You’re the second person this afternoon who has suggested that those of us defending the rule of law are also defenders of sexual predators.
May i suggest you take some time to develop your reading comprehension skills before making further “contributions” to Great Debates.
Exactly. The problem with Megan’s Law is that the website does not release the specific details of anyone’s crime, just the statutes he/she was charged under. I have no way of knowing if the offender down the street merely had sex with an underage girl who appeared to be (and said she was) eighteen, or whether he was running a kiddy porn dungeon in his basement.
I wouldn’t care two bits about what happens to sex offenders, except that it’s turned into a media-driven witchhunt. And what happens in a witchhunt? People who aren’t even witches get burned at the stake. All it takes is one baseless accusation to destroy your life – look at Pete Townshend, for instance. He was 100% of wrongdoing, and people still think he had gigs and gigs of kiddy porn on his computer a la Gary Glitter. And then there’s that whole McMartin trial fiasco.
Society can define punishment how it pleases. Just because you have been released from prison does not mean you instantly go back to the full rights you had prior to being convicted, it doesn’t mean you will ever have those full rights again.
Our society has a long history of prohibiting felons from voting, from holding elected office, from being able to purchase weapons. All three of these things are basic constitutional rights that felons have been forced to give up, regardless of whether they are within a prison or released.
So there is nothing at all wrong with thinking pedophiles may deserve an “unequal” life outside of prison. If they didn’t want to lose those rights they shouldn’t have violated the law in the first place.
As for someone who has sex with a 16 year old when they are 19 or something, tough luck. The law isn’t a secret, you have a responsibility to know the law and not break it. If you disagree with the law and break it anyways, then you are fully aware of what is going to happen and you have no one to blame but yourself.
The Merck manual explains that pedophilia can be treated with varying degrees of success. And then mentions that incarceration, even long term, does nothing to affect the desires of the pedophile:
http://www.merck.com/mmhe/sec07/ch104/ch104c.html
As for “100% recidivism rate” you have to take several things into account. Firstly not all people convicted of assaulting children are actually “pedophiles.” In that not all of them have this mental disorder. I never said “all pedophiles” have a 100% recidivism rate, just that there was a class of pedophiles that could never be cured and would always violate a child again if given too much freedom.
For those that do have the mental disorder some can be treated. Some cannot be treated. I don’t see why I need links to support this. It’s basically “common knowledge” that some people with mental illness can be successfully treated and live normal lives, while others cannot, and no current treatments alleviate their problem.
Any mental illness recognized by the APA has varying degrees of treatment success and there is always the case where someone just cannot be fixed using modern medical science.
I could go digging around for hours through APA documents, google, and a plethora of other places but I don’t think I need to in order to be able to say confidently that some people with pedophilia cannot be treated effectively. That should go without saying to anyone who understands mental illness.
MH: So there is nothing at all wrong with thinking pedophiles may deserve an “unequal” life outside of prison.
Fine, but if you want that to be part of their punishment, it should be enacted and administered by the law. Vigilantes in the general public, going around acting on their own notions of what kind of “unequal” life sex offenders should be allowed to lead, aren’t contributing anything useful to the situation.
And as mhendo noted, supporting the rule of law and opposing vigilantes’ illegally harassing sex offenders does not make one a “fan” of, or “apologist” for, sex crimes. I’m surprised that as many as two people actually needed that explained to them.
No-one’s talking about the rights that the legislative and judicial system takes away from convicted felons. Is your reading comprehension truly that poor? People in this thread have simply been arguing mindless vigilantes have no right to determine what someone’s rights are and are not out of their own personal sense of justice. One of the reasons we have a legislative and judicial system in the first place—imperfect as it may be—is to codify the laws and the appropriate punishments for breaking them, and to stop the morons who would impose their own ill-thought-out and arbitrary version of “justice.”
