Do you believe in the boogeyman?
This is the pivotal question of the Halloween movie franchise. The tension around naming the movies’ antagonist foregrounds the problem of seeing him: “it” or “him,” “thing” or “human,” “The Shape” or “Michael Myers”? Even if you have never seen the original 1978 movie, you know the plot. On Halloween 1963, six-year-old Michael Myers kills his older sister after she has sex with her boyfriend. Cut to 1978, and Myers, after being locked in an asylum for fifteen years, escapes back into the neighborhood to repeat his crime on teenagers who, like his sister, use the freedom of babysitting to have sex with their boyfriends. Myers’s brutality answers the sexuality of these young women. The story is a morality tale embedded within a coming-of-age story: enjoying themselves as sexual beings without heeding the dangers costs the girls their lives. Only the heroine, Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis), bookish and virginal, is able to defy Myers, fending him off with a knitting needle and a coat hanger, domestic objects that reinforce her identity as both a good babysitter and a virtuous girl.
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The national “stranger danger” campaign—and the Halloween franchise, with its monster who escaped from an asylum—came, not incidentally, on the heels of a deinstitutionalization movement that a decade prior had freed juvenile offenders and mentally ill patients, placing them in community-based care facilities. As public policy, deinstitutionalization began with John F. Kennedy’s Community Mental Health Centers Act of 1963, which aimed at combating abuse, neglect, and misdiagnoses in asylums, and was sustained by the invention of psychotropic drugs. The massive influx of former asylum patients into established communities, however, without proper infrastructure or public education, stirred up distress and stigmatization. As a commentary on the deinstitutionalization movement, Halloween proposes that mental illness is akin to criminality, and specifically sexual predation.
These fears remain with us to this day.
It’s nice to see some fair and balanced reporting on Registrants instead of furthering the distortion of truth.
We need more articles like these!
Then we have these news stories…
https://www.nbcsandiego.com/news/local/Operation-Boo-Keeps-Sex-Offenders-In-The-Dark-on-Halloween-564209121.html
No news on trick-or-treaters getting assaulted by registered citizens, but I did read an article about a 7-year old who was shot while trick-or-treating and is in critical condition. The assailant, a 15-year old. https://www.4029tv.com/article/7-year-old-critically-injured-after-being-shot-while-trick-or-treating-in-chicago/29660016#
But hey, I’m sure that Butts County sheriff would still sleep well at night had this occurred in his jurisdiction.
“More barbaric than those we fear.” ain’t that the truth.
So, I know there is always a lot of build up to Halloween. Several articles on here and I think something like a 6 hour phone call. Did anything happen? I assume they did Operation Boo like every year for people on parole, but did any people not under the watch of parole/probation have any issues? I really don’t even think about police at this point, but I’m sure there are some communities that have overactive law enforcement who push constitutional lines.
@Will Allen
Thank you for sharing a bit of your past insights of your life before you got swept into the Registry.
I was the same way before I got swept up. Before then I was not focused nor passionate about these issues. I was busy following my career, paying my taxes, voting, car payments, and so on.
My passion and priorities were elsewhere then.
The Registry is like cancer. No one cares about it until they get it. Celebrities all the sudden become advocates for cancer research AFTER they get sick. People start educating themselves about cancer AFTER the fact.
So unless everyone gets swept into the Registry (or cancer) most people are happy in their ignorance and pursue their little lives. Just like most if not all Registrants before we got swept up.
Unless your Janice Belluci. She’s one of those rare advocates that didn’t need to be personally affected by the system in order to care.
She is awesome.
So, while cops in California and across the country were busy wasting valuable resources on Halloween to keep close tabs on RCs, this happened:
https://abc7news.com/5th-victim-dies-after-shooting-at-halloween-party-at-airbnb-in-orinda/5663845/
Surely, such tragedies will shift the focus toward real threats like drunk driving and gun violence next year, rght?
Welp, if the cops spent less time with BS like Operation Boo-like crap and more time fighting gang violence, this might not have spilled over into your neck of the woods.
Likewise, if Airbnb spent less time screening out RCs and more time screening gang banging scum bags, well you get the idea…
Here’s a REAL danger on Halloween night:
https://ktla.com/2019/11/02/3-year-old-boy-dies-after-suspected-dui-crash-in-long-beach-that-also-killed-his-father/
☹️
I’m appalled at how Offenders have been portrayed as perpetrators or a threat during Halloween? PATCH (family oriented website) each year posts a Sex Offender Map so children and parents can avoid these locations? I emailed 2 of the articles in 2 different locations? They have (per their response) no idea if a child/or adult has been victimized during Halloween and they have no statistics to support we pose a threat?
Her response:
Hi,
Thank you for your inquiry. I do not have the statistics. Given the heavy police presence on Halloween, I imagine the numbers are low … but that’s just a guess.
So, the police must know? Duh
Here is another response (she never addresses that her article portrays sex offenders as dangerous). I guess? I guess?
Please read: As mentioned, I do not have the stats. That said, high police presence, safety awareness, “trunk-or-treat,” etc., in my opinion, have made it less likely that a child will be harmed on Halloween. Not sure about your neighborhood, but in my I did not see one trick-or-treater. Not saying that’s a good thing, mind you, but statistically speaking if kids aren’t out there they are less likely to get physically harmed.
It’s definitely an interesting topic. Feel free to call me if you have some thoughts. You can also submit a letter to the editor if you would like.