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“…devouring the young and sacrificing them to the god of safety.”
Sunday, September 20th, 2009This is one of the more moving blog posts I’ve read in a long time.
The pictures are just crushing.
49 Responses to ““…devouring the young and sacrificing them to the god of safety.””
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No link provided, Radley.
Yes, you linked to yourself by mistake, bud.
Look at this word ‘This’, it’s the link.
Devastating article. I had no idea how widespread the problem was, and I’d recommend that you put that graph of Sex Offender charges vs. age on your front page. Talk about a picture being worth a thousand words. How can anyone look at that graph and not understand how flawed the prosecution of these ‘crimes’ is???
Ahhh. Link’s there now. I had a feeling that was the one you were thinking about.
If an adult has consensual sex with a sexually-mature 17 1/2 year old girl, The State will charge the adult, since the 17 year old is deemed too young to legally give consent.
Yet The State has no qualms about prosecuting teenagers as adults.
“I’d recommend that you put that graph of Sex Offender charges vs. age on your front page. Talk about a picture being worth a thousand words.”
Wow, that link was worth looking at just for the graph. It needs to be everywhere.
I really liked this part.
“The laws are constantly changing, usually for the worse. The mob brays for ritual sacrifices and your child is the Jacob they want placed on the altar. They will only be happy when they see the knife plunge downward, hear the tortured scream of the child; watch the blood drain from the trembling body. Then they will be satiated, until the next Isaac comes along. Unlike Jehovah, the political mob will not stay the hand that holds the knife. They will, instead, demand bigger knives, sharper knives, and more stabs into the heart, more children on the altar, even more altars. They want someone to suffer. After all, we have to protect the children.”
Sad.
Solutions?
Classically Liberal is a consistently excellent blog that you all should be ready regularly if you aren’t already.
And yeah, that post stands out as extremely powerful.
Of course I meant to say “reading” instead of “ready”. I’m dumb.
Also, for the record, I’m in any way affiliated with that blog (other than the occasional comments). But seriously, add it to your daily reading list.
This is why I’m afraid to have kids. Your child is more likely to be a sexual predator rather than a victim of one. When you say it like that, I think it puts things in perspective for everyone.
Our war on adolescent sex is a new drug war. A life long punishment for a crime with no victims. And to think that so many people in this country think Muslims are cultural backwards without feeling like hypocrites. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. This is not just knee jerk reactions to pedophiles. This is a conspiracy to take away everyone’s rights before they have the chance to have them as an adult.
I agree that a lot of these laws are silly and counterproductive.
But frankly, the linked post and a lot of the discussions here seem to be engaging in this sort of “boys will be boys” justification of what in reality can be some pretty horrible and traumatizing crimes. The attitude here seems to be that because you have a handful of examples of dubious prosecutions, all sex offenders are therefore themselves innocent victims of our sex hysteria, that if one person was charged with sex crimes for mooning somebody, then nobody charged with sex crimes ever actually assaulted anyone, that if one person is in jail for consensual sex with somebody a week before their 18th birthday, no person molested their 6 year old cousin, etc. And if anybody actually did any of these things, well, it’s just kids experimenting, perfectly natural, etc.
So here’s a counterpoint to the unsourced chart linked above: http://ojjdp.ncjrs.org/ojstatbb/victims/qa02401.asp?qaDate=2001
Matt D –
Does that chart count consensual sex where of the parties consenting is a minor as an “assault?”
If so (and I think it does) it would seem to support the other chart, not undermine it.
Matt D,
You are absolutely ridiculous. You really think that because many of us have commented that consensual sex amongst teenagers is not criminal…that that is the same thing as saying that child molesters don’t exist? No one here has said anything remotely close to that nor anything that could be interpreted as such. You made that up and put words in everyone else’s mouth. Seriously, you read our comments and you interpret them as we think no sexual assault ever occurs? It’s that kind of reasoning that has led to such a bastardization of our legal/justice system in America.
#14–
I’m not sure what else I’m supposed to conclude from reading the linked post and commentary here. That entire post is one long-winded fact-free narrative-form assertion that all juvenile sex crimes are the result of innocent and harmless experimentation blown out of proportion by your favorite boogieman, the nanny-state. As best I can tell, the author doesn’t have the vaguest idea what any of the pictured offenders actually did; he just assumes it was consensual and something best handled in private.
