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"Should Sex Offenders Be Invited," Randy Cohen, NY Times
The Ethicist ethicist@NYTimes.com
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/07/magazine/07FOB-ethicist-t.html?scp=2&sq=randy%20cohen&st=cse
Should the Sex Offender Be Invited?
By RANDY COHEN
NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE
Feb. 7, 2010
"I am thinking about organizing a 30th reunion for my elementary-school "graduating" class. One classmate is a registered sex offender whose presence may discourage other people from attending, especially with
their kids. Should I invite him? Make the event adults only? Inform others of his offense? Public records show that his misdeed was committed 13 years ago. He received probation, and there's no indication of any subsequent crime. I would regret excluding him or violating his privacy, but I'd feel bad withholding information that other classmates might want. What to do?"
NAME WITHHELD, TEXAS
Do nothing. It's often the best thing. Some parents might be uneasy about this fellow, but to respond to that anxiety would be catering to prejudice, not forestalling danger. There's information about my former
classmates I want - their infidelities, their plastic surgeries, their P.I.N.'s - but it doesn't follow that I'm ethically entitled to it.
If the classmate constituted a threat to anyone, you might have to act. But data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics indicate that the recidivism rate for sex offenders, contrary to widespread misconceptions, is far lower than for many other criminals. Nor need you fear that having committed one sort of crime, he is apt to commit another. The bureau reports, "Sex offenders were less likely than non-sex offenders to be rearrested for any offense."
Given these facts, your vague knowledge of his long-ago crime, the light sentence he received and the many years he has gone apparently without being rearrested, you should leave him in peace rather than subject him to the scrutiny and scorn of his classmates. He has paid his debt to society; you ought not extract a further toll by exiling him from ordinary social interactions. (Nor should you hang him, even in Texas.)
"The Love We Lost," Joanne Wypizewski, THE NATION
The Love We Lost: Carnal Knowledge
By JoAnn Wypijewski
This article appeared in the February 8, 2010 edition of The Nation.
A lot happens in a year, events ripe for exploration but athwart the deadline of a column scheduled to appear only six out of fifty-two weeks. Such was the case in 2009, and I had planned on reviewing The Year in Sex, plumbing the meaning of some of the bigger stories that slipped past, when fresh events intervened: Vanity Fair plastered its February cover with a portrait of Tiger Woods that blends classic beefcake with the essence of a police artist's perp drawing; and death came calling.
I'll get to death in a moment, but first the really morbid subject. That picture of Tiger, grim-faced and naked except for a ski cap, sums up the major sexual theme not just of the past year but of our time, the sexual
being as offender. Tiger coerced no child, copped no plea, jumped no bail, whacked no white woman. It doesn't matter. He had merely to bust up the prison of his own image, and the black Escalade became the white
Bronco, Tiger became "the new O.J.," with the difference that this time some people cheered domestic violence, wishing out loud that the club-wielding Elin had given her bloodied husband more of a beating. When mere horn dogs can so easily acquire the tincture of criminality and whet the taste for punishment, it's clear that ordinary rules of judgment have been suspended. And so, plucking just a few headlines from the recent past, it cannot matter that Michael Jackson was acquitted of child molestation, since he was frequently remembered in death as a pedophile. It cannot matter what happened all those years ago between Roman Polanski and Samantha Geimer in a mansion on Mulholland Drive, just as it cannot matter whether others who plead guilty to a sex charge really did it, or whether evidence to convict was nonsense, or whether
the guilty serve their time. They can never "pay their debt to society."
Guilt is the presumption, forever. One who pleads on the promise of a deal can no more realistically retract that plea than the ex-cons and wrongly accused can shed the label "sex offender." Martha Coakley says
she still believes the Amiraults--whom she helped put away on preposterous charges of daycare horror and who were later vindicated--are guilty. The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court suggests it may not let other convictions stand on repressed memory alone but it has no problem doing so in the case of defrocked priest Paul Shanley (another prosecution initiated by Coakley), ignoring the reams of scientific research offered by the defense. And dozens of people who have done their time are still living under a bridge in Miami, quaking in the unwonted cold, because the city's residency requirements for sex offenders afford no other place for them. Perhaps the Supreme Court will feel the tug of constitutional duty and rule this year in US v. Comstock that the federal government may not authorize indefinite civil commitment of "sexually dangerous" persons beyond their prison term, as provided in the odious Adam Walsh Child Protection Act.
But the definition of sexual danger has become endlessly elastic. Like the terrorist, the sex offender is a new category of human being. Fear will probably stick around a while.
Into this gloom, death comes as a rescuing angel, bearing memories of an erotic world that now seems a different dimension entirely. Teddy Pendergrass, a symbol of '70s soul who helped to shape that world, died
January 13. He was only 59, not all that much older than kids like me in the 1970s, picking our way toward consciousness with little more than the culture as our guide. The newspaper obituaries all remembered him as a sexual icon, and for the women who attended his Ladies Only concerts, licking chocolate Teddy Bear lollipops and throwing panties onto the stage, he may have been mainly that. To me, he was a groove master and soul stirrer, a sexual educator when that was something I wouldn't have even recognized. "Wake up everybody," he sang with Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes, a song as much about living in your skin as in olitical
time. Music was Teddy's text, and with it he taught us how to come into our nature, to feel not only the fire but also the texture of sensual things--the need in his voice, the lushness of Philadelphia sound, the mix of power and vulnerability that defined the sexual being as lover.
