Lenore Skenazy, blogger, public speaker, and reality show host is the keynote speaker at the 6th annual conference of Reform Sex Offender Laws, Inc. being held in Dallas, Texas, July 16-19, 2014.
She was given the title of the World’s Worst Mom after, at his insistence, she dropped her nine year old son at Bloomingdale’s in New York with a subway map and twenty dollars and allowed him to get home on his own. He did, and she has been simultaneously held in great admiration and in despised ridicule ever since.
Her dominating contention is that children of today are increasingly pampered and over-protected and that children who grow up believing the world is too scary a place in which to function will become adults unable to function in the world.
She sees the public sex offender registry as a foolish and useless attempt to protect children from what is actually the rarest of all threats—assault by a repeat offender.
She finds support in this from Trevor Butterworth, a spokesman for the research center STATS.org, who said, “The statistics show that this is an incredibly rare event, and you can’t protect people from very rare events. It would be like trying to create a shield against being struck by lightning.”
Of public registries she says, “Seeing a bunch of dots on a map is enough to make us lock our kids inside, where they get fat, bored and addicted to ‘Halo 3,’ because we think it’s ‘Halo 3′ outside. Goodbye, any sense of community! Which is ironic because community – knowing and looking out for each other – is exactly what makes neighborhoods safer.”
The theme of this year’s conference is Hope. Courage. Reform. Lenore will talk about having the courage to raise children strong enough to be the leaders of tomorrow, and she will show how through reform to laws that cripple not only our children but all of society, hope and courage can be returned to us all.
Register for the conference and all related events, including hotel reservations and airport and shuttle information here.
