Weird, sick and frightening What to do about topic we avoid

Weird, sick and frightening What to do about topic we avoid
Weird, sick and frightening What to do about the topic we avoid A former suspect in the Jon Benet Ramsey murder case, John Mark Karr is displayed on a computer screen at the Siam Swan Cosmetic Clinic in Thailand, where he had received laser hair removal for his face. Inset: Karr waits to board a plane for the U.S. from Bangkok in late August. He ended up in Atlanta two weeks ago, and has reportedly now moved on to Alabama—but what can his case tell us about tracking child predators? CREDIT: Getty Images By Stephanie Ramage Jim King, a resident of the Chastain Park neighborhood, was looking forward to Halloween trick-or-treating with his children when something truly scary happened. A neighbor claimed to have seen John Mark Karr walking down the street just three blocks from the neighborhood playground. The rumor made sense. Karr, after falsely confessing to the murder of Jon Benet Ramsey in late August and then being released when DNA evidence did not match his own DNA, had said he was thinking of moving to Atlanta where his father lived. The older Karr lives in the Chastain Park neighborhood. After California authorities lost evidence in a child pornography possession case against Karr, he was free to go wherever he chose: He was not a convicted sex offender of any kind and, so, would not be listed on any sex offender registry. It stood to reason that he would come back to his father’s house in Chastain Park. King, as president of the Chastain Park Neighborhood Association, sent out the following e-mail on Thursday, Oct. 19: Dear Neighbors: This is to let you know that John Mark Karr has moved into his father’s home in North Chastain Park. Also, is approximately three blocks north of the Chastain Park playground. As you may recall there have been many published reports in newspapers on Mr. Karr relating to incidents in Colorado, California and Thailand. If you would like to learn more about Mr. Karr, please visit the following link: HYPERLINK "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Mark_Karr" \o "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Mark_Karr" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Mark_Karr ... or go to Google.com and type in “John Mark Karr” to learn more. This e-mail is being sent in response to many emails and phone calls from fellow neighbors that I have received concerning Mr. Karr’s arrival in our community. Thank you. Yours truly, Jim King Karr reportedly left Atlanta soon after and has been sighted in his grandparents’ hometown, where he was raised, in Alabama. Karr was never convicted of anything. In fact, he was officially cleared of the very child murder at which he claimed to have been present—although he added that 6-year-old Jon Benet Ramsey’s death had been an accident and he was “very sorry.” When he was arrested in Thailand originally, he told police he’d had some form of sex with Jon Benet. His confession, however false, would seem to justify alerting the neighbors about him. And the events in the Chastain Park neighborhood look like a chapter in the success of neighborhood awareness. But for Grier Weeks, founder of Protect, a national anti-child-predator advocacy group based in Tennessee, it’s one more chapter in the book of government’s failure at every level to protect our children—even if Karr hasn’t been convicted of anything. “If he is what he says he is,” says Weeks, “he will find a way to gain access to children.” And, Weeks adds, parents would be badly mistaken in assuming that the current system of keeping track of others who, unlike Karr, have gained access to children and molested them is working. Because it’s not. “Over the last 10 years, the major trend in government has been to shift the burden of correctional supervision from prison guards to regular citizens,” Weeks says. “While I support any efforts to make the public more aware of the problem, the bottom line is the public is not trained or capable of watching these guys in any meaningful way. Period.” Child pornography = child sexual abuse Karr’s case is a weird exception to nearly every rule. He’s never been convicted of any crime, but according to reports by the Associated Press, in a series of e-mails to a University of Colorado professor, Karr made graphic claims describing sexual acts with Jon Benet Ramsey and details of her death. A California judge dismissed child pornography charges against Karr in early October after investigators admitted losing the computer—with the alleged child pornography—seized from Karr in 2001. Weeks says that California has historically been soft on child pornography charges. “California only recently attached felony charges to possession of child pornography,” says Weeks. “But they left the misdemeanor charges on the books. People arrested for it rarely do any time.” This week, however, California is poised to pass the toughest anti-child-predator legislation in the nation, including provisions to clamp down on child pornography. After all, the prevalence of child pornography gives some indication of the prevalence of pedophilia. Last year, the FBI and international law enforcement agencies were able to determine that fully 1.4 million individual computers worldwide are regularly used to traffic in child pornography. Those figures add up to a whopping caseload for American law enforcement, since it’s the United States that is home to the world’s largest market for child pornography. The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children received more than 24,400 reports of child pornography on the Internet in 2001. By August 2006, the number of reports had climbed to more than 375,000. According to Weeks, child pornography represents the biggest gap in our legal system’s response to the problem of child predators. It would make sense that only those who are