Wants comprehensive approach
To the editor:
Over the next few days, thousands of former sex offenders in Iowa, many of whom have served their sentence and worked diligently to make amends, will be scrambling to comply with a wide range of new restrictions on their lives.
Not because they have been classified at a high risk to re-offend.
Not because they pose a legitimate threat to any Iowan perusing the sex offender registry.
But, as perhaps we will grow to recognize in the next few years, because we lack a government with the wisdom and courage to address sexual violence through a comprehensive approach.
With any luck, our legislators will stop labeling and demonizing the tiny fraction of perpetrators who are convicted for their crimes, and who, with the right support and guidance, can rehabilitate.
Perhaps then legislators might truly protect Iowa's children by addressing the circumstances of most acts of sexual violence - when victim and perpetrator are acquaintances, or even family members, when the perpetrator has never been caught, and when the victim is unable to report the abuse. The myths of ''stranger danger'' and the incurable ''sexual predator,'' long debunked by scholars, need to finally be removed from our laws.
Make no mistake, confronting sexual violence in our society is a very complicated mission.
And as a result, we cannot allow our legislators to continue taking shortcuts.
We cannot continue to be distracted by the claim that the real problem of sexual violence is a few thousand ''bad people,'' while we pretend that former offenders are less likely to re-offend if they can't find a home, a job, or a community that will treat them like a human being.
As a society, we are responsible for every victim who is unable to leave an abusive relationship, every child whose ignorance about sexuality is exploited, every institution that praises those who exploit the weakness of others, and every perpetrator who is in dire need of rehabilitation.
Let's start acting like it.
Kyle Payne
Executive director
Iowa Coalition for
Sex Offender
Rehabilitation
Sioux City
Facebook
MySpace
Digg
Stumble
Mixx
Fark
del.icio.us
LiveSpaces
|
prisrn
|
|
|---|---|
|
07-04-09 11:24 AM
|
thendrickson- you need to read the next verse. . . "If your brother sins, rebuke him and if he repents forgive him. "
|
|
thendrickson
|
|
|
07-04-09 1:37 AM
|
man I gotta slow down between thinking and typing.
|
|
thendrickson
|
|
|
07-04-09 1:36 AM
|
Jesus said it would be better to tie a rock around a child molesters neck and throw him in the water than for them to face the wrath of God. Somehow i don't think giving child molesters the opportunity to repeat there crime is the answer to anything unless the people who advocate doing so are willing to be punished when they're brilliant ideas fail.
|
|
prisrn
|
|
|
07-02-09 7:46 PM
|
thank you Kyle for your well written and informative thoughts. (I totally disagree with sportsman, who obviously has done NO research on this very controversial subject.) What our lawmakers have done is to put a very small bandaid over a huge gaping wound, which as Kyle states, starts most often, with aquaintances and people who know their victims quite well. Zoning, 2000 ft laws, etc have NO relevance to rehab or to prevention. I think that is what he may be trying to say. However, our lawmakers have chosen the easiest and most politically correct approach in order to pat each other on the back and say "well done." Too bad for all of us, that it doens't work. Offenders CAN change.
|
|
SPORTSMAN
|
|
|
07-02-09 4:46 PM
|
Kyle, do I understand your letter correctly? Are you saying sex offenders can be cured?? They can't be. I think I'm missin' something in this letter. So I hope someone will explain to me what Kyle is trying to say here. Thanks.
|