas claiming that she isn’t tired.

A 20 year old drunk driver and sexual predator killed my family. But underneath the labels there is a human being. He is going to be in prison for a long time. I’m not sure how I feel about that. On one hand he got drunk, got behind the wheel, and killed four people. He deserves to be locked away for that. But on the other hand, they can lock him up and throw away the key and it won’t bring my family back. It won’t change what happened.

After all my digging and talking to people, I feel as though I’ve gotten to know him. I believe he was screwed by the system. Had the atmosphere in this country not been on of a “pedophile witch-hunt”, I think the chances of him coming around a corner in the wrong lane with twice the legal limit of alcohol in his system is pretty close to zero.

Maybe that’s forgiveness. I don’t know I just had to get all this out. If you don’t believe me there is a place for that, and it isn’t this thread.

Edit:The second word of the title should be “unintended.” Could a mod please fix? Thank you

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Have you communicated with him?

3

That’s a long way off, if it ever happens at all.

4

I think it would do both of you a lot of good if you’d communicate with him. Maybe just a letter. But not till you’re ready.

5

Anything I could say regarding what happened to your family would be inane, so I won’t.

However, it is somewhat disturbing that you’ve taken to stalking a guy and digging into his personal history. I’d definitely recommend against ever contacting him. Why would he want that?

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I’m sorry, Frosty Camel. I saw pictures of your boat and it’s a beautiful, constructive use of your time while you heal. I doubt I could be so creative and productive after a loss like yours.

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Public records can be perused by anyone who wishes to understand what would lead a young man to destroy a family. It isn’t stalking. Sounds like the OP is finding a way to hate the kid less. Leave him alone, he’s grieving.

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Just because you can doesn’t mean you should. I’d be extremely disturbed if I found someone had been prying into my personal history, whether it’s through purely legal means or not.

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You don’t know that. People drive drunk for all sorts of reasons.

It sounds like you are searching for explanations which cannot be adequately explained. While forgiveness may be divine, it can also be a double-edged sword. Your attitude sounds like a variant of Stockholm Syndrome, or whatever they call it when victims of a crime try to console themselves by empathizing with their victimizers. Whether or not this guy deserves to be labeled a sex offender is irrelevant to the fact that he destroyed your family – his prior actions are his problem, not yours, and there’s no reason for you to assume an even heavier burden.

Don’t feel sorry for this punk. He chose to drink and drive, now he must pay the price.

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He’s not just some random guy perusing public records. He’s looking into the person who killed his family.

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I’m quite sure the drunk who took four lives forfeited his privacy during the commission of his crime, and privacy would be the least of his concerns, truly.

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That doesn’t make it any less disturbing. The fact that all this information is apparently out there doesn’t make it not creepy for someone to go out of their way to research someone’s background. Someone going out of their way to compile a dossier of a stranger’s life without their consent is stalking in my book.

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And what does your book say about a selfish, careless man who killed 3 kids and their mom? Is he a murderer? A killer? A drunk? Destroyer of Families? Use a little common sense here and imagine the magnitude of the crime. The OP trying to make sense of a tragedy and find forgiveness is entitled to ponder public record, entitled to sue for damages, is entitled to rage or fume or empathize and generally dwell on the action and the actor in whatever manner he sees fit.

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Just because the guy did something wrong doesn’t make it okay to pry into his entire life history. I can see we’re not gonna agree on that, so let’s drop it.

I’m actually quite worried that the sex offender’s register is publicly searchable too.

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When you are old enough to buy a home and raise a family you will probably appreciate the convenience of those easily accessible records.

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How condescending. My age is irrelevant to my capacity to form an opinion on the subject.

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He’s not a stranger. He’s the guy who annihilated his family.

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Like I said, we’re not going to agree. Privacy is a massive berserk button for me, partly because in the past few years I’ve had it stripped from me. Psychiatrists discussing my mental health with hair removal technicians, voice therapists reporting my every word to the psychiatrist, endocrinologist making judgements about my appearance in emails to my psychiatrist, doctors refusing to acknowldege my right to refuse to disclose past medical history (like my being trans), housing support agencies giving out my old name to social workers and social workers outing me to people from my past.

Suffice to say, I’ve been subjected to enough breaches of privacy that I’m very protective of it for everyone. Having your history bandied about and researched without consent is extremely dehumanising.

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It only took five posts for someone to threadshit. Amazing, considering the severity of the subject matter. To the OP, I’m sincerely sorry for what you’re going through. I can’t begin to imagine and I can only hope that your journey to understand more about this young man helps you heal. And I do see your analysis and would tend to agree with the cause and affect.

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I had to google “threadshit”. And I don’t appreciate your assumption that I was being “intentionally vile” (the definition I found on urban dictionary). I think it’s perfectly reasonable to point out when someone is out of line, and I feel that researching someone’s background without their knowledge or consent is out of line.