The following story appearing in yesterday’s Tampa Bay Times is exactly the type of story that enrages community members. A multi-time repeat sex offender is released after spending 15 years in prison, only to repeat his offending pattern upon release.

Well guess what? It’s the type of story that enrages most sex offenders too!!! Why? Because most sex offenders don’t re-offend. They move on and try to build a productive life and do the right thing. Then this clearly sick individual comes along and makes things worse for all “sex offenders”.

Registrants and non-registrants want this guy punished to the full extent of the law. We all agree on that. Registrants probably more so than non-registrants because we not only want to punish him for what he did, but we want to punish him for how it’s about to make our lives more difficult.

For every one of these jerks are hundreds who are doing the right thing. We work hard to be good, law abiding citizens and support our families. But despite all we do to take a step forward, inevitably the one will come along and knock us back 10 steps.

So why are we posting a story to promote “the one” we’d rather not make an example of?

We think it’s important to realize that no matter what laws are passed or measures are taken, sexual offenses will continue to happen. We also need to realize that not all “sex offenders” are the same. When someone uses the term “sex offender” everyone automatically assumes the person is a pedophilic child molester. In fact, the term “sex offender” is commonly used synonymously with ‘child molester’, ‘predator’ or ‘pedophile’. But not all sex offenders are sexual predators, some do not even have a direct victim. Not all sex offenders are child molesters. In fact, a quarter of those registered in the United States are children themselves. Many didn’t molest anyone, let alone a child!

What happens when the rare but heinous case like this one happens, is the perception of the recidivist predator is perpetuated. Everyone wonders, ‘what went wrong to let ‘this one’ fall through the cracks?’. Then follows the knee-jerk passage of some law intended to close the loophole that purportedly allowed this to happen which will be ineffective. While “the one” won’t be effected by the law because he’ll be in prison regardless, the ones who will be effected are the hundreds who are doing the right thing. The result is it will become more difficult for the hundreds to continue doing the right thing. All because society thinks all “sex offenders” are the same and chooses to treat them the same.

What the article also exposes is how the current registry fails to help citizens find the ones they need to watch out for. Since everyone knows “sex offender” encompasses a broad spectrum of offenses, from Romeo & Juliet consensual cases to violent rapes, we’re at a point where it’s difficult to find the needles in the haystacks. For the ones with the more heinous offenses, it’s very easy to blend in with the crowd and dismiss the registration as something less than it is. Because the registry contains mostly non-violent, one-time offenders, it’s very easy to believe that someone is on the list for something benign.

We need to stop lumping all sex offenders together and painting them with the same broad brush. Unless we limit the list to those who are actually dangerous, people no longer take the list seriously.

For those interested; here is the article.