Is Everyone on the Sexual Offenders List Dangerous?

In a recent newscast, it was reported that people in one California city were upset because a large number of sexual offenders had been allowed to live in some neighborhoods where people considered them a threat to their children. The question was asked, "Just where are these people supposed to live?"

That is a question that often comes up when the subject of pedophiles or other sexual offenders is mentioned. Where are these people supposed to live? Would you want a neighbor who was a convicted sexual offender? Would anyone?

In one way, the answer seems obvious. If these people are not to be trusted to live in a civilized society, should they be kept locked up for the rest of their lives?

But what about the ones who were convicted on the word of one child, and no more? There are many reports of people who admit to having lied about being molested when they were younger. Now they would like to have the person wrongly convicted on their testimony set free.

There have been cases where ex-wives have put their children up to lying about their own father having molested them. But there have also been cases where the father actually did molest his child. How does one know what to believe?

Are lie detector tests accurate enough to prove if an accused person is lying? Or if the accuser is lying?

Can sexual offenders change? Some of them who have served their time say the urge never leaves them. Is there some chemical means of altering these urges? Would it be legal to administer these chemicals to unwilling individuals?

There have been cases in some countries where sexual offenders have been castrated in hopes of protecting their potential victims. But sexual perversion may have nothing to do with hormones. It is a mental illness and if one action is made impossible, they will find a different way to hurt their victims.

The sad part is that a man's life could be destroyed on the word of one child who had cause to lie about him. Maybe the cause was nothing more than a desire to get even with the man for some real or imagined slight. Did he fail to give the child a place on the ball team? Or show favoritism to another child? Even if the man is allowed to plea bargain to avoid going to trial, there is a chance of his being portrayed as a pedophile and required to register as a sexual offender wherever he chooses to live from then on. It will be almost impossible for him to find a decent job. That is a life sentence as surely as if he were incarcerated in a physical prison.

There is also a problem with the fact that some people on the sexual offenders list are not that at all. Their offense was "indecent exposure" which was nothing more than a person who got in a tight and was forced to find some unorthodox place to relieve himself, and was caught in the process, although he had not intended for anyone to see. Those people should not be listed among the ones who have ruined the lives of innocent children and women. While there are, of course, cases of intended indecent exposure, not every case is intentional at all.

Many young men have been prosecuted and their names placed on the sexual offenders list for having consensual sex with a girl who is under 16. He may be barely 18 and she may be one month short of 16 and may have been the one who initiated sex, but if somebody decides to prosecute him, usually the girl's parents, his life is ruined. There was one case where the girl's father had the boy arrested, then after he had gone to jail and endured abuse from other prisoners, the girl's dad finally realized his daughter had been a willing participant and tried to have the boy's name cleared. They went to court to do so, to no avail. The boy wanted to join the military but now cannot do that or find any job. Yet this boy is no more dangerous than most of the promiscuous teenagers in any town in America.

Another young man who had had consensual sex with a minor girl was hunted down and killed by a vigilante his own age, who hadn't bothered to investigate the reason for his having been on the list.

In recent years there have also been cases of women accused of molesting teen-age boys. That, too, is often a case of consensual sex, but boys that age are quite capable of bragging to their friends about things that never happened. Who does one believe?

Every effort should be made to get to the bottom of each situation so that no one is unjustly convicted, or that no guilty person is allowed to run free to roam and pose a threat to others. If there is to be a national sexual offenders list, there should be a very distinct division in the list between violent offenders, true pedophiles, and those punished for having consensual sex or accused of indecent exposure when that had never been their intent.

Every child should be protected from potential molesters from the day of their birth till they are grown. While that may seem a bit overprotective to some, the truth is that one can never be careful enough. That means not leaving a small child with his/her mother's boyfriend, good old Uncle Bill, or in some cases even with Grandpa.

