Like many parents, I have followed the story of Madeleine McCann with strong emotions. For the very few of you who are not familiar with the tale, a brief recap: Four year-old Madeleine visited a resort town in Portugal with her parents and one year-old twin siblings. On May 3 her parents went to dinner with friends at a restaurant 100 yards away, from which their apartment was at least partly visible, but they left the children alone. (The resort facility, at Praia de Luz, offers babysitting and day care but the McCanns did not use these options.) The door to the apartment was probably unlocked. Every thirty minutes a parent would come back to check on the children. At 10PM, they discovered that Madeleine was missing from her bed. She is still missing.
The story has received worldwide media attention. Why does it affect us so? As tragic as the story is, dozens of children are lost every day. Part of it, no doubt, has to do with the behavior of the parents. In America at least, deliberately leaving children so young unattended is not generally accepted — in some states it is illegal. But almost everyone leaves a child alone in their own bedroom at night, and what if something were to happen? As a parent, you watch your young ones like a hawk, but somewhere in the back of your mind there is a calculation that the odds of something actually happening are minor, and there is little reason to torture yourself over it. Then a story like this comes along and suddenly the bogeyman springs to life again.
In one sense, however, the internal calculation is right. The largest risk of abuse to children comes from people who know them, rather than outsiders. In addition to keeping watch on our children, we need to be aware of who they are spending time with. There is a free national sex offender registry that every parent should use.
(Note to Google: It would be helpful if this free and authoritative resource were easier to find in a standard web search — but it is nearly drowned out by pay sites.)
I hope this story will have a happy ending. There are precedents for it. Elizabeth Smart came home safely after a far longer time.
I was saddened to hear about the missing child. Obviously abducted by a registered sex offender, it makes me angry that we as a nation are doing very little about fully segregating sex offenders from our children. To that end, nothing short of segregation in a sex offender colony (or regional colonies) would be safe enough.
Our children and families are under a greater threat of domestic terrorism than at any point in our country. We should consider not only restriction the length of distance a child molester lives from our schools and parks, but consider a concentrated place to intern registered sex offenders AWAY from ALL children and vulnerable citizens.
It is time we seriously consider building sex offender colonies throughout the western United States and Alaska.
It is obvious. Nobody wants sex offenders to live in their neighborhoods, or even their cities. I’m a parent, and I would fight tooth and nail to prevent sex offenders from living anywhere that children may live, even if their victims were people they knew. It means NOTHING to me; what means EVERYTHING to me is they committed an atrocious crime against children. That’s enough for me.
Unfortunately, these sex offenders have rights. If they are not in prison, they will probably get the ACLU to sue the city and we will have to spend thousands of dollars defending the restrictions.
The ONLY thing, therefore, is to create an amendment to the US Constitution, creating sex offender colonies to restrict where these convicted sex offenders live in the first place. How to do this?
The first thing that needs to be done is to create an outline of such an amendment. I looked at the process for how an amendment is created. Here is the process:
Under Article V, there are two ways to propose amendments to the Constitution and two ways to ratify them.
To propose an amendment
1. Two-thirds of both houses of Congress vote to propose an amendment, or
2. Two-thirds of the state legislatures ask Congress to call a national convention to propose amendments.
To ratify an amendment
1. Three-fourths of the state legislatures approve it, or
2. Ratifying conventions in three-fourths of the states approve it.
I would submit that the state legislature route would probably be more effective, but the congressional method can be tried first. It can effectively be used as a litmus test for voting, i.e., if someone doesn’t want to vote for proposing the amendment in congress, their 2008 opponent can have a field day in saying that the incumbent protects sex offenders at the expense of children’s safety, etc.
Such an amendment would solve many problems. First of all, the registry would not exist in its current form. Parents don’t have to worry where the sex offenders live, as they all would, by law, have to live in the colony. This also eliminates the need for GPS, as the sex offenders would be restricted to the colony in the first place. No worries about convicted child molesters stalking your children’s school or favorite park, or trolling on the Internet.
Next, registrants would constitutionally have to be subjected to non-court ordered search of their premises within the zone. In addition, all their mail and phone calls would constitutionally be authorized to be monitored for illicit activities. Internet usage would also be strictly regulated, with all file storage for every computer actually done at the server-level. In addition, emails would be assigned by the administration, no Instant messaging or accessing MySpace or other children sites allowed, and all keystrokes and sites visited will be recorded 100%. All costs for such usage would be borne out by the offender, incidentally.
All registrants would be required to work, with their paychecks being handled by the administrators. Deductions for medical, rent, all services, and everything else would be done automatically, and any credit the registrant have be used for discretionary income ONLY from the colony store. Also, EVERY registrant will be required to go through treatment appropriate to his crime, and be certified as cured; otherwise, he can be subject to a felony charge and returned to prison.
Now, please keep in mind one thing: The sex offender colony is NOT…repeat…NOT a replacement for tough, appropriately long, non-paroleable sentencing guidelines in the first place! THAT IS PARAMOUNT. The colony would exist because society cannot handle the large amounts of offenders in their neighborhoods, with the inherent terror parents have with the knowledge that offenders are around their children. Therefore, the colony is SPECIFICALLY for offenders to spend their entire registration periods in a constitutionally-approved manner, eliminating the need for registries as they exist now.
Keep in mind, many offenders also are able to leave the registry for certain crimes after a specified amount of time has passed. Therefore, once a registrant’s time period has expired, he can petition the administration to be relieved of the duty to register and live in the SORERA zone. A panel of professionals, law enforcement individuals, and the offender’s victim representatives, will go over the request. If they feel the offender is ready to join society, then he can leave the zone and live anywhere he wants, although he will have to permanently register with law enforcement wherever he goes for the rest of his life. Bear in mind, also, that any registrant who has to register for life will NEVER get the opportunity to leave the zone. Only the most benign of the registrants will ever be allowed to leave.
So there you have it. With a constitutional amendment, we can control where they live, where they work, and how they communicate, with confidence that they won’t have a “relapse” when our own children are in striking distance.
All interested people are encouraged to write to me at man4theages@hotmail.com to further this just cause.
My comment is to Peter. The Madeleine McCann story has nothing to do with registered sex offenders. This is a sad story and you (Peter) should be shamed for only using this site to spread your BS. Peter, notice the author even states the statistics that most crimes as this involve people familiar to the victim. Peter, please get a life, a girlfriend or boyfriend and stop your BS.
My comment is to Chuck. I agree with you, but for the record since we do not yet know who kidnapped Madeleine, and since most non-family abductions are commited by sex offenders(registered or otherwise), you cannot yet know that this story has nothing to do with registered sex offenders or unregistered sex offenders. We’ll have to wait for more information to surface before we jump to any conclusions.