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Only in death, it seems, can a sex offender on the registry be considered a human worthy of love and sympathy.
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Alton Sterling, the 37-year-old Baton Rouge man who was peddling CDs when he was shot by two police officers on Tuesday, was described by his friends quoted in this Reuters report as “a fun-loving guy” who was also a hardworking dad “who scraped together a living selling music recorded on compact discs.”
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“He was a very nice guy, always smiling and laughing,” said Abdullah Muflahi, the owner of the store Sterling worked in front of.
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“I’d never seen him get out of hand with anyone,” said a woman who had just purchased a CD from Sterling.
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A woman at a vigil for Sterling called him a “good man,” who “never bothered anyone.”
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Eleven paragraphs into what is truly an affecting portrait of a well-loved man gunned down in his prime, we learn that:
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According to the Louisiana Department of Corrections, Sterling was convicted in 2000 for a crime against a minor that led him to spend about four years in prison and be registered as a sex offender..A court document reviewed by Reuters showed that he was accused of having sex with a 14-year-old girl and impregnating her when he was 20.
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He had a rap sheet of other crimes, too. But what’s most amazing to me is that usually when we hear of sex offenders who had sex with someone underage, we see them as a incorrigible monsters. They can’t live near a park. They can’t hand out Halloween candy. They are sometimes are not even allowed to walk their own children to school. Their humanity is completely obliterated, even if they have served their time and are now just trying to live their lives. We at least give lip service to welcoming back most citizens returning home from prison. We recognize that people can change. But we treat sex offenders as permanently toxic.
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This, even though of the nearly one million people on the sex offender registry, the vast majority will never commit a sex offense again. The U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics found that sex offenders have the lowest recidivism rate of any criminals other than murderers.
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It seems to take the shock of an unjust death to remind us that sex offenders can be humans — people worthy of a second chance.
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It would be nice if we remembered that all the time.
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55 Comments
Racist garbage. Thanks for setting back humanity, bigots.
Tell me does what he did in past justify being held down and having 4 rounds fired into his chest at point blank range ? I’ve read many a comment about it being a service to the community to have him killed. It’s pig propaganda smeared about by the lame stream media to stack a jury so these serial killers in blue get at paid vacation and are back on the job, bolstered by no conviction they’ll get worse, and you might be the next victim or your child.
Here’s a tip, Sean and Joel: avoid embarrassment by actually READING THE STORY before commenting on it.
Here’s a tip, Les. Avoid embarrassment by actually READING THE COMMENTS before commenting on them..
I didnt read the story on his death. Who was in the wrong is none of my business, as i dont live there. But Lenore, i agree to a point. We shouldnt treat them like trash while accepting murderers and other criminals back into our society. Thats hypocritical. I read a story yesterday about inmates who risked more prison time to save a guard who had a heart attack. I dont know their crimes and i likely never will. But it is proof that even the lowest members of society can be good people if given the chance.
thank god one child molester down now to get some more to bad it didn’t happen 16 years ago… fucking garbage monkey
That not as bad as the guy shot in his car cause the poor scared cop heard gun and freak out and shot him at least 4 times. Now it’s he looks like a crook so that made okay. Police don’t get on the top 10 list of dangerous jobs. Most of their deaths are their fault. Not obeying the rules of the road and bad health. Yes there are a few nuts who want cops dead but you give respect you get respect. Cops have gotten a bit big for their bottoms and when the worst punishment is a paid vacation what do you want.
This is so funny. I don’t see the relevance of this. He wasn’t raping a minor the night he got shot. Nothing more to say. Why try to headline the story that way?
Heidi guess you don’t have kids so you wouldn’t understand good thing your on the Obama care and are on birth control… he didn’t rape any kid that night but 16 years ago he committed the worst act ever really surprised the inmates he served with didn’t get the job done… p.s. don’t have kids because you are dumber than a box of rocks.
“…you are dumber than a box of rocks.”
Why is it that the people who can’t spell or put together a proper English sentence are always the ones complaining about how dumb other people are?
I’m confused by some of these comments. Isn’t the point of this post the fact that he was a registered sex offender and none of the people that knew him cared because he was a good man? The age difference when he was convicted may have been extreme to some, but he did not rape a prepubescent girl. It sounds closer to a Romeo and Juliet scenario, and it was 16 years ago. I think I’m more frustrated that in cases like these, where the cops are clearly in the wrong, the victim’s less-than-perfect radio sheet gets released and people use things like this to justify him being killed.
