Editor’s note: This is the third story in a three-part series regarding sex offenders and the ongoing need to protect children.
PRINCETON — Illinois State Rep. Andy Skoog (D-76th) commented on the current laws surrounding registered sex offenders and the residency restriction limits they must follow as a way to cement community safety.
Current Illinois legislation states a registered sex offender must remain at least 500 feet from a school, nursery, playground or essentially any place where adolescent activity might take place. Skoog agrees with the notion increasing the restriction limits would result in greater public safety and mental reassurance for concerned citizens. Full Article
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Editor’s note: This is the second story in a three-part series regarding sex offenders and the ongoing need to protect children.
SPRING VALLEY — Children are brilliant in their youthfulness. Their energetic approach and creativity to an adolescent perspective brings a smile to the face of most every person with a spirit of warmth. Unfortunately, the naivety in that innocent approach does not allow a child to understand the evil that lingers in this world — or fight it when they are confronted face to face. That’s where adults must step in … Full Article
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Editor’s note: This is the first story in a three-part series regarding sex offenders and the ongoing need to protect children.
In 2014, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children reported almost 467,000 cases of missing children. That same year, reports indicated there were at least 49,000 non-compliant sex offenders in the United States.
For Spring Valley resident Lisa Chounard-Lewis, those numbers are catastrophic, and anything less than a global undertaking to reduce them is a gross injustice to our children. Full Article
Totally brilliant!!! Bring your kids up in fear and to fear all strangers; especially when you haven’t done your homework to see if you are being lied to about people forced to register. I suppose registrants are hiding under trampolines now!!!
“Their punishment was to Google the amount of registered sex offenders in close proximity, and what Chounard-Lewis encountered made the hair on the back of her neck stand up.”
This is the quintessential example of stupid, ignorant and a bunch of other things.!
” “We have almost desensitized ourselves to it because any word related to sex — offender, deviant, predator — makes people all hush hush, but it’s something that needs to be discussed,” she said, adding if money is more important than our children, we are headed in the wrong direction.”
Really? I think legislators need to be more concerned with keeping their children safe from their own laws and off of the registry.
“Legislation seems to bounce back and forth without ever being enacted, but Chounard-Lewis posed a simple question. How much would a legislator’s tune change if their child was the one abducted?”
Oh yea? Well why don’t you take a parenting class and learn how to care for your kids instead of expecting the state to do it for you; you idiot!
““There is no substitute for the safety of our children,” she said.”
Ugh, more BS. To say there are “almost 467,000 cases of missing children” then immediately state “there were at least 49,000 non-compliant sex offenders in the United States” is such a conflation of facts and is clearly used to make the reader infer that the sex offenders are the cause. Disgusting and sloppy “journalism.” Eric Engel should be ashamed.
The woman in the article tacitly admits that the registry (including the bus stop and school restrictions) wouldn’t have stopped any person who wanted to harm her children. Her children snuck out of the house. She didn’t even know where they were. Not to mention that her children are more likely to be abused by someone in her own personal circle than the registrant around the corner.
Boogeymen have been living in her neighborhood, I’m guessing, longer than she has.
I wonder if her “research” unearthed how many children have been snatched up from bus stops? Or snatched from the playground?
She’s carrying on as if registered citizens suddenly just moved in, and now everyone is in danger. Truth be told, they’ve always been there and, no shock to any of us, I’m guessing that precisely zero children have fallen victim. I’d even go far as to say that a child has probably never even been approached by a registered citizen, let alone been in any danger.
This women needs to be educated!
This article is total B.S. and Hypocrisy right from the start – and I mean the very start: its title!
Because if she really means Protecting EVERY Child, then she would also mean the children of registered citizens and the children who themselves are registered citizens. And, to protect EVERY child, we should abolish the registry instead of making our kids paranoid about it.
This woman is an example of a term I recently heard Matt Drudge use: “The American Sickness”
People like her need to hear an earful from us whenever they open their pie hole and start beating their chest all in the name of the chilllllldren….it’s alllllll forrrrrr the chillllldren. Makes me sick!
Lisa needs some drama in her life. Lisa needs to go to Yemen and rescue children about to be torn apart by real “predator” drones. Lisa would be running back to good ole safe Spring Valley and all its storybook sexmonsters in no time.
Emailed facts of studies showing the next two stories in the series should reflect the facts and not hysteria. I would suggest the we educate this journalist. One at a time and eventually we educate hundreds. Email her and let’s start educating those that need to be.
Good luck figuring out how every child will be protected. One bit of advice; to effectively achieve this goal requires far more than is being done and focus on systemic causes rather than symptoms.
“there were seven registered sex offenders in Spring Valley, all within a few miles of city bus stops where children often stand alone waiting for the school bus”
Seriously? She’s worried that a city has seven registered citizens within a few miles? This is the epitome of paranoid!!!
A three part series on THIS? Let me save the author time and stress.
1. Laws do not protect anyone from anything. People who really want something will do whatever they can regardless of legality to get what they want.
2. Very few individuals would dare propose something effective enough to protect every child. First because that’s a massive and extremely lengthy effort on a global scale. Two going as far as needed would scare most parents and enrage a whole lot of people who are not parents. Three “protecting every child” encompasses so much more than one might believe and the only way it works is with every child in the world getting the same level of protection.
3. The only problem with sex offenders is that we label people as sex offenders. These people are not some group whose actions or lack thereof are intrinsically linked other than through made up associations 99% of the time. Oh and children can be labeled sex offenders too. Probably should do something like study the damage caused by classifying people (including children) in such a negative way.
4. Less offenders equals less offenses and less victims. How about caring enough to insure far fewer people ever get labeled as a sex offender?
This woman, Lisa, is a dream for a non-convicted sex offender. Her kids openly disobey her and take extreme risks. They would keep secrets. That lady three doors down who lets Lisa’s kids come over, smoke weed and drink and then after all the kids leave except for Lisa’s, they watch special movies and do things that Lisa’s kids enjoy mostly because it’s another secret they get to keep from their overbearing and paranoid mother.
I heard something in group once. She said; “I was a very good mother, no one but me ever molested or harmed my kid.”
What she meant was that she knew how to protect her kid from everyone but her.. it was said in a broader context, but the point remains.
Absent a sex offender registry, Lisa would be one of those women in the area who has her nose in everyone’s windows but her own, which is good because that’s where kids get out.
I don’t know how much good it will do for us trying to educate this rather small and rural county, population roughly 35,000. In the early 1800’s, according to Wikipedia, the early settlers of Bureau County “brought with them many of their Yankee New England values, such as a passion for education, establishing many schools as well as staunch support for abolitionism.” Indeed they were once a “line” on the underground railroad.
Doesn’t seem like today they have a passion for educating or civil rights. Politically and socially, they have more in common with the rural South. In the end, it may be seen as an issue of big city evils (in the form of sexually deviant individuals) invading their idyllic hinterland and react accordingly.
Please people, we’re talking about keeping children safe so there’s no need to deal with facts. After all, why let sound scientific evidence stand in the way of irrational fear?
We need even more draconian punishments for registrants NOW before cooler heads prevail!
(Dripping with sarcasm)