interested in sex with children would own child pornography. And it would make sense, then, he says, that law enforcement would want to keep track of people who have been found to be in possession of child pornography because in the terrifying game of trying to preempt the next child rape, possession of child pornography gives a glaring clue. “Most people don’t even understand what child pornography is,” says Weeks. “They think it’s pictures of naked children. It’s much more brutal than that. When you are viewing child pornography, you are viewing footage from a crime scene. A child has been raped or otherwise molested to make that image. It is abuse in and of itself.” Despite the huge pool of unidentified offenders and their international connections, federal efforts to track child pornographers and their customers have met with some success. Driving that success is the FBI’s Innocent Image program and the Department of Justice’s Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) task force. It was through programs like these that investigators in 2002 were able to track down a Toccoa, Ga., man who repeatedly raped a 6-year-old girl and then sold video of the activity on the Internet. Yet, last year, Congress allocated only $10 million to the Innocent Image program, which hunts down pornographers overseas as well. By way of comparison, Gov. Sonny Perdue has vowed to spend at least double that—some $20 million—to put “graduation coaches” into Georgia’s high schools. “We’re always saying how much Americans care about children,” says Weeks. “But when it comes to funding law enforcement efforts to protect children, that’s not true. It makes me sick to think of the hypocrisy.” Jeff Brickman, who specialized in prosecuting child sexual abuse cases as an assistant U.S. Attorney and as former district attorney for DeKalb County, thinks that Weeks underestimates the commitment of lawmakers and law enforcement to cracking down on child molesters and pornographers. Although he has heard law enforcement agents express frustration with the practicality of Georgia’s controversial new law targeting sex offenders, for example, he believes that officer training and investigations of child pornography and molestation are at an all-time high. “The legislation’s intended goal—to protect our children from sexual predators—is without question, an appropriate and necessary endeavor,” he says. “The problem, however, is not the goal. The problem lies in the practical consequences of its application.” He points to teenagers charged with misdemeanor sex crimes against other teenagers will now have to register as sex offenders for the rest of their lives and have their choice of residence controlled by the law. Due to cases like this, he believes the law needs to be clarified. More than we know In 1997, three researchers published controversial findings titled “A Meta-Analytic Review of Findings from National Samples on Psychological Correlates of Child Sexual Abuse,” in the Journal of Sex Research. The study suggested that it is possible for children to consent to sex with adults and that such interaction should be labeled “adult-child sex” rather than “abuse.” Individuals all over the world weighed in to agree and the American Psychological Association took a beating from many academics for “distancing” itself from the article and its authors. Since then, several studies have debunked the research and some of the debunking can be found on the Web site of The Leadership Council on Child Abuse and Interpersonal Violence (www.leadershipcouncil.org). Joyana Silberg, a psychologist and executive director of the council, says that the lack of information regarding the size of the pedophile community and the public’s ignorance of it is frustrating for those who deal with the damage caused by child sexual abuse. Moreover, the pedophile community is large enough to support its own press, and in pedophile publications, adults who oppose adults having sex with children are called “child haters.” “That’s what they call us,” she says. “Because we want to ‘deprive children of the chance to have sex with an adult.’” In her own practice, she has seen enough cases of child sexual abuse to know that its incidence is much more frequent than anyone wants to admit. She also points out that most child sexual abuse is not perpetrated by some stranger in the neighborhood. “You don’t need to worry so much about pedophiles walking down your street,” she says. “They don’t even have to walk down the street. Most of them are fathers and stepfathers and uncles and other members of the family. They don’t even have to walk down the street. They can just stay home and have a ready supply of victims provided for them.” SP -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Perspectives on child-predators “We’re always saying how much Americans care about children. But when it comes to funding law enforcement efforts to protect children, that’s not true. It makes me sick to think of the hypocrisy.”—Grier Weeks, founder of Protect, a national anti-child-predator advocacy group based in Tennessee “The legislation’s intended goal—to protect our children from sexual predators—is without question an appropriate and necessary endeavor. The problem, however, is not the goal. The problem lies in the practical consequences of its application.”—Jeff Brickman, former district attorney for DeKalb County, who specialized in prosecuting child sexual abuse cases as an assistant U.S. Attorney “They don’t even have to walk down the street. They can just stay home and have a ready supply of victims provided for them.”—Joyana Silberg, a psychologist and executive director of the Leadership Council on Child Abuse and Interpersonal Violence http://www.sundaypaper.com/NEWS/News/NewsArchives/tabid/202/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/2053/110506-CoverNews.aspx

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