Hello.
I am a victim of circumstances.
Let me tell you a story.
Two drug addicts a Women and a Man. The women gets pregnant; therefore, they decide to get married before the baby girl is born. The marriage doesn't even last a year before they decide to get divorced. A custody battle took place for 5 years, at the end of 5 years the father decides to take their daughter into the police and have his daughter tell the police that her uncle sexually molested her. Eleven months later the uncle is charged with two first degree felonies. The daughter continues to say the uncle did something one and one half years later. The uncles attorney has advised the him to plead guilty to a lesser charge because he is faced with a life sentence. The uncle pleads guilty to two third degree felonies of a sexual nature. While waiting to be sentenced for the felonies the daughter changes her story and says that nothing happened and told the police that her "daddy tricked her into lying." The uncles attorney and the prosecuting attorney interview the little girl. The little girl again said that nothing happened in a 35 page document. Six months pass by, and eventually the prosecutor, gets an expert witness to refute everything the defense attorney does saying "the uncles family had something to do with the recant." The uncle eventually pleads guilty to two Class A misdemeanors of a nonsexual nature.
That uncle was me. I went to school and go a degree in Criminal Justice for over 5 years. Six months after I graduated I plead guilty to a crime I did NOT commit. Everything I learned in college was a lie. The very standards that the law are supposed to uphold are the same ones that they don't follow or recognize. So much for being innocent until proven guilty. So much for letting a guilty man go free before punishing an innocent one. Do you have any idea what it is like to be accused a crime you didn't commit? The worst crime you could possibly think of. I am not arguing as a matter of opinion but as a matter of fact. The rest of my life is based on the fact that you are guilty until proven innocent. The truth is that no one is willing to give anyone the benefit of the doubt when its a sex offender case especially when there is a child involved.
I think a lot of social workers and prosecuting attorneys are victims of sex crimes and that's why they choose the occupation they do. They have a conflict of interest.
I think Chris Hansen has a conflict of interest too. I can think of only one reason why someone would want to do what he does. I think that he gets jollies off of embarrassing these men, who are for the most part fully functional human beings. Make no mistake about it, I don't think it is a good for these men to do what they do and they should get help, but its not right to publicly humiliate them and give them absolutely no hope. I can only imagine how a child feels whey they are hurt by an adult sexually, I know a few women how have. But are you really doing any good by making an example of this people? Michael Jackson was exonerated and people still make fun of him and say he did something. There is no love, there is no hope, there is no benefit of doubt. There is only hatred and sadness with no forgiveness. If you really want to do good, which I highly doubt, gives these men therapy so they can start to thinking right, and maybe in generally people should start to think right, instead of being entertained by weird stuff just like the people they are making fun of.

http://www.accused.com

To your point, deancicca, don't miss a commentary on the Predator series by David Finkelhor, director of the Crimes Against Children Research Center at UNH. Serious food for thought:

"People guilty of committing these acts should be punished. However, this massive and irrevocable punishment is being meted out well before the careful deliberation of the justice system has had a chance to deliver its verdict.

"But even if these offenders were certifiably guilty, is public humiliation the proper punishment? There is no question that millions of Americans would tune in to watch murderers being put to death in Texas or Florida. It used to be argued that such public executions were a strong deterrent against crime. But they were discontinued in the United States after 1936 in part out of the sense that it is not consistent with our values and in the public interest to mobilize outpourings of vengeance and to exacerbate the strong primal passions that swirl around heinous crimes. The public humiliation of sex offenders especially in the absence of any legal process belongs in the same historical dustbin."

Anne
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Anne Collier
BlogSafety co-director