The problem with Megan's Law and its ilk is that there's really no point to enacting such legislation, except giving people the opportunity to hound ex-cons into possible suicide. If I find out that someone in my neighborhood is on the list, what am I meant to do? Either nothing -- which defeats the purpose of having the law in the first place -- or else I do something -- which, in practice, means what happened in this case.

BTW, how carefully were you choosing your words when you talked about "a spurt of sexual assaults"?

The ostensible idea is that parents can prevent their children from associating with sex offenders. But I believe the implicit purpose is to drive sex offenders into isolation, extreme poverty, alcoholism or suicide - to diminish their threat by putting them under stress.

The problem with this case is that the guy was already very limited in his capabilities, under the supervision of a therapist, and living on the same property and under the care of his parents. In addition to that, according to the therapist he recognized his desires were abhorrent and that his best approach to avoid recidivism was to avoid children - which he did. The odds are now 100% that he will never molest another child, which is ideal, but they probably weren't a whole lot less than 100% before he killed himself.

If more sex offenders had his sense of shame, recidivism wouldn't be such a problem.

I think the main purpose for Megan's law is not continued harrassment of ex-cons but rather the informing of parents of small children.

What do you do with this information? Knowing you have a sex offender in your hood, you don't let your children go out and play without parental supervision. I was lucky enough to grow up in a time and a neighborhood in which I could play with my friends in the street or in each other's yard with relative freedom but if there were an offender nearby, I would've been locked indoors. Extreme, I know but have you guys seen Mystic River? It's that easy or easier.

Also, as a single woman, you don't, know matter how stifling hot your apartment is, EVER leave your downstairs window open.

That's barely rational. There might well have been a sex offender nearby, but you could still play with your friends so long as your parents didn't know it. Have you seen Mystic River? As I recall, the sex offender in that film picked up his victim from a car. It's not hard to drive a little bit outside your neigborhood, should you be so inclined. The risk of a child being molested and/or abducted by a stranger is statistically negligible, which is one reason why the cases where it does happen are so high profile. As Steven Levitt loves to point out, parents are irrationally afraid of things which are almost certain not to happen, while they're not rationally afraid of things like the neighbor's swimming pool, which is MUCH more dangerous to their kids than any number of local sex offenders might be. The downstairs-window thing is similar: there are no statistics proving that single women who leave their downstairs windows open are significantly more likely to be the victims of assault. But you feel in some sort of inchoate/anecdotal way that it can or should be true, and so you give up your own physical comfort for the sake of appeasing your dubiously-rational fears. Where I come from, that's more or less the same as superstition.

Felix, you are neither a parent nor a single woman but I'm amazed at how expert you are at everything.

I'm with Felix on this. There is no statistical correlation between parenthood and statistical correlation skills.

Yeah, do explain, Michelle: In what way would my being a parent or a single woman qualify me to opine on such matters, and in what way does my being neither of the above disqualify me? Any idiot can become a parent; it seems to me quite obvious that parents often lose rationality on such matters upon achieving parenthood, as opposed to gaining it. In doing so, they endanger their kids, who are unprotected against real dangers and overprotected against imagined ones.

The original questions was:

If I find out that someone in my neighborhood is on the list, what am I meant to do? Either nothing -- which defeats the purpose of having the law in the first place -- or else I do something -- which, in practice, means what happened in this case.

The answer for a nonparent or non-single woman, is nothing. The answer for parents and single women who know sex offenders are living in their neighborhood is to be more careful. It doesn't mean you have to go after that person to coerce him into suicide but it does mean that you don't encourage the opportunity for a sex crime to be committed on your child or yourself.

I don't see what's so irrational about being careful.

As a matter of statistic correlation, I don't know anyone who had children, or as a child, that was/were a victim of sexual assualt while under the charge of their parents. I know several that were once they entered the realm of nominally independent decision making (that is, adolescent behavior that was statistically threatening -- getting drunk with older men, etc.), but I do know one person who had a sibling (two years old) drown in a swimming pool.

