Monsters
I am concerned that with the present hysteria surrounding the fear of sex-offenders that the courts and our legislators have put us on a course that makes our judicial system a travesty of justice. Case in point: A man with no history of sexual deviancy is charged with Sexual Battery/Coercing a Child, Sexual Battery/Threatening with a Deadly Weapon, and Lewd & Lascivious Actions on a Child under 16. Charges he vehemently denies. The charges stemmed from one alleged incident involving a child of the woman he was living with and engaged to marry. The accused states that these charges were the result of his breaking off the relationship he had with the alleged victim’s mother. Our subject is arrested and spends two years in jail awaiting trial. He cannot afford an attorney and a public defender is assigned his case. In our country an accused is supposed to be presumed innocent until proven guilty. You can throw that out if you are accused of a sexually related crime. If you are unfortunate enough to be assigned a public defender as your defense council, in most cases your own attorney will treat you as one who is guilty of all charges. In the case we are studying, during the two years our subject was in jail, he rarely saw his public defender, and when he did, the attorney would only tell him, he needed to accept the plea bargain offered by the prosecuting attorney or face spending the next 25 years of his life in prison. He was told that the prosecutor holds all the cards and that he doesn’t have a prayer if he insists on going to trial. With two years of this type of psychological pressure he succumbs and accepts a plea bargain of 8 years probation. The fact that the state’s attorney was willing to give him probation without any prison time tells us the case against him was very weak. Not being familiar with these matters, our subject had no clue. Nor was he told that by accepting a plea bargain, he forfeited all rights of appeal. Neither was he made aware of the difficulties he would face in attempting to meet the conditions of his probation.
Things begin to look up for our subject. He is accepted into a Christian Prison Aftercare program that assists those who have been charged with sexual crimes. He tells the director that while in jail, he was led to the Lord by a fellow inmate. He does well and graduates this 12-month program. Later he meets a lady and after a short courtship, they become husband and wife. They run into difficulties in finding a place to live for two reasons. First because no one wants to rent to someone whom the neighbors will be told is a sex-offender, and secondly because he is listed as a “Predator” and is not permitted to live within 1,000 feet of any place where children congregate. That includes schools, parks, playgrounds, daycare centers, etc. He also has difficulty finding meaningful employment due to his record, and has to settle for a job far below his capabilities. Finances become a problem because in addition to paying for his probation supervision, he is required to attend weekly sexual therapy sessions, which include polygraph tests. But he is making it. That is, until in church one day, a young lady asks how he likes the flower she has in her hair. He says, “It looks nice, if you water it, you might have a nice garden.” Later that day this 14 year old tells her mother that our subject approached her and said, “I like the flower in your hair, I’d like to water it and make a garden.” She then tells her mother, she didn’t like the way he looked at her. Now our subject has been attending this church for 6-months and has been active with the praise and worship team, without any incidents. But the mother knowing that he is classified as a sexual predator is naturally concerned. She calls the sheriff’s office asking what restrictions this classification has with regards the subject being around minors. She is told that he is not permitted to be around unsupervised minors. It might not have gone any further than that, if it weren’t for the fact that the sheriff’s office reported the matter to the probation office, which has a zero tolerance policy in place with regards sexual predators and our subject is arrested and placed in jail on a charge of violating his probation. His regular probation officer was not in the office that day, and it was the supervisor who ordered the subject arrested without any investigation into the incident.
As the director of the prison aftercare program that our subject was in, I know that there is no way that he would violate anyone in the way he is accused. I know him intimately, and I know of the love he has for the Lord and for his fellow man. I might believe this of someone else, but not him. In spite of the fact that the accused was attending church with numerous people present when he had this brief conversation with the young lady, the presiding judge found him guilty of violating the conditions of his probation that says he is not allowed unsupervised contact with minors and sentenced him to 20 years in prison. I was shocked to learn that a probationer who is found guilty of violating one of the terms of his probation can be sentenced based on all his original charges, even though he has never had the opportunity to refute those charges in a court of law. This is one of many fallacies when one accepts a plea bargain rather than taking his case to trial. To learn more about this go to Dick’s writings on our web site and read our article titled Justice For All.
The sad part is, that if on the original charge our subject would have had a defense council that would have considered his claim of innocence and truly tried to defend him, I doubt if he would have been found guilty on those charges and all of these problems would have been avoided.
