nixtress's Diaryland Diary

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My soapbox

My tummy hurts and I feel half sick. I've spent some time reading the blog of the sex offender they found with Shasta Groene. It clearly details his disintegration. I can't help but think there were people out there, reading his thoughts and seeing his decline, and I wonder why something wasn't said or done. It makes me ill.
http://fifthnail.blogspot.com
I learned alot while working at the police dept. I learned that we have way more than our fair share of sex offenders living in my city and in my county. Part of that is because they're released from the prison over in Mansfield and their parole officers want them close but not too close so they set them up in housing here, with other sex offenders. I learned that the victims are forever changed, and I learned that firsthand. I saw these kids that came in, held their hands and their small bodies as they shook and cried and worried that they'd done something wrong. I saw these young girls and boys who knew entirely too much about the workings of sexual organs, who knew slang terms for things they shouldn't have even known existed. My heart broke over and over and over. I learned that some of these poor kids turn around and offend as well, because they're so twisted by what happened to them, because they've mixed up the pleasure with the perversion, because they're acting out as they were acted against. I learned that half the time, these sick individuals get a slap on the wrist and are back to their own devices in no time. I learned that there isn't justice for the harm that's done and I learned that no amount of prison time can cure what ails a pedophile.
Perhaps I come across as judgemental, maybe a little accusational, maybe even hate-filled.
My mother's oldest stepson is a sex offender. He had a traumatic brain injury when he was 13ish, hit by a motorcycle going 60 mph. Just before that he and his younger brother watched their mother die, stabbed to death by her bf on the floor of a laundromat. As is fairly common with brain injuries, he acted out sexually. He should have been in some severe therapy after they caught him openly jacking off in the high school cafeteria, in the girls gym locker room, at his desk. They slid it by though, ignored it rather than dealt with it. Several years ago my mother walked in a room of her house to find him forcing one of the boys she babysat, to perform oral sex on him. It wasn't the first time nor was it isolated to just him. There were two other boys as well. My mother swears he never touched my little sister but I have my doubts. There were certain behaviors that manifested with her that make me wonder.
He spent time in prison and was released, only to be fitted with a GPS after he accosted a young female at a religious network here. And on Monday afternoon, he was arrested for being at the public pool, doing things he should not have been doing and violating his parole just by being there.
In his case, he had a brain injury, something that can't ever be fixed, something that wasn't his fault. I still can't excuse it. Still can't say it's okay. We have an obligation to protect our children, to keep them from the predators that roam.
And there has to be a price to pay when someone impacts another's life in such a huge way, with the potential to help them follow in the same sick pathway.
***
Forgive the soapbox. This just tore me up.
N.

10:17 p.m. - 2005-07-08

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