[hackerspaces] Sex Offenders at a 'Space

[B F]

That echos my feelings exactly.  I won't get involved in nitty-gritty of
the discussion of who to or not to admit because it's outside my experience.

However I know of a case from twenty or thirty years back (which was BEFORE
things really got out of hand), in which a man ALMOST got in trouble
because a girl he was tutoring mentioned to someone, "He touched me."  He
HAD touched her -- on the HAND!  Fortunately, he was able to dodge that
bullet.  (This is not apocryphal.  I know the names involved, but, of
course, won't repeat them here.)

Child molestation is a real problem.  I, for one, would probably have the
gut reaction of lynching someone I caught molesting a child.  I think
children (especially) need ample protection against predators.

But what our society has only recently come to realize it the "con man" (or
child molester in this case) is the person you LEAST suspect of it.  He (or
she -- to be clear) is not the ugly, dirty, disgusting person of the
movies, but rather the church deacon, the camp counselor, the scout leader
-- the person you trust your child to.  (This is not to say all such people
are child molesters, of course.)  Child molesters gravitate to positions of
responsibility over children.  That SHOULD have been a no-brainer, but when
people see a wholesome, clean-cut person, somebody "just like you and me,"
they assume that he is safe to leave in charge of one's child.

My point is that if there are child molesters in your space, you probably
won't know it soon enough to matter.  When a person is a known child
molester -- and I don't mean a person caught peeing in a back alley, or
falsely reported for an amber alert -- you have a head start.  I would
think it perfectly appropriate to admit that person but to inform him that
he is NEVER to be alone with children in your space, and to enforce that.
Since his record is public, it would be acceptable to inform everyone in
your space of the fact.

- BF

On Tue, Feb 17, 2015 at 6:14 AM, ITechGeek <itg at itechgeek.com> wrote:

> Actually I feel the same about the sex offender registry laws as I do
> about the tax laws, both need MAJOR overhaul.
>
> --
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