Who is Really Protecting Our Children?

Children are in more danger now than at any other time in our history. When a 4-year-old boy can be suspended from preschool for "inappropriate touching" because he hugged a female teacher's assistant it becomes a cold, unforgiving world indeed.

Many laws and restrictions have been passed, all in the name of protecting our children. But as time has passed and the laws have proven ineffective, where do we go from here?

While the masses worry about newer and stricter laws being applied to control sex offenders, our children make up a very high percentage of the registry themselves.

The general public is bombarded by politicians, lawmakers, and the media, with the terms, sex offender, pedophile, child molester, predator, rapist, pervert, etc. all used interchangeably and applied to all registered sex offenders.

The registry was originally created to be used by law enforcement to track violent predators. This classification of registrants now covers less that 6 percent of the registry population, due to current laws that have become increasingly inclusive, now requiring registration for offenses such as solicitation of a prostitute, public urination, public schoolboy type pranks, "sexting", and consensual teenage sexual and even non-sexual activity. As a public registry it serves only to further punish people (yes, I said people) for crimes above and beyond what their original sentences were and sets each one up as a target for vigilante justice in addition making decent housing and employment virtually impossible.

Our children today are much more at risk of being included on the sex offender registry than they are of being victimized by someone on it. So I ask again: Who is really protecting our children?