That can even be for the male relative's protection as well. There was an Oklahoma case a few years ago where a step-grandfather was accused of molesting his step-daughter's little girl. The accuser was the grandmother, who, incidentally, was committed to a mental institution the next day for unrelated reasons. Her own daughter defended her step-father, saying he had raised her and had never at any time shown any inclination to do anything wrong towards her. Yet the court was taking the word of a mentally ill person against the man, although there was no physical evidence that the child had been molested. I never heard how the case was resolved, but whatever the outcome, it must have been a nightmare for the poor man.

No one wants to think their beloved relative would harm a child, and especially a child who is related to him/her. But it happens every day. We had two much older male relatives that my sister and I learned to avoid like the plague when we were in our teens. Neither of them ever did more to us than put his hands in the wrong place, but we didn't like it a bit. One of them actually propositioned my older sister. These were both my mother's beloved relatives, and we wouldn't have dared tell her for a number of reasons.

It didn't ruin my life. It just made me angry at the ones who did it. But I made sure from that point on never to be in a situation where they could be alone with me.

Some small children are not that fortunate. They are left unprotected with some male relative who has a problem his family is not aware of. And worse yet, many times the parents take the word of the relative against that of the child if he/she tells of the molestation.

Sadly, most women I know have similar stories to tell about how an uncle or some other relative took liberties with them when they were young.

When I was a teenager, my parents allowed a relative of an in-law to live in our house while he was working in a nearby area. I moved out of my room into my sister's room so he could have mine. Both of our rooms were in the back part of the house and our parents seldom went there. Soon both my sister and I found ourselves fighting with this man every day, as he would hide around corners, grab us when we came by and start pawing us. While we felt that our parents would probably take our side if we told them what was going on, we didn't want them to have to throw him out, because it would hurt our in-law's feelings. So we made a pact to protect each other, and if he caught one of us, we would yell for the other, and he would quickly turn us loose and retreat. We were able to protect each other till he moved on. But what if we had been small children in such a situation?

Parents should warn their children that there are some people in the world, even among friends and relatives, who would hurt them. They should be told not to let anyone touch them in any place that their bathing suit would cover, and if someone does or tries to, they should be assured that when they tell their parents, they will believe them.

Parents should pay attention to what goes on in their own family. They should know the whereabouts of that precious child every minute of his/her life till he/she reaches adulthood. Precautions should be taken about allowing a child to visit in homes of friends whose relatives might prey on him/her. A child should not be allowed to walk or ride his/her bicycle in areas remote enough to pose a danger from pedophiles. It would be safer to insist that a child never go anywhere alone, as there is usually safety in numbers.

If a child should act nervous around an individual, or even cry frantically and cling to a parent who takes them to a sitter or a daycare, when they have not done that from the first day, the parent should have reason to believe that something has happened to cause the child to be afraid. There are too many cases of molestation and other abuse even in day care situations.

The sad fact is that there are dangerous pedophiles living among us. Some of them may have been able to change or at least to control their impulses to a large extent, but that is too great a risk to take. Yet we shouldn't panic and persecute a person just because his/her name has been placed on the sexual offenders list. While it might seem a bold thing to do, the kindest thing would be to ask the person outright why his/her name is on the list, and give him/her a chance to be heard on the issue.

In a recent newscast, a pedophile who had served his time and had been released from prison said he still had the same impulses as before. He also said that he and others of his kind would be more likely to go somewhere besides their own neighborhood to molest a child, because with the websites available to check the whereabouts of sexual offenders, they would be more likely to be caught in their own neighborhood, since their neighbors would be watching them. So regardless of where they live, they are a real threat to our children.

Constant vigilance is the only protection we can give our children. We need to be extremely careful to whom we entrust our most precious gift. After all, once a child has been molested, it can't be undone. And sometimes the child is murdered as well.

We have no control over pedophiles or where they live. The only thing we can do is keep our eyes open and guard our children with every resource we have. The worst threat to our child may not be the pedophile listed on the website, but someone in our own family.