But there is the flip side to Felix's argument: what is the most dangerous statisical threat to safety? Falling down. What do you do about that? Ask Maclaren to build little rolling scaffolding that you insert your child into?

I'm sorry, I must've missed the statistics presented that Felix correlated.

"Any idiot can become a parent; it seems to me quite obvious that parents often lose rationality on such matters upon achieving parenthood, as opposed to gaining it. In doing so, they endanger their kids, who are unprotected against real dangers and overprotected against imagined ones."

Fucking EXACTLY!!!

I am a parent, one who has always let his kids play outside, sometimes WITHOUT MY IMMEDIATE SUPERVISION. I put this in caps because this practice has been met with horror and derision mre tha once by other parents in the neighborhood. Kids today between the ages of 6 and 10 DO NOT PLAY OUTSIDE. Why? Video games do have an impact, but mostly it's due to parents' irrational fear of the statistically improbable. I don't have the time to find the appropriate links, but I'm certain I've read studies that show child molestation and/or abduction rates have not risen or fallen all that much in 30 years. However, media coverage of such crimes has skyrocketed.

So yeah, I'm losing steam on this...

I'd be happy to see some statistics.

Well, I had a couple of weird experiences when I was a kid living in San Diego which I reflect on, granted this was 25 and 27 years ago.

The first one was when I was a kindergartner. We lived 3 blocks from school so my mom spent the entire summer training me how to walk home on my own (she had 2 other kids at home, a newborn and a toddler so it really helped if I could walk home alone). When it came time to do it, I blanked and ended up at some guy's house. He kept me there for some time and I trusted him completely. He eventually found a way to bring me to the right house. Today, I feel really happy I could trust him. If I were a parent knowing that a former child molester lived in my neighborhood let my 5-year old girl walk home alone? Probably not.

The second was with a psycho babysitter who resented that my mom (who worked out of financial necessity) had figured out she wasn't all there. She followed me home from school with a knife. I found a police officer in the front of the school and they 'took care of her'. They admitted her into a psychiatric ward and my parents moved away. I know she doesn't fit into the sex crime category but rather I offer this as support to why I'd be more cautious than my parents were.

So though I'm not a parent, I would lean toward being more cautious given my experiences. I think that ex-cons who have gone say 5 years without recommitting another crime should be relieved of reporting.

Number of children under the age of 10 who drown in residential swimming pools every year: 550.

Number of children under the age of 12 who were victims of "stereotypical kidnappings" in 1999: 45

Where do you get 45 kidnappings? I see the bigger picture:

*Bullet point #1: 115 "stereotypical kidnappings"
*Bullet point #2: 40% of #1 were killed, another 4% no body was recovered
*Bullet point #3: 58,200 nonfamily abductions
*Bullet point #6:"Nearly half of all child victims of stereotypical kidnappings and nonfamily abductions were sexually assaulted by the perpetrator"

If we are going to be rigorous about statistics, you could read a little further down for this:

Fifty-seven percent of children abducted by a nonfamily perpetrator were missing from caretakers for at least 1 hour, and police were contacted to help locate 21 percent of the abducted children.

So 25,000 of your bolded number were returned in less time that it takes to watch Desperate Housewives, and since the police were only contacted for 12,000 of those instances, we can assume the 13,000 spread were resolved a relatively short time frame, and many (based on their discussion of methodology) were likely situations that decidedly do no match with the stranger sexual predator that everyone envisions. 12,000 is still an awfully big number (even though we don't know how many of those cases resulted in something other than lost kids os parents/caregivers with undue misapprehension), but I would argue a more legitimate one to post, having read the data as well.

But even allowing for your dispute, it is still five times more likely that your child will die in your neighbor's pool than at the hands of a stranger. Where I expect for some there is a qualitative difference, losing child is still losing a child. The couple I knew filled in the pool and subsequently became alcoholics, a state which was in its 20th year when I met them.

