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Thursday, August 2, 2007

This Bothers Me

This man was accused of 2nd Degree Sexual Assault on a Child. The problem here, is that this happened more than 10 years ago, when he was 16. He had consensual sex with a 15 year old girl, and now carries the stigma of having assaulted a child. He was a child himself at the time, so how can he be charged with this? When a 16 year old boy has sex with an adult teacher, he has no ability to make adult decisions, so therefore he's automatically assumed to be completely innocent and taken advantage of. Yet, a boy of the same age has sex with a peer (which, if you've ever been to a high school sex ed class, what do you think they're promoting when they're handing out condoms?), he's labeled a sex-offender.

How is this right? The man is now being ostracized, his neighbors don't want him near their children (when he has no interest in them in the first place, since that's not even what he was convicted on), and his life is being destroyed because he had sex when he was a kid. Now, I'm a firm supporter of abstinence until marriage, but when the sex ed classes are handing out condoms, and telling kids to practice safe sex (instead of telling them not to have it in the first place), of course this sort of thing is going to happen. There is absolutely no reason to label this man as a sex offender for the rest of his life.

On a side note, part of the reason I hate this system is because I have a friend who was wrongly accused of inappropriate behavior with a student. I know this man well, and his wife was even around for some of the supposed "incidents". The girl was troubled, she hit a police officer, and then had him removed from the case because he came into the store where she worked, to return a shirt with his daughter, and basically managed to get all of the witnesses discredited in some fashion or another, so that my friend had no ability to make a case. So now, he's being harassed by a nasty case worker who won't let him so much as breathe the wrong way, and he will be labeled an offender for the rest of his life. All because some bratty little girl didn't like him. This system is seriously screwed up.

4 comments:

Real Life Sarah said...

Fear of being wrongly accused is exactly why my husband no longer teaches High School. He is very paranoid about being alone with students, and I'm glad.

Shana said...

My friend told me that it was sometimes difficult to make sure that there were other people around. Even on a few occasions, some of her friends were with her, so they weren't "alone", and they were willing to testify against him because their friend told them to. It was very frustrating, because I couldn't do anything about it. I worked with him for nearly a year, and I never once had any inkling of an issue with him. Sometimes it was him and me in the store, and maybe one other person. It depended on the day. I was young then too, and I never once felt uncomfortable in his presence. (which was odd, because I have a thing against tall guys with beards, they usually creep me out, but he didn't).

the Joneses said...

OT comment: You had mentioned on Klampert's CEC Worship blog that you were looking for CEC bloggers. I'm a CEC deacon in Virginia, and my wife and I blog at thebookbeast.blogspot.com.

Dn. Darren Jones

Shana said...

Thanks! I'll check it out :)