UK: Target of vigilantism moves for the 6th time after being targeted again.
A man from Huddersfield, UK moved from his home days after it was vandalized with graffiti that named him as a “paedo”. According to the news report, the 39-year-old had lived in Huddersfield since he left Dewsbury in West Yorkshire after being beaten up by a dad, and it is believed that this is the sixth time he has had to move since being released from prison in 2008.
He is registered for the 2008 offense of possessing 49 indecent images of children and sent to prison for 20 weeks. That would have made him 20 or 21 at the time of the offense. A neighbor said she became aware the man was living at the address after a post by a voluntary online group which monitors sex offenders.
The Courts determined that the appropriate punishment for what he did was 20 days in jail. Apparently every neighborhood he moves to since feels otherwise and that he need to continue to be harassed and shamed more than 17 years later. And they say the registry is not punishment!
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“law enforcement undertaken without legal authority by a self-appointed group of people” – definition of vigilantism.
These people are thugs harassing people and if the harassment involves defacing property, physical harm, etc. it is criminal behavior.
Maybe because I am older, but when I would hear the word vigilante I always thought of someone probably doing good because the police can’t or won’t. In our world it is people harassing people who have gone thru the injustice system and those harassing are the ones with criminal intent. So why do we keep using this word? Is it just me? I call them what they actually are…thugs, criminal, lawless, agitator, aggressor, corrupt, abusive…….
Taking the law into one’s own hands whether for alleged good or bad is what you are thinking because of what the movies have portrayed it as.
If you’re going to call them what they actually are, call them cowards. Vandalism is already among the most chicken-sh*t offenses. And there likely isn’t a single one of these “vigilantes” that would dare approach their target without their cohorts at their shoulders, even though by their own admission they never saw the registrant doing anything more sinister than playing xBox.
I have had a couple of instances where there was a problem with someone harassing me because of the registry. The first one got handled in a very disappointing way to the aggressor. He found out that his target not only knew how to defend himself but was actually good at it. He was also charged with battery on the disabled and with criminal trespass. However he was not charged with the felony of using the registry to harass. To this day I am still curious if that little clause in the registration act has ever been enforced. The second person found out that this registrant was a better neighbor than most of them in the neighborhood and was willing to allow anyone in the neighborhood access to water when Irma knocked out our power for over a week.
I built a reputation in this neighborhood for being the one person that would take care of the neighbors when storms hit. I always post a sign that the well will be available with the times I run my generators and that there will be power available at those time to charge whatever they need to charge.
I am the first one out there cutting trees to clear the road and keeping the profiteers out of the neighborhood after a storm. These two incidents are 10 years apart and I have found that proving my value in the neighborhood has made them forget about the unconstitutional registry.
Same with me. My crime was 1991, yet 34 years later, I cannot catch a break from the neighbors, the public, the courts or the registry. Have done my time, never had an incident before or after my arrest and have been a model citizen since. And yet, people who I do not know nor have a connection with give me grief. I told one lady that I was here first and if she didn’t want to live near me, check the registry before you buy a home.
I laughed when she called the police and the cop told her the same thing I said, if she didn’t want to live near me, “She should have checked first, that is what the registry is for” (Even though non of us agree there should be a registry in the first place and there might just be peace in the neighborhoods)
“Check the registry, that’s what it’s for.”
If it were up to me, every time I read a story where some group or politician proposes building a pocket park or something specifically to try to force a registrant to move, that person/group would be criminally charged with using the registry to harass (which all registries specifically forbid but seldom if ever enforced) AND child endangerment for knowingly attempting to induce precious children to the presence of “sex offenders”. Especially in places where child endangerment is a registerable offense. They’d have to admit to one to deny the other. Either way, it’s a pretty good payback for their deliberate insanity.
I think I’d have a heart attack if there were a DA willing to do that.
So no one ever saw him doing anything more sinister than playing Xbox (and that when they were looking in *his* windows.
I’m sure the neighborhood is so much safer now that this guy can no longer play Xbox in his living room instead of watching people from his window (which they never saw either). And the staff at that nursery can go back to handing over the keys to any adult that comes in and take the rest of the day off.
That was my take away exactly. If the person spying didn’t know this person was a sex offender (or even if they did) why are they peeping in their windows? Perhaps they should be on the registry too.
I wonder if he could sue the online group for harassment? I realize that this is Great Britain and not the US, but I would be considering legal action.
BWJ
Those poor souls in the U.K and other countries would not have those issues if the U.S had not invented the offender registries. Lots of countries make rules after the United States make certain laws, such as the registry and then other countries get on board and say “Hey what a great idea, we should do that”.
Ban the sex offender registry!!