ENOUGH with the Sex Offender hysteria already

I have things to do today. So I'll procrastinate a minute (more like an hour or two) with this idea that's been swirling around in my head for a little while and is sure to get me nasty comments and e-mails.

Now, for unpopular opinion #1,527: ENOUGH with the sex offender hysteria already.

Bureau of Justics statistics (albeit older ones) show that sex offenders have low recidivism compared to other former prisoners. But despite that, vigilante murders of sex offenders -- made easy targets by their home addresses and pictures being plastered all over the Web -- seems to be a growing trend.

Yes, I know that Megan of Megan's law was murdered by a child molester. So I definitely have mixed feelings on the issue. But I think this whole thing has reached a level of hysteria that is punishing many reformed, alleged molesters for the rest of their lives and often putting them in harm's way.

When I worked as a reporter at a small paper, we ran a story about a new child molester at least once a week, often twice or more it seems. We'd stick their mug shots on the front page and run their home address and the attitude was "yeah, that'll show him, that dirty son of a bitch."

At the time, hey, I was doing my job and I got a little sadistic kick out of it. Our paper's attitude was, "If they got arrested, they did it."

I now feel remorse for my attitude and feel sorry for anyone who is subject to such public shaming before even being convicted of anything. Why, you ask, would I have any sympathy for an evil child molester? For the same reason that many oppose the death penalty: just because they got arrested and/or convicted doesn't mean they DID IT, and even if they DID, did you take a close look at the surrounding circumstances?

Here's the REALLY unpopular part: All kids who scream "molestation!" aren't "victims," even if they were participants. (Like South Park so brilliantly illustrated in the episode where all the parents are locked up for "molestering" so the kids can do what they want.) Just because someone is under 16 doesn't mean that they are always coerced or "victimized."

Plenty of people arrested for molestation DID do it, ARE chlid predators and DO need to be off the streets. But let's look at this further, how we are attacking a complex and nuanced problem in the typical American way, by hitting it repeatedly on the head with a hammer and not caring who falls through the cracks.

Five cases in point:

1. Genarlow Wilson: The 15-year-old OFFERED him the blow job. He chose to stay in jail than take a plea deal that would stick his name and address on the dreaded Sex Offender Registry for the REST OF HIS LIFE. Smart move, my man.

2. Wendy Whitaker, the Augusta woman who had to move from the house she and her husband had just bought due to her landing on the Sex Offender Registry due to a 10th-grade blowjob.

3. Lisa Clark: She was 37 and he was 15. He got her pregnant and they got married. My mother-in-law gave me a copy of Clark's book (she's all about tabloid trash) and I'm over halfway through it. The lady is a nutcase, make no mistake about it, but from what I've read, this relationship was extremely consensual and the horny kid (also a nutcase) was really chasing HER down for sex at first. This kid was no angel to start with (he's a Satanic Bible/Marilyn Manson type), and, I'm wondering throughout the whole thing (Clark as a teen, and the 14-year-old) -- "where are these people's parents?"

Am I saying this relationship is OK? No. But I just don't buy the argument that if one party is 14 and the other is twice that, that the 14-year-old doesn't know what s/he's doing. Kids are smarter than you think. And, will society crumble if these two want to be together? Laugh if you want at us backward Southern hillbillies, but for some reason Jerry Lee Lewis comes to mind, Scarlett O'Hara's parents come to mind (in the GWTW book, her mother was 15 and her father was in his 50s or 60s when they were married), and many of our own grandparents come to mind (people getting married at 12 and 13). Child marriages aren't necessary or even plausible anymore due to longer life expectation, modern mandatory public school attendance til age 16, and not needing bigger families NOW for more hands to work the farm. BUT, in situations where there ISN'T any true predation going on, I say let 'em sort their own fucked up messes out without dragging the legal system and the jails and DFCS into it. Though the kid doesn't need to be raised by these two, so I'll let DFCS have that one.

Which brings me to the redneckery in my own family ...