I've never lived in a neighborhood with a pool. I have a hot tub now but it's covered and above ground so the likelihood of a neighbor's child falling in is pretty much nil.

99, you're comparing child abduction deaths vs. deaths caused by a swimming pool.

I see the topic more as child abduction leading to sexual abuse not leading to deaths. Also, I thought the original comparison was supposed to be sexual abuse of children from before Megan's Law versus after.

Look, there are absolutely dangerous people out there, and if you never let your kids outside, then you are decreasing the chances they will be abducted. But there are so many other potential dangers that are FAR more likely to occur on a daily basis, such as auto accidents, etc. And yet we don't blink an eye. Non-family kidnappings are sensational and rare. My child is literally more likely to win the lottery than to be abducted.

I agree, children need to play outside and given the constraints over the availability of an adult's time, they need to go out unsupervised.

The questions in my mind are, does knowing a convicted sex perp lives in your neighborhood influence, in any way, how much, when and with whom you let your kids out to play? Is having that information valuable? Does having a convicted sex perp living in your neighborhood increase the chances of your child being molested? I think the answer is yes.

The law exists not only to terrorize the ex-cons (to push them into suicide?!@#$) but to improve the safety of the most vulnerable creatures on this planet, children. Even if one child is saved from such a horrendous experience, I think it's worth it. These guys may have paid their due (in this case 2 years) but their past shows their tendency to abuse children. The law is already in effect, you guys want to eliminate it to make them more comfortable. You're defending rights of a criminal at the potential cost of an innocent child. Go figure.

You won't be surprised that I see things a bit differently, Michelle. The fact is that sex offenders, upon their release, have to live somewhere. Now, given that they're living somewhere, we should ask whether the information about where they're living should be made public. I think there are good reasons why it shouldn't.

1. It violates their right to privacy.
2. It puts them at risk of vigilante attacks from the local population.
3. It can lead to suicides, as in the case which prompted this post.
4. Your gut feelings notwithstanding, there's no real evidence that publicising this information reduces the number of children that are molested.

But there's also

5. It reduces the quality of life of most of the children in the neighborhood, as their parents follow your advice and never let them play without adult supervision.

In other words, there are many obvious costs, and only one possible benefit -- a benefit which may or may not even exist.

It seems to me that any law which increases fear more than it increases safety is a bad law -- which is why Megan's Law and its ilk are bad laws.

Yes, I am comparing abduction deaths to pool deaths. That is the closest thing to an apples to apples comparison here. The data Felix provided was inconclusive about sexual assualt from stranger abduction, mostly because the Megan's Law discussion that opened this was about absolute stranger threats, not those from babysitters (which are a nonfamily threat, but not an unknown threat, which was not broken out in the data).

What about the fact that a woman is a greatest risk for murder when at home with her partner? How do we handle this? Or that the majority of sexual assault victims know their attacker? Are you recommending women only be around strangers?

If you are looking to reduce the likelihood of even a single instance of child harm, why don't support that municipalities publish lists of pools in a given area? And the number of pools that don't have locked gates, etc. With relatively sophisticated mapping and information technologies, we could give parents a pretty specific threat matrix, and even identify best possible locations, overlaid with preschools that send the highest proportion of kids to ivies, and then overlay it again with density of immigrant female populations (cheap caregivers). They all those fucking yuppies can fight of the three houses that guarantee absolute safety and promise unfettered social success.

Why focus on sex crimes? Isn't murder a much more irreversible crime? Isn't murder worse than rape? Are recidivism rates for rape higher than for murder?

Stefan, because Megan's Law refers to sex criminals and acts of sex crimes against children. Please don't belittle the physical and psychological effects sexual abuse has on children.

99, you're clearly off your rocker (not that that's unusual for you). You're way off topic now.

Felix, of course I expect you to have a different view. Isn't that why we're all here? Or at least why I'm here? As the only female (and non-white) editor and main commenter, I try to offer a different perspective. You guys don't have to buy it. In fact, you can continue to ignore me but as Stefan recently eloquently (no, I'm not giving you compliments) said blogging is about discovery. We can all continue to live in our own world or listen to the views of others whether you decide to incorporate them or not.

