Monsters among us

Her name is Somer Thompson. She was 7 years old. She's dead.

In her last minutes of life, this beautiful little girl suffered inhuman acts of brutality. She was taken and murdered by one of the monsters who live and work among us – one of the pieces of human debris, the living mounds of filth, who are allowed to breathe the same air, live in the same apartment buildings and work the same jobs as genuine human beings. They look like us, but they're not human at all; they're animals who walk on two legs, with hearts full of black emptiness and minds full of perversion and violence.

Somer Thompson disappeared a week ago last Monday. She left school to walk home and was never seen alive again. By Wednesday of last week, ABC News was reporting that the density of registered sex offenders living within walking distance of Somer's home is so great that "when their homes are represented by pins on a digital map they create a cluster so thick it overlaps in places." On Thursday, searchers found Somer's body in a Georgia landfill. By Friday, authorities had interrogated and ruled out as suspects all 161 sex offenders living in a five-mile radius of the house that will never again feel like a home to Somer Thompson's parents.

Let me write that out: There are ONE HUNDRED SIXTY-ONE sex offenders living within five miles of this little girl's house. What's more, that density of legally registered perverts, child molesters, rapists, flashers and whatever else, is considered average. ABC quoted a Florida lawyer named Ron Book, a legal activist who fights for stricter sex-offense laws. "In spite of appearing ... to be a lot, that's about average. Some areas have hundreds of offenders."

Thanks to the miracle of technology, many new parents now experience the dubious honor of a new rite of passage in our society. When they are pregnant or shortly after their children are born, they visit various websites online that inform them of exactly where and who are the sex offenders in their neighborhoods. You, too, can obtain a map of these unctuous, contemptible creatures in your own neighborhood.

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Just browse to familywatchdog.us, enter your address, and prepare to be horrified. You'll get a scattering Christmas-tree pattern of colored squares overlaid on a map of your target address. Clicking these squares will give you pictures, names, work addresses – complete dossiers, really – of the monsters lurking among you. There are other sites, too, such as your state's offender registry, that you can check. For example, I'm a New Yorker. My state lists sex offenders by county and risk level and allows you to search that registry by name and location.

Technology affords us an amazing array of options in cataloging, tracking, monitoring and pursuing sex offenders. From searchable registry websites to GPS ankle bracelets to the various electronic security devices, including "smart" ID cards, employed in public schools to prevent unauthorized personnel from entering buildings, our children and their parents live their lives behind electronic fortifications that are stronger than ever before. The question we must ask ourselves, however, is "Why?"

"Predator May Have Killed Before," read last Monday's headline to Sarah Netter's ABC News story. "The person who killed 7-year-old Somer Thompson may have preyed on children before," she wrote, going on to quote authorities who worry they may have a serial child-killer on their hands. To any reasonable human being, this is not news. I guarantee you that the kind of person who would assault and murder a little girl has done it before – or has only just begun. Why do we live in fear this way?

It's very fashionable in some "tough on crime" circles to agitate for forced chemical castration of sex-offenders, as if the way to make our children safe from societal predators is simply to deny them access to the biological equipment necessary to commit crime. The fact is, nothing less than a cordless drill to the brain – to let the evil spirits out, let's say – will truly remove from a murderous child molester the urge to victimize little boys and little girls. There is no such thing as a child molester who has "gotten better." There is no such thing as a registered, high-risk sex offender who has "served his time" or "paid his debt to society." There are only ticking biological time bombs – sleeper agents of evil who watch and wait and fantasize about brutalizing your daughters and your sons in the name of their own sick gratification.

You, as a rational adult, understand that you cannot leave a little child alone in public for any reason for any amount of time. This is because you, as a rational adult, know that such a child will almost immediately be propositioned, touched or stolen by one of the loathsome beasts in humanoid form who are even now crouched to spring on any unattended youngster. Why do we refuse to eliminate this omnipresent threat?

The most expedient and truly workable solution would be for any multiply convicted sex offender, at some arbitrary number of convictions, to be dragged behind the courthouse, whereupon some stern bailiff could put two bullets through the offender's skull. As we're unlikely to agree on such extreme measures as a society, I propose a compromise. We must refuse to let registered, high-risk sex offenders live and work among us. They will never represent anything but a palpable threat to those around them. They will never be worthwhile, productive members of our society.

Put them away. If you refuse to put these predators in prison and keep them there forever, then force them to live out their lives, after their pitifully short prison sentences, in camps erected for that purpose. Put them behind razor wire. Surround them with lights, guns and dogs. Put on those battlements men and women who understand that they and they alone stand between these monsters and our children.