“The anonymity of the Internet has allowed predators to easily hide or misrepresent themselves.” – ABC News, August 2017
“Concerns about sexual predators have led communities in 30 U.S. states to adopt laws limiting where registered sex offenders can live.” – Reuters, November 2015
“Convicted Sexual Predator Allowed to Stay in Hotel During Cancer Treatments” – WFTV 9, May 2017
In May, the AP Stylebook changed its guidelines for how reporters should refer to people with substance abuse problems. “Avoid words like alcoholic, addict, user and abuser unless they are in quotations or names of organizations,” says the 2017 version.
For those with addictions, that change won’t just shift how they’re portrayed but how they’re treated. A piece by Zachary Siegel in Slate last month noted that even veteran clinicians were more likely to recommend punitive measures for people described as “substance abusers” and rehab-oriented treatments for those referred to as “people with substance abuse disorders.” Even when people’s conditions are the result of personal choices, reporters avoid charged labels—that’s why those with diabetes aren’t described as “sugar abusers,” Siegel says.
So it’s time for editors to stop letting reporters use “predator” in describing those who’ve committed sexual offenses.
“Sexual predator” isn’t a clinical term that means anything to criminologists or sex-crime researchers. Instead, it’s a media construction created after horrific cases of rape and murder in Washington State in the early nineties…
Sexual Preditor is nothing more than a media buzz word plain and simple and they will probably not stop using. Clinical professionals must deviate away from that phrase at every opportunity and subtly let it be known that they are doing so especially in interviews every time a interviewer use sexual preditor replace that term with another in their reply. The media knows it envokes emotions in people and that turns into viewers and that turns into revenue the truth be damed
These labels being thrown around such as sex offender and sexual predator while made up and essentially meaningless are still very important to separate as far as the registry fight goes.
The confusion is deliberate and by design to add to the confusion and resulting fear. They have managed to make anyone caught for a so-called sex offense into a baby rapper in the public eyes.
This is exactly what the politicians like Lauren Book and others want – create second class citizens that it is easy to dump on and appear to actually be doing something when the truth is that these registries actually benefit child abusers by taking a parents attention off of the real danger which is someone the child or they already know (sound familiar Lauren) and NOT a stranger as they imply yet the data clearly disproves!
They know this and yet continue to use proven false data to keep this charade going – worse still is that courts have stated that the false/fake data doesn’t matter!
You can’t make this up because no one would believe it and yet that is how Florida operates.