1. It violates their right to privacy - yes, I agree but this has yet to be successfully challenged in court. Also, I have little sympathy for those who are only in this situation because they have physically violated someone else.

2. It puts them at risk of vigilante attacks from the local population - there is not proof of this, at least that you've offered up. This site indicates such is not common.

"The most commonly raised concern about Megan's Laws relate to fears of vigilantism, when neighbors learn of a sex offender's presence and decide to either drive him out of the neighborhood or cause him physical harm. These fears are not without basis, but to date incidents of vigilantism are not common."

3. It can lead to suicides, as in the case which prompted this post.

Read more closely, Mr. Salmon. This guy had serious psychological problems (more associated with his physical disabilities) with previous suicide attempts prior to the posting of signs.

4. Your gut feelings notwithstanding, there's no real evidence that publicising this information reduces the number of children that are molested.

You're the one who is offering gut feelings and not offering any statistical data to support your point.

5. It reduces the quality of life of most of the children in the neighborhood, as their parents follow your advice and never let them play without adult supervision.

This law allows each parent to make an informed decision. If you have a sex offender across the street just as Megan did and you still allowed her to play outside near the offender without supervision, that is your choice, as a parent and you can live with the consequences of her life after having been abused, assuming of course that she wasn't murdered after being sexually assaulted like Megan was.

Cheap shots aren't going to get you out of this. You posit zero tolerance for child safety, yet focus on only one area, when it can be demonstrated there are several others where threat levels may be higher, yet no remunerative action is recommended. If we are preaching zero tolerance, shouldn't we outlaw swimming pools? It would save more children.

Statistical safety as regards known and unknown assiliants is paramount, since we can make the perverse argument that it may be statistically safer having convincted sexual predators serve as caregivers for children, since childern are far more likely to suffer physical and sexual abuse by family members than they are by strangers (I don't know enough about statistics to create a model that would test this, which would have to balance recidivism against general probability of sexual assualt -- but the whole point is that Megan's Law is not a well constructed model, but one that is narrative constructed)

Megan's Law has to be justified only using probability. I would hope you recognize that any other measure would be massively prejudicial and unconstitutional, in the form of individual screening. And if the data are poor, then we shouldn't have the law.

What next, pull a Landesman, and claim we are being callous and uncaring about sexual abuse?

IT's odd having this discussion while this is being reported. Did anyone see a follow up to the two childern who were killed in GA about two weeks ago? As soon as their bodies were found, the story all but vanished.

Stefan's not belittling anything: he's making a solid point. If sex offenders have to register, why not murderers? Hell, why not drug dealers, too? They're probably more harmful to children than sex offenders are -- one sex offender can't fuck up all that many children, but one drug dealer can fuck up hundreds.

And I'm not ignoring you, Michelle -- quite the opposite. I'm responding to you. This thread is now 25 comments long. What makes you think we're ignoring you?

I also am the only person here who did go out and find statistical data. But even the strongest proponents of Megan's Law must admit that, statistically speaking, there are many greater dangers to children than sex offenders. What statistical data would prove my point to your satisfaction? And why is the burden of proof on me, rather than on those who would burden society with extra legislation on the basis of anecdote, hype and hunch?

If a bad law has positive results, it's still a bad law. If a bad law has negative results, it's a really bad law. Megan's Law is bad law because, as I say, it creates more fear than safety. The point that Stefan and 99 and I are all making in different ways is that if Megan's Law is justifiable, all manner of other laws could be justified as well, from banning swimming pools to forcing convicted drug dealers to register for life on a public address registry.

What I find astonishing, however, is this:
If you have a sex offender across the street just as Megan did and you still allowed her to play outside near the offender without supervision, that is your choice, as a parent and you can live with the consequences of her life after having been abused...

