A System Broken Beyond Repair?

A sex offender kidnaps, rapes, impregnates and manages to hide an eleven year old for eighteen years. A mom sells her five year old for sex which results in the child’s death. A fifteen year old child who has a known history of suicide attempts, self-mutilation and mental healthissues kills a nine year old child. A known criminal with a history as long as a interstate highway bashed in the face of a television anchor while she was sleeping in her own bed. Another known sex offender is let out of prison early only to rape, kill and store at least eleven bodies in and around his home and the list goes on and on. I could type for hours listing the many ways that our legal system has failed us. I could also add the many, many missteps of the Department of Children and Family Services in almost every single state.

Abused children are returned to parents who are strung out on various drugs and alcohol only to turn up either beaten or murdered at a later date. Yet the system claims that they can’t do a thing because they are over worked and under staffed. The courts give repeat sex offenders light sentences or let them out because they were “good prisoners”. How can any of us feel safe with this nonsense going on?

I have heard some bleeding hearts crying over the fact that people who simply possess or use drugs should not be jailed at all making room for hardened criminals in the prison system, yet; many of the hardened criminals they refer too have a long history of substance abuse. Should we just let them roam free infecting our communities and doing whatever is necessary to obtain their drug of choice?

How do we convince elected officials and judges to render appropriate sentences for serious offenders instead of giving them a slap on the wrist (or an ankle bracelet) to clear their court calendars or free up the crowded prison system? How do we make our voices heard when it comes to putting these potential monsters away for good rather than burying our loved ones because of their sick needs and desires.

I for one am sick and tired of hearing about a dead child or a missing mom. I am tired of watching grieving families who will never see their babies grow up and who’s lives are totally destroyed because the monsters under the bed are very real and very close by.

Check your area for registered sex offenders and you will be shocked at how many live right around the corner from you. I live in a retirement community and I found over 50 offenders within a five mile radius. There is no limit to age or area where these creeps are concerned. They are everywhere.

Recently my kids and I had to teach my three year old granddaughter how to scream as loud as she could and run as fast as she can if a stranger approaches her. We had to tell her that other than people well known to her (like parents and grandparents), are not to be trusted. That felt horrible. We started the process of removing her innocence out of necessity and because it is a very real fact that she could be kidnapped, raped or killed in a minute…right under our noses. It is happening every single day and there is a serious contagion of sociopathic behavior going on in our neighborhoods.

I doubt that we can cure most of these sex offenders because the statistics have proved that they are simply not curable so we have to put them away for life or give them the death penalty when they offend the first time, not the 17th time. Yes, most of these offenders have offended more than ten times before they even get caught for their first official offense.

How many more lives must be destroyed? It’s time for action on the part of all of us and if we have to write our elected officials and keep on writing to them until they listen than that is what we must do. The alternative to speaking out and demanding tougher laws are more dead children. Which would you prefer?