Matt D attacks the post because it is a fact-free narrative. Actually it is the conclusion of a dozen or so posts all easily found on the ClassicallyLiberal blog (if he cared to look) which are linked to story after story offering precisely the kind of evidence Matt D., seems to think doesn’t exist.
I assume he would dismiss the Declaration of Independence because it was devoid of footnotes and made mere assertions without proving them. Had he bothered to look he would have found documented cases aplenty which serve as the foundation for the conclusion drawn here.
That it is not clear what the “pictured offenders” allegedly did is one of the points made in the article. People like Matt D like to assume the worse. We don’t know and the law doesn’t make it clear. It uses broad categories so that two teens in backseat of the car on Saturday night are listed as if they had raped children. No one can tell from the sex offender lists which leads to harassment and vigilantes. That was part of the critique of the situation, but Matt D., seems to think that using a main point the article is making, is somehow a refutation of the article.
Nor does the article say that “all juvenile sex crimes are the result of innocent and harmless experimentation.” No where is that said or even assumed. Much of it is, and some of it isn’t. The laws are so badly written we can’t tell from the mere statistic unless the “offenders” come forward and talk. We do find plenty of evidence that a large number of offenders are guilty of such experimentation. But we can’t know the precise numbers.
He neglects to take into consideration that the legal definitions of these “crimes” tend to say that consent is not possible and therefore automatically list each “offense” as non-consenting. In some states, depending on the age of the “victim” it is also listed as “violent” even if no violence is used. So a 14 year old fooling around with a 12 year old can be guilty of a “crime” that is called non-consenting and violent even if the 12 year old consented and no violence was used. Then that 14 year old is listed on the registry as a “violent sex offender” which gets people thinking of lynchings.
Matt D,
Since I know my own mind better than I can ever know the mind of another, the jumping-off point for all questions involving state of mind has to be an analysis of myself.
Analyzing myself, I discover that I absolutely, positively could competently have consented to sex when I was younger than the current legal age of consent in most parts of the US. Much younger, in fact.
This single data point allows me to conclude that the statutory rape laws are unjust. It further follows, as a result, that people are in jail today due to an unjust law. To me, this is something to be mad about.
Are there dangerous molesters out there? Of course. But that doesn’t mean I can’t be mad about injustice.
I am a victim/survivor of sexual child abuse from birth until age 12. A victim of rape and robbery when I was 15. However my predators were ADULTS well over the age of 18.
What I see here is just more bureacratic bullshit. When they have stupid assed laws like this it minimizes the crime(s) against true victims.
You bunch of hypersensitive pussies. It’s about time society crack down on blatant sexuality in people who haven’t reached the government decreed age of consent. It’s a scientifically proven fact that exposure to nudity, sexuality, and body consciousness months, days, and even minutes before children magically transition into sexual adulthood can permanently disfigure their young malleable minds.
And quit your whining about the sex offender registry. Looking and touching someone of the opposite sex prior to the age of consent, no matter how benign it might seem to you ignorant know-nothings, is 99.9999% certain to lead to future assaults on children, so they will inevitably wind up as registered sex offenders anyway.
And don’t kid yourself that the cops ever catch offenders early in their perverted careers. It’s doubtful. no matter what their age, that there is anyone listed on the sex offender registry who hasn’t had innumerable (yes, innumerable!) victims before they were caught.
But, as astronomical as the odds are against such an occurrence, let’s just imagine for a moment that an innocent person winds up unjustly charged with a sex crime. What the fuck do you think juries are for? No innocent person accepts a plea bargain so a trial is a certainty and juries are very reluctant to convict someone of a sex crime. The system is fool-proof. In any case, those few innocents that accidentally get falsely charged and convicted are just the price society has to pay in order to be civilized.
The punishment for a sex offense should be far worse than it is for murder because sex crimes are far worse than murder. Victims of sex crimes unanimously agree that murder would have been preferable. And just because both the boy and girl are both under age doesn’t let them off the hook. Clearly they’ve chosen to abandon the moral high road and have sullied their souls with the Satan’s dirty shameful pleasures of the flesh.
Finally, I find it very suspicious that so many people on here publicly object to the government’s crusade to shackle and restrain those who would destroy our children. What is your interest that you so vociferously support the perverts of the world and pour boiling cauldrons of hatred on defenseless little children victims who are tricked into “exploring their sexuality” by those sons of Satan who have no legitimate place among humanity?
