'sex offender' hysteria - play along at home!

[clairobscur]

@Jaade

Plenty of situations? I cannot think of plenty…I can think of a few where it could maybe be understandable, but not many.
.

When kids do stupid things, that is harming other people or endangering themselves. And kids do plenty of stupid things. All the time.
Case in point : there’s a 19th centuty moving bridge near my place. There are often kids doing all sort of stupid things when the bridge is being elevated, at the risk of being crushed by the wheels or cables, drowning or whatever else. Should adult bystanders let them do so?

I wouldn’t have much issue with grabbing and chastizing a kid who is, say, damaging stuff, or insulting people, etc… either (let alone running in front of a car and putting himself, the driver and who knows who else in danger like in the linked article).

Last time I restrained a kid was precisely the example given in the article : two boys were fighting on a subway platform. They were maybe 12-14 yo. I separated them, and while another [del] responsible adult [/del] psychopatic child abuser put one of them in the next train, I physically restrained the other who didn’t want to give up and intended to climb in the same train and resume the fight. Should this other stranger and I have instead called the police and, while waiting, placed bets on the winner?

[Mr2001]

@Jaade

I disagree with this case’s outcome. I don’t think this guy should be charged as a sex offender if everything the article says is true and as the man proclaims. However, I do think it is inappropriate for someone to jump out of a car and grab a person’s arm that they don’t know. If someone did that to me, we’d have a big issue. If they did it to my child, they would be in worse trouble.

Agreed. Branding him a sex offender is ridiculous (frankly, I think the sex offender registry is flawed to begin with), but he shouldn’t expect to go around grabbing people who don’t want to be grabbed with no repercussions. You don’t get to detain strangers and lecture them whenever you want just because they’re under 18.

[Frank]

@Bryan Ekers

Well, unless you can demonstrate some actual harm was done to you… sure.

Did you ever bike against the lights again?

No.

But I’m asking Jaade, who would seem to have had an issue with it if I had been her kid.

[clairobscur]

@Jaade

No, you cannot grab a child and drag he or she down to his or her house if you don’t know the kid. The world where you could do that was the world when serial killers were unheard of and random acts of violence were still shocking to all of us.

Why would this make difference?. If an adult is dragging your kid to your house because he, said, threw stones in the stranger’s window, he obviously isn’t a child abuser/abducter/serial killer.
So, what yo propose to do in the various situations mentionned previously :

-strange kid passing the safety barriers of a moving bridge in order to have some fun jumping off from said moving bridge?

-strange kid damaging stuff in a public park and refusing to stop when told to do so?

-strange kid fighting another one in a subway station?
-strange kid throwing stones at your windows and running away?
-strange kid stealing stuff from your house/backyard/shop?
-Strange kid insisting on climbing on poles or in a closed stone quarry (that would be me when I was a kid)?
I think that it’s the responsability of any adult not to let kids doing such things. It’s a duty. If you disagre with this, then never stay more than 10 feets away from your kids, so that you can take care yourseklf of any issue. Maybe you do. But not everybody does.
Concerning the scare of abducters, serial killers, etc… : this risk is ridiculously low. A kid is more likely to be killed during pretty much any everyday activity, even the most mundane ones than being abucted. Besides, the majority of sexual abuses of children isn’t done by strangers, but by close relatives, neibhors, etc… So, the people should really be warry of if you’re a mother aren’t strangers but your husband, your father, your kid’s coach, your friends, and so on.
Meanwhile, this hysteria is preventing adults from acting responsibly when children are in trouble or are causing touble, from interacting normally with kids (like say, speaking to them. You know… it used to be possible to speak to a child in bygone days), teachers are on the verge of filming any interaction they could have with a child (preferably only when at least a dozen witnesses are present) out of fear of being accused or even suspected of something ugly (and this is ven true for female teachers), and so on. There isn’t anymore anything normal in adult/children interactions.
I remember a post last year by a mother who pitted a strange man who had the audacity of being sitted on a bench alone in the park where she brought her kids to play. Seriously, what could a man be doing in a park except trying to spot some undraged prey? We’ve reached this point. A point where your mere presence in a public place is in some people’s mind an evidence of nefarious intents. That’s plain hysteria, indeed.

[Mr2001]

@clairobscur

So, what yo propose to do in the various situations mentionned previously :
[snip]
I think that it’s the responsability of any adult not to let kids doing such things. It’s a duty. If you disagre with this, then never stay more than 10 feets away from your kids, so that you can take care yourseklf of any issue. Maybe you do. But not everybody does.