Duh Jess the slightest thing to make sure cop look better than the victim even if cop is guilty is SOP.
this is a reprehensible blog with run by a reprehensible woman who is suggesting that this guy who molested a 14-year-old and got her pregnant should be shown mercy based on his molestation actions . It’s wrong to conflate how he died with what he did in his previous life . He may have been fun loving but he also raped a 14-year-old girl and got her pregnant. How on earth is that okay? And how the hell is a child molester part of free range parenting ? Anyone who continues to follow this is disgusting .
“who is suggesting that this guy who molested a 14-year-old and got her pregnant should be shown mercy based on his molestation actions ”
Your local community college offers classes on improving reading skills. You should look into them.
” And how the hell is a child molester part of free range parenting ?”
If she got pregnant as a result of the sex they had, she is by definition NOT a “child”. I get it, though, that “young-adult molester” doesn’t have that same ring to it.
So sad ….it was reported here that Mr Sterling co-parented the child with the 14 (now 31?) year old, after jail time I assume. So as Jess says, sounds like an albeit foolish romance rather than a crime.
Am not sure what can be done in the States to combat this type of all-too-common shooting death. I mean, why would it occur to cops who have someone on the ground to just blow them away? I would suggest only allowing special squads to be armed – while not infallible, that seems to work reasonably well down here – but unfortunately I suppose too many of your ordinary citizens carry guns to make it viable. But some kind of much tougher training needs to happen. I recently watched (stupid me) appalling footage of a rather fat middle aged cop shoot an unbalanced man who was trying to hit him with a flagpole. Now, granted the flagpole would have hurt him had he been whacked with it, but he had several options open to him. He could have run behind his car and called for back up. He could have attempted to block the flagpole. He could even have dived into the nearby shop to give himself a moment to collect himself and consider non-lethal options for ‘dis-flagging’ the chap, who posed no immediate danger to anyone else. But no, he simply pulled out his gun and shot the man through the chest. Because, why not?!
Ridiculous.
@Anna: You’re reprehensible. you deny this man’s humanity because he committed a crime and act like he forfeited his right to life because of it. Your comment is completely unproductive and totally uncalled for.
“But no, he simply pulled out his gun and shot the man through the chest. Because, why not?!”
Generally, the rules for cops using deadly force are the same as the rules for anyone else… an imminent danger to self and others justifies use of force to end the threat. Two things comes into play to make things different. First off, police are expected to go TOWARDS dangerous people rather than AWAY FROM dangerous people. Second, courts are AMAZINGLY deferential to police. Police are slow to blame other police officers for taking unjustified lethal action. Even if the police do investigate thoroughly, prosecutors are slow to bring charges. And even when prosecutors bring charges, juries rarely convict, even when clear evidence is available (as it often is not… the guy who’s still standing writes up a report of what happened, and that’s all the evidence available. The oft-derided surveillance society is slowly changing this because there’s video evidence to back up… or counter… the written report.)
The challenge is that there are so many self-reinforcing feedback loops built into the system. Minorities feel persecuted and mistrust the police, which causes them to not cooperate, which causes police to mistrust them in return, which causes them to mistreat minorities, and we’re back where we started. Middle-class white folks see police going places and dealing with people that we’d rather not have to (cynics will insert minorities here, but it’s more than that… homeless, criminals, and the mentally ill… categories which often apply in combination are what I’m talking about.) and because the police are dealing with people we’d rather not deal with, we tend to give them a bit of a pass in how they do it. Recognizing that this shouldn’t happen and believing it strongly enough to do anything about it being different things. Really, really different things.
There’s no easy solution. If there was, it would already be in place.
Take, for example, the Taser. It was widely adopted by police agencies because it offers a (usually) non-lethal way for officers to subdue violent persons. What we learned after it had been widely deployed, however, was that because officers knew it was non-lethal, they were far more likely to draw, and use, their Tasers.