Actually, the age of consent in over half of the states in the United States of America is 16. Furthermore, some states (e.g., Colorado, Florida) have very specific laws related not only to the age of the younger person, but also to the age difference between the younger and the older person. In some states, these “split” age of consent laws would apply directly to your example of a 19 year-old and a 16 year-old.
Please point out to me where anyone in this thread has suggested otherwise.
Allow us to be extremely clear here. I just went to an Internet site whose address or link I will NOT provide here, which allows me to search for Registered Sex Offenders in my county or zip code, or by their name.
Am I to understand that I- a private individual- am legally allowed to know about this site, allowed to visit it, and read information regarding details of sex offenders in my town, and yet can be sued for discussing such things with my neighbors, for knowing about it and spreading information about such persons or printing out the web page that details this persons’ information?
I can know but cannot impart? I can know but cannot discuss?I can know but cannot disseminate? What if I rented to a person, then afterwards found out that my tenant upstairs was a R.S.O. ? I have zero recourse and no way to legally protect my 13 year old daughter because I am not supposed to know about this person?
Confusion and anger reigns. Anyone know the Straight Dope?
Cartooniverse
I note that you conveniently forgot to quote the following from the Merck manual:
Furthermore, it is possible for pedophiles to continue to have pedophilic desires, but not to act on those desires. This, of course, does not occur with all pedophiles.
Sure, some pedophiles can’t be cured. Never suggested otherwise. But your “100% recidivism rate” assertion from your earlier post is now meaningless. if you can’t direct us to a particular category or type of pedophiles that are incurable, all you are saying in effect is that 100% of incurable pedohiles are incurable. Something of a tautology, no?
Again, no-one has ever suggested otherwise in this thread. Remember, you’re the one who marched in here accusing people of being apolgists for sex offenders. But this thread is about people who have been released back into the community, and are presumably thought by those within the justice system not to be a danger to the community. All your wailing and gnashing of teeth about the possibilty of incorrigible pedophiles ignores the fact that someone has to make the determination about whether a pedophile is likely to reoffend, and generally the people making that call are members of the very same APA that you are using as your authority in this thread.
As you suggest, some sex offenders can be treated successfully, and others cannot. Given that this is the case, we the public should not take it upon ourselves to assume that every former sex offender falls into the latter category. More importantly, we have no right to take it upon ourselves to administer vigilante justice just because we believe that the legalislative or judicial system has erred, either in a particular case or in the general formulation or application of the law.
Again, predictably, you miss the point.
No, you don’t need citations to prove that some people with pedophilia can be treated and others cannot. But, when i argue that someone released from prison should be granted all the rights that the law allows, and should be free from illegal harrassment by vigilante assholes, you should refrain from calling me an apologist for sex offenders.
No.
You can know. You can discuss. You just can’t harass.
Telling your 13-year old daughter that your neighbor is a sex offender, and that she should treat him with the same respect she’d show any other stranger, but that she should never, ever spend time alone with him? That’s what the law is for (ostensibly).
Walking behind the guy with a bullhorn everywhere he goes, shouting “PERVERT! PERVERT! LOOK AT THE PERVERT! PROTECT THE INNOCENT CHILDREN BEFORE HE RAPES THEM!”? Harassment. Not what the law is for.
What’s wrong with being an apologist for released sex offenders?
In our society, they’re subject to legally sanctioned harassment, will have a great deal of trouble ever leading a normal life, and are surrounded by people who won’t ever be able to see past their mistake. Released sex offenders–and all ex-felons, although that’s a broader debate–are an opressed segment of society and they (the people, not the acts they comitted) could use some defending.
Actually, it’s not quite clear what the situation is regarding the dissemination of such information. Also, it’s likely to vary from state to state. There was a link provided in Post #6 of this thread by Mynn, which discussed the issue as it relates to California, but the wording of the law did not make it very exactly which uses of the information are acceptable and which are not. The site said that the information can be used “only to protect a person at risk,” but, as others pointed out, exactly what that means is open to a wide variety of definitions.
