Because children are most often molested by someone in their family or by a trusted friend and not a stranger, children are sure to see pictures of their own family members in that video. Does the police department expect children to know how to handle such a brutal outing? Does the police department expect other children to know that they shouldn't use that information to torment classmates?
How does this help children in the families of sex offenders? It doesn't. In fact, it makes the children of sex offenders even more vulnerable than they already are by having their address on the registry.
Casual cruelty.
Shelly Smith at With Justice for All lays out facts about sex offenders on Halloween. From her blog:
This is from non-academic commentary:Shelly agrees with me about the Bedford video (what compassionate and thinking person who cares for children would not?) and tells how she posted a comment on the Bedford police department Facebook page to get the facts out to that community only to have her comment removed. It seems the Bedford police are not very interested in facts about registered citizens.
“The intimidation campaign is a silly diversion of manpower and a waste of your tax dollars. Police and the politicians who are in search of tough-on-crime votes will tell you otherwise, but don’t believe the myth that Halloween is the night child sexual predators wait all year for. The facts tell a different story... Over the past several decades, there has not been one reported instance that I can find of a convicted sex offender molesting a child on Halloween night.” [My emphasis.]
Registered sex offenders have an extremely low rate of re-offense.
Most sex offense arrests are of first-time offenders.
That means the registry is a list of people unlikely to commit a sex offense. Even in Bedford, Indiana.
Thanks, Marie. Yours is one more of those voices that will not be silenced.
ReplyDeleteThis makes me very angry. So these guys are supposedly going to molest your kids when they are reaching into the candy bowl. So stupid.
ReplyDeleteBoyfriend, step-dad and uncle so-in-so or the neighbor who takes your kid trick-or-treating are the ones that's going to molest your kid on Halloween.
When was the last time that kids were allowed to trick-or-treat alone anyway? I've never see kids without a parent.
Parents that watch that video will think they are all set. This is really disgusting.
As someone very experienced in this, I'm all for protecting the kids. The video isn't doing anything for that.