Terrorists Live Among Us
By John David Powell (03/12/03)
The attack came without warning and followed an established pattern. The terrorist fit the profile,but once again, he was not in the national database. Even though the ghoulish crime was part of a string of similar attacks within a 24-hour period, the breathless media whores did not describe it as “the latest in a wave of terrorist activity sweeping the nation.” Moreover, members of Congress did not clamor for a full investigation.
The crime did not involve a plane, a bomb, or a sniper in the back of a car. It was committed by a 24-year old Charlotte, S.C., man who rammed his vehicle into the back of a woman’s car before dragging her into a wooded area where she was sexually assaulted.
I have a wife and two daughters, and I am here to tell you that my family – and yours – is in far greater danger today from an assault by a sex terrorist than from an attack by Osama bin Laden and his hell-bent
Moslem minions.
Sex terrorist? You bet. The U.S. State Department defines terrorism in the political context, in that the terrorist attempts to gain control over a person or a political entity through violence or the threat of violence. A sex terrorist has no political agenda; the goal is simply to violate a person through violence or the threat of violence.
The really scary thing about this is that we have a brand-spanking new federal agency of Homeland Security trying to keep tabs on known and suspected political terrorists, while your local gendarmes cannot effectively monitor registered sex fiends, much less protect you from the unknown creep next door.
Among the sex crime stories in the nation’s newspapers on March 11 were the following:
- A former teacher in Anderson, S.C., admits to having sex with a 13-year-old student in his car.
- A jury finds that C.W. Post College and baseball camp officials bear most of the blame for an attack on a 12-year-old boy who was sodomized at the camp in July 1999.
- Police charge a Montgomery County, Pa., woman and her son in the rape of a 14-year-old girl.
- The leader of an Amish splinter group in Michigan gets up to 15 years in prison for sexually assaulting a 14-year-old boy in his care.
Tens of thousands of sex crimes occur annually. San Antonio, Texas, averages more than 2,500 sex crimes a year. New York City has more than 17,000 unsolved sex crimes committed during the past 10 years. Nationally, 10 percent of females and 4 percent of males will report a sexual assault at some time in their lives. That’s tens of millions of victims, surely a holocaust in someone’s book.
All fifty states and the District of Columbia require convicted sex offenders to register with the local police. Megan’s Law is the collective name for these statutes, named for 7-year-old Megan Kanka from New Jersey murdered by a rapist fresh out of jail, but whose criminal record was unknown to the neighbors. As with airport baggage screening and boot checking, these registries are well intentioned, but provide little security.
Implementations of the laws vary. Thirty-four states have the information online, although many sites are of little use. Other states put up barriers between the information and the public. (See if your state is online at www.crimetime.com/SPguide.htm.)
A creep convicted twice for indecent exposure lives one block from me. I discovered this because Texas allows a search by zip code. There are recent photographs of most of the deviants, along with their addresses and descriptions of their crimes.
Registration is futile when police can’t track the ones they know about. Multnoma County, Ore., parole officers let a high-risk sex offender run amok. Now they say he raped three girls, sexually assaulted and killed another, and raped his girlfriend’s cousin while on parole. He faces 31 counts ranging from sodomy to murder.
Several states are trying to figure out how to keep track of homeless sex offenders. Two Pennsylvania sex criminals went back to prison to finish their sentences because they couldn’t find a place to live, thereby violating the state’s registry requirements. Touchy-feely defense attorneys there think that was unconstitutional and unfair.
The U.S. Supreme Court is considering whether some states violate the constitutional rights of sex criminals by plastering their faces on the Internet, thus stigmatizing non-dangerous convicts as predators. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg last year compared that practice to shaming someone at a town square.
Daniel Ray Erickson, a.k.a. John William Dickey, of Brooksville, Fla., agrees. Erickson/Dickey told the St. Petersburg Times that his girlfriend dumped him after she saw his mug on the state’s sex offender web site. The 53/64-year-old guy was convicted of child molesting in 1976, kidnapping in 1980, and indecent assault on a child in 1986, all in California, and possibly another sexual assault in Florida in 1987.
“How can a guy get married and become a good, stable citizen if they’re putting your picture where it doesn’t belong?” he asked a reporter. Indeed.
Corpus Christi, Texas, Judge Manuel Baneles ordered 15 sex offenders on probation to put signs in front of their homes and on their vehicles. Now he wants the Legislature, which convenes in January, to pass a law requiring them to remain posterboys if they move from Nueces County. Right now, a loophole requires public notice only in the county where the crime occurred.
A Corpus attorney thinks the order stigmatizes the sex offender and poses a danger to the offender’s family. That attorney represented John Robert Lee who challenged the judge’s order. A Court of Appeals ruled against the judge, but the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals said the appeals court abused its discretion.
Meantime, Lee wants to drop the matter and get out of the limelight. He and the others with signs want left alone, according to the attorney.
Hey, Lee. You may get off probation, but my family still lives with fear.
First published at www.EtherZone.com
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