Keeping Our Children Safe

Keeping Our Children Safe
by Melissa Kelly, Guest Contributor

August 1, 2002

When 14-year-old Elizabeth Smart was abducted from her bed, a new fear was realized. I used to feel secure putting my children to sleep every night. I would walk into my their bedroom every night and watch them sleeping soundly, and believed they were safe. But now, I check the windows and door locks every night because we are no longer safe. Child predators are no longer just taking our children from parks and schools, they are breaking into our homes. My daughter is 5-years-old now, around the same age as Samantha Runnion and Cassandra Williamson (the two beautiful children who were found dead a few weeks ago.) I wanted to know what the laws were protecting my children. After looking up the penalties for child molesters in New York, I was outraged.

As child abductions finally begin to get the publicity they deserve, there is now a question of what to do with child sexual predators. Child molesters who have a high probability of repeating the offense should get a mandatory life sentence with no possibility of parole. According to New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services, now the average sentence in New York is a joke; level 3 offenders, the most likely to molest again, only receive an average of four months in jail and five years probation. The sentence given to every child molester is so different; while some might get 10 years in prison, others only get a few months. The child molester who is sentenced to 10 years (which rarely happens) is usually the one who’s victim show up at trial, and tells his or her story. But other victims, who are reliving the abuse every night in their dreams are often too scared to face a trial or too young to take the stand.

There are two types of child molesters: the situational child molester and the preferential child molester. The Situational Child Molester does not have sexual desire for children - has few, often only one victim and the child was victimized because he was available at the time. The Preferential Child Molester has sexual desire for children that continues throughout his whole life and has a large number of victims. A level 3 Child Molester, (that list of offenders in New York is available on the Internet at http://criminaljustice.state.NY.US/nsor/index.htm), is the Preferential Child Molester (also known as a Pedophile). According to Crimes Against Kids “Pedophiles have obsessive-compulsive characteristics similar to the fantasy-driven cycle of serial killers.” Often their crimes go undiscovered for several years, as they continuously prey on children who have emotional problems by befriending them with emotional support and gifts, leading to a large number of victims. (Connor 1)

While some might say that life in prison for a child molester is cruel and unusual punishment, prison is supposed to be an institution that keeps criminals who are a threat to society locked up to protect the innocent. Knowing that pedophiles will likely molest again we have an obligation to protect our children.

What about treatment for sex offenders, some might say? New York State has a program to try to deter offenders. The program consists of 3 levels of study, which are Introduction to the Counseling Program, Relapse Prevention Model, and Wellness through Personal Recovery; each class is 8 weeks long (24 weeks total). It sounds good, but what is our insurance that it works? To date, there is little information about whether or not the program is effective. While a treatment facility might benefit the situational child molester because his crime was never of a sexual nature to him (no attraction to children), how would it benefit the preferential child molester who has an attraction he can not control? Most sex offenders will not even complete the program; they are thrown out of the class for failure to progress, poor work values, possession of contraband, assault, or sexual misconduct. As for those who do finish the class, there is no guarantee that they will not offend again. The most appalling issue to me is that after they get out of prison, New York has NO aftercare program for sex offenders. We should not allow a child predator to be out on our streets with our children without assurance that they will not harm our kids again. Isn’t it our job to protect our children?

The effects of sexual abuse on a child last a lifetime. The survivors of abuse often feel responsible for what has happened and are afraid to tell, often because the predator threatens them. According to The Healing Way, the long lasting effects on a child are low self-esteem, depression, confusion about whom to trust, difficulty expressing anger, difficulty saying “no’ and setting limits, sexual problems, nightmares, sleep disorders, regression (flashbacks), loss of memory, panic attacks, eating disorders, trouble in school, psychosomatic complaints, and relationship problems. These issues often go unresolved for the duration of a survivor’s life. (Kunzman 10-15)

When we send a child molester to prison for a few months to a year, are we saying that it takes a survivor that long to get over it, or that his or her emotional well being is only worth that much? Murderers get life in prison, or the death penalty for taking another person’s life. Considering the harm sexual abuse has on a child, knowing that it will take their lifetime to get through it, and acknowledging that a preferential child molester has done this to a large number of children, they deserve life in prison.

We do have Megan’s law, which is access to the addresses of sex offenders who are at high risk to repeat the offense. But how effective is it? Who really looks up sex offenders in their neighborhood? Some school districts send out a notice, but really don’t provide a lot of information in it. About a year ago, I received a notice from my daughter’s school alerting to a child molester in my area. In the notice, it never told me where the offender was living; I had to research that information myself. I found out he was a great distance away, but I’ll never forget how scared I felt.

What would you do to protect your child if one lived a block away? Perhaps you could try to get the neighborhood together to make his life difficult until he leaves, but then he would just go to another town with young children. It is not cruel and unusual punishment to lock child molesters away for the rest of their lives; we will just be protecting our children. It is far worse to put our children knowingly in harm’s way. It is a child’s right to feel safe, to be young and innocent, and to have our society protect him. ***

REFERENCES:

Kunzman, Kristin. The Healing Way, San Francisco: Harper & Row Publisher, 1990
Child Molesters and Crimes Against Children. 13 April. 2001
Profiles Of Child Molesters. 6 May. 2002

A native of New York, Melissa Kelly is a Mom raising her children on Long Island.