Take my advice and crawl back down from the ceiling and seek treatment for your irrational fears and unwarranted hysteria. You’re not qualified to even discuss this topic. Leave complicated issues like this to the experts in the legislature, courts, and law enforcement and go back to gardening or something else you can handle.
There is nothing in the Constitution about sexual freedom. Quit trying to read things into it that aren’t there.
“I’m not sure what else I’m supposed to conclude from reading the linked post and commentary here.”
That doesn’t speak well for your reasoning skills. The nanny state isn’t a boogie man. Boogie men aren’t real. The nanny state is very much real and extremely dangerous. I know it’s nice to pretend that our wonderful politicians and D.A.’s would never hurt any innocent people and that those who say otherwise are just a bunch of unamerican, soft on crime, pussy ass winers who blow everything out of proportion. But the truth sucks. We aren’t making it up, you’re just ignoring it.
“Take my advice and crawl back down from the ceiling and seek treatment for your irrational fears and unwarranted hysteria. You’re not qualified to even discuss this topic. Leave complicated issues like this to the experts in the legislature, courts, and law enforcement and go back to gardening or something else you can handle”
What an ass.
#21 Rollie Fingers: “What an ass”
That was just some of Dave Krueger’s sarcasm, Rollie. You get used to it eventually ;) .
Well said, #18 Judi. Thank you for sharing, and thank you for pointing that out. Common sense should tell us this, but this stories behind this particular blog remind us that common sense is often in short supply in the criminal justice system.
Dave Krueger | September 20th, 2009 at 5:26 pm : “And don’t kid yourself that the cops ever catch offenders early in their perverted careers.”
Does “early in their perverted careers” modify “cops” or “offenders”?
#8 The real perverts are the police officers and persecutors that arrest and convict these kids. They are the ones who should be placed on the sex offender registry.
Well, that sucked.
Boogie men aren’t real.
It would appear that sex offenders, and to a greater extent pedophiles are in fact the new boogie men.
Oh, how I long for the old days when all we had to worry about was Russia nuking us, or that there were communists under every rock.
Whew, what a story! I guess that is why I would pretend to not see an under 18 person drowning…if you touched them you would be a disgusting pervert, copping a feel. Instead I would RUN, not walk, away, feeling rightheous & proud of my sexual restraint.
“rightheous”: adjective characterized by or proceeding from accepted standards of morality or justice; “the…prayer of a righteous man availeth much”- James 5:16
You go Jimmy boy…
I would like to track down the old girlfriends of the politicians who sponsored these laws, then find out how old they were when the politicians-to-be had sex with them.
I bet we could add a fair number of the sponsors of these bills to the list of “sex offenders.”
No, No, No. You’ve got it wrong. The communists were under the bed, the Boogieman was in the closet, and the drug dealers were under the rock.
I think one of the most heinous aspects of the whole “sex offender” thing is… the State that cried wolf. Too many times.
The first visceral reaction to hearing ’sex offender’ is that wash of negative reaction to whoever is wearing the label.
Then it’s suspicion. “Wait, is he/she *really* a sex offender, or is this some stupid bullshit like he was 15 years old and he had sex with his 15 year old girlfriend? Or did he take a leak on the side of a building at 3am and get caught and strung up by the local ADA?”
So basically, instead of instilling this sense of righteous outrage at the label-wearing sex offender, they’ve instilled this righteous outrage at the government (school administrations, prosecutors) for being so fucking inept.
Good job.
“The Left wants everyone in therapy and under the perpetual care of the state, and the Right wants everyone in prison, or in fear of the law, and under the thumb of the police. And that is what is happening.”
Spot on
Here’s my challenge to anyone here. Find a person in the next two days and try to convince them of the need to elect ’soft-on-crime’ legislators instead of the people we have now.
Good luck with it.
How did we end up with this bullshit dichotomy that we’re either hard on crime or coddling criminals?
How about tough on violent and/or nonconsentual crime and leave everybody else the fuck alone?
Is that too complex for the average voter?
Wow. 3.5% of all people 14-20 years of age.
But wait. Sexual offenders are sexual offenders for life. Think about what that graph will look like in ten years. That 3.5% will be 24-30, and the new batch of teenagers will almost certainly be subjected to an even more dire situation, because everybody has to be tougher on crime than the last guy.
Can we fire up the ovens yet?
Only the obvious one.
Oops, read the graph wrong, and I’d rather not try and google the correct number at work.