Ultimately, I think the problem is that there are a small number of officers who are far too prone to use of excessive force, and a majority who use force only when they have a legit reason to do so. But the cops who don’t use excessive force back the ones who do, for a multitude of reasons. You want to see a real decrease in excessive force? Cut the people who are prone to excessive use. To do this, you need the cops who don’t to recognize that the ones who do make their jobs harder and more dangerous. How to do that? Dunno. Maybe make police pay and pension funds cover costs of excessive force lawsuits, so that when Officer Aggro gets that million-dollar lawsuit, it costs Officer Serve and Officer Protect some of their paychecks and/or retirement.
There a simple reason for the shooting first ask questions later mentality. Cops are taught from the first day it’s them or us the so called heroes in blue! They think they are always in danger. And tattletale cop end up hated by his fellow cops so no stopping bad cops. Blame the President for scolding bad cops while praising the good ones and act like there was no praise for the good ones.
I’ve got to disagree with you in this one. If he had committed one offense, did his time, and came out of prison and didn’t commit another crime, I would say he was reformed. But this man committed crime after crime. Domestic violence and abuse charges, several battery charges. It seems that the people around him might be safer now. I have no respect for a man who repeatedly beats up on other people, especially his own family.
I’ve seen this on the news but don’t remember any mention of him being a sex offender (good, because that’s not the point).
I’m glad for him that he at least got to live the past 16 years as a ordinary human being and not as an outcast puked out by society.
@Hineata: I know it’s fiction, but this is why I stopped watching some American show about the sniper unit of the police after like 4 episodes: they kept shooting people in (to me) perfectly avoidable situations – it was infuriating! And then afterward they’d act all down and went, “oh it’s not your fault, there was nothing else you could have done.” Ugh.
@Anna: I’m proud to continue to follow this blog. #jesuisdisgusting
“Cops are taught from the first day it’s them or us the so called heroes in blue!”
No, they aren’t.
They ARE taught “officer safety”, though.
My wife and I have been happily together for fifteen years, got married three years ago, and now have two kids together. We first started dating when she was fourteen and I was twenty one.
I read stories like this, and am SO thankful that I lived in a time and place where this was legal. (At the time the Canadian age of consent was 14 – now it’s 16).
And, given some off the hateful comments I read here, I consider myself so very, very lucky not to be an American.
Officer safety means violence is the answer to everything. I have read of plenty of times where keeping a cool head would have better. A guy wants to kill himself let just shoot him. A man want to know why his guests are being bothered for going to their car ,time for violence. A man is sleeping outside which means he probably nutty and it not life or death but you got to wake him.
Humans can be brainwashed into seeing anything. For example:
1. A cop can start to interpret any shouting or fast move as a life threatening situation.
2. A helicopter parent can interpret any man that is friendly in any way (to a person under 18) must be a pervert and a sexual monster.
On this, blog Lenore is trying to show that kidnappers and child rapists are NOT on every corner. We are trying to show the fallacy of example ‘2’. However trying to show the fallacy of example ‘1’ is an uphill battle. That’s because CSI, The News, and Facebook are doing everything they can to prove that this is an amazingly dangerous world! They are also doing their best to keep racism alive.
“I have read of plenty of times where keeping a cool head would have better.”
I couldn’t agree more! I wish more people understood this. Unfortunately we have built a society that encourages emotional instability.
You can’t become a marathon runner simply because you want to. You have to train and work your way up to that level of fitness. This is the same as trying to keep a cool head during times of stress. You can’t keep a cool head during stressful times simply because you want to. It takes practice to be able to do this.
Lenore, you know that I boldly support the rights of former offenders, but this guy was no saint. The sex offense just just one of this guy’s numerous criminal convictions. Police were called to the store because he flashed a gun at a homeless guy. He had a history of conflict with the police. He resisted arrest many times in the past and was resisting arrest this time. I’m not a fan of police, either but i’m not going to try to fight when being handcuffed. We have far better examples than Alton Sterling.
I don’t support any movements that rely on professional victim mentalities and bogus statistics to propagate a bogus agenda, and BLM is on par with the victim industry on that point.
“The sex offense just just one of this guy’s numerous criminal convictions. Police were called to the store because he flashed a gun at a homeless guy. He had a history of conflict with the police. He resisted arrest many times in the past and was resisting arrest this time.”
When I was in law school, they didn’t teach me that resisting arrest carries a death sentence.
