Sen. Grassley doesn’t REALLY care about children or victims of sexual abuse
By Shelly Stowe . . . Mr. Grassley, like you, we grieve with families of children who are victimized and abused, and we especially grieve that virtually all of this type of crime is committed by the family members and others close to their young victims. Like you, we would like to see a strong commitment to keeping our nation’s children safe.
Unlike you, however, we have seen no evidence of this commitment for the past twenty-five years. Such a commitment must be based on solid research, on facts and evidence, and on the reality of both child sexual abuse and of those who are the abusers.
The Adam Walsh Act is ill-conceived legislation,contraindicated by empirical evidence, which fails to address the crime of child sexual abuse because it does not target those who commit child sexual abuse.
The rhetoric and the reality of the AWA are light years apart. The rhetoric says the AWA “was enacted in response to multiple, notorious cases involving children who had been targeted by adult criminals, many of them repeat sex offenders.” The reality is that the cases that drove the legislation are the rarest of rare crimes. They are crimes of murder. They are crimes that would not have been prevented by the AWA or by a thousand sex offender registries.
The reality is that the crime that set John Walsh upon his crusade, the murder of his son, was not committed by a person on the sex offender registry at all.
The reality is that the 800,000 persons on sex offender registries across the nation — ranging in age, according to the various registries, from nine years old to well over a hundred – have not killed anyone. The reality is that the vast majority of them are not repeat offenders but one-time offenders who, after completion of their sentences, live in our communities without ever committing another offense.
The reality is that the many, many millions of dollars and many millions of law-enforcement hours expended in public notification and public registration of those who have committed sexual crimes do not advance public safety. A huge and growing body of evidence attests that they do not affect the rate of first time sexual offenses, of repeat offenses, or of child sexual offenses.
And so we grieve also, Mr. Grassley. (Please read the rest of what we grieve at With Justice for All)
Excellent response.
This is what I hate about this debate. If you take a position that supports empiricism but doesn’t discount child abuse, you are still seen as sympathizing with child molesters. How can one win an argument when the premise is flawed right from the beginning? I actually overheard a person tell my father that he doesn’t care about children because of his views on the AWA. Anyone who knows my father can attest otherwise. It pisses me off to no end that they can throw out this BS response to basically shut us up because after all, who doesn’t want to protect the most innocent among us?
Articles like this need more media coverage. People who come to websites like this already have fairly good idea about the ridiculousness of these sex offender registry and laws surrounding it.
A couple of points.
1. I messaged “Last Week Tonight with John Oliver” requesting them to cover the issue of sex offender registry and the draconian laws surrounding sex crimes in this country. I thought that if there was a popular show in the media to cover this injustice, then it would be that. However, to my dismay, I got a replay few days later which basically said that they are not interested, and which made me feel like they won’t even touch the topic with a ten foot pole. So now I don’t even feel like watching that show, or any of the Lame stream media.
2. I noticed that now even home realty websites have sex offender registry data in them. As noted in the article above, majority of sex crimes against children are committed by their near relatives or family members. If so then how will including sex offender data in Realty websites help in preventing sex crime for new family moving into a neighborhood?
I absolutely agree that the public must be informed. Real data, facts and figures. Without an informed populace, there will be no pressure on elected officials to make realistic and necessary changes.
Grassley is up reelection this year. This is merely a political move and nothing more or less. Persons impacted in Iowa, where he will campaign obviously, by AWA ought to ask him when they can if sky is falling scare tactics are the sole reasons for law generation or is empirical data better to generate laws. Would not mention in what context so he could skirt the issue, but merely ask about scare tactics vs empirical tactics. Get it recorded too by the way……information is power.
We need more sensible discussion in broader forum, like Reddit, for example, where you can have audience from all over with different backgrounds.
Here is a thread pertaining to a recent news article. Please participate, but please use facts and cool head when you find people who are misinformed and who generally have wrong but strong views about the issue.
https://www.reddit.com/r/news/comments/4918pd/alabama_lawmaker_wants_sex_offenders_to_pay_for/?ref=share&ref_source=link
“Hatred does not cease through hatred at any time. Hatred ceases through love. This is an unalterable law.” – Lord Buddha
Grassley is Iowan. Iowa is NOT one of the 17 AWA States. Grassley is high on AWA. Sooo….what about this week’s HF-2427 in Iowa? It says all the 10 year people are to re-register. Iowa is only 2 levels: 10 years or life. Hmmm…
What say you Iowans ? Oh-No, Iowa has no RSOL…