As far as i can tell from looking at the various states’ information on this site, the use of the list is governed in each state by whether or not that state has a Confidentiality Provision in its law.
For example, Maryland, where i live, has no such provision. California, on the other hand, has a confidentiality provision that says:
In Massachusetts:
And in Texas:
The thing is, in each case you would probably have to know more about the individual state’s laws to determine exactly what these confidentiality provisions mean in real terms.
Well, i agree with your anger about the harrassment of past offenders, and i’ve been spending much of my time in this thread trying to explain why that harrassment is wrong.
I guess that i took the term “apologist” to mean someone who tries to apologise for or justify the actions of sex offenders. That certainly seemed to be the sense in which Martin Hyde and Machetero were using it, and in doing so they simply betrayed their ignorance and lack of reading comprehension.
Metacom: What’s wrong with being an apologist for released sex offenders? […] Released sex offenders–and all ex-felons, although that’s a broader debate–are an opressed segment of society and they (the people, not the acts they comitted) could use some defending.
But that’s not the same as being an apologist for them. Defending sex offenders against illegal harassment is not the same thing as “arguing in defense or justification” of their crimes, which is what “apologist for sex offenders” implies.
Don’t mind me, I’m just mhendo’s echo. 
Ah. I’d call that being an “apologist for sex offences.” In any case, I agree that’s most likely the meaning that MH et. al. had in mind… Sorry for the sidetrack. The absolute last thing I want to do is to make yet another “debate the devolves into semantic argument.” Carry on.
Good luck! Some people have seen one too many “Law & Order: SVU” episodes to be rational about the topic…
No, it can’t. If my apartment complex took a poll on whether Mr. Convicted Pedo should be forcibly evicted and sent on the next plane to Cambodia, most of them would probably vote yes. Would that make it legal? Moral? Wrong on both counts.
And even if you successfully argue that society is responsible for its own laws, that doesn’t mean anyone who disagrees with the law, or believes it is overbroad, doesn’t have the right to say so. That’s the way it is in America, at least until the First Amendment gets rescinded.
You said yourself that sex offenders who “keep it in the family” aren’t typical of pedophiles in general, and you are right. (For instance, a father who abuses his daughter often considers her “property” to do with as he pleases – he wouldn’t look twice at the equally young girl next door.) However…these are the vast majority of crimes against children. Pedophiles who seduce and rape total strangers are something like 17% of the total.
I have no problem with identifying and tracking pedophiles who hunt in their own neighborhood, and in fact I question the wisdom of releasing these people back into society in the first place. Intra-family predators have no business being on the list because they aren’t a significant threat to the community at large, and it’s assumed that the family already knows to keep their kids away from Wicked Uncle Ernie. Same goes for those who are tricked into sleeping with a teenager with a fake I.D. Heck, let’s just lower the Age of Consent to 12 and cut off everyone’s dick who crosses that line. I could live with that.
So - do you not believe that criminals serve their debt to society in prison?
Do you not believe that people are capable of rehabilitating themselves - through faith, medical treatment, or plain hard work?
Do you believe that every person jailed for a sex offence is in fact guilty? You’d be wrong there.
The sex offenders that bother me are not the ones who are getting out of prison, but the ones who are never caught. A child that I know was abducted by 2 men in a car while walking home from school. They dumped her in the centre of another town in the middle of the night, and they were never caught. These are the sort of sex offenders who bother me - the hit and run type who can carry on for years living a double life.
Where does it note any where in here that sex crimes are widely believed by law enforcement to be the most under-reported crime there is? When the crime isn’t reported, it isn’t punished. Those cites are effectively useless.
Argumentum ad populum.
Just because a bunch of people believe something doesn’t mean it’s true. I’ll take studies based on proveable facts over the biased beliefs of people involved in law enforcement.
Where is this person supposed to live if every apartment complex forbids a free person who committed a crime to live there?