Both political parties have come together in support of a committee to investigate how the Island should deal with sex offenders.
The motion, moved during Friday’s session of Parliament by the PLP’s Zane DeSilva and amended by OBA backbencher Mark Pettingill, would create a joint select committee to examine existing legislation surrounding the sex offenders registry, and other matters related to convicted sex offenders. Full Article
Lauren Book-Lim’s involvement in trying to create a registry in Barbados makes me wonder if she’s also involved in Bermuda’s Zane DeSilva and backbencher Mark Pettingill acting like these are their original ideas and if these guys are getting some quid pro quo payoff to do it. Remember it was Book-Lim’s father who created the Julia Tuttle Causeway insanity in Florida and a lot of other insanity in Florida with regard to registrants. Or maybe some others with a personal vendetta against registrants, with money for bribes, are involvfed to get this done. But, who knows.
Even if that is the case, Pettingill’s logic makes some leaps. First of all, he says he got a call from a man whose daughter was molested and Pettingill talked him out of attacking this man. Understandably, a father would be upset if this happened to his daughter. But then, Pettingill, appears to shift the people he is talking about from the father of a victim going after the perpetrator of his daughter to all people who feel this way, meaning all people who want to kill sex offenders, regardless of if the sex offenders had a real victim, or if they know the sex offender or the victim personally. Pettingill thinks these people are loving, sensitive, rational people.
To me, it sounds like he is validating vigilantism against registrants with victimless crimes and all registrants, and using his personal experience with the father of a victim of molestation to justify violence against non-molesting registrants. To make this point more clear, imagine if Pettingill got a call from a father whose daughter was killed in a DUI. Again, understandably, the father would be furious and maybe want to attack the DUI perp. But would Pettingill consider vigilantes who want to attack DUI perpetrators they did not know but could locate if there was a registry of these people
caring, loving, sensitive and rational? Even if they were arrested for DUI and did not hurt anyone?
Pettingill gets it correct that molestations are done by friends, family, aquaintenances. But, he doesn’t seem to differentiate between non-registrant friends, family and aquaintenances , and registrants who have a extremely low re-offense rate.
Pettingill is taking his eye off the ball. 19 out of 20 sex crimes are done by non-registrants, mostly friends, family, aquaintenances. Not registrant friends, family, aquaintences. Pettingill uses U.S statistics on how many people were molested as children. Is he that out of it to also not take note of the failures of these systems in the U.S, such as the counter-productiveness of it?