Sex offence is a treacherous subject.
As a father, I am gripped by the slight nausea and immediate gut-reaction of wanting to hurt someone who hurts children. I’m okay with that. Child rapists are among the lowest of the low; that’s not something I will change my mind about.
I feel similarly, if less viscerally, about a man who forces himself on a woman — your standard rapist.
If our laws were directed specifically at those miscreants, there wouldn’t be the (same) problems we currently have. Unfortunately, someone, and I’m not sure who, decided that the only way to keep our children safe is to come down hard on sex offenders. Sex offenders has become synonymous with child rapists in the mind of the public, so anything done to and in pursuit of sex offenders is fair game.
That by itself is worrying, since even the lowest of the low have rights, but it just keeps getting worse.
While hiding behind the cry of “Think of the children!” legislatures compound the problem by lumping everything they possibly can under the penumbra of sex offence. That’s why we’re left with the issues of children’s lives forever ruined by youthful indiscretion.
That’s why we’re left with people who need help, but who end up sentenced to spend the remainder of their lives in prison.
Fear mongering is an insidious evil that permeates every aspect of our culture and our nation, and the reason it’s not going away is because it works.
When we allow ourselves to be convinced that our children are not safe without the draconian and over-broad sex offence laws, we cheapen and insult victims of rapists and abuse, as well as willingly relinquishing our rights and turning a blind eye towards justice.