Well, a new
statistic—there are some 315 million people in the USA, and 750,000 sex
offenders. So that means that one person in 420 in the United States is a
sex offender. And there’s a little problem—where do you put these guys?
I know about this because the New York Times had a video this morning about a sex offender village in Florida.
And I can also tell you—nothing reveals the deep prudery of the United
States better than this video. One man, living with his mother, had sex
at the age of 18 with a girlfriend, age 16. Another guy was in “gay
rehab”—wow, didn’t know we could do that, have to check it out—and
mentioned to his counselor that he had touched a boy inappropriately.
Still another “computer solicited a minor”—whom he never met.
Granted,
no criminal comes right out and says, “yeah, I sadistically assaulted
and tortured a little girl, and hey, I’d do it again, in a flash!” But
the Times video does make several points. It shows the church member who
says that the church got involved because there is almost nowhere to
live that isn’t within whatever state limit has been established from a
place where kids congregate. So they found a community that had been
built to house sugar cane workers; the workers are mostly gone, but the
sugar cane fields remain.
Then
there is the public defender of Palm Beach, 35 miles away, who makes
the point: there’s a big difference between an 18-year old kid screwing
his 16-year old girlfriend and a rapist. But they are both “sex
offenders” and they both have a label for life.
There’s also the point that not one complaint of a sex offense has occurred in the sex offenders village.
So there are over 100 sex offenders living in the village of Pahokee, Florida—isolated from the rest of Florida by sugar cane. Right, so who are the people in my neighborhood? Are kids safe?
Don’t have the answer, but according to the NSOPW website, there are eight sex offenders in my zip code.
OK—anything I need to worry about?
Yeah—a
guy who tried to commit rape and sodomy in 1974. Another who
intentionally committed child abuse. A couple of men who committed lewd
acts, and one who attempted to commit a lewd act. (Sorry, but I can’t
quite get my head around that. Was he just about to pull down his pants?
Was he intercepted in a grope?) Several have moved in from other
jurisdictions, and no details are given.
Mind
you, there is a school three blocks away from where I live, as well as a
school across the street from where two of the offenders live (if the
database is accurate).
All right—another statistic: one in six women will be raped in the course of her lifetime.
That’s
serious—that’s something I’d like to know about. What I’m not
interested in knowing is what an 18-year-old kid did with his
16-year-old girlfriend. Assuming it was done consensually, assuming no
one got hurt, I couldn’t care less. And the video makes a good
point—there’s not a lot of work out there for registered sex offenders.
Once you’re on the list, that’s it—you can kiss that promising career in
food preparation at Burger King goodbye.
We’ve
all gone a little crazy, I think. We have the courts giving sentences
to kids having sex with kids two years younger than them. At the same
time, we have the Catholic Church, which is reportedly still harboring
real sex offenders. And, as well, we have a Catholic bishop who has been
convicted of not reporting the case of a predator priest.
Yes, I bring you the sorry case of Robert W. Finn, the bishop of Kansas City, who was convicted last year on one account of failure to report Shawn Ratigan,
a priest who had hundred of pictures of the private parts of little
girls. The pictures were apparently so shocking that the computer
technician who discovered them on the laptop Ratigan had brought in for
repair later stated: “my hands were shaking so much, I could barely turn
off the machine.”
So
what did the bishop do? Transferred Ratigan to another place, and told
Ratigan to stay away from kids. And what did Ratigan do? Got right back
involved with a youth group. Oh, and went to dinner at a parishioner’s
house, and got caught by Poppa, photographing with his cellphone the
daughter under the table.
For
all of this, the bishop has received a suspended sentence, and has
agreed to meet monthly with court officials. But the gay guy—or did the
rehab work?—down there in the sex offender village, how much time did he
get?
A year in the county jail.
Clothes
make the man, it’s said, and it’s evidently true. Who knew that a Roman
Collar was a pass to touch any child anywhere at any time?
