Shaken By Bigotry :: C JOHNSON WEST

ARTish The Magazine

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I have sat in this seat for hours contemplating how to best write this piece so as not to appear as though I am defending the acts of a convicted individual or worse yet, offending any person whose life has been raked over by these same acts.
Being a childhood victim of an offender myself, I write this with my thoughts bearing empathy to all whose lives have been immediately affected by the deranged acts of the sexually perverse individual.

For the sake of reality, I am quite aware that no matter what my intentions, those who make it to the end of this story will undoubtedly reach their own conclusions and so be it.

The following incident is a true yet sad example of how society has gone leaping off a self-righteous cliff.

A steep cliff whose edges are sharpened by startling evidence of why man should play the part of man and let God (whomever you interpret God to be, which is not man by the way) play God.

Especially when it comes to having the final say on what individual deserves to live and which one does not.

One afternoon, I overheard a conversation between two behavioral health professionals.

They were inserting their own commentary while recanting the actions of a group of their fellow workers whom in return for their wages are required to appropriately respond to incidents occurring within a community.

This same community who continually contributes to the salary of these fine service people trust that in the event of a crisis, these service-giving folks make rational and just decisions.

Ironically, all of the above mentioned individuals paid for an education in the field of Social and Behavioral Health, at their own personal choice, no one forced them.

These college graduates are educated and trained on how to handle “crisis addicted” individuals.

I wonder what their college professors would say if they overheard the conversation I had to hear.

“Fire (fire department) came to “clear” the guy before we could take him. (Clear meaning; assuring the individual is medically stable).

“Ha Ha”

“You know what that means right? Basically, they (fire) drive by, make sure the person is still moving and give their okay to transport.”

“Ha Ha”

“Yeah, and of course fire cleared him”

“Ha Ha”

“They loaded the pervert in the van to take him away, then they here some commotion in the back of the van and say fuck it, it’s probably that drunken child molester jerking off.”

“Holy shit”

“Really?”

“Yep." "So by the time they realize the guy wasn’t jerking off it was too late.”

Ha. Ha.

“Wow!”

“Well, how the fuck were they supposed to know he was having a seizure?”

“Ha. Ha. Holy Shit!”

“Oh well…”

“Yep”

“I guess that’s one less pervert we gotta worry about.”

“Yeah really.”

“One less for probation, too”

“Ha Ha”

“Probation won’t be too happy about this, that’s one less pervert they get paid for.”

“No shit.”

“Well, I gotta get back to work, I got a lunatic to handle.”

“Okay, have a good night!”

“Talk to you later, bye.”

A hand full of social service professionals trained and paid to handle any crisis situation with impartiality and reason.

One dead man.

I know right about now, many if not all of you are spewing the following comments, “Serves the guy right” or “The baby raper deserved to die” or “Karma sucks buddy.”

Go ahead and spew.

Now read on.

Even if all the above comments or opinions are justifiable, the consequence of that mentality is exactly why a man is dead.

I could interject my own comment or truth by stating the blame lay partially in the lap of those who originally, at their own free will placed themselves in the center of the situation when deciding to assist the public and failed.

It all went seriously wrong when they forgot the most important objective of their career, “..to assist the public without prejudice..”

Yep.

It is the expected behavior of the professional to make legal and ethical decisions while assisting another individual whose ethics are recognizably questionable.

Even if the subject fondled you or your neighbor’s five-year old daughter.

On the other side of the coin, the same behavior is demanded of the professional if the convicted individual whose life is in danger is your thirty-five year old child.

“Ha. Ha. Not my kid.”

Don’t laugh, because if you think for one minute the above sentence is impossible, think again.

The mind of the sex-offender knows no boundaries, obviously nor is it selective when it comes to gender, background or financial status.

Sexual perversion is not biased to the offender or the victim.

Yes, I did just suggest that this offender could easily be your son, daughter or your cousin in fact just as easily as any of one of them could be the offender’s victim.
It happens in any culture, any neighborhood, rich or poor.

This also means that the offender having been rightly or wrongly accused (yes, I did just also suggest that this happens in our society as well) could just as easily have been your relative, now deceased because lifesaving assistance was denied to them out of nothing but pure prejudice.

Not so funny, now.

For obvious reasons, society glares upon the sexually perverse individual in gasping bewilderment, perplexed by what would drive any man or woman (yes, women do it too) to act in such a sickening manner.