4. My uncle married a 15-year-old girl (his son's ex girlfriend and next door neighbor) when he was 36 -- in 1996 or so. Her parents signed the papers and they were together for several years until she came to her senses and was like "WTF am I doing with this old loser?" Totally redneck, no doubt about it. But he wasn't a predator, she went into the relationship willingly. (His first marriage was when he was 17, to a 14-year-old). Should he be in jail for 20 years? Fuck no! He's insane (Tourette's), but that's not a crime last time I checked.

5. Another male relative is currently serving 20-25 years in state prison for child molestation. The quick rundown is this: He had a bad meth problem for over 15 years that he didn't want his wife knowing about. His 14-year-old stepdaughter found out about the meth. She began leveraging this damning knowledge to get away with anything she wanted. "I'll tell mom if you don't let me go out tonight with my boyfriend" etc etc. Now here's where it gets tricky and some smartass is going to say "Oh but he got what he deserved." Somehow it came about that she gave him a blow job, once. Why? I wasn't there, but my take, knowing all parties involved, is that he decided to stop letting her get away with things and this was the ultimate blackmail material. He was really fucked up/strung out and claims it only lasted for a second or two and he quickly was like "what the fuck am I doing?" At the risk of sounding misogynist, the girl is what many would refer to as a "hoochie mama."

Now to talk some sense for a minute. He DESERVED to go to jail. But do you see that substance abuse was his REAL problem? And that he is not the type who goes looking for kids at bus stops or on MySpace? And that 20 to 25 years without chance of parole is kind of harsh, especially when many murderers serve FAR LESS time and are often allowed to get out on bond or parole? And that once he DOES get out, he'll be on the Sex Offender Registry for the rest of his life, opening him up to vigilante justice and severely limiting the places he can live? All this in light of the fact that we don't have MURDERER REGISTRIES?

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Now, onto Sex Offender vigilante justice. I cheered on Charles Bronson in Death Wish too, but he didn't have easy access to names and home addresses on the Web ...

1. Hit List: Deadly sex offender registries: "On Easter Sunday, Stephen A. Marshall, a 20-year-old Cape Breton dishwasher visiting Maine, borrowed his father’s truck, rifle, and two handguns, shot and killed two men in two different towns, then boarded a bus to Boston, where he was approached by police and shot himself. Marshall’s motive for the murders is still unclear, but his method of selecting victims is not: He found them on Maine’s online registry of sex offenders."

2. Vigilantes Use Online Sex Offender Map to Burn Down Wrong House: "a trailer full of equipment sitting in the driveway of a house was ignited by arsonists who also scribbled "GET OUT PERV" on the garage door. The vigilantes, however, seemed to have the wrong address. A man who was recently arrested for soliciting a police officer posing as a teenage girl lived a few houses down from where the crime took place."

3. Killings of 2 Bellingham sex offenders may have been by vigilante, police say: "Last Friday night, a man claiming to be an FBI agent dropped in on three Level 3 sex offenders living together, supposedly to warn them of an Internet "hit list" targeting sex offenders. The man was not an FBI agent ... [and] two of the roommates were found dead early Saturday of gunshot wounds."

4. Did Sex Offender Listing Lead To Murder? Rapist Stabbed To Death, Allegedly By Neighbor Who May Have Seen His Name On List: "Convicted rapist Michael Dodele had been free just 35 days when sheriff's deputies found him dead from stab wounds last month in his mobile home. They quickly arrested his neighbor, 29-year-old construction worker Ivan Garcia Oliver, who ... two days before the killing ... 'told every house' in the trailer park that he found Dodele's name listed on the Web site of convicted sexual offenders, and was uncomfortable living near him."

5. And now, the motherlode: The blog "On Sex Offender Murders by A Voice of Reason" does a great job compiling story after story after story on (mostly rehabilitated) sex offenders -- many who have moved on and have jobs, families and children -- murdered by angry neighbors and aquaintances.