Panic!

The following is an excerpt from part two:

The ReformSexOffenderLaws.org group points out how our system goes so far as to defy common sense:

“As soon as someone is accused of sexual behavior with a minor, their name is splashed all over TV and the newspapers, destroying their careers and good name, and their accuser is publicly labeled a victim. All of this happens whether the accusation is true or not... DAs, judges and juries indict or convict on the mere allegation of sexual violation without any consideration that supporting evidence is lacking. ‘Repressed memories,’ unsupported or even contradicted by physical evidence, sometimes become the basis for Conviction.”

Mass hysteria is perpetuated by the media and sustained by less-than-informed individuals. If the umbrella phrase “sex offenders” really described a group of dangerous predators, then it would be realistic to view it as naming an actual threat. But children as young as four years old—including minors convicted of consensual sex with other minors—fall under the sex offender umbrella.

“It includes persons whose alleged crimes are labeled violent, but where no force or violence occurred. The term “sex offender” encompasses an extremely wide range of people who have been judged guilty of behaviors from bad taste to serious abuse. In the public mind (and sometimes in the statements of public officials,) every sex offender is a person considered to have committed heinous crimes.”

All “offenders”—from those charged with public urination to teens convicted for consensual sex to those accused of a sexual violation, guilty or not—are grouped in the same “dangerous predator” classification. Those in our country who might feel threatened by living next door to a convicted sex offender in more than nine out of ten instances are living in fear of a nonexistent risk. Statistically, a very small percentage of offenders pose a real danger. This is quite similar in nature to previous panics aimed at other groups.