I myself have many times wondered the same damn thing.
Nonetheless, when one accepts a diploma in any area of Social and Human Services, one is quite aware that not all persons seeking or needing your services will be mentally stable.
Yet, one cannot deny simply out personal opinion, lifesaving assistance, to any individual requiring it.

Both the offender and the professional have fallen short of human expectations.

So has the System.

This So-Called-Justice System that continues to lock up the sexual predator for a few idle years all the while expecting them to emit from cement walls with healthy and wholesome sexual thoughts.

In my opinion, imprisoning the sexually perverse is like using an old dishtowel to plug a leak
under the kitchen sink.
It temporarily pacifies the most safety conscious members of our society, until of course the quick fix fails, then the professionals scratch their heads in amazement and pass the blame back on the offender and the buck back into society.

Let us not forget that not too long ago a convicted offender up for parole after serving a prison term for numerous child molestation charges was quoted as saying, “Don’t let me out of here because I will do it again”.
Though everyone was stunned and gasping and asphyxiated by shock, it is not all that surprising that a short time following his release he was discovered downloading child porn off the Internet at the Public Library. Ironically, he returned every evening to his apartment only blocks from the Police Department.

Pardon me for a moment while I reach into a murky System grab a dishrag and wring it out all over the street.

Knowing the truth and the consequence of the System, the offender is back in prison and in a few short years, will be out on probation.

Lifetime probation.

His lifetime and as well as yours and mine.

Interestingly enough, one of the many specific conditions of probation this type of offender must comply with entails logging every (hopefully) unintentional encounter with a child.

If the individual is on a bus, should a child happen to board, the offender must keep his hands where they can be seen and later, back in the privacy of their home, log any sexual thoughts, if any.

If the individual is in a waiting room and a child enters, the individual must leave the room and again back in the privacy of their home, log any sexual thoughts, if any.

I do certainly wonder if they are totally honest when they are logging all of their sexual thoughts.

I am sure they are, right?

Akin to the familiar sixth grade scenario when one was instructed to write one thousand times, “I will not talk in class” all the while knowing the truth would really read, “I will talk in class again tomorrow and any other time I so decide”.


In all seriousness, if learning a lesson were the only hurdle any offender had to overcome, realistically you could take the average, let’s say bank robber, incarcerate him for five years and he may get the point that he screwed up.

Usually, it is not until after many other complicated issues come into play, such as lack of employable skills or gaining and maintaining employment or residence due to criminal history, that you raise the probability of re-offending.
Does the word prejudice mean anything?

Selling crack is a crime, robbing a bank is a crime and though both may be derivative of a mental health issue; neither would be considered a perverse or mentally deranged behavior (aside from the physiological effects of long term drug use).

Though it may be true that many individuals displaying criminal behaviors are frequently diagnosed with minor mental health issues those mental health issues can be tamed with the coordinating efforts of professionals.

Keywords: Coordinating effort.

Your neighborhood drug dealer can be taught a legal and productive manner in which to earn his keep.

I’ve seen it done, though it may be a slow process nonetheless, the individual could eventually become a productive member of society, if given the unbiased chance.

Surely, much remains to argue within that arena but my point being, robbing a bank, driving while intoxicated and drug pushing are all crimes.
The individuals committing these types of crimes have higher success rates of reform, being that a prejudicial society doesn’t make reform difficult or next to impossible.


You can pluck these individuals from prison walls and set them back into society with some sort of peace of mind that, with the assistance of paid professionals, they may succeed in not harming other members of society.

Then there are those individuals who, when the occasion arises, will not hesitate to harm another human being; for instance, the violently deranged psychopath, the serial killer and yes, the sexual predator.
When referring to the term sexual predator, I am not referring to the eighteen-year old individual who somehow managed to piss off the parent of the fifteen-year old they have been dating for two years.
While some may argue the age gap and the possibility that other issues may be involved, this person is not always a sexually perverse individual one could justly label as a predator.

By sexual predator, I mean the seriously mentally ill individual who cannot and will not ever be able to fight off the uncontrollable urge to lure small children into their home, vehicle or computer for sexually perverse reasons.

Repeatedly.

That, my friend, is the behavior pattern of the sexual predator.

They are a walking time bomb.

They can maintain employment and a permanent address making them hard to recognize, unless of course you could read their minds.


They also appear to be functioning on a normal level and much like the way you view your neighbor; they too may seem friendly, adjusted and kind.

What you don’t see is a deranged mind.

