Nick -
I acknowledge your grumpiness at feeling your serious quest on this
topic was derailed by what you took to be fun-poking. I read the Blue
Velvet reference as a slight tangent (me, a prince of tangents), but
still relevant, and only a little appropriate mirth on Marcus' part.
As one who has participated in making you grumpy in this way in the
past, I acknowledge that your earnestness has been mishandled from time
to time. I don't think this is what Marcus was up to but can see how
you might have thought it was.
As for me... I've been close to a situation such as you/Doug describe.
I had to choose between helping someone close to me extract herself from
the larger messy situation, helping make sure the sex offender was
monitored by someone who knew his nature in detail vs making sure the
letter of the law was upheld and the neighbors who looked could find him
on the list. The sex offender was geriatric and very cowed by a decade
in prison (by this time) and the estrangement of his entire family and
community, not a big risk, but still worth keeping away from children.
His son, the monitor, a victim himself and the brother and uncle to
other victims needed to force his registration, or to do it himself. If
anyone else had forced it, I think they would have simply moved the
potential problem to someone else' back yard. Eventually they took
themselves back to the community they came from where registration would
have been redundant if technically required. I am not sure if any
healing resulted, and I fear the greatest risk of propogation of the
damage was through the victims themselves, not the original
perpetrator. The cycle of abuse seems very real, if deeply puzzlingly
paradoxical.
I don't know Doug's situation and yours is hypothetical (right?) but
sometimes I think taking personal responsibility (monitoring the
situation yourself) may be more effective and important than making sure
the bureaucratic requirements are met. It may not always be
appropriate, possible, or effective to do this, but it is always worth
considering.
I also know people whose public record makes them look scarier than they
are (or ever were) who have had to live with variations on the Scarlet A
forever. Some would say false positives are a hazard necessary to
reduce false negatives. They may be right, but I still don't like it
when it happens to me or mine. Anyone want to take a polygraph and
have the results published?
- Steve
Ah, a breath of fresh air. I'm afraid we're going to ask you to
leave, Marcus.
<irritating smirky face>
--Doug
On Wed, Jan 16, 2013 at 4:51 PM, Marcus G. Daniels
<[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
On 1/16/13 3:56 PM, Nicholas Thompson wrote:
> Makes me grumpy.
Poor you. It is not surprising that criminals, deviants, and
unstable humiliated people populate every community. There is
inequity in the world. If people can't find a purpose or
acceptable identity in their lives, then drug & sex addiction,
magical thinking, and exploitation of others provide some pleasure
and sense of control. Meanwhile, it also should not come as any
surprise that individuals in a society can learn how to play along
and give the appearance of `normal'. The popular use of the
Internet simply brings a little more in to the light what was
always there: Lots and lots of troubled and mentally-ill people.
It's important to make people look at it.
Marcus
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