I don’t think he was a saint either. I just think it’s interesting how we all can change our views about a person in order to strengthen our opinion or keep the tsunami of emotion flowing.
view 1. He was child rapist and got everything he deserved!
view 2. The cops murder people and get paid for it!
Both of these views are extreme, wrong, and a bit sick. However they’re great for getting likes on Facebook.
“I’m glad for him that he at least got to live the past 16 years as a ordinary human being and not as an outcast puked out by society.”
Let’s not ignore that there may have been a relationship between the fact that he was a convicted sex offender and the fact that he had to eke out a living selling CDs on the sidewalk. I’m not sure his conviction didn’t make him an outcast in a sense.
@copsaregood,
Actually, death is much worse that getting raped. It’s about perspective. The SOR is complete BS and does nothing to actually protect kids, and in fact, makes the families of people (and yes, some of them have kids) extremely unsafe.
While I don’t condone what this guy did, he did his time, he paid for it, and and did not reoffend.
Also, what Jess said.
No, this guy isn’t a saint or this year’s poster child. He committed many crimes, but only one gave him a permanent stigma. The stigma is not against all serious crimes, just sex offenders. Murderers don’t have to register anywhere. The current cultural fear of sex offenders has taken away almost all childhood freedom, making this topic pertinent to free range. Most sex offenders are not really a threat though. Consensual sex w/ 1 person over 18 and 1 under, urinating in public, a kindergartner being bullied into pulling down pants (previous story I think). . Most of this is irrevelent to me in the interests of keeping my kids safe. I don’t care if some jerk peed on the highway. I only care about the really dangerous people who will do horrible things that are NOT consensual. The list is clogged, making it difficult to use in a meaningful way. What if someone who is registered moved in next door? Does anybody want to move because the neighbor urinated in public 12 years ago? We don’t have enough information to know if they are dangerous or not. Chances are they are not and moving can be expensive and if you bring your stuff it is a lot of work. Then someone else who is registered moves in near the new address…
A black supremacist, pedophile, rapist, thieving, violent thug.
Turned into a choir boy for political reasons, to incite an anti-white race war.
For “the narrative” any crime can be brushed under the rug.
@Art
“…did not reoffend.”
Uh, yes he did. Many times. 46-item rap sheet. Some of it minor, some not so minor. Easily google-able on an internet near you.
What is going on with this comment section? It’s reminding me of my local news FB page…..
Beth, I thought the same thing.
What we see is an agenda driving the news. When one “thing” is deemed more horrific than another, that other thing is downplayed. In prior cases, the “thing” is “sex offender” while downplaying the fact the kid was 18 and the girl lied about her age, the good grades the kid got, the places he volunteered on the weekends.
In this case, there is a strong social justice warrior movement to denigrate lawful authority, and so the victim must be portrayed in the best possible light. The “thing” is how awful the police are, so the other “things” of the victim’s questionable life choices must be ignored (or at least minimized).
It reminds me of the clip Lenore had many moons ago about a fictional news room covering the Casey Anthony trial and how a consultant was brought in to show exactly how the story was being framed by a news organization to drive ratings. The same thing is happening here.
Facts and logic usually fail when opposed by strong emotion. I say this as a facts-and-logic person. Humans are not logical creatures. If you want to get people behind you to change the system, develop an emotion-based argument. You have to overcome the emotion of “think of the children.”
Thanks for the post, which brings up this aspect to the story I had missed.
One thing to note is that one flaw in our culture now is, one way to get someone else killed, is often to call police with a report of someone else brandishing a gun.
Maybe I completely missed the point of lenore’s blog, but my understanding is that she was trying to highlight the hypocrisy between the people screaming “Murder by cop” and those people that scream about how all child molesters should be put down like the dogs they are. After all, it’s not beyond the realm of possibility that some of the people who believe that child molesters should all be put down are some of the same people that are screaming about how this was a racist murder of a black man by cops.
Police Officer is no better than any other profession in the world – you have good ones, mediocre ones and bad ones. I deal with many police officers from many different police forces on a daily basis. Some of them are the good guys that everybody seems to want them to be and some of them are more contemptible than the people they arrest. Some are well suited to the job with a calm, cool demeanors and an ability to diffuse crazy situations and let the insults hurled at them by people not particularly happy to be arrested roll off their back and some are hot-heads on power trips. Some are smart and some are dumber than dirt. Some are respectful and some are demeaning. Some are colorblind and some are racist. Like every profession in existence, cops run the full gambit of human personalities and traits.