What you're doing, in effect, here, is placing the blame for any abuse not on the abuser, but on the parent. You're basically telling good parents like Sac that if he's not more careful/paranoid in looking after his kids, it'll be (partially) his fault if they get abused. Which seems pretty sick to me.

Where I think the difference lies is that in the mind of a parent, it is far worse to have a child die at the hands of a sex offender than through drowning in a swimming pool.

But the question is, is it 12 times worse? Quite possibly, yes, in the mind of a parent.

But then, just as we should not let relatives of victims of crimes mete out punishment, we should not let emotional accounting dictate public policy.

There is also the problem which Sterling initially raised: the people named under Megan's Law have already served a full sentence. I think this is double jeopardy. One solution, of course, is to change the sentences for sex crimes to incorporate post-jail monitoring. But Megan's Law hasn't done that; it is breaking rules rather than creating a transparent, level platform of rules. The issue isn't whether these individual ex-cons deserve their fate, but the government overstepping its bounds. If it can happen to kiddie fiddlers, it can happen to other types of criminal...it's a slippery slope.

Stefan raises an interesting point, and I actually disagree with him that "we should not let emotional accounting dictate public policy". Democracy = will of the people, and the people are, by their very nature, emotional beings. Legislators neither can nor should have an emotionectomy after being elected to office. Without "emotional accounting", I doubt slavery would ever have been abolished. The difference is that the abolition of slavery had a rock-solid intellectual grounding, while Megan's Law, to put it charitably, doesn't. But what's important is whether a law is good law or bad law, and you can't tell by looking at how emotionally-grounded it is. Megan's Law is bad law, and the various Bush Administration forestry and logging initiatives are bad law too. But the former is emotionally based while the latter is lobbyist-based. And any fule nos that lobbyists have no emotions.

"And why is the burden of proof on me, rather than on those who would burden society with extra legislation on the basis of anecdote, hype and hunch?"

The burden of proof is on you because the law is already passed and enacted in all 50 states. If you want it removed, then you, 99, Jame, Sac, Stefan (you needn't point out that all you boys disagree w/me, Felix - I'm used to it) will have to provide a more adequate argument and appeal to all those emotional voters to side with the rapist. Good luck.

The reason I haven't bothered with your guys' swimming pool argument is because it's so ridiculous. Of course swimming pools are dangerous, so are having knives in the kitchen, so are having electrical plugs that are not babyproofed, so are having stairs. They are all potential dangers for children and that's what public/community education is about. The difference between these household dangers and a rapist? Must I answer that? Yes, of course, the difference is someone is preying on your child. It's no accident, rather it could be a crime of opportunity.

You're basically telling good parents like Sac that if he's not more careful/paranoid in looking after his kids, it'll be (partially) his fault if they get abused. Which seems pretty sick to me.

Guilt is something every parent feels. If your child fell out of a tree and you did nothing to prevent him from climbing it, you would automatically feel responsibility for it. Why? Because as a parent, you are supposed to be their protector until he's come to an age where you can equip him to make informed decisions on his own. Or if he got run over by a car on his Big Wheel, you would feel guilty for having allowed him to ride in the street even though it's clearly the driver's fault. As you said, emotions (including guilt) are not rational. I'm not a parent but I am big sis to three siblings so I still know this feeling.

Megan's Law has a lot of flaws; there appears to be no end to the reporting, statutory rape is included and the type of information required is ridiculous (e.g. loan applications). I would've never voted to pass it but given that it's already passed, I'm not going to complain or take any actions to remove it especially if I one day have children of my own. Which I guess makes me opportunistic.

When I was asked to put my name on a petition for Megan's Law about 12 years ago, I said no. It's the wrong answer to a big problem. If these people are still dangerous, why are they being let out of prison? Why aren't they serving life in prison? Why is someone who has been proven to be a continuing danger to our children being released from prison? If the energy that went into passing Megan's Law had been focused on getting longer sentences for sex offenders, our streets would already be significantly safer for our children.