I don’t think any adult has the duty, the responsibility, or even the right to physically restrain an unrelated person (regardless of age) who isn’t in the process of committing a crime. Now, if someone is stealing from your home or your shop, you can use force to detain or eject him - whether he’s 14 or 40. If he’s vandalizing public property, you may be able to make a citizen’s arrest. If not, or if he’s simply putting himself in harm’s way, then just tell him to knock it off, and call the police.

[clairobscur]

@Mr2001

I don’t think any adult has the duty, the responsibility, or even the right to physically restrain an unrelated person (regardless of age) who isn’t in the process of committing a crime. Now, if someone is stealing from your home or your shop, you can use force to detain or eject him - whether he’s 14 or 40. If he’s vandalizing public property, you may be able to make a citizen’s arrest. If not, or if he’s simply putting himself in harm’s way, then just tell him to knock it off, and call the police.

So, basicaly, you’re telling me that in the example I mentionned I should actually have let them fight, called the police and placed bets?
I can easily imagine the pitting resulting from an article stating : “kid kills himself doing (whatever stupid and dangerous thing). Dozens of bystanders look and do nothing to stop him” Mr. Smith declares :“I couldn’t, in good conscience, grab his arm. This would have been very wrong”. “We’re proud of the good behavior of our law-abiding citizens in this delicate situation, Mayor says”.
Yes, I do think, given that kids aren’t generally considered as being able to make the smartest decisions, that it’s a moral duty for any adult to keep an eye on them if their parents aren’t present and to act when they put themlves in harm’s way. Actually, being protective of children is a quite widespread gut reaction. And do not tell me that a parent isn’t going to hate the guts of an adult who didn’t do anything when his kid put himself in danger and was seriously harmed as a result.
In the other example I gave(the bridge), I assume the police would probably need at least a dozen minutes to come. In the third one (me climbing in a stone quarry), since it was a rural area, probably more like an hour or so. IOW, way too late to do anything. By this time the kid would be either safe or already drowned/crushed/in a pool of blood down the quarry.

[dropzone]

@Mr2001

I don’t think any adult has the duty, the responsibility, or even the right to physically restrain an unrelated person (regardless of age) who isn’t in the process of committing a crime.

(emphasis mine)

So if you saw someone commit a crime, be it jaywalking where she was nearly killed or murder, you cannot restrain her AFTER she finished committing the crime?

(Okay, I can’t lose the image of Gomer yelling, “Citizen’s ar-ray-ist! Citizen’s ar-ray-ist!” but you get the idea.)

[Mr2001]

@clairobscur

So, basicaly, you’re telling me that in the example I mentionned I should actually have let them fight, called the police and placed bets?

Called the police, yes. The ethics of placing bets on street fights is a subject for another thread.

Yes, I do think, given that kids aren’t generally considered as being able to make the smartest decisions, that it’s a moral duty for any adult to keep an eye on them if their parents aren’t present and to act when they put themlves in harm’s way.

Suppose I believe that you, clairobscur, aren’t able to make the smartest decisions. Should I restrain you, over your protests, whenever you’re about to do something I think you shouldn’t do? (You don’t smoke, do you? ;))

Actually, being protective of children is a quite widespread gut reaction. And do not tell me that a parent isn’t going to hate the guts of an adult who didn’t do anything when his kid put himself in danger and was seriously harmed as a result.

I don’t think our gut reactions are necessarily good indicators of how we should act, and neither is the fear that someone might dislike us if we don’t act. That parent would have no one to blame but his kid and/or himself.

In the other example I gave(the bridge), I assume the police would probably need at least a dozen minutes to come. In the third one (me climbing in a stone quarry), since it was a rural area, probably more like an hour or so. IOW, way too late to do anything. By this time the kid would be either safe or already drowned/crushed/in a pool of blood down the quarry.

And it would be his own fault, not yours. You aren’t obligated to come and rescue everyone who puts himself in danger, no matter how old they are.

@dropzone

So if you saw someone commit a crime, be it jaywalking where she was nearly killed or murder, you cannot restrain her AFTER she finished committing the crime?

Ah, yes, indeed. You may also detain someone who has committed a serious crime until the police arrive. (Jaywalking doesn’t count, as the unfortunate man in the OP found out.)

[The_Hook]

@Mr2001

And it would be his own fault, not yours. You aren’t obligated to come and rescue everyone who puts himself in danger, no matter how old they are.

