MySpace Vs ThemPerv’s
May 15th, 2007 | by Matthew OKeefe |Educate your kids on safe internet use by clicking here Kids.gov
As the father of five very young daughters I first let out a cheer upon reading this piece that was in the Houston Chronicle today. If there is one type of American that I have no tolerance for it is sexual predators of our children. This kind of crime against children makes me sick to my stomach because most of the time the crime committed against the child is committed by someone that the child is related to or knows very closely.
Contrary to my mostly liberal mentality I firmly believe that castration or imprisonment for life is the only cure for this sick behavior on our nation’s children. You can call me a bad liberal but all it would take is one of these perverts to touch even one of my girls and I would be the parent in the courtroom going nuts when the guy walks away with a two year sentence for destroying my daughter’s life forever. Film at eleven and all the networks would cover it.
Here is what the Houston Chronicle had to say on this…
May 14, 2007, 12:40PM
MySpace asked to reveal sex offender information
By SAMUEL SPIES
Associated Press
RALEIGH, N.C. — Top law enforcement officers from seven states issued a letter to MySpace.com today, asking the social networking site to turn over the names of registered sex offenders who use the service.
The letter asks MySpace to provide information on how many registered sex offenders are using the site, and where they live. Attorneys general from North Carolina, Connecticut, Idaho, Mississippi, New Hampshire, Ohio and Pennsylvania signed the letter.Law enforcement agencies have identified more than 200 cases nationwide of children “lured out of their home by predators they met on MySpace,” North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper said a written statement Monday.
In their letter, the attorneys general also asked that MySpace describe the steps it has taken to warn users about sex offenders and remove their profiles.
Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal called the site a “virtual playground” for predators.
“That combination of sex offenders and children is a recipe for tragedy,” Blumenthal said. - Houston Chronicle
I’ve had some time to think about the article and had a few thoughts as to where this also could lead. What avenues of interpretation does this type of request open up that can be abused by our internet providers at the request of so called defenders of the people from our government leaders? What is the Constitutional basis that would throw the request out of court? Is it your personal privacy that is being invaded if you have a MySpace account? How is MySpace to know who is a pervert and who is just a kid other than the “honesty” policy of reporting your age that is required by the site?
It makes me sick to say it but this is ultimately an invasion of personal privacy that can lead to further actions that will eventually lead to abuse of all internet users to make sure that everyone is a good worker bee. Credit rating to risky, banned from site x, y, and z. Employment history not up to snuff, banned from sites A, B, and C. Filed bankruptcy in the last ten years and you could possibly be banned from L, M, N, O and P web sites. If you have ever been charged with shop lifting then you can forget about buying jack on Amazon or Best Buy or any online vendor.
This whole scenario could be solved by parents knowing that the twelve year old in the house has a MySpace account and the parents have full access to it. One item that was lacking in the story in the Houston Chronicle was the question of where the hell were the parents of these 200 kids when they were lured out of their homes. MySpace needs parental control for children under the age of eighteen and the kids need to have their parent’s permission to have the right to log onto it. Knowing that Mom or Dad will be monitoring it and aware of contact to their children’s account with a simple automatic email to Mom or Dad’s personal email is just one fix.
The world of information is changing so fast and so many avenues open up every single day that our children can be abused or singled out as pray for a sick deviant and we need to make the system accountable in a logical way other than setting a precedent that will uphold in a court of law that can be sighted for more big brother watching over our shoulders. MySpace needs to clean up its own act to protect the kids using their software and parents need to be actively responsive to what programs their children are using on the family or personal computer.
As for perverts and pedophiles I’m still however in favor of Castration. That form of treatment seems logical and sends a message that is loud and clear to perverts and deviants everywhere. Pass a law saying that that will happen to convicted people concerning sexual crimes against children and the percentage of sexual crimes against children will drop over night!
Cross posted at Papamoka Straight Talk
3 Responses to “MySpace Vs ThemPerv’s”
By tammara on May 15, 2007 | Reply
dear matthew,
castration will not work. there are a few reasons for that.
1. this kind of crime is not a crime of sex. it is one of power. therefore, castration would not prevent it. it might make it more violent.
2. castration does not prevent erection in most cases. therefore, if penetration is the goal, it could still be acheived. orgasim is still possible, just no ejaculation. (if you don’t believe this, read the history of the castrato of europe- they set fire (figuratively)to the beds of noble euopean women, because they were the perfect lovers, could not get you pregnant)
3. most pedophiles have been victims, and their patterns of behavior were set when they were very young (sexuality is an early skill set)and these preferences are not ammenable to treatment or change.
4. the threat of castration will not stop deviant thought. deviant thought is not a crime. action is. the research is clear that sexual deviancy is not treatable, nor can it be threatened into submission.
5. mandatory long term treatment for sexual abuse is our best hope. too many times it is left untreated, and it results in more sexual abuse victims. the families themselves try to protect the pedophile in their midst at the expense of the vitim. more times than not, male victims become victimizers, while women victims become victims of other types, such as battered wives, etc.
next-
being sexually abused is awful, but it does not necessarily ruin your life forever. craig and i are both examples of that. the victim defines the scope of the abuse, and can with treatment decide how it will affect the future.
as awful as this sounds, i would not trade the experience of having been sexually or physically abused away if i could. i could have done without the emotional abuse, that left far worse scars. what i know about myself as a survivor of abuse is that i am a fighter, a very strong individual, and nothing can get in my way forever. what i have learned about how to read other peoples actions and motives is of value to me every day.
that said, i would not wish the experience on anyone, and those who perpetrate the crime should be locked up, throw the key away, and be done with it, as they are not curable by any method we know at this time.
meanwhile, limiting the internet in the above manner is not acceptable to me. my space needs to police itself and parents need to watch what kids are doing on the net. parents bear the biggest responsibility here, and they need to be sure about what their kids are doing.
By Matthew O'Keefe on May 16, 2007 | Reply
Tammara,
I aggree with most of what you said. One point that you made that I would want heard loud and clear is how to stop the endless cycle of sexual abouse of our children.
If locking them up and throwing away the key is the only solution then that is something to think about.
I’m the Dad to five babies and they are my world. I love them so much that if anyone abused them then I would loose it.
Where or what can the solution be to this crisis in America be?
Should the government strip the rights of all internet users to protect in a big brother manner for the sake of our children? I’m troubled by that thought as I think that you know if the government gets an inch they will take the whole damn yard eventually.
My thoughts are with you for what you went through and I appreciate your comment. I mean no disrespect to you in my reply for what you have been through.
This issue needs to be faced and dealt with by folks like you and I.