They live trapped in their own dark and scary world, which can be just as arcane to them as it is to us. Face it, being attracted to a seven-year old is not a notion someone would adopt out of the blue.

Not any mentally sane person, anyway.

I doubt the individual woke one cloudy morning and made the decision to live life in such a disordered and tragic fashion.

It is a mental illness.

It is abnormal.

It should earn its rank in the DSM-IV, right up there with many other truly organic mental issues, such as schizophrenia.

Try convincing a true schizophrenic individual that they are not hearing voices.

Ha. Ha.

Of course we could toss that individual in prison until he changes. Five years in prison, a handful of community service hours and probation should shut those voices right up.

To add insult to injury, we could then insist he leave the room whenever he should hear those voices or better yet, insist he keep a logbook denying he ever heard any of them.

What voices?

I certainly didn’t hear any.

Speaking of not hearing any voices, back to the dead man.

Though his family may have a rough idea of what happened, I doubt they know the exactness of the events, hell maybe they are better off not knowing.

Imagine knowing your loved one wrestled for life and was denied assistance out of intolerance or bigotry. He served his prison sentence, maintained employment and kept an accurate logbook of sexual thoughts, if any.

All the while, the hands on the clock of prejudice were ticking silently against him or perhaps those silent hands knew something we didn’t and prevented an unfortunate encounter with yet another victim. Who knows?

I do know this it doesn’t take a genius to recognize the absurdity of imprisoning an individual for x amount of years in order to change sexually disordered thoughts.

Disordered thoughts caused by an “organic mishap” or even horrifically conditioned by being severely victimized them selves.

Every individual serving a sentence behind bars charged with a crime had their reasons, hell, even serial killers have their reasons and absurd as their reasons may be they deem them reasonable.

The service providers, who neglected to save this man’s life out of pure bigotry, had their absurd reasons as well and not any less notable than those who injure, maim, molest or kill out of rage, jealousy, greed or psychosis.

In all honesty, I don’t have the answer as what to do with any individual who cannot abstain from committing sexually perverse acts but it is slightly more than obvious that prison is not the solution.

Prison merely serves as a preventative measure in keeping the predator from having complete accessibility to a victim because they themselves cannot control their urges.

Temporarily.

So now you may be asking,

“What then do we do with such individuals?”

My first response would definitely not be, kill them in the streets. It would be more like, “I am not sure but what we are doing does not appear to be all that effective.”

The sexual predator knows this to be factual; in fact they know better than any professional. Remember the offender’s plea or recommendation to not let him out?

He knew he could not control his urges and the only thing that would stop him was a barbed wire fence and those ignored his warnings, well they should be with him in the chow line tonight.
So anyway, we have a man, pardon me, had a man, the one whom before he died, appeared to live normally amongst the population and whom before and after he was found to have committed a sexually unfathomable act, earned a living right alongside the rest of us.
Though, as with many offenders, this man knew his behavior to be immoral, he did it anyway. Without a doubt, the negative effect of his actions will stem far beyond the victim and the victim’s family; branching into his own family and quite possibly immediate generations to follow.

For obvious reasons, due to his completely unacceptable behavior, he should not be allowed to roam the neighborhoods freely. In the eyes of some professionals, because he was prosecuted, he quite possibly should not even be given the right to continue breathing.

Here’s the kicker.


We have a few college graduates, who appear to live normally among the population who before and after committing not only a morally unfathomable act but illegal and unethical as well, earn a living right alongside the rest of us. As for these professionals, though they knew their behavior to be immoral, they did it anyway.

Without a doubt, the negative effect of their actions will stem beyond the victim and the victim’s family; possibly branching into their own and quite possibly immediate generations that follow.

For unknown reasons, after their completely unacceptable behavior, they are still permitted to serve the community and not for free, might I add. In the eyes of some professionals, they maintain their right to continue breathing.

So if I address those of you who
believe that “Karma Sucks” or “One gets what one deserves”, then allow me to be momentarily harsh.

If you believe it to be just and true, that the universe gives you what you deserve, then you must certainly believe that “the universe is not biased to whom it repays for unfathomable actions imparted on man, by man.”

As for the aforementioned gentleman who has since returned to prison to serve yet another term, I hope for the sake of the society, this time around is successful in teaching him to refrain from his habitually unhealthy sexual attraction to small children.

It would certainly be a crime if it didn’t.

Story and photos by C Johnson-West


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