And police departments tend to have a specific culture that is ruled by the top. I deal with probably 15 different police forces on a regular basis. 90% of my motions to suppress due to constitutional violations come from 3-4 of them. Those departments are my prolific testa-liers too. Largest amount of obstruction of an officer warrants are from that handful as well. If anyone from one of those 3-4 departments shot someone, I would immediately question whether excessive force was used. The rest are pretty honest, straightforward and by the book. I’d be willing to give them the benefit of the doubt in most situations.
The problem is that for some reason some portions of society seem to have this need to believe that all police officers are good and well-suited to the job, despite the fact that these same people would not insist that to be true about any other profession out there. Therefore, we get knee-jerk reaction of looking for all the ways to blame the victim and contortions of the law to get the police officer out of trouble.
As for him being a sex offender or having a criminal record, so? Not a single one of his charges carries the penalty of a death sentence without the benefit of a trial.
“…did not reoffend.
Uh, yes he did.”
He did not commit another sex offense. And that really is what we mean by reoffending for a sex offender. That is the entire justification of the sex offender registry – the belief that a sex offender will commit another sex offense, not that a sex offender might one day steal a car.
His death was a tragedy, but the mass media are deliberately provoking ill feeling toward the police by selectively reporting whenever a black is killed by police, while ignoring the vast majority of blacks killed by other blacks. That kind of distorted image of society presented by the media is what’s really psychopathic.
Sexhysteria, your argument is like saying cancer is not a problem that should be discussed in the media because more people die from heart disease. (I have no idea which disease actually has a higher death rate).
Yes, there is a lot of violence in our inner cities and such violence tends to be black-on-black because that is who lives there. None of that violence excuses or minimizes a person in a position of authority improperly taking the life of another unarmed person.
This idea that we can’t care or talk about one thing while something else bad is also occurring is ridiculous. Most of us have the capability to care about many different things simultaneously.
Actually, Donna, if I may try to improve your analogy, I’d say it’s like saying we shouldn’t be talking about hospital-acquired infections and healthcare errors in general because far more people die from cancer, etc.
It’s because we (hopefully) have more direct control over the former that we should be talking about it. It *ought* to be easier to have effective oversight of law enforcement and ensure that all people enjoy the same civil rights than it is to eliminate crime.
Some years ago there was a “mea culpa” article written by the NIH psychiatrist who originally made that pronouncement that pedophiles couldn’t be cured. He said he wished he’d never said that, because his statement has been used to justify some of the craziest laws on the books. He went on to say that while a true “cure” might not be possible for many, some CAN be cured, and most can be helped to control their desires. I wish I’d kept a copy of the article because I’ve been unable to find it since. Perhaps someone with better research skills can find it. I don’t recall his name, but I think it might have been in a NIMH online publication.
However, a 20-year-old who has sex with a post-pubescent 14-year-old is not a pedophile.
This actually happened in my neck of the woods, about an hour from where I live in NOLa. I get your point Lenore and no I don’t think it’s reprehensible to feel this way. I get your point exactly. The aim of incarceration in many cases is rehabilitation, as I learned during my pre-law curriculum working with a “Convict re-entry program”. Given the public call to justice, it seems that Alton Sterling was doing his due part to become a caring productive member of society again.
I support respectful discord with the police in all situation, as my father was an officer who lost his partner in a situation where a suspect was running from my father and his partner and his partner was shot and killed, but the video’s are fairly damning and the Baton Rouge DA just recused himself because he has a personal relationship with the parents of one of the involved officers. So we shall see how this all plays out. Again, however, I get your point Lenore and I hope all parties involved can receive some resolution.
Cops need to be ashamed of themselves. They think because they wear the badge they can do what they want. They commit murders, they commit sex crimes, and when they get out of prison they don’t have to register, because they want to protect them and there families. Most of them go unpunished tho. It’s time for reform. They need to realize that laws are for everyone to abide by, and if they break the law, just like everyone else, they go to jail and prison.