I’m suprised that nobody mentioned that the only pictures shown were those of male offenders. Is it impossible for a girl to commit this crime? It ALWAYS has to be the boy?
Obvious to you and me, Zargon. To almost everyone else, not so much.
#34 billy-jay — The false dilemma is the primary weapon in the statist logician’s arsenal.
#35: “Is that too complex for the average voter?”
I think that you already know the answer to that question. Boiling water is too complex for the average voter.
Matt,
The problem with your graph is that it doesn’t really help us. Sure we could read it your way and we could read it Radley’s way. What we need is data on how often 7 – 11 year olds are assualted. For example how many 7 year olds are assaulted and the age of the assailant? That would help. Your graph manages to strip it out. Why? Why not provide complete information?
Seriously, answer that fucking question. You see, my background is in economics, and one of the ways to screw up things like markets (which are ubiquitous in life) is to hide information. Moral hazard, adverse selection, hidden information, all distort the markets outcome for the worse. So, again why not publishing the fucking numbers.
We put the names and faces of these children on the internet. So why not provide age of the victim and assailant? It can be done to protect the victimized, I know it. I work with data all the time and provide lots of confidential data to people outside the company I work for. I can remove all identifying information from the data and the people wanting the data still find it useful, so don’t hide behind the privacy bullshit.
Here is my guess as to the answer: fear. Your graph scares parents of young children. My god….teenagers are child rapists. Everytime a teen walks by, hold your pre-teen a bit closer!
No. There is no doubt that teenagers engage in sex crimes. But at the same time we hear about teenagers who are being tried as sex offenders because of a birthday, a stupid prank with pictures and texting, and so forth. These children and later adults should not be branded for life as monsters when they were just being young and foolish.
And you assume it is not. Given the number of abuses that Radley has documented here on this website I would think it would give one pause to reflect on whether or not these really are sexual offenses or just young and foolish teenagers.
And yes, the author readily admits he can’t find information on the specific crimes…BECAUSE THE STATE DOESN’T PUT IT UP. Seriously are you just this stupid or what? Its right there in the article. Did you read the whole thing, or get part way through, make up your mind and come back here and comment? I’ll go with this last explanation as it reflects better on you.
You see, people are generally horrible when it comes to evaluating uncertain events. They tend to overestimate low probability events and underestimate high probability events, they discount historical data too much, focus too much on recent data, and generally make a hash of it all. For example, I know one person who was worried that the people operating the rides at the state fair were child molesters…well until I told her that the most likely scenario would be that if her kids were going to be molested, and unlikely event, it would likely involve someone they knew. A friend of the family, family member, someone at the kids school, etc. “Stranger danger” while real is vastly over-stated.
Here is a hypothetical. Matt D has just come out of a bad relationship. He’s lonely and in need of some companionship, so he finds the local “City Paper” and calls an escort. Someone to talk to and maybe a bit more. Consenting adults and all that right. Turns out its a sting. Matt D is arrested, booked, charged, and cops a plea for a lighter sentence. But wait! Matt D is now a sex offender. He’s committed a sex crime. Onto the list he goes. Ooops, too close to a school, so he moves. Ooops too close to a park with a play ground for kids, time to move. Dammit too close to a church with day care, to close to a pre-school, to close to a Chucky-Cheese….ahhh under the Julia Tuttle Causeway he goes.
Judi,
Well said.
Only if they are Tier 2 and Tier 3 offenders. If they were 16 or 17 and their partner was below age of legal consent…that is quite possible. Heh, could be a good article if a journalist really wanted to dig. I’d also add John Walsh to the list.
None of my posts are hitting again…I’ve cut out every reference to sex and deleted the html links, is it possible it’s Opera or something else on my end?
Insane registry laws and restrictions did not prevent the perverts, Philip Garrido AND HIS WIFE from doing what they did! The registry laws, and especially the residency / work place restrictions, have done far more harm than good. Forget about all the cases of vigilantism and suicide; forget about the fact that while these laws are proposed to protect the children, they include children, while a huge percentage of those on the list committed crimes that had nothing to do with children; forget about the fact that study after study has proven these laws not only are ineffective, but have actually made matters worse. Forget about the fact that upon release from custody, sex offenders have one of the lowest recidivism rates, not the highest. In fact those who receive counseling and treatment have outstanding records versus those convicted of other violent crimes! The fact is the registry and any restrictions should be limited to those who are proven child molesters and pedophiles; that Law Enforcement could handle and monitor effectively. Do you seriously believe a committed pedophile cannot walk or drive 500, 1000, 2500, 5000 feet or more? Jaycee Lee Dugard was abducted miles from where Philip Garrido lived!