Teddy said his calling to secular music came at a Jackie Wilson concert in Philadelphia when a female fan straddled the singer, then on his back, and ground her hips to the rhythm of his song. The adolescent Teddy was bug-eyed. He harnessed that excitement in a mature voice that was deep and emotionally bare, and that carried up from radios on the street in spring through the windows of the city bus I took home from high school--I miss you... If you don't know me by now... It jousted with the sounds of Motown; with "TSOP" and the other hits from Gamble and Huff out of Philadelphia International; with Barry White and Earth, Wind and Fire, and the more liquidy tones of Al Green in songs produced out of Memphis at Hi Records by Willie Mitchell, the old soul genius who left this world a few days before Teddy.
Who knew then, feeling the groove riding through the black and Polish neighborhoods of Buffalo, that the antisex, antiblack, antigay, anti-loveandpeace backlash that would forge so much that is harsh and ugly today, were all in the works at that moment? Not a young white girl who understood only in the broadest strokes that the beat carrying from soul to funk and R&B to disco, the beat that made one dance, made one sigh, was a precarious beat of freedom.
In 1982 Teddy Pendergrass broke his neck when his Rolls Royce spun out of control and crashed. By then he had recorded five consecutive multiplatinum albums, the first black male singer to do so, and it was an easy thing to make a program of music following the full arc of love from first seduction ("Come Go With Me") to final heartbreak ("Another Love T.K.O.") just from his songs. His passenger, a transsexual M-F who'd worked as a prostitute, was treated for cuts and bruises. Teddy, 31, was paralyzed from the chest down. Every obituary I read said that the accident transformed him from sex symbol to figure of sympathy or, at best, inspiration. I thought something similar at the time. But I was stupid and the obit writers still are, because anyone who followed the music and the man should have learned a few more sexual lessons from him.
He had fashioned himself from the start as an object of erotic interest because he sang as if he understood a few things about love, about making love and giving love, sometimes begging for it; about the sexiness of a brain and human transactions more intricate than the missionary position. Paralysis forced him to discover a new voice--less powerful, more supple, still seductive. It forced him to discover new ways to make love, because he believed in singing from experience. He reinsinuated himself into women's sexual fantasies because he didn't stop embodying his sexuality. At his last concerts, about eight years ago, they still threw panties onto the stage. Watching him sing "Close the Door" from a wheelchair after Al Green stomps and shouts a version of "Let's Stay Together" on a 1993 video from the Apollo Theater, I know whose lap I would crawl up into. And maybe somewhere right now some kid is screwing a blue or red light bulb into a lamp socket, waiting for a lover, pulling Teddy from the old-school pile and, nervously, hoping to get lucky.
About JoAnn Wypijewski
JoAnn Wypijewski is a writer in New York. Contact her at:
jwyp@earthlink.net
Soldier in Afghan Prosecuted for Child Porn for Family Pix,
Associated Press
Soldier's family says pictures aren't porn
DAVID MERCER, Associated Press Writer
Daily Local News
Chester County, Pennsylvania
January 15, 2010
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. (AP) - The family of an Illinois National Guard soldier said Friday that he's been charged with possession of child pornography in Afghanistan over innocent snapshots of a 4-year-old relative in a
swimsuit.
The U.S. Army has charged Spec. Billy Miller of Galesburg, Ill., with possession of child pornography and a related charge of failure to obey an order that troops in Afghanistan not possess pornography.
Army spokesman Lt. Mary J. Pekas declined to discuss details of the case or evidence against Miller. She said the charge is punishable by up to 10 years in prison.
Miller's unit returned to Illinois in August, according to the National Guard, but the Army said he remains in Afghanistan, awaiting the end of his case and possible court martial.
"Spec. Miller is currently on active duty and assigned to Headquarters and Headquarters Co., 82nd Airborne Division, pending the conclusion of the investigation and any potential legal proceedings," the Army's media
center in Bagram, Afghanistan, said in a brief, unsigned e-mail statement.
Miller's father, Rodney, said the Army won't discuss the case with the family. But he said his son has told him the charges stem from a handful of photos of the girl that the soldier's mother e-mailed to ease his
homesickness.
"I can't believe that the Army's doing this to our son; it's unbelievable," Rodney Miller said from his home in Galesburg, about 55 miles south of Davenport, Iowa. "The Army and the government's telling us more or less that it's none of our business."
The pictures show the girl in a swimsuit playing in a pool and sitting on Billy Miler's pickup truck, according to the family. A small portion of one of the girl's buttocks is visible in one, Rodney Miller said.
Billy Miller, a mechanic in civilian life, was part of the Illinois Army National Guard's 33rd Infantry Brigade. About 3,000 members of the brigade went to Afghanistan in late 2008 and returned home last year.