Cops need to be ashamed of themselves. They think because they wear the badge they can do what they want. They commit murders, they commit sex crimes, and when they get out of prison they don’t have to register, because they want to protect them and there families. Most of them go unpunished tho. It’s time for reform. They need to realize that laws are for everyone to abide by, and if they break the law, just like everyone else, they go to jail and prison. I’m in Fort Worth Texas, and a captain with the fort worth police dept, was involved in an accident and he was arrested for DWI, so he was drinking and driving, and caused an accident, buy we all no, nothing will be done. Because he wears the badge. Bull,………
The information above shows that the sex offender registry does *not* ruin a guy’s life or reputation. If the above quotes are to be believed, vs. reflecting the usual tendency of people to say nice things about people after they are dead.
The sex offender registry just informs those who investigate that he had a sex offense at some time in the past. Apparently most people either (a) don’t check the registry on every guy they know, and/or (b) have the sense to understand that taking advantage of a 14yo 16 years ago is something to be forgiven and moved past, assuming the individual served his time and committed no further nonsense of that type.
SKL – So for you the definition of a”ruined life” means solely that you become a social outcast about whom nobody ever speaks except in complete disgust? As soon as someone believes you are a “happy, fun-loving guy,”, your life is not ruined, even if you are living in a tent in a homeless sex offender encampment eating out of trash cans because you can’t find a job or a place to live due to your status.
The fact that his friends and neighbors thought he was a decent guy despite his status says absolutely nothing about how he was treated by the public at large or the impact being on the sex offender registry had on his life. It says nothing about whether his status and the limitations involved contributed to his subsequent criminal history (outside of the failure to register offenses which are clearly related). It says nothing about whether it contributed to his choice in occupation. It says nothing about whether it contributed to this specific situation and his death.
FYI – I was speaking generally. I have seen no facts that indicate that this guy was homeless., however homelessness is a common state for sex offenders.
@K: That’s true. I was thinking more of what his neighbors etc said about him than of what he did for a living, because I don’t know what other options he (would have) had.
Dave: “that pronouncement that pedophiles couldn’t be cured. He said he wished he’d never said that, because his statement has been used to justify some of the craziest laws on the books. He went on to say that while a true “cure” might not be possible for many, some CAN be cured, and most can be helped to control their desires.”
Eh… If you consider pedophilia a sexual preference like any other, the suggestion that it can be cured sounds just silly. (Unless, perhaps, teens who grow out of it or something???) In that case it’s also obvious that most can be helped to control their desires. After all, plenty of men are single, but they don’t all roam the streets raping people right and left.
“Eh… If you consider pedophilia a sexual preference like any other, the suggestion that it can be cured sounds just silly.”
It’s not well understood, but it seems unlikely that the spectrum of pedophilia (from true pedophilia… attraction to prepubescent children… through to people who like people who are 17 years, 364 days old) exists distinctly from attraction to adults, nor is it clear whether some cases of “pedophilia” are actually just an obsession with a specific individual who happens to be underage. In cases of the latter, once the person turns 18, then the person obsessed with them is no longer a “pedophile”.
Of course, as you suggest, it also makes a difference if you consider the status of “cured” is achieved when the person no longer has a desire for inappropriate subjects, or when the person no longer ACTS on a desire for inappropriate subjects.
Thank you for writing this. The sex offender registry lumps a lot of relatively minor crimes in with the worst of the worst, and does it’s best to ruin the lives of the people on it…and their families. I am glad to hear a parent speaking with a clear head, and not out of hysteria.
Listen, I have a daughter of my own. Whether this disturbing act happened yesterday or 16 years ago the fact of the matter is it happened. He was a bad person for what he did. Don’t resist arrest idiot.
There are a few comments here saying they might have some sympathy if he had come out of prison and committed no other crimes following the first “carnal knowledge of a juvenile” (NOTE: this is a different charge than rape, pedophilia, etc. So all you people making them one in the same are stacking the deck).
But perhaps they haven’t considered what a breeding ground for crimes prisons are. There is no faster path to the wrong group of friends than spending time in prison. Perhaps spending time in prison as a young man put him on the path to continue crimes, since he came out of prison a felon and a sex offender, how could he find gainful employment to support his child?
I’m just checking to see if my new app is working!