Funny, "Wrong Answer" comes from Richmond. Who else do we know in Richmond?

Yeah, Sterling. Have you been violating the ban on letting your friends comment on MF? 'Cos you know when we allowed you onto this site, it was on the explicit understanding that no one else from Richmond would ever be allowed to comment.

Could just be a case of MPD.

Juvenile wisdom ignores ratio of risk and potential loss.
Juvenile wisdom is guided by avoidance of constraint.
Juvenile wisdom minimizes likely harmful consequences.
Juvenile wisdom often seeks minimum personal effort.
Juvenile wisdom employs irrelevant issues to rationalize.

Most people get it right if the risk and potential loss are both high or both low. And many get it right when the risk is high and the potential loss is low (It often depends on the situation.). But low risk, high potential loss situations seem to boggle young minds.

When a wise parent is faced with a teenager who wants to participate in risky behavior, they will often say ìI agree that the risk is very low, but the potential loss is so great that it overwhelms the low risk. Therefore it is unwise to do as you wish. So... NO!!!!.î

You non-parents who have commented here have no grasp at all of the value of a child to a loving parent. You call them irrational cuz you do not understand what is going on! It is your arrogance, not their foolishness, that accounts for the difference in perception.

When parents do expose their children to such risks, a loving parent has to wonder whether the negligent parent really loves their children. Or is it just that their reasoning is juvenile?

Arguing against Meganís Law on the basis of low risk IS juvenile!
In fact, it is S T U P I D !!!!. Arguing that other hazards are more probable is I R R E L E V A N T !!!!

I would like to remind several of you that swimming pools do not stalk our children. I had thought that was obvious.

The recidivism rate of child molesters almost guarantees they will strike again. So when molesters are near children the risk of harm is not all that low! So loving parents want to know!!!!

And do not turn a blind eye to the cost. The cost of molestation to the subsequent quality of life for the molested child, if not killed, is in many cases very high. Some never recover, experiencing disruptive emotions for the rest of their lives. I know one such person, and that personís emotions traumatize an entire extended family. Sensible loving parents will not expose their children to that risk.

One reason that molestation incidence rates are ìlowî is that loving parents do watch their kids closely. These folks strongly appreciate Meganís Law, and wish for stronger measures.

One reason that molestation rates are as high as they are is largely due to negligent parents who are too self-absorbed to expend the effort to watch their kids closely. Witness the parents of kids allowed to stay overnight in Jacksonís bed.

For those of you who pity the molesters, I have a question. While you may acknowledge that molesters are the most despicable of persons, doing serious damage to the most vulnerable, why do you *idenitfy* with them? Something deep down inside of you finds some affinity there?

No, I do not buy that you are just applying principles of fairness and justice. Molesters have discarded all their rights by violating societyís most prescious assets. Society routinely penalizes persons guilty of crimes by removing some of their rights, or all of their rights with the death penalty.

WRONG ANSWER has a clear view of the problem: ìIf these people are still dangerous, why are they being let out of prison? Why aren't they serving life in prison? Why is someone who has been proven to be a continuing danger to our children being released from prison?î

Why indeed! Legal restrictions on sex offenders are often flagrantly violated and are hard to enforce. Most loving parents agree that Meganís law is a bandage to compensate for ineffective government action. They are glad they have Meganís law, but wish they did not even have to be concerned with this nightmare!

Already colonies of sex-offenders have been set up at government expense, sometimes in remote locations. If you added up all the costs of freed molesters, you could easily justify the costs of some isolated facilities for them. They are not stupid, give them real jobs there to earn their way. But keep them away from society.
BTW, there are degrees of offense here, and being so isolated should be for the offenders likely to repeat.

Michelle has exhibited admirable wisdom on this topic. It seems not one of you listened. If you are not so juvenile, go back and read again her answers to your questions on this topic. Open your minds to what she as to say.

To clueless non-parents:

I suspect some of you childless folks have no appreciation for the problem parents face in protecting their children these days.

