The Sheila Variations

Would a bracelet have helped in this situation? (I don't think I even know what the bracelet is used for, is it just a GPS tracking device?)

I agree with your sentiment. The whole thing is just depressing/infuriating.

Of course the leg-bracelet thing is not infallible - and I'm with you, I don't even know what the hell it really does - but something is obviously wrong with the system as it now is. I don't know the solution, but ... there's Martha tripping around on her estate with a tracking-sytem attached to her, and this murderer pedophile is evading the authorities and not reporting in and yadda yadda?

It's horrifying.

I remember from the extras on Capturing the Friedmans that Jesse Friedman had to wear one (hell, he might still have to). He wasn't allowed to leave his house during certain hours, and it had some device that alerted authorities if he left during that time. Otherwise, I think it just tracked his movements.

I guess I didn't realize that he wasn't reporting in. The whole sex offender registry thing seemed like a good idea. But it just doesn't work. It seems like every story like this starts out the same:
", a registered sex offender, ..."
What good is this registry doing? It obviously didn't help this poor girl.

I haven't been following all that closely, but I do know that this guy was not where he was supposed to be.

And the check-in thing - the whole concept was lampooned beautifully, I thought, in The Big Lebowski. The sleazoid awful character knocking on these suburban doors: "Hi, I'm a conviced pedophile, and I just moved into your neighborhood."

Emily, that movie haunted me. I didn't see "the extras" though.

It is depressing. From what I can find out he had served whatever sentences he had been given (24 arrests on a variety of charges over 3 decades including a felony charge of a sexual offense against a child in 1991)

I agree with you completely that whatever system of monitoring was supposed to be being used failed completely - and if there wasn't one, there should have been. He also had a couple of outstanding warrants for probation violation - not reporting to his probation officer and possession of drugs.

But the reason why Martha has a leg bracelet, IIRC, is that she is still technically serving her sentence - under house arrest.

The way I understand the bracelets to work is that at certain times a signal must be detectable from the bracelet by a receiver in the house.. a sequence that is usually triggered by an automated phone-call to the receiver.

I guess it just seems ridiculous to me that Martha is under house arrest while this convicted child-rapist WAS NOT.

Someone who is a risk to children, as he is, should not have been out of prison at all.

Sheila,
Watch the extras when you get the chance. While the film left the issue somewhat ambiguous on purpose to make the documentary more compelling, once you see all the other footage and interviews, there will be no doubt in your mind whatsoever that poor Jesse Friedman did not do ANY of the things he was accused of and went to prison for. NONE AT ALL. I even donated money to the guy's legal battle to get a new trial. I am that convinced.

The way this case was handled by the authorites was *infuriating*. They should be charged for what they did to that family. Especially that bitch judge, who sat before a camera and said there was no doubt in her mind that the Friedmans were guilty. The case never even went to trial! That means she heard no testimony, saw very little evidence and never had the chance to hear the defendants' side of the story, yet she knew they were guilty? Why is this woman still wearing a robe? God help any of us should we ever sit before the likes of her with the rest of our lives teetering on her judgement.

Sorry for going off on a tangent. I'm very emotional about this case.

You know what really got me, Emily? Was how all the kids who had said: "No, I wasn't molested" - then were sent to a therapist who somehow "recovered" memories for them - and suddenly they had all these memories of the "abuse".

The whole "recovered memory" theory of therapy has been under fire for the last 10 years or so, and is quickly being debunked - but not quickly enough if you ask me.

Leg Bracelets are not mandated by statute in any states of which I am aware. They are an option for house arrest, parolees, community corrections, etc. So they are used only where the option is chosen, agreed to and/or ordered by the judge or parole board, parole officer.

It was worse than just the "recovered memory" bit, Sheila. When the police were first searching the Friedman house, they found cameras in Jesse's closet. They placed these cameras next to the photographs they found in Arnold Friedman's office (stashed in the basement, behind a piano, in a dark corner, which became in police accounts "child pornography spread all over the house"!) and some copies of Playboy that they also found in Jesse's drawers (the pervert. Can you imagine - a nineteen year-old boy looking at Playboy. Sick, just sick!) in such a way that suggested that these photographs were being taken in the Friedman home. These people wanted a witch to burn, and they weren't going to let anything get in the way of their bonfire, ruining people's lives be damned.

"Someone who is a risk to children, as he is, should not have been out of prison at all."

Easier said than done. Florida's civil commitment statute, the Jimmie Ryce Act, consumes a huge amount of the time of the state attorneys and public defenders: it is designed with as many hoops and hurdles as you can imagine, since the burden of providing due process for someone who's already served their criminal sentence but the state wants to keep locked is guaranteed to be pretty severe. I'm not making excuses--indeed, the criminal justice committees in both chambers looked at Jimmie Ryce every session I worked for the legislature--just saying that, unfortunately, the law places a huge burden on offices that already overworked, which means things will slip through the cracks.

