AZ- Your Views: It's easy to hate sex offenders

3-14-2008 Arizona:

It's easy to hate sex offenders

Editor,

I am a counselor who has worked with sex offenders every week for years. I have put in more hours than anyone I know in northern Nevada working to help prevent new sex crimes in our state, so it is with an informed opinion that I read Mr. Lindberg's February 22, 2008, comments on the topic.

I can tell you that both he and the irresponsible decision-maker who posted such a self-serving rant did nothing to serve the community's interests in publishing such thinly veiled vigilantism.

I, too, am a businessman in the community; I, too, am a father and a grandfather. I, too, am outraged by the same events that horrify all of us.

But never in my wildest dreams did I ever think as a man that it would be right to glorify my own darker self-indulgent revenge fantasies in a public display of self-righteousness. Such violent fantasies are viscerally satisfying, but represent a childish approach to public policy.

First of all, the vast majority of convicted sex offenders are hardly up to the standard of "predator." Face it, the word "predator" is overused.

Consider: a 17-year-old teenager who turns 18 after a year of having sex with his 15-year-old girlfriend is guilty now of Statutory Sexual Seduction and is required to register as a sex offender for the rest of his life.

Consider: a pathetic drunk who, in his inebriated stupor, steals booze, gets in an altercation and then exposes himself to passersby is hardly worthy of the word "predator," yet he, too, will have to register for the rest of his life...as a sex offender.

Surely I am not the only one out there old enough to remember "Laugh In" and the actor in the trench coat who made us all laugh by exposing himself?

How have we been so easily manipulated to fear and hate what we once found pathetic or even humorous?

Many sex crimes are far more serious than these, but Nevada does an incredibly good job of incarcerating virtually forever those sex offenders who are not amenable to treatment or whose crimes are so horrific that we cannot abide their release.

Others who do not meet this level are released because their crime is hardly deserving of the death penalty--particularly at the hands of enraged family members wielding baseball bats as Mr. Lindberg suggests would be best.

Treatment does work. It's always sensational to seek out the naysayers and urban mythmakers who profess to know because the truth is far less titillating.

For the last six years the recidivism rate in our program has been hovering at 1%. That's a 99% success rate.

Just read about the next 100 sex crimes in our community (as easily found in the newspaper)--you'll find that over 95% were committed by first time offenders. It is not the previously convicted offender who poses the greatest risk, it's the unknown future offender.

By so stigmatizing sex offenders as Mr. Lindberg has done, we create vast public reservoirs of shame which contributes to our inability to even discuss sexual thoughts, feelings and behavior that might not be to Mr. Lindberg's liking.

If sex offenders are sick, an idea of Mr. Lindberg's that I agree with, then sex crimes are a public health problem. Like AIDS, cholera, smoking, and every other public health problem, our tools are information, education and rational thinking.

Getting mad and indulging in baseball bat fantasies is useless, self-defeating and counterproductive to community safety.

Like Mr. Lindberg. I am a conservative. I am a Republican, I own guns, I'm against abortion; but I do not see a problem with an overabundance of liberal judges as does Mr. Lindberg. Our judges in Nevada generally do a pretty good job--their knowledge of the offense and the law make it clear they are the ones to make the tough sentencing decisions.

What's really going on here though, if you stop and just think, is that we Americans have some sort of weird blind spot when it comes to sexual crimes.

Sure, as a parent, I'd like to know about the dangerous people in my neighborhood: but so long as we're outing sex offenders why wouldn't we list convicted drug abusers, meth manufacturers, those convicted of domestic violence, and why not all the drunks convicted of drinking in public and DUI?

Aren't all of these people dangerous to our children?

If we made such a list. of course. eventually we'd find it easier to list those good folk not on the other list...at least not yet.

It's easy to hate sex offenders. We've made it easy by using sex offender registries and public exposure to label them the way the Nazi's did the Jews with their yellow stars.

In this way, we've created the last class in society that it's politically fashionable to hate.

But since when has hate and fear ever informed public discourse?

When has hate and fear ever protected future victims from attack?

When has hate ever solved anything?

To jail the 300 men and women I've worked with over the last 10 years would have cost our state $90 million. Couldn't we do something better with that money?

Sex crimes are crimes of secrecy, and when the secret ends, the criminality generally ends with it.

We all need to be better informed about sex crimes and what is being done about them. To that end, I challenge the editors of this paper, and Mr. Lindberg himself, to sit in on a group therapy session of men previously convicted of sex crimes who are working to better themselves.

These men look forward to letting you see who they are and what they are doing--all they want is a chance to put their mistake behind them and build a life with their families.

Call me and I'll set it up.

P.S. You can leave the baseball bats at home, they're a very civilized crowd.

Sincerely,
Steven Ing