Once again, we have people here making the statement that sex offenders have a higher than average recidivism rate.
Try proving that. I’ll help you out - you can’t because it’s not true NOT true. (I’ve done it, spent more time than I care to on it. all info that’s out there says the reverse is true)
I participated in all of those other threads, and it tires me out.
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I am not ‘in favor of’ child molesters.
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I am not in favor of Megan’s laws, either.
My reasons:
Any attempt at these have been rampant with wrong information. Such wrong information can have serious, fatal, horrible consequences, not only for the person wrongfully identified, but their neighbors, family etc, AND for the people wrongfully omited.
Think about your average day. How many people do you come into contact with, even momentarily (standing in line at the bank for instance). Now, out of those people, how many of them do you know their name/address etc?
Child molestations happen basically two ways - either a snatch and grab or some one who is known to the child or family. In the former case, Megan’s laws will do nothing to prevent this scenario.
In the later case? if they haven’t been convicted yet, no, you wouldn’t know. But before I get into the rest of it, let me explain what I think you ** should** do.
To me, the best way to protect your child from being a victim is to make them a bad victim. Rules are: do not go anywhere unless mom/dad/caregiver knows about it first. If anyone ** ever** tells you to keep something a secret from mom/dad/caregiver tell right away. If anyone ever makes you feel icky, tell. If anyone ever gives you presents, wants to take your picture, tell.
Now, what this does is allow the parent to make the decisions about who/what is appropriate. Don’t use terms like “stranger” or “grown up”. Because, frankly, it might not be a stranger or a grown up.
Now, for the rest of the picture of why I don’t think these things work. In the first place, how often are you going to check it? daily? weekly? monthly? hoping, of course, that the info is accurate. And, again, all you’d find out is addresses, which won’t help you at all at the store, the park, etc. How many people visit your neighborhood? delivery folk, visitors for neighbors etc. So you ** won’t ** and can’t know about everybody. But by enacting these laws, you might have some accurate info about some people. Now what? if you’ve already been a vigilant parent, and taught your child the rules above, your child is not a good victim for the seducer. You want to tell your kid specifically not to go there with that guy? well, what the child may hear is ‘pretty much everybody else is ok’.
I’m also reminded of a scene I once saw. I work with ex offenders, have for many years. I was at a local shopping center, and I saw one of my folks, ‘shopping’ at a store. Now, this woman had a loooooooooong history of shop lifting, and in fact, had been arrested at that store before. A few moments later, in walks another lady I knew. they passed each other as if they were strangers. They weren’t. So, while all the store personell were busy watching Gerri, Marsha was wandering around all innocent (I went up to each and told them to take a hike). So, while you’re busy protecting your child against the guy across the street that you know (or according to this site) has a history, the other guy you weren’t watching has a clear shot.
In short (too late, I know), lots of money that could be better spent on treatment programs (that have been shown to work - if you’re going to have them out in the first place), don’t really make any child safer, and may lull parents into a false sense of security that they’ve done something, while possibly setting the kids up to be hurt by other folks.
Just throwing the two sides of the coin in as the first post to help the OP get rolling (i.e., yeah, I don’t like 'em, but the general public does - who’s right?).