For many people with elderly relatives, the joy of knowing that your family member has enjoyed a long life is often mixed with fear of what the future may bring regarding his or her health. Not to mention the fear of someone possibly harming him when he's too vulnerable to fend for himself. But very rarely do we worry about the elderly physically harming others, particularly at 100 years old. Yet when Theodore Sypnier was paroled in 2009 at the age of 100, his family so feared him that they declined any future contact with him. The reason? He was last convicted of sexually abusing multiple children at the age of 90.
Sypnier was known for using his persona as a friendly grandfather type to win the trust of young parents who then allowed him to baby sit their children, whom he later pled guilty to sodomizing. (For the record, Sypnier is not an anomaly. In 2010 a 90-year-old Australian pedophile generated headlines for abusing numerous children in Thailand.) The existence of men like Theodore Sypnier -- who had been convicted of abusing children multiple times before his conviction at 90 -- has forced our legal system to grapple with one of the most complicated moral, ethical and legal questions ever. Is it ever justifiable to incarcerate someone for a crime they MAY commit one day?
USA Today recently investigated a controversial federal program in which the U.S. Justice Department has sought to keep some of the country's most dangerous sexual predators behind bars after the conclusion of their prison sentences through what is known as civil confinement. But according to USA Today's review of 136 cases, the Justice Department has lost or dropped 61 cases while winning court approval to continue detaining just 15 predators. Part of the reason is because the criteria used to determine which perpetrators should remain detained is so complicated and contradictory it borders on ridiculous. According to the investigation:
To successfully commit a person, government attorneys have to prove three things: First that he molested a child or committed a violent sex crime; second that he has a mental disorder; and third, that his illness means he will have 'serious difficulty' refraining from new sex crimes if freed.The investigation went on to note that among those released were those who had racked up multiple offenses against children -- but because it was determined that they couldn't be proven to definitively meet the other criteria they were set free. According to the current standards, "Past offenses alone cannot show whether someone is mentally ill or likely to commit new crimes." Only when it comes to molesting children this is patently false.
In our interview, Snyder, who founded the very first sex crimes unit in America, explained that sex crimes are more complicated to prosecute and ultimately eradicate, than other crimes. For starters, sex crimes are more likely to end up in plea bargains than other cases for a variety of reasons. For instance, if a child is the victim of a sex crime it can be tough to put a 7-year-old on the witness stand, so such a case is likely to result in a plea bargain. As a result, even if we could hand out life sentences to pedophiles, very few of them would ever serve more than a few years because most cases are being plea-bargained anyway.
Snyder explained that closing the loopholes in current law, such as addressing the statute of limitations guidelines on sex crimes (something I have written about before) is one important step. She also expressed support for measures to collect DNA from all defendants arrested, noting that it will help identify perpetrators of unsolved sex crimes more quickly and also expedite the release of those defendants who have been wrongfully arrested. Of course, measures like this are only effective when DNA evidence is processed in a timely manner and in many major cities it is not. (Read more about the DNA backlog and how you can help, here.) She added that perhaps the most important improvement necessary for the current system to work is to allocate greater resources to make these solutions feasible to implement nationwide.
Snyder added that, "The whole concept of our criminal justice system is you're punished for the crime you commit." But, "Keeping someone civilly confined is highly appropriate if all appropriate safeguards are in place and due process rights are enforced."
So far the government has not always done a stellar job of exercising such safeguards, with some perpetrators waiting more than a year for a hearing to determine whether or not they meet the criteria for civil confinement. But since the criteria is nearly impossible to meet -- and government attorneys now know they are more likely to lose such hearings than win them -- who can blame them for trying to keep perpetrators behind bars as long as possible through any means necessary?
Now there are those of you reading this who may consider this a basic civil liberties and civil rights issue. I agree. I believe adamantly that we all have a basic right to keep our children safe. There are those of you reading this who may argue that protecting all of our civil liberties means protecting the rights of the Thomas Sypniers of the world. I happen not to agree. If keeping him, or someone like him incarcerated indefinitely, saves one child from abuse, I'm okay with that and I'll sleep just fine at night.
I think the bigger question is how those who oppose such measures, and have worked to make such measures nearly unenforceable, will sleep when one of the men the Justice Department was forced to let go, assaults someone else. Because it's not a question of if, but a question of when.
Click here to see how you can close some of the loopholes in our laws that aid sexual predators.
Keli Goff is the author of The GQ Candidate and a Contributing Editor to Loop21.com where this post originally appeared.
Follow Keli Goff on Twitter: www.twitter.com/keligoff
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... you might be God.
This statement by the author is equally troubling:
"I think the bigger question is how those who oppose such measures, and have worked to make such measures nearly unenforceable, will sleep when one of the men the Justice Department was forced to let go, assaults someone else."
This is the essence of the Willie Horton Ad. Apparently, extremists on both right/left, liberal/conservative have found common ground here.
By the same logic we should incarcerate drug offenders for life - as we all know, addicts always re-offend. Sex offenders include people who have never even touched a child or committed rape, but we just KNOW they will commit rape or assault. And, of course, we all just know that
"people of color" will commit future crimes.
Before letting such hysterical arguments take us down the primrose path, consider where it may lead. Incarceration should be only for crimes committed - not for imagined future crimes.