To illustrate, we recently had a festival for youth in our community. The organizers had downloaded face pictures of the locally registered sex-offenders to keep an eye out for them. And yes, several of them did show up, one of which had a terrible history of multiple offenses against children. And he was seen watching kids play from a distance of a few feet, and in an area where a snatch might have been successful. Were it not for the alert organizers, we might have had another abduction.

This is not a rare incident.

Juvenile wisdom tends to underestimate risk.

Iím sorry. In my rush to post #34 I failed to include this one in the opening list.

I think you all know this, and if not, talk to an actuary for driversí insurance.

Wise parents know this, and it is often a consideration when they are evaluating a childís estimate of risk as he/she is trying to get parents approval for their engaging in risky conduct. Of course, a NO answer gets the child into a huff with the clear opinion that the parents are fun smashing dinosaurs.

While we can chuckle at this, we have all seen it, and it is serious business. Even more serious is when the child does not grow out of this juvenile thinking as they mature into adulthood. It can be very subtle, hardly noticed. But the usual effect is that very smart adults may end up making some very bad decisions.

Isnít anyone mad at me yet?

Not mad, just bewildered. Hurling platitudes is ridiculous and irrelevant. As a loving parent of 3, I am fully aware of the risk/harm ratio, I worry abot it daily just sending my oldest on his daily bike ride to school. Although to be honest, I am more concerned about a car running into him than with a molestor snatching him off the street. I'm being quite serious. As for the minimal personal effort of "juvenile wisdom," that does not apply to my lament regarding hwo kids don't play outside anymore. I send my kids outside not to lesson my parental workload, but to give them time to play without direction, which is important for their mental development, and to hopefully get a little exercise in.

Good luck with setting up your molester colonies. The thing about suggestions such as these is that they will never happen. Instead, the smart thing to do is deal with reality, that you can't account for everything.

Back to the core thread - the issue of a convicted child molester living in a neighborhood is itself so imflammatory that it requires no added fuel. A simple printout from the database, with some appended text saying that he'd had no further convictions in 15 years and was mostly confined to a wheelchair would have been sufficient. Basically, "Keep your kids away from him but don't panic." Instead someone wrote up a hateful leaflet, and the guy killed himself from shame.

And that's not to say that some people shouldn't be shamed to the point of suicide. But this poor bastard hadn't caught a break since he was a little boy himself. A little research - or just going to talk with the guy and his parents - would have been sufficient to put most of the neighborhood's fears to rest. It's just a shame that his life ended that way.

I just hope the six year old he raped recovered and has been able to lead a productive life. Kids at that age are resilient, so maybe she has put it behind her.

Where is the real Sterling and what have you done to him? The Sterling I used to know would've shot this guy, had he molested his little sister, in a space in time when so well calculated that no one would've suspected him. Have you found god or something?

And what is this crap about the poor guy being confined to a wheelchair? Is that somehow supposed to make him less able to molest? Have you forgotten that the bastard was already in a wheelchair when gave the 6-year old oral sex? And convinced her to blow him?

And I don't buy this suicide BS. He had some serious mental problems before the posters - he had to "buy" friendships made on the internet. The legal system had been far too kind on him with only dispensing two years (which was probably a result of his disability) for stealing this girl's childhood.

I think he should have done more prison time, as well. And if he did it to my sister I probably would have wanted to kill him myself. But imagine being a wheelchair-bound child molester in prison.

But when he was ten years old he suffered brain and other nervous system damage as a result of a vaccination gone bad. Imagine being a normal ten year old one afternoon, and then waking up a few days later with severe mental and physical impairments. I empathize with the loneliness, need and desperation he must have felt.

The guy was dealt a pretty awful hand. And I just wish that whoever sent around the flier had spent five minutes thinking about the potential consequences.

Back to the core thread.

My internal alarms go off when someone points to a rare failure of law as a reason to change that law. This is a favorite tactic of the Hollywood types. In seeking publicity they present themselves to the world as ìcourageousî for bucking conventional wisdom. But in fact they are trying to undo a law that does far more good than harm.