This may be the Seinfeld finale episode turning on me, but isn’t illegal in some places to stand around and do nothing to help, when you can, someone in need?

[threemae]

@Mr2001

You aren’t obligated to come and rescue everyone who puts himself in danger, no matter how old they are.

Yeah, well, sometimes you shouldn’t be a chicken-shit pansy ass trying to CYA about everything. Frankly, people that do really, really stupid things to endanger their own life sometimes need a little help in realizing the error of their ways, and frankly this adult acted in the best interests of the 14 year old.

[boofuu]

The article did not give very good details as to what occured. I would like to know: when he grabbed the girl, did he shake her around while restraining her; what do they mean by “grab” or “restrain,” like did he have her in a half-nelson; did the girl make hysterical pleas to be let go; was this in the middle of street where he left his car idling; did he drag her to another spot, maybe closer to his car; how else saw this, I mean, did the girl get his plate numbers so that even knew who he was to arrest him; was he arrested at the spot.

I suppose I am just questioning the nature of exactly what occured. I would bet with all pertainent information disclosed it would sound more like a case of assault, (maybe), than attempted kidnapping, which he was acquitted on anyway. How did his lawyer lose this?

…Okay, rereading the article, “technically” he was guilty. He did restrain her. I am still curious about some of the questions I posed. Sounds like those technicalities that got me in trouble as a kid. I guess I will just say the situation seems stoopid and the law nitpicking. How much is “restraining a child” a precursor to child molestation and assault? Is this causation or correllation? I am sure I exhibit a lot of behaviors that would indicate a propensity to murder or some such thing. It is like charging him with a crime he did not yet commit.

[betenoir]

@Jaade

Plenty of situations? I cannot think of plenty…I can think of a few where it could maybe be understandable, but not many.

How about, you see a child getting into a strangers car?

The world where you could do that was the world when serial killers were unheard of and random acts of violence were still shocking to all of us.

The thing is, that world did have serial killers and random acts of violence in it. People were just not as aware of (or hysterical about) them. As they remain pretty rare. The main difference in childrens safty…and why we don’t let kids just “go play outside” for the day is back then the other adults in the neighborhood would also be keeping an eye on the kid and doing something if the kid was doing something dangerous. Much as clairobscur described.

Now we leave everything up to the police and this case re-enforces the idea that it’s risky to do anythng else. Don’t get involved. Ironically, making the world a safer place for no one, except possible child molesters.

[tdn]

@Metacom

Gotta disagree with you here… If the law is wrong, the legislature should change it. Maybe by making a sex offense a necessary condition of being put on the sex offender registry, and then passing a bill to get this guy taken off it.

Disagreement right back atcha.

Supposedly judges are smart people with a bit of common sense. They are not (or should not be) automatons. Yes, the law should be modified, but in the meantime, judges have a duty to take the facts of the case into consideration, and mete out punishment that fits the crime. Following the rule of law in this case is dangerous and irresponsible.

My girlfriend once broke up with a judge for this very reason. In that case he put a child back in the custody of a sexually abusive father because the letter of the law stated that he was the lawful custodial parent, and “That’s my decision, I’m right, end of discussion.”

[JRDelirious]

OK, so what it looks like here is that at some point someone went over to the legislature and said something like:

Look at this list of cases from the county court. A number of alleged child-fondling perverts walked away with a charge of “unlawful restraint” because we could not actually prove the fondling, only the grabbing. We need to make “unlawful restraint” a registerable sex-offense, and we need to make sure that some soft-on-crime-activist-judge does NOT have discretion about it. THINK OF THE CHILDREN!!!"

Thus resulting in this. tdn, in many jurisdictions the courts have had their power to “mete out punishmet that fits the crime” TAKEN AWAY by the legislature through mandatory sentencing laws, while We The People applaud that they’re reeling in the soft-on-crime-activist-judges (That in much of the USA the judge and the DA posts are filled by popular election, doesn’t help). The judge may be in a position where his only ethical alternative is to resign or expose himself to impeachment if he can’t or won’t enforce that law.

