To Make a Predator
What's the difference between a 17-year-old who touches a 13-year-old's breast and a 34-year-old creep with a 13-year-old girlfriend? Nothing — not when it comes to sex offender registries, at least — because we are talking about the same guy. In fact, I was talking to him myself the other night, when he called in to a blog radio show called "Americans Reality Check." That's a show mostly devoted to sex offender registry issues, and I was a guest because I have written that these lists are rife with folks who've committed such "sex crimes" as peeing in public, visiting a prostitute or even streaking — in other words, folks who don't pose much of a threat to kids. Well, this caller was not a streaker or a john. He actually fondled a young teen when he was a teen, 17 years ago. Now he's 34, but on the registry next to his name and current age, it states his offense: "Indecency with a child." As if that's still what he's doing today! So to the casual observer — or freaked-out parent — it looks as if there is a middle-aged guy down the street who molests young girls. Now look: No one is in favor of grown-ups having sex with kids. But right now, there are more than 600,000 people on the sex offender registries, many there for the sex they had as teens with other teens ! So rather than making our kids safe from predators, the registry is turning them into "predators." It's labeling them that! Boys as young as 14 can find themselves on the registry for years — for decades — and our rationale? It's "for the sake of the children." And yet the vast majority of abused children are molested by people they know (relatives, family friends, etc.). The need to protect kids from strangers is far less than the need to protect them from those they know and love. Meantime, the chance of a young life being ruined by getting on that registry keeps growing. Check out the Web site http://freestudents.blogspot.com. Now he's on the sex offender registry for life. Yes, life , because he is a "Tier 3 offender" — the most dangerous. His offense was classified as "aggravated and violent" because of the three-year difference between him and the girl, not because of any actual violence. Once you're a registered sex offender, you can't live near a school, park or day care center. You can't work with kids. If you have a younger sibling at home, most states will make you move out. Finish your high school? You're not even allowed in the building! Get a job? Just try. (And we're not even talking about the jail time many young "offenders" have to serve.) A just-released study by David Finkelhor, head of the Crimes Against Children Research Center at the University of New Hampshire, found that rather than put more names on the sex offender list, a far more effective way to keep kids safe is to teach them how to identify dangerous situations and summon help. So what is the alternative to a registry that's like a great big dump filled with streakers, public urinators, once-horny teens gone gray and the occasional rapist? How about a registry with JUST the rapists? Folks like Phillip Garrido, who is accused of abducting Jaycee Dugard. Maybe if cops didn't have to keep checking on every guy who had sex as a high-school senior with a freshman girlfriend, they could concentrate on the actual criminals out there. That way, all our kids would be safer. Including the ones who have sex in their teens. Lenore Skenazy is the author of "Free-Range Kids: Giving Our Children the Freedom We Had Without Going Nuts with Worry." To find out more about Lenore Skenazy (lskenazy@yahoo.com) and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com. COPYRIGHT 2009 CREATORS.COM
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