AMBER ALERTS

The Amber Alert System is probably one of the greatest inventions of all time. Unfortunately it came too late to save the little girls’ life for which it is named.

In January 1996, Amber Hagerman was abducted while riding her bicycle near Arlington, Texas. She has been left ALONE for just a few short minutes while her brother rode on ahead to their grandparent’s house. She was abducted in broad daylight. A Man living nearby heard her screams for help and looked out his window to see a man carrying her off into his pick-up truck and drive away. He called 911. By the time the police arrived, the suspect and Amber were long gone. They had no leads.

Four days later, Amber's naked body was found in a creek bed near an apartment complex in north Arlington. The young girl's throat had been slit.

A tragic, senseless, and horrific crime. To this day, her killer has never been caught. The sex offender registry will NOT save you or your child from this cold-blooded killer because he is NOT on it. He has to be caught first.

The pattern of a young child being left ALONE and the tragic ending to Amber’s story is much like that of Adam Walsh’s and Megan Kanka’s, both of Whom have laws named after them. Of the these three cases, only one killer has been caught, Megan’s. Her killer had a very violent criminal history which included an abduction and sexual assault of another young girl, Whom he had left for dead. This man was truly a predator and a danger in every sense of the word and should never have been let out of custody. He belonged in a mental institution. Even though there was no public sex offender registry at that time, police and neighbors knew right where to look. The community was already aware of the man’s past.

These facts alone make it glaringly obvious that the sex offender registry is a dangerous tool that should not be relied on to protect your children. It does a great disservice to the public in many ways. The false sense of security that it gives, the hatred and anger it inspires and incites, the lowering of property values, the increase in homelessness and joblessness of those who are on the registry. I cannot think of a single case in the decade since the passage of Megan’s Law where a single child has been saved.

I know so many parents who, when Junior finds a new friend, hurry over to their home computers and look up the friends’ address. No sex offender is listed and Junior is allowed not only to go over but to even spend the night. I cannot reiterate enough the fact that over 95% of the new sex offenses are committed by someone who is NOT on the registry, effectively making 95% of the registered sex offenders NO THREAT to you or your children.

Florida puts prostitutes on their sex offender registry, there are many Romeo and Juliet type cases also, as well as in Oregon, married adults who were caught in parked cars trying to recapture their youth steaming up the windows being added. Then there are the teachers. The pretty bomb-shell blonde Deb LaFave. It may satisfy some readers to see her register but is she a predator? Can she be helped? We put her on that registry to humiliate her and let her serve as an example to others that we don’t go around having sex with our teachers, even if he or she is a hottie.

What does the Deb Lafave case, for example have to do with  Adam Walsh, or Megan Kanka? What does Mary Kay Letourneau have to do with them? Are these women violent sexual predators? Are they a danger to the community? If they are not, why would we treat them, and others like them, as though they were? Can somebody please tell me? How victimized do their victims really feel? Certainly there is a huge difference between these cases and cases of flat out rape and where there was absolutely no consent whatsoever. Ms. Leterneau’s victim married her as soon as she was released from prison and they have two children together! Ms. LaFave’s victim refused to even testify, probably because of all the "high five’s" and "atta-boy’s" he got from his peers. I'm sorry folks, but that's the reality. These are clear examples of why "One size fits all" legislation is bad public policy.

But back to the Amber Alert. Numerous lives have undoubtedly been saved and many crimes thwarted as a result of the Amber Alert System. This tool is not only valuable, but invaluable as well. As a mother myself I am grateful for the wisdom and effectiveness Amber Alerts have had.

Now, that in mind, I want you to ask yourself how many Amber Alerts you hear about. Yes, we have all heard them but not very often. We are certainly not inundated with them are we? And of these Amber Alerts, how many involved registered sex offenders? How many involved a non-custodial parent or a jealous, possessive boyfriend kidnapping his girlfriend?

I can think of a total of maybe three Amber Alerts that have involved a registered sex offender. Three. This number is really mind boggling considering there are approximately 600,000 people on the sex offender registry, all of Whom are "suppose to be so dangerous" as to warrant their registering. How can this be? John Walsh testifies repeatedly before congress that our streets are littered with mutilated and decapitaed bodies of children. This cannot be true. It isn’t true. If it were, why, we’d be inundated with Amber Alerts to the point where it would be useless to even issue one.

Are we as Americans really so stupid as to fall for this? Are we really willing to put people on the registry for a ever expanding variety of crimes which ruin their lives because of what happened to Megan Kanka? To throw in the Romeo and Juliet’s, the married adults out "parking", kids who moon each other or show Playboy magazines to their friends away, along with the serial child molesters and rapists for which the registry was originally created? Is this really okay with us as Americans? Is it okay that all these lives are destroyed because it might have some snowball’s chance in hell of saving one child?

WHERE is the prevention? Why don’t lawmakers ever talk about that? The headlines involving those rare instances which do involve registered sex offenders are headlines because they have offended again and NOT because any child was saved!

Perhaps it’s time to do a little weeding out in the sex offender garden...ya think?

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