I am sure we will see comments from hysterical, uninformed individual(s) who will suggest that all those on the registry should be locked up for life or worse and say there is no rehabilitation for these people. And for a few they are right, we need to focus on those! Once a person has done their time that should be it. That is the foundation of this great country and its legal system. Don’t like it, move to China, Russia, North Korea, Iran, or wherever individual rights are ignored. If a person is a pedophile, lock them up for a long time and provide treatment. Treatment not working, keep them locked up. Many families are being destroyed for political expediency; children of those on the registry are being abused and ostracized at school. Whole families are forced into isolation and restricted from the work place. If the registry is to truly protect the children, then let’s focus on the pedophiles and child molesters’. Get rid of the residency/work place restrictions, focus on the loitering laws. Let the rest on the registry re-assimilate into society after they have done their time, become solid, productive citizens; part of the solution not the problem. The facts, (and the Garrido case) as well as virtually all of the research, and study after study have proven what we are doing now, mostly for political expediency and to appease hysterical uninformed parents is not working and is in fact making matters worse!
With regard too the Sexual Offender Registration laws, the public dissemination of public information in such a way as to guarantee public humiliation, loss of privacy, reckless endangerment and threat of harm (even extinction), risk & humiliation of innocent family members and fellow employees, destruction of innocent children’s lives, has been ruled permissible by the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS)… However, the raping of individuals rights to residency, protection from banishment, right to affordable housing, restrictions on gainful employment, restraints against freedom of movement and lawful assembly, destruction of ability to assimilate into society, restrictions from access to public services and facilities, and general banishment from society, even retroactively after conviction and/or after a person has served their sentence, has yet to be ruled on. Please ACLU and others, please give the SCOTUS the opportunity to unconstitutionally screw up that ruling too.
I remember reading about teens being charged as sex offenders for ’sexting’ or sending naughty pictures via phone. And all I could think was ‘for crying out loud, is this not something that could be solved by grounding the idiot for a month and taking away his or her phone?!’
Teenagers are stupid. They’re morons. They do stupid shit. Hopefully a lot of it won’t haunt them later in life, but that’s no reason to brand them with it like they’re a damned axe murderer.
Since the article was written I spent several hours going through state sex offender lists. I have specifically looked at the cases of teens who were arrested. Out of the couple of hundred cases I looked at not one was a female. So the reason the pictures are males is because you will have a hard time finding females on the sex offender lists. I didn’t put the people on the list I’m merely reporting what is there.
However, over the years I have documented enough cases where no crime (in a libertarian sense) was committed to know that such cases are not uncommon. The kids are terrified. Most won’t speak out. One case near me got a lot of publicity when the prosecutor tried to jail the kid for life. It turned out the kid had not actually done anything. But they tried to convict him as a sex offender because he showed a school mate a copy of Playboy. The judge, thankfully, threw that out. That kid and his family is reluctant to talk even today fearing the prosecutor will come back at them.
The boy that Janet Reno went after in Miami, before becoming AG, left the US with his family after being found innocent. They feared if they stayed in the country that Reno would try again. Kids who are on the lists don’t want to be noticed, they don’t want to talk about what happened out fear of vigilantes and harassment. I don’t blame them. I wish that they would come out of the closet. I’ve got people willing to put together a documentary on this horror looking for kids who will talk.
//Forget about the fact that upon release from custody, sex offenders have one of the lowest recidivism rates, not the highest.//
What would be the recidivism rate among those who actually BELONG on the sex-offender registries? Obviously if the state prosecutes as “sex offenders” ten people who really aren’t for each person who really is, recidivism rates will be quite low, but that doesn’t mean that the state should ignore those people who really are sex offenders.
If the government didn’t seek to undermine the prohibition against cruel and unusual punishments by preventing juries from determining whether the facts of a case support the punishment (if a jury would find a punishment cruel and unusual for a particular crime, given the particular facts of the case, the punishment IS cruel and unusual and thus unconstitutional) sex-offender registries might serve a useful purpose. Unfortunately, some people want to undermine such registries by flooding them with people who don’t deserve to be on them, and are at best indifferent to the people whose lives their antics destroy.
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