It Takes a Village

Reading a little Eschaton tonight, late night comments thread, and I end up sending an email to Zaz Hollander, an author of an article out of Alaska. Here's the text of the email:

Found out about your article on Eschaton's blog, via this comment, then followed it to the General's blog, where I posted this foul-mouthed comment.

A couple of clean questions, repeated from my not-so-clean comment:

1) Will Joe Brost be punished, too?

2) What does 'laid on hands' mean? Is that like Mr. Miyagi in The Karate Kid?

3) And is anyone else worried that this guy ''took troubled students into his family's home''?

I hope so, because those 'troubled students' may be a lot more troubled later in life when they really have to deal with getting 'laid on hands' by the oh-so-Christian principal. This just sounds way too much like the priest sex scandal. Someone should interview the boys with a social worker present and make sure the questions are not leading. That whole whippings in the basement thing is way too much like the movie Sleepers.

This guy is a sexual predator, and he needs to be stopped. I'm convinced. I hope someone is looking out for those kids, because if they don't get right in the heads, then they'll end up perpetrating the same sexual crimes they endured on their own children or others.

Thanks.

Am I over-reacting? I don't know, but I hope someone does follow-up with those kids. This principal guy seems dangerous, and I come from the camp of folks who believe that sexual offenders are not the same as other types of lawbreakers.

Sex crimes are not committed against property, and they're not victimless crimes like pot-smoking. From everything I've heard and read, they are absolutely devastating to the victim. And sex crimes are crimes that keep on giving - if the victims don't get right in the head, they are likely to find a way, later in their lives, to make victims of other innocents. That is why we freedom-loving liberals at the art of the possible believe in the sex offender registries. There are grey areas everywhere, and this is one of them. I believe in siding with the victims and potential victims of sex crimes. If that limits the freedom of a convicted sex criminal, then so be it. I don't believe that those convicted of prostitution and other adult/consensual sex-related crimes should be listed in sex offender registries. That just defeats the purpose of the registries by flooding the system with unneeded information - information that will not protect the public.

The point of this post, however, is to see that the 'troubled students' that spent time at the principal's house were not sexually abused. The best people to do this are folks who are already with social services groups - people who already know the ropes, and may already know the children. If we all work a little bit harder to look out for each other, we could make the world a lot better place.