By Lenore Skenazy . . . Every year around Halloween time, Patch, the news website specializing in local coverage around the country, publishes maps that show where sex offenders live. Patch claims this is some kind of public service, even though a thorough study of 67,000 cases of child molestation found zero increase in sex crimes against children on Halloween. The vast majority of crimes against…
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By Lenore Skenazy . . . A Boston Herald article is calling for a new Massachusetts law to stop registered sex offenders from participating in Halloween. Such a law would violate the rights of sex offenders, for no public benefit whatsoever. The piece—as random as a piece can be, in that it is not tied to any actual news, crime, or person of…
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By Lenore Skenazy . . . Both the boys admit they did it. Horsing around, two New Jersey 14-year-olds pulled down their pants and sat on the faces of two 12-year-old boys. As one of them later explained, “I thought it was funny and I was trying to get my friends to laugh.” For that act, he and his buddy…
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By Lenore Skenazy . . . Wondering whether the sex offender registry actually works to make kids safer? Consider a case at the Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin, where alert staff prevented Stuart Yates, a 49-year-old man on the sex offender registry, from visiting his severely ill son Kahlil, age 9, who was crying and begging him to visit. As Fox 6…
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By Lenore Skenazy . . . Even Zach Anderson’s probation officer wanted him off probation, but the judge ruled no. Zach’s one night of consensual teen sex means he still cannot live at home, drink alcohol, leave his county, or walk by a pre-school. He had hoped to get off probation on the 8th, but an early Christmas was not to be.…
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By Lenore Skenazy . . . We are in the midst of a massive mommy moral panic. Across the country, mothers are writing breathless accounts on Facebook of how sex traffickers nearly snatched their children at Target/Ikea/the grocery store. While at Sam’s Club, one such post explains, “a man came up to us and asked if the empty cart nearby was…
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By Lenore Skenazy…. “Trick or treat, trick or treat, give us something lethal to eat!” That’s not the actual rhyme, but from all the warnings about Halloween you just might think it was. Even the American Academy of Pediatrics is still insisting that “a responsible adult should closely examine all treats.” But why? How many decades of disproving this murderous…
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By Lenore Skenazy…. The woman who looked to be about 60 walked up to the podium and spoke in a quiet voice. She was at a St. Louis synagogue that was hosting an evening of presentations about the sex offender registry. I spoke, too. But this mom’s story has haunted me in the weeks since. I asked for a copy…
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By Lenore Skenazy . . . Paul DiMarco has been selling ice cream in Poughkeepsie, New York, for two decades. He owns a fleet of trucks. When one mom confided to him, “You gotta be careful because there’s a lot of pedophiles in this world,” he recalls replying, “That attitude falls into the same category as ‘All black people that drive…
Read MoreBy Sandy…. Sophie and Hans Scholl did it in Nazi Germany and were executed for high treason. Rosa Parks did it in segregated Alabama and sparked a revolution. And some writers in America, outnumbered and overwhelmed by politics and public opinion about the sex offender industry, are doing it and daring to expose the truth. The definition of what makes…
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