Unspoken injustice; your neighbor the sex offender
By Stephen Webster
Investigative Reporter
1st in a Series
Did you know that in Denton County, a small, family-oriented enclave in North Texas, there are over 70 convicted sex predators – men and women who assaulted children under the age of 12 – who never served a jail sentence for their crimes? The sum total of this county’s offenders comes to 176; only 12 are currently in jail. In Flower Mound, one of North Texas’ most beautiful, sought-after villas, 13 such individuals are presently living unmolested. And in Highland Village, a cornerstone of family and conservative values, five more lurk. Dallas County is worse: there, 843 convicted sex criminals are free to live, work and play. The State of Texas only requires these individuals to register their home address; the same action asked of law-abiding citizens seeking to obtain a drivers license.
According to the National Center for Sex Offender Management, nearly half of all convicted child molesters are arrested for committing other violent crimes within half a decade of their first conviction. Perhaps more shockingly, the Higher Education Act of 1998 explicitly stipulates that any convicted drug offender over the age of 18 is to be barred from receiving a Pell Grant for one year, whereas no prohibition has been established for convicted sex offenders, or any other breed of criminal for that matter. This country incarcerates more of its population than any nation on Earth - one out of 136 citizens are behind bars - yet somehow cannot manage to find room in its prisons for the offenders that do the most damage.
But the problem is much more widespread that just that. Ernie Allen, President of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, claims that somewhere between 80,000 and 100,000 convicted sex offenders have completely absconded from the government’s not-so watchful eye. Worse, the Department of Justice has determined that a child is sexually assaulted somewhere in America every four minutes. Ultimately, the leniency being given to convicted sexual predators is not somewhere far away, in another city or state. It is endemic to America’s system of justice. Because of this, these individuals are currently living in your neighborhood, working in your office, and prowling your streets.
How can this be?
That is the question Christopher Largen has been asking since he was 21 years old. A Denton resident and repeat victim of childhood sexual assault, Largen is the founder of a nonprofit organization called "Building B.L.O.C.K. – Better Lives for Our Communities and [Kids]." Largen, who taglines himself as an "internationally published novelist, journalist, screenwriter, public speaker and social activist," took several hours to speak with The Lone Star Iconoclast to detail how he perceives this problem, and what he believes can be done to fix it.
"Breaking the silence about the abuse is critical," said Largen. "That’s the main priority of Building B.L.O.C.K. There can be little healing for victims until they break their silence. Predators thrive on secrets, and the system of injustice that allows these perpetrators to go free thrives on apathy and social disconnection from this issue. I often wonder if we as a people are going through some kind of collective and unspoken dissociation ourselves. American children are being molested, raped, tortured, murdered, even buried alive. We cannot separate ourselves from the fate of our neighbor’s children. We must act as if these children are our own."
"Many people don’t realize how devastating sexual abuse can be, because it didn’t happen to them," continued Largen. "But it’s become widespread in this culture. If it didn’t happen to you, then you know someone who’s a survivor. So how could our public priorities become so skewed and diverted? Perhaps it happened because even though abuse is considered an acceptable topic for talk shows, it’s still not considered proper dinner conversation in this country. It’s not a pleasant issue, but until we start talking about it in our families, schools, and local communities, we can’t mobilize forces to address the problem."
Over the next several weeks, LSI will be running a series of investigative reports detailing the widespread leniency being dolled out to sex criminals, and the cycle of abuse that turns their victims into tomorrow’s offenders. There are several judges in Denton County who have records of giving these criminals probation, even after repeat offenses and multiple convictions. Furthermore, during our own research we noticed that dockets detailing the trials of several area sex criminals have simply vanished from the court’s archives.
The goal of this series of reports is to break our community’s silence on this unspoken injustice. We will be joining with Building B.L.O.C.K. to raise awareness of this important topic, and we encourage our readers to write in and get involved with this cumulative effort to shine a light on a most painful topic.
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