As you pointed out, the real failure in the case of Chuckie Claxton was an inconsiderate application of the law. In fact, one act of a single inconsiderate person. Whenever you give someone a sharp tool it is possible that they may hurt themselves or someone else trying to use it. That is especially the case when giving tools to the general public.

The Chuckie Claxton case is a data point on the side of the law being inadequate for every situation. But all laws are inadequate for *every* situation. As I have said before, laws are crude instruments for conveying good intent in a given situation, and judges are often required to fit the law to poorly matching situations. Was a judge involved in giving Chuckie his label? If so, maybe he deserved it. We live in a hugely imperfect world.

My sympathies are reserved for the victims of sexual crimes, not the perps, especially when children are the victims.

Nonetheless, I worry that there is such a permanent and binary nature to the label of ìsex-offenderî (You are either presumed to be one or not be one). And that once this label has been pinned on you, justly or not, you may never be free of it. I know of kids engaging in juvenile sexual experimentation that could get them labeled as sex-offenders, when (I suspect) they are not of the uncontrollable urge variety, not dangerous to society.
This calls for some refinement in laws effecting how the label should be applied.

ìHurling platitudes is ridiculous and irrelevant.î

Thank you for the confirmation. By it you have provided an opportunity for yourself and others with the same sentiment. I hope you and others do take advantage of it.

To emphasize the character of what you had to say:

Miriam Webster:
Platitudes:
1. Quality of state or being dull or insipid, triteness, commonplaceness.
2. A flat, trite, or weak utterance; a dull or stale truism; a commonplace.
Trite:
Used so commonly that it has lost novelty and interest.
Insipid:
1. lacking taste or savor : TASTELESS
2. lacking in qualities that interest, stimulate, or challenge

YES, they are in fact stale truisms, cuz most of us got tired of hearing them from our parents and society years ago. We thought they were flat and weak compared to the strength of our juvenile desires. We thought them irrelevant as we could not see how they legitimately imposed the constraints that frustrated us. Yes, such statements are dull, trite, insipid, and commonplace... to the juvenile mentality.

But the fact remains that they ARE trueisms! E.g., they are facts of real life. To still regard them as platitudes says that some juvenile thinking is still a component of your thinking. Please do not be too proud to see that fact. As parents of teenagers (it seems that your kids will be getting there soon) you will need an awareness of the significance of these trueisms so you have them as important tools to deal with your own teenagerís problems. What needs to happen in your thinking to see these not as unwelcome constraints but as valuable knowledge that will help you raise your kids in a healthy fashion? Whatever it is, please for your own sake, for your kidís sake, let it happen. That is your opportunity here.

While your kids will benefit, they are nonetheless likely to see your understanding of their juvenile wisdom in terms of irritating platitudes.

Shifting gears...

While I was trying to accomplish several things in #34, #35 and #36, my point relative to Meganís law was this: In an argument against that law, bringing up the greater probability of other threats is a classical juvenile red herring.

Saying we should not have Meganís law because other threats are statistically more likely is not sound reasoning. They are not two players in a zero-sum game. We do what we can to limit the risk from each, and each has its own vastly different characteristics and difficulties and solution mechanisms.

Should there be some government entity that identifies societyís most threatening problem and recommends that society only apply its solutions to the current worst problem? Of course not. Besides, people could never agree on what was in fact the current worst problem, or even on a set of worst problems.

Yes, we live in a world full of threats of different probabilities. And yes, the greater the probability of a threat, the creater caution should be afforded against it. But in that reality we have to address the threats that we can as we can. Meganís tragedy created an opportunity that got something done. If not her, maybe another child later on. Such random opportunities have more effect on which problems are dealt with and how, than any kind of rational trade-off.

ìGood luck with setting up your molester colonies.î Yeah, I know, I expected someone to point out they would more likely be cities. And what would you do with their families? Still, some degree of isolation is the right direction for the more serious sexual offenders.