Violent rape/murder of children happens more as a T.V. plot device than it does in any given year in reality. I'm not sure we have a large enough population to understand their problems well enough to make definitive statements.
Still, unless and until a cure that works is available, lock them up.
But remember your odds are better to win the lottery than to have one of these violent men attack your child. The most common child molester is the father of a girl with other friends and relatives coming in close behind.
There's a major religion that promotes good Samaritans stopping and giving aid to the guy laying on the sidewalk. I'm a member.
It is possible to look past the horror and fear and see the people underneath.
It's good to know there are people out here like you and hope you're around when I need assistance. I usually offer help when someone needs assistance, but first access the situation before jumping in. Every action we take results in unforeseen consequences that could put your life in danger. I guess that's why gawd invented and allows one to use cell phones or other communication devices.
Think before leaping is the best-assured path.
Of course not, is this a serious question? If you want to keep him in prison for life for the crimes he did commit, that's fine. But "It is better that a hundred guilty men go free than one innocent man should suffer."
The original quote (Blackstone's ratio) was referencing Abraham arguing with God over Sodom's fate.
This Biblical incident is highly relevant to the current discussion for those who believe in the musings of a certain 2,500 year old nomadic tribe.
One of the advantages of being a Christian is having a book with answers. Spoiler alert: God sides with Blackstone, not Pol Pot.
After prison they move to a highly structured, life long, closed community where freedom and behaviour go hand in hand with a highly supervised big brother control system. Not prison but semi free confined segragated communities, from where they can go back to prison if they commit further crimes.
Then normal, law abiding citizens might not have to live behind locked doors and windows day and night.
*Source: http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/pub/pdf/rsorp94.pdf
I think the solution to the problem is not in adding to the sentence once complete, but changing the sentencing altogether. Predatory sex offenders can be incacerated for a period and in a closed community of sex offenders after that.
I think it is not right to sentence someone to say 10 years and then when they are done say oh by the way, we are tacking on 10 more years. It should be part of the original sentencing.
A quibble, I guess, but still out of a population of 6 billion plus, two cases hardly rise beyond 'anomaly' status.
And where are the stats showing how many convicted molesters don't get arrested again? Not to be seen, as they might conflict with the notion that all pedophiles will repeat their offenses. But they don't all do so, so they?
The short sentences, given everybody's public outrage for years on end, indicate something else is going on-- privileged offenders with money and power use their power and money to buy something they need. Otherwise, you'd think by now the sentences for offenses such as these would be longer-- but they're not.
"...men like Theodore Sypnier..." I wonder what the author thinks about Women who sexually assault children, and one needs only read this site to know that there are plenty. Or don't their victims deserve the same consideration?
Not according to most of the comments on the Bengal cheerleader/teacher who bagged one of her students. Most people wanted to throw them a parade.
Adults have little trouble seducing/pressuring children.
Thus I disagree with you. I see no difference between the female school teacher and the male school teacher. Both abuse their knowledge and power to take advantage of someone.
If less damage is caused by the woman, it's only because the child will not feel as much need to hide his actions. Society, not the teacher, saves the boy some pain.
Furthermore, most male teachers who sleep with their students are ALSO engaged in consensual sex. Remember, females are evolved to seek power in sexual partners, and in school very few have more power than the teachers. If they're attractive to boot? Then it's not really surprising.
So no, there's no difference between a male teacher sleeping with his students than a female teacher sleeping with her students.
Where there IS a difference is when you're talking about grown men (and occassionally women, though you hear about it less often...) molesting children who haven't even entered puberty.
I couldn't find recidivism rates for child molestation, but I did find the following from DOJ, which seems to indicate the opposite of the article's main point when it comes to rapists vs economic criminals (at least as far as arrests go, obviously sex crimes are the most under-reported)
"Released prisoners with the highest rearrest rates were robbers (70.2%), burglars (74.0%), larcenists (74.6%), motor vehicle thieves (78.8%), those in prison for possessing or selling stolen property (77.4%), and those in prison for possessing, using, or selling illegal weapons (70.2%).
Within 3 years, 2.5% of released rapists were arrested for another rape"
Perhaps the article should have said that recidivism is high for most criminals, likely including child molesters, and while someone stealing a car again might be worth the risk or trying to allow them to normalize in society, the risk of someone molesting again is not.
I disagree. I've been robbed six times in my life. The robbers were never caught, even when I knew who they were. The detection rate for robbery is low as well.
Plus, once a man is suspected for molesting children, people watch him in a way that they don't for average men. That way includes things like beatings with baseball bats. (The day the predator list was published in Durham, NC there were six shootings.) The odds of getting caught a second time are much higher.
IMO, the data is good. Yes it undermines the article's point. In fact I suspect the real point of the article is to push women's issues ahead of the general election. "Republicans are rapists" seems to be a theme this year.
Wrong question. The question is whether we are appropriately dealing with those who have already committed a crime of this nature. No pedophile or rapist should be able to repeat the crime - don't let them back into society. Release the drug offenders to free up some room and keep the predators, pedophiles and rapists in for good. If you abuse children in any manner you do not deserve to be in our society.
If you demonstrate that you can't be trusted with the freedoms we all enjoy, then you should be removed from those freedoms permenantly, and allow the rest of us to live in peace.