This is just one case, but these things are happening in our courts every day. No one is safe. You could be wrongly accused of a sexual crime and be subject to these injustices. It isn’t just the innocent. How about the person who was guilty of a sexual offense and served his time in prison? Is he or she permitted to lead a normal life upon their release? Not hardly! These days all convicted sex-offenders must serve years of probation following their prison sentence and are in danger of having their probation violated for any number of reasons. We know of incidences where men have been violated for being asleep and not answering the door when their probation officer came to their house to check on them. Another one of our graduates had to spend two months in jail before he was cleared on that very technical violation. Our legislators are constantly passing new legislation further tightening the noose on sex-offenders. Unfortunately, they haven’t done their homework to see if these laws will make our communities safer. A major problem is that for the most part there is no real plan in effect to properly classify the degree of risk of each offender. When you throw all sex-offenders into the same fish bowl, you make it difficult for law enforcement to monitor those who pose the greatest threat. When you treat people like animals and make them wear monitors, many will become frustrated and act like animals. If you treat me like a monster, eventually I will become a monster.
I have only listed a few of the conditions sex-offenders are facing. There are others that also make it extremely difficult for them to make a successful transition back into our communities. I submit that these strong arm methods are not helping to keep these men from re-offending but driving many into despair making them more likely to re-offend. Rather than making it easier to monitor their activities, we are forcing many of these men to abandon their attempts to conform to these oppressive conditions and go underground. When that happens, we have defeated the purpose for which these laws were passed. We have lost the ability to monitor their activities.
A few years ago we would hear accounts of how communist governments had become police states that monitored every movement of their citizens. We were appalled. Is what we are doing to this segment of our society any less oppressive?
Continually harassing those who are truly repentant for their past sins, is not going to protect our children from sex offenders. If you really want to know how to protect your children visit our web site www.matthew25ministries.org and read our article on Sex Offenders. It is on the link “Dick’s Writings.”
Fifty years ago a handful of people started a sexual revolution. They declared we should break off the bonds of sexual restraint and we started down a slippery slope. Their cry was for “sexual freedom.” Sex never was free, and today we are paying the price for opening the door that has led to so much depravity. We need to get back to the moral values that this nation had 50 years ago, where sex wasn’t being promoted in every media and marriage and family were honored. We need a new sexual revolution. We need to make a radical 180-degree change and get back to sexual purity.
Our hearts go out to the families of the latest victims of rape and murder. The reaction to these horrendous crimes by the media and our legislators has caused additional laws to be passed in an effort to protect our children. Will these laws accomplish the task for which they are intended? I think not. If they only targeted the one to two percent of sex offenders whose criminal history shows a tendency of violent behavior, or stalking children, they might be beneficial. But, when they target the majority of those charged with a sexual offense against a minor child they are only going to add to the problem. The laws that were already on the books have not changed the danger one iota; in fact they have compounded the problem. For instance, do you think for one minute that prohibiting a sex offender from living within 1,000 feet of where children congregate is going to stop one who is bent on assaulting a child? I think not, but it makes it extremely difficult for one who is trying to live a normal life to find housing. As one who has worked with sex-offenders both in and out of prison, I can share with certainty that a large percentage of them have truly repented of their sins, and want to live honorable lives. Contrary to popular belief the majority of convicted sex-offenders do not go on to commit new sexual crimes.
According to a report by the United States Department of Justice a 1994 study shows that of 9,691 sex-offenders from 15 states being tracked for three years after there release from prison only 5.3% were rearrested for another sex crime; 4,295 wee in prison for child molesting www.ojp.usdoj.gov. This is a far cry from the 90% figure being touted by the news media.
prison sentences and longer probation periods upon completion of those sentences. These mandated prison sentences tie the hands of judges who might take into consideration extenuating circumstances when imposing a sentence. This will cause us to have to build more prisons to handle the increase in prison population caused by these longer sentences. We the taxpayers will have to foot the bill for building and operating these new prisons.
All sex-offenders are not monsters. Most have made horrendous mistakes which God will forgive and bring healing. Society is creating a monster in believing the lie that “these type never change.” Unless we can find a way to enlighten our society, this monster will turn around and bite us.
Our ministry has operated programs helping former sex-offenders make a successful transition from prison back into society. We continue to meet much opposition to these programs to which we respond; would you rather have a sex offender come into your neighborhood without any treatment, or in a program that monitors his activities and helps him to overcome any sexual addiction?
If this has helped you, and you would like futher information on this subject, or you would like to speak to the author, contact:
Rev. R.D. Witherow
(561) 670-5564