I’m not especially fond of Halloween.
Oh, I like chocolate, and the young kids can be cute. But every Halloween, I’m reminded of the fear and rage stoked by America’s Sexual Disaster Industry.
Activist groups like National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC), Fight the New Drug, and SafeHome.org lie to us. They tell us that paroled sex offenders are likely to attack our kids. They tell us that sex offender registries will protect us and our loved ones. They urge us to look at neighborhood maps, with helpful red dots locating houses we should supposedly avoid.
Anti-porn groups lie that “porn addicts” inflame themselves to the point of molesting kids.
What they don’t tell us is that hundreds of thousands of people on sex offender registries were NOT convicted of crimes against minors, or of any violent crime. This includes people convicted of public urination, sex work, and consensual sex between teenagers.
Some people spend decades on the Registry for crimes they commit when they’re minors. In some states, high schoolers who “sext” each other have been convicted of creating and distributing child porn. They’d no sooner molest a kid than fly to the moon.
STRANGER DANGER? NO.
And these activists don’t tell us that strangers carry out only 7% of sexual crimes against children. Or that child sexual abuse has declined by 60% between 1992 and 2010. Or that registered sex offenders are less likely to re-offend sexually than murderers, drunk drivers, arsonists, or violent burglars are to re-commit their crimes.
In reality, the vast majority of people who endanger kids sexually are not on the Registry, have not been caught or punished before, and don’t fit a profile–except that they’re family or friends or neighbors with no criminal record.
There is NO DATA showing that more sexual offenses are committed on Halloween than on any other autumn evening. But no group collects money from donations or state legislators by telling the truth about this. And certainly no one gets elected by telling us that we’re safer than we think. Or that well-funded groups are wrong when they terrify us so effectively.
It is extremely difficult for convicted sex offenders to get paroled or released after serving their terms. If prosecutors or jail officials have declared someone ready to integrate into society, you can bet that you’re safe around them. While I’m not claiming that any of them are angels, we’re all better off if they get support rather than ostracism. Stringent laws that force them to live under freeways, or prevent them from getting jobs, create the circumstances that promote recidivism, not community safety.
DESIGNATED PARIAHS
“Sex offenders” (“child molesters,” “pedophiles”) are the designated American pariahs—the lowest priority in any community, any mental health system, and any legislature. Sex offenders are so socially loathed that they’re even targeted in prison for rape and violence.
This year it’s worse than ever, as one presidential candidate has consciously created fear and anger about normal life. Donald Trump has encouraged his followers to target “others”—a group which gets bigger daily. It used to be simply immigrants, but “others” now includes journalists, economists, electric car owners, people of color (with a special shout-out this week to Puerto Ricans), women, Democrats, and other “enemies of the people.”
No candidate in American history has ever called the tens of millions of people voting against him “enemies of the people.” I never once called Reagan or Bush an “enemy of the people,” although I disparaged their ideas regularly. But I digress.
Well, not entirely. Because the creation of a “them” as a target of our fear and hatred is the real danger. Whether “they” are sex offenders, gays, soldiers, Mormons, or whomever, we lessen our own humanity by disidentifying with any group of our fellow humans.
It’s psychologically reassuring to believe that sex offenders are less than human–that they’re “them,” not “us.” As with so much in the sexual arena, many people would rather believe fairy tales than face the truth. So many Americans would rather fear drag shows instead of bullying, rather fear library books than the lack of birth control and sex education.
Our kids do face danger out there, all right, but most parents haven’t understood it correctly. The dangers include parents who won’t vaccinate their kids, leaving other, vaccinated kids more vulnerable to face measles, pneumonia, and whooping cough; the normalization of young kids questioning their gender; kids learning that they’re so emotionally fragile that “words are violence,” and that they can’t handle conventional texts; and parents’ increasing inability to manage without being in phone contact with their kids during a normal school day.
So is Halloween free of danger for your kids?
No. It’s the most common day of the year that kids get hit by cars.
And there’s all that candy (which can turn parents crabby after they eat more than they planned). Other than that, Halloween is a normal Thursday in Anytown, USA.
And still, the most dangerous thing in the average kid’s life is not being molested—it’s texting while riding a bike. I bet your ‘tween or high-schooler did it today.
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