We Will

by Sandi Hrozek

"Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self."  -Cyril Connolly

In thinking about it, I believe that Cyril got it only half right.  If you write for yourself, you are writing from your heart, you are writing with truth and passion, and when you do that, you will have a public.  This is the goal of the responders, also known as Minute Men, of the RSOL Correspondence Committee, to have a public, a listener, to our voice.

The process begins with an article, a new item, an editorial, or a response to one of these, something that displays lack of knowledge or presents misinformation about some aspect of being a sex offender. Sometimes these articles come to us by way of other groups or individuals. Sometimes we come across them ourselves. Sometimes they are posted on the RSOL Forum or on our own website. When our process is more refined and organized, by far the greatest majority of them will come to us by way of another sub-group of our committee called the monitors. They will cull, from everything that is out there, the most pressing articles, the ones where a response is most clearly needed, and post them to the website where we, the responders, will pick them up and write and post responses. Our objective is to correct misinformation, to educate, to enlighten, and to do so with facts, statistics, and research, much of which can also be found on our website.

Those responsible for providing this information to us are the members of another sub-group, our committee’s research group, dedicated and hard-working individuals. Their objective is to provide easily accessible information to us, the writers, information that will aid us in making our points and convincing our public. Their model or format is still evolving, and the earlier forms hold great promise for a very useful tool. At this point we are using other information they have provided and posted on our site. This includes research, statistics, facts, and quotes dealing with, ideally, every topic for which a response might be called. The registry and all of its many and varied ramifications, juvenile offenders, internet offenses, "sting" operations, false accusations, recidivism, treatment and therapy, changing laws, pending legislature, residency issues, the Adam Walsh Act, current cases in the news, and the financial aspect of the "sex offender industry" are all topics about which an individual responder may go to the website and find factual information with which to combat the huge amount of ignorance, misinformation, myths, and outright lies connected to sex offenders.

Although we are united in a common goal, we are individuals with different experiences and differing knowledge pools, and we each approach the writing task in or own way. Several of us gather facts and read the research dealing with the topic of each item we are responding to before we actually begin to write. Others, myself included, just start writing, letting our feelings and the points we wish to make drive what we write, stopping to go to a facts sheet or a study when we need something we have said supported with a specific fact, a statistic, or a quote. And then there are the few who have it all in their heads and their hearts. They have lived with the realities of the sex offender world for so long, they have read all the research, the opinions, the studies, and they don't need to stop and look for a statistic or the name or date of a specific study; it is part of who they are.

In spite of our approach to writing being very individual, our feeling about what we do is collective. We are all convinced that what we do is extremely important. Sometimes doubts sneak in; we are so few voices in the babble of the many; our voices can so easily be lost. But as one of our members recently reminded me, this makes it even more important that we stay out there. Our few words can be those that turn the tide, and then our writing becomes part of the majority opinion that is expressing truth instead of fiction, facts instead of myths, reason rather than hysteria.

Another way in which the individuals in our group of responders are linked to each other is by email and by the website. Within seconds I can see to it that some or all of our small group has the same information and that some are ready with an informed, well thought out and supported response. Since we are small, we function best right now with the same information being sent to everyone, knowing that only one or two will receive it immediately and be able to respond in a timely manner. We need more volunteers. With a larger pool of responders, days, shifts, and specific periods of time can be assigned to individuals. Those "on duty" will go directly to the website, pick one or more items demanding immediate action, and write and post a response.

What does it take to be a Minute Man? Obviously we are all individuals who believe firmly that the current laws and procedures for dealing with sex offenders are not working and need serious, serious reform. They are counter-productive, unnecessarily burdensome to law enforcement, useless almost all of the time in preventing what they claim to prevent, destructive to children and families, often violate constitutional rights, and their "one size fits all" philosophy more often than not targets juveniles who have exercised poor judgment, those who were involved in victimless situations, those whose situations held no hint of violence or force, and those who pose no greater risk to the community than any other law abiding citizen. Some of us are the sex offenders just described. Some of us are their mothers and fathers and wives and husbands and brothers and sisters. All of us have seen first hand the havoc that these arbitrary, destructive requirements and conditions can wreak upon individuals and families. None of us are "soft" on violent, predatory crimes or the individuals who commit them. All of us want rapists and moelstors who harm children caught and stopped and punished and controlled so that their risk of raping, torturing, molesting, and killing in the future is as minimized as possible.

All of us have a desire to be actively involved in bringing about needed change, and I suppose it is true to say that all of us have some skill in writing, but a passion to be a part of something important, something that is desperately needed, outweighs a lack of ability with words. Someone else can edit what you write if that is your desire; no one else can bring your individual perspective to our organization and to our audience. If you would like to be a part of our group, please get in contact with our editor in chief at the first email address at the end of this article. No matter how little time you have, that time can be put to good use, and your efforts will be greatly appreciated.

We have been doing this in a somewhat informal manner for over two months now, and I have seen some amazing things. We do indeed have the audience that we want, small now but growing. You need only look at some of the pieces written by one of us or by others who are willing to speak up and then see the responses thanking the writer for understanding, for speaking the truth, for giving them hope. We do have a public. There are thousands upon thousands of people who need to hear what we are saying, some because it gives them hope, others because it gives them the truth in place of the lies they have learned to believe. Many are unwilling to hear it, but they will hear it. There are many, many voices saying the opposite, but we will not be drowned out. We will not be stopped. We are only a few, but so were the original Minute Men in the face of their opposition. We will keep the passion; we will speak the truth; we will write and write and write, and as we grow in number, we will write more and more. We will make a difference. We will.

Robin, vandrwall@gmail.com

Related sites:

http://www.justicefellowship.org/what-is-restorative-justice/justice-fellowship-resources/11695-how-should-we-deal-with-sex-offenders

SOL Research, http://www.solresearch.org/~SOLR/

California Sex Offender Management Board, http://www.csom.org/pubs/mythsfacts.pdf