Emily -

Oh, I know - the whole thing was a travesty. Enraging - the movie made me sick to my stomach.

But I was particularly struck by the recovered-memory therapy travesty.

"Easier said than done"

I have no doubt that that is true, Dave - it shouldn't be easy - and undoubtedly whatever system is used will never be 100% airtight.

From an earlier report on CNN though, and given his record, there is the question of at least one outstanding warrant from August 2004 for violating probation.

Sheila,
The reporter from the film has done a lot of writing on that subject. She wrote a great article for the Village Voice a few years a go. She's a bit of an akward writer - uses a thesaurus way too much - but the content is excellent. I'll see if I can't hunt it down and drop you the URL.

One more thing about the Friedmans extras and then I'll stay on topic - the mother of one of the students interviewed taped the police while they were questioning her son. He was telling the authorities that unequivocally nothing, NOTHING harmful had ever happened to him while under the care of the Friedmans. The cops told his mother that they didn't like the answers her "punk kid" was giving them. They basically pushed the kid around in an attempt to get him to say that he was molested. All of this supposedly done with his best interests in mind. I'm baffled as to why any of these people still have their jobs.

It just exemplifies how our judicial system is a complete failure. It is not set up for rehabilitation. Not in the least. So, we let these crazy sick people out into the public, knowing that the the possibility of them striking again is more likely than not. Most abusers do not feel remorse about what they've done if they are punished. That MAY happen if they are treated for their illness. The system puts them away for a minute, then pretends to know where they are and wipes their hands clean.

Shiela,

Being from New England, I hope you have heard about the Amirault family. Dorothy Rabinowitz of the WSJ has been on this case and others like it for almost 20 years and won a Pulitzer Prize for her coverage.

Anytime anyone on the right or the left use hyperbole with the term "witch hunts", I always tell them that the REAL "witch hunts" were the prosecutions of supposed child molesters in the 80s and 90s based on "recovered memories" and the testimony of coached (brain-washed?) young children.

Dorothy Rabinowitz is a hero, in my opinion, JFH - thank you very much for bringing her up. Yes. You're right.

I got very very into this whole "recovered memory" thing for a while. It came out of my interest in cults, and the work Rick Ross does (he's the cult-buster-upper-guy)

Rick Ross, too, collects information on these recovered memory scandals all over the world, and keeps it in a massive archive on his website. It's terrifying to read. There was one in Australia, in particular, which struck me as a true witch hunt, in all its shared hysteria.

The worst part is that it takes away from real instances of abuse and pedophilia. Children need to have their voices heard ... and not manipulated by these charlatans.

Sheila
I hunted down that article here. It's a good read.

Thanks, Emily ... I just printed it out, I'll read it later.

Okay, as someone who (in my volunteer life) works with children, these kind of stories push ALL my buttons. I tend to agree with peteb - I'd rather see "Life, no chance of parole" as the sentence for these offenders. Or death penalty if they kill a kid in the process.

I'm not a violent person by nature, but if someone harmed one of "my" kids (the ones I supervise and mentor) in that way, I could easily become violent towards them.

I really don't think an ankle bracelet would necessarily stop a determined child-predator. Maybe a penis bracelet, one that delivered a painful shock every time the person was in an area where children were around.

She's been my hero for over 10 years, Sheila. I've been clipping her editorials from the WSJ for that period of time and trying to get my family and friends to spread the word as much as possible.

Surprisingly enough, most of the public STILL are uneducated between the difference of REAL sexual predators and the victims of the "ritual abuse witch hunts" of the late 80s and early 90s.

JFH - If you're interested at all, here is Rick Ross' archive on the subject. I believe Rabinowitz used him as a resource.

Sheila, you prompted me to go look up my town in my state's database. There are 7 registered sex offenders in my little town, three of whom seem to be rapists rather than pedophiles (some comfort, huh?). One of the seven was convicted of having been with a minor, and there is a big red notice on his page: "Not In Compliance, Whereabouts Unknown". The hell? His last known address is less than 15 minutes' drive from my house. This is where the leg bracelet comes in. It's not hard to put a temperature and heartbeat / pulse senor in it to make sure it does not come off without notice.

What further irritates me is that the charge listed in the database is not really specified - I tend to think of some lech who got drunk and boinked a 16 year old as a very different animal from someone who molested a 6 year old. I'd like to know who is whom in that database, but both cases would be listed as sex with a minor.

John - Jesus Christ. What do you do now? Contact the police and ask about it?

The whole thing is very disturbing.