Tell Me Why Not

The people of Ontario will be voting for their next provincial government on October 6th of this year. One election promise being made by the hopeful PC party is that if they are brought into power, they will create a publicly accessible website to list the names and addresses of the province's registered sex offenders. It would likely be the first such website in Canada, and would currently inform the public of the names and locations of over 14,100 individuals.
Of course, there is controversy over the proposal. Some are saying that it would serve the purpose of better protecting children from predators. One of these is Paul Gillespie, the former police officer who co-founded Kids' Internet Safety Alliance. Others, however, are saying that the website would only lead to vigilante-style action being undertaken by parents. They say the police already keep track of registered offenders and can alert the public of looming dangers in the form of pedophiles who move into a neighbourhood.
I agree with Gillespie on this one. I think those who bemoan the rights of the registered sex offenders as being trampled on by having their names listed on the proposed website are forgetting the rights of those victimized by the perps. There are too many bleeding-heart liberals in Canada willing to twist themselves into pretzels in order to protect the rights of those who victimize others. Unfortunately, they expect the rest of us to do the same. They forget that these predators have willingly declared themselves to be more desirous of perverted pleasures than they are of giving any thought to the matter of rights. They often come to the consideration of rights only when they don't like the living conditions in the pen or when they find themselves about to be exposed to the general public as the undesirables they are.
I know such a declaration as the one I have just made will lift many an eyebrow and elicit many an expression of dismay over the perceived lack of willingness to forgive it entails. So be it. People who expect that forgiveness to materialize do so in spite of the fact that the rights of the victimized children have been trampled into the dust. Many of these children will have had their childhood completely stolen away; their innocence completely destroyed. They will have been left to spend a lifetime trying to piece themselves back together after the offenders have shattered their wholeness of spirit. Why should those responsible for shattered lives be given so much consideration when they decide they want to move on?
Part of the debate about such measures as the website is the seeming lack of definitive answers available in current research into recidivism rates among sex offenders. Available research, however, does suggest that "incarcerated child molesters committed on average two to five times as many sexual assaults as resulted in conviction." While the jury is still out on this one, maybe we should listen to people like Gillespie, and err on the side of caution, with the children first and foremeost in our consideration.
When pedophiles make the choice to forever damage a child, they make a declaration. They choose to mark themselves, forever, as people who have taken pleasure from victimizing the vulnerable. Why should we worry about everyone knowing the choice they have made?