Who Are the People in Your Neighborhood? (reposted)

Talking about the Catholic Church, I leave you with this post originally published on May 22, 2013....

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?  

...Just so you know

She was impossible not to like, but I expected that. I know her sister, I’ve met her mother and her brother, and she’s lived for years in Canada. So it was clear—she’d be a nice, fun, intelligent woman. And she was.

She was also terrified of setting foot on American soil.

Which was literally about all she had to do—she was flying from Ottawa to Puerto Rico, and had a layover in JFK. But even that freaked her. Would she be safe? Would she be caught in crossfire? Who knew what could happen?

You guys up there? This is how the rest of the world is seeing us.

Consider the fact that the Attorney General of the United States, Eric Holder, has just spoken to the NAACP, and revealed that he has had to sit down with his son—as his father sat down with him—and explain how to behave with the police. The message—yes, the police are racist; yes they will stop you unfairly; no, you can’t trust them.

This from the Attorney General?

Consider the fact that whites who kill blacks in “Stand-your-ground” states are 342% more likely to be exonerated that whites who kill other whites. Check out the chart below, based on 5,000 killings…..

Or what about the black woman who got 20 years for firing a warning shot at her ex-husband, against whom she had a restraining order?

It may be the horrific cold that has fallen upon me, or it may be true, but everything seemed seriously skewed. First of all, who dreamed up Stand-your-ground? OK—I’ve looked it up, and apparently it goes back to the very end of the 19^th century. Florida, however, only enacted the stand-your-ground law in 2005. And according to CBS Miami, deaths due to self-defense are up nearly triple since the law was enacted. 

OK—and this is how Wikipedia describes the moments before the shooting:

At approximately 7:09 PM,[Note 4] Zimmerman called the Sanford police non-emergency number to report what he considered a suspicious person in the Twin Lakes community.[69] Zimmerman stated, "We've had some break-ins in my neighborhood, and there's a real suspicious guy."[32] He described an unknown male "just walking around looking about" in the rain and said, "This guy looks like he is up to no good or he is on drugs or something."[70] Zimmerman reported that the person had his hand in his waistband and was walking around looking at homes.[71] On the recording, Zimmerman is heard saying, "these assholes, they always get away."[72][73]

About two minutes into the call, Zimmerman said, "he's running."[12] The dispatcher asked, "He's running? Which way is he running?"[74] The sound of a car door chime is heard, indicating Zimmerman opened his car door.[75] Zimmerman followed Martin, eventually losing sight of him.[12] The dispatcher asked Zimmerman if he was following him. When Zimmerman answered, "yeah," the dispatcher said, "We don't need you to do that." Zimmerman responded, "Okay."[76] Zimmerman asked that police call him upon their arrival so he could provide his location.[12] Zimmerman ended the call at 7:15 p.m.[12]

After Zimmerman ended his call with police, a violent encounter took place between Martin and Zimmerman, which ended when Zimmerman fatally shot Martin 70 yards (64 m) from the rear door of the townhouse where Martin was staying.

OK, so Martin was running away from Zimmerman. Zimmerman is chasing Martin—how in hell can this be self-defense? In Florida, can you really chase someone down, get into a fight, fear for your life, and kill? If so, nobody is safe.

Which is what the black guy on the documentary said—is it now open season on young black men? What was Martin supposed to do? If he had stopped in his tracks and held his hands up, would that have prevented Zimmerman from attacking him? If he had walked toward Zimmerman, would that have been perceived as “threatening?” Having been branded as an “asshole who always gets away,” there was virtually nothing Martin could do.

Well, into this gloomy picture enters Georg Philipp Telemann, the baroque composer who, at the time, was much more respected than a guy called Johann Sebastian Bach. And who knew that there was such a thing as a chalumeau? Originally a folk instrument, it was popular during the baroque period, but then was replaced by the clarinet. And guess what? I like it much more.

Enjoy, guys. I’m putting this cold to bed.

Who Are the People in Your Neighborhood?

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?