In any case, forcefully laying hands on a person without satisfactory justification is battery, a perfectly well established offense, and if there are special circumstances about the person being grabbed it can be aggravated battery. If in the process you deprive the person of liberty then it is also Unlawful Restraint. But there is no reason why a person guilty of one incident of battery and unlawful restraint should be considered a “sex offender”, a marked man unable ever more to freely choose where he lives or works – except that a hysterical legislature decided that there is no other possible reason why you would lay hands on a minor. I sure hope none of the legislators that passed this ever administered their children a bare-bottomed spanking – IIRC, sex offenses against minors have extra-long statutes of limitations and can come back at ya years later…

[clairobscur]

@Mr2001

Called the police, yes. The ethics of placing bets on street fights is a subject for another thread.

There we must agre to disagre. I’m not going to let 12 y.o. fight. Nor adults, for that matter.

Suppose I believe that you, clairobscur, aren’t able to make the smartest decisions. Should I restrain you, over your protests, whenever you’re about to do something I think you shouldn’t do? (You don’t smoke, do you? ;))

Maybe you should in some cases. Anyway, I stand to my position that there’s a difference between an adult and a child.

I don’t think our gut reactions are necessarily good indicators of how we should act,

And pondering about legal technicalities may not be the smartest thing to do in many situations. My point was that I don’t think I’m a complete whacko for believing strange adults should do something when children put themselves in troubles. That’s a rather natural reaction.

and neither is the fear that someone might dislike us if we don’t act. That parent would have no one to blame but his kid and/or himself.

My point wasn’t “parents won’t like me”. But “generally speaking, parents would expect other adults to act in such situations”. IOW, acting when a child put himself in harm’s way isn’t a weird concept born into my deranged mind.

I do not doubt there are parents who would go : “You dared touch my kid? Sue you!!” and in another circumstance “You did nothing? Sue you!”. There are a lot of morons. If some people don’t see that one position contradict another, that’s a problem.

IOW, if someone states that nobody should ever touch his kids, then he should consider that he’s asking for a society where nobody will do anything if his kid is in danger. Apparently, you at least are already conditionned to think that way, and it’s a shame. Children are less safe as a result, not more. “Don’t touch my kids” will deter the overwhelming majority of law-abiding citizens, and likely not much the extremely tiny minority of serial killers.

And it would be his own fault, not yours. You aren’t obligated to come and rescue everyone who puts himself in danger, no matter how old they are.

Actually, you’re wrong, because under french law there’s a legal obligation to act when someone is in danger and you can help without placing yourself in harm’s way.

But I was discussing the issue from a moral, not legal, point of view. Regardless of the legalities, I believe it would be my fault. And a lot of people would think the same. As I wrote above, essentially all parents would blame me in this situation, and rightly so, even if I was perfectly within my rights.

[clairobscur]

@betenoir

The thing is, that world did have serial killers and random acts of violence in it.

I think people have been well aware of such things for a long time. The novelty is IMO the awareness about “ordinary pedophilia”, rather than murders and random acts of violence that have been largely reported in gory details by the press for more than a century.

[clairobscur]

@tdn

Yes, the law should be modified, but in the meantime, judges have a duty to take the facts of the case into consideration, and mete out punishment that fits the crime. Following the rule of law in this case is dangerous and irresponsible.

Yes, but if the law is clear and inambiguous, the judge may not have much options. I don’t know the technicalities in this situation, but let’s assume the jury found the guy guilty of unlawfully restraining a minor. The law states that unlawfully restraining a minor is a sexual offense. And it states also that sexual offenders must (not “may”) be registered as such. Then, the judge has his hands tied, and there’s nothing he can do. Apparently, according to the article, it seems the judge himself thinks this case doesn’t make sense.
That’s one of the reasons I really wouldn’t want to be a judge.

[Guinastasia]

@clairobscur

I was just joking. Not stating that you suggested such a thing…

Sorry, I didn’t realize that. I appologize.

If all he did was gently grab her arm and say, “You dumbass, you could’ve gotten seriously hurt, perhaps even killed!”, that’s fine. If he yanked her arm and held on to her for a long period of time, without a sensible lecture, well, he’s an idiot.

But not deserving to be on the sex offender list.

[eleanorigby]

I think it’s wrong for some of the reasons mentioned here, but also because it waters down the effectiveness of the offender list.
If this guy qualifies, then is there really a true list of actual threats out there?

I ahve never been even so much as read any of the lists, but think that they do serve some sort of purpose, I suppose (whole other thread, really)–but if the list consists of some who sort of did something, some who what this guy did (which does NOT qualify to my mind) and the real sickos–what good is the list?

I do hope this guy appeals the decision.

[Studs_Murphy]

What if this kid was drowning. Should he call the emergency services and shout advice from the river bank?