The Millers say their son became close to the little girl after she was diagnosed with a serious illness while her own father was away for military training. The pictures were taken by Terri Miller and the girl's mother at the girl's birthday party last summer, Rodney Miller said.
The Army said any legal proceedings will happen in Afghanistan, but Rodney Miller hopes for some way to have his son tried in the United States if it comes to that. Anyone from his National Guard unit who can testify on his behalf isn't in Afghanistan, Miller said.
"If they court martial him in Afghanistan, he will be absolutely on his own," he said.
Article about Toronto Suicide Because of Media – by James Dubro
Dewees funeral draws hundreds What we really know about what happened
James Dubro
Xtra, Toronto, Ontario (Pink Triangle Press)
October 2009
The Runnymede United Church near High Park in Toronto was packed for a funeral on Oct 9. More than 1,000 people jammed the aisles, entryways and basement.
Dead was David Dewees, 32, a Grade 10 teacher at Jarvis Collegiate Institute and counsellor at [ evangelical Christian] Ontario Pioneer Camp who killed himself on Oct 3 after being charged by police with two counts each of invitation to sexual touching and luring. Police allege Dewees had "inappropriate contact" over the internet with two young guys, 15 and 16, he knew from camp.
On Aug 17 the teens told the directo*r of Ontario Pioneer Camp [where Dewees had been active both a camper in his youth and a counselor there every summer since] that Dewees had previously sent them sexually charged messages over the net. Dewees was escorted from the camp, the director called police and Children's Aid. Dewees retreated to his home until his arrest on the morning of Oct 1.
Then his mug shot and the charges against him blared from mainstream media. The Toronto Star incorrectly reported that he had been charged with sexual assault against two 13-year-old's. Dewees committed suicide on Oct 3, the same day the Star ran a tiny correction. But even after Dewees' suicide The Star went further. Rosie DiManno, in a malicious column, assumed his guilt then painted Dewees' as a paodophile, hardwired to molest young boys.
"Tyler," who knew Dewees from camp, was interviewed on CFRB radio. He said in the piece that Dewees sent him a number of emails about his sexual exploits with women and wanted Tyler to respond with stories of his own. Tyler later compared notes with other campers and found five young guys who had similar internet experiences with Dewees. Tyler said Dewees' emails "creeped him out" but that he didn't contact police until after the story broke.
So what is it about Dewees' life and tragic death that drew all these people - more than 80 members of the Mendelssohn Choir, hundreds of students from Jarvis Collegiate, dozens of former campers and friends - to pay heartfelt tribute to this young man who died under a cloud of scandal and suspicion?
"When I saw the image of David on the TV that night along with the sensational account of the charges I said to myself, 'His life is over,'" says James Harbeck, a friend and longtime Mendelssohn Choir colleague of Dewees'.
"How is asking teenage boys to tell you about their sexual experiences or fantasies tantamount to child abuse?" asks Harbeck. "Oh, what he's accused of is inadvisable and inappropriate behaviour, certainly, but when I was 14 and 15 I was in high school and had an unrelentingly dirty mind and the permanent hard-on nearly all adolescent boys have. The behaviour described isn't destroying their innocence; it's just creeping them out."
Twenty-two-year-old NathanThompson, a former camper who Dewees' mentored, told Xtra he met Dewees at camp when he was 15, that Dewees had become a friend and helped him through many problems over the course of seven years.
From the pulpit officiating reverend Linda Levin grappled to reconcile her Christian faith with the horror of Dewees' tragic end. Dewees, she said, was publicly humiliated, cast out, suffered and had a darkness descend on him, not unlike what happened to Jesus Christ. "Dewees never had a chance to defend himself," she said, adding that he was mercilessly humiliated in the newspapers and on TV.
"If one good thing could come out this, it might be a change in the procedures in the justice system," she said, suggesting that in some sensitive cases the names and photos of accused ought not be made public
before a trial or a finding of guilt.
Chris Tindal ran twice as a federal Green Party candidate. He got to know Dewees [as an avid Green supporter and attended] the funeral. They canvassed the corner of Church and Wellesley together during the 2008
by-election.
"The way it played it out is very upsetting and tragic no matter what way you look at it,"Tindal told Xtra. "I think the public needs to know what the police knew. They behaved in a way that suggested they believed David to be a dangerous predator and I don't think we've seen the evidence to support that."
Elizabeth Addo Noel, principal at Jarvis Collegiate, eulogized Dewees by calling him an exceptionally gifted teacher who went well beyond the call of duty.
In the end Dewees was both the victim of a sensational media frenzy and, perhaps, of a few ill-advised emails. But one cannot say if he was secretly gay. In his faith, which meant so much to him, gay sex was simply not an option. And if he did indulge, he would have have been burdened with guilt.
"We all have our demons and we all have our occasional lapses of judgment," says Harbeck. "I don't know whether David made the lapse of judgment he is accused of, but in one day his whole life was taken away and then came his greatest lapse of judgment: killing himself."
Contact the