yeah I saw this on another site - not sure about my feelings on it - kinda plays into a lot of the stereotypes about RSOs -

actually it was a very disappointing article. when i first started reading i guess i was hoping that it was something good? something meaningful??? all it was, was a cheering section and advertizement for Book. a rah-rah, hip-hip-hooray for Book. wonder who paid what for it and just how brown the writer's nose ended up.

2 sentences really churned up the bile, "recidivism rate is 13%", and this, "“Seeing these men in plainclothes sitting across from me reminds me that they are people. But they’re lions in sheep’s clothing.” the last sentence alludes to men in general. way to go... further the fear and hint that ALL men are or will be offenders.

the only good thing about the whole thing was the statement that while FL spends tons of money to punish they spend little to prevent.

"David Lisak, board president of 1in6, a nonprofit for male victims of child sexual abuse, is a leading psychologist who studies child sexual abuse and non-stranger rape. “What frightens me,” he says, “is when I see people winking at each other so we can all pretend this really does pass constitutional muster, because—wink, wink—we’re treating these people for a mental illness, when the same people will tell you in the next breath, especially off the record, that they view these people as untreatable.”

"The myth of stranger danger—“dirty men” lurking in parks or malls, luring our children away from us with puppies and candy—is itself a danger. The reality is, the overwhelming majority of predators are in the victim’s family photo album or social circle. Ninety percent of children who are sexually abused know their abuser. A 2000 study found that family members account for 34 percent of people who abuse juveniles, and acquaintances account for another 59 percent. Only 7 percent were strangers.

Yet conversations about child sexual abuse often focus on horrific examples of stranger danger. We find comfort in searching registries to find out whether registered sex offenders live in our neighborhoods. We tell our children not to talk to strangers. And we label men and women who abuse children as monsters. This demonizing of strangers is extremely dangerous, considering that 1 in 3 girls and 1 in 5 boys are sexually abused by the time they turn 18, and around 90 percent of individuals with developmental disabilities will be sexually abused at some point,"

"The good news is that, for more than two decades, the rate of child sexual abuse has been declining in the U.S. Between 1992 and 2013, the number of cases fell 64 percent, according to a study headed by Finkelhor. Costly criminal justice initiatives—like sex offender registries, community notification and civil commitment—are often credited for this dramatic change, but Finkelhor argues that “these came online after the decline had already started.”

Still, those big-ticket criminal justice efforts tend to get all the money and attract all the headlines. Yet these initiatives, Finkelhor says, “mostly pertain to people already identified and arrested—and only about 10 percent of new cases of abuse involve someone who has a prior record. Even if you lock up everybody who had been convicted of an offense, you’d only be taking care of 10 percent of the problem.... We need more prevention and treatment in this area, but that costs money and legislators don’t want to do that.”

“Wouldn’t it be better to stop child sexual abuse before it starts? Everyone says yes, and then I hear we don’t have the money for that,” says Elizabeth Letourneau, director of the Moore Center for the Prevention of Child Sexual Abuse at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. “We have money to spend millions of dollars on [prosecuting and punishing] sex offenders, but no money to prevent these things from occurring in the first place.”

The author is a terrible writer. Extremely long winded, I cut and pasted some of the actual research but this article goes on for ever.

I do agree that we should focus more on education and prevention- in that aspect Lauren Book has it right. However, he father pushes for harsher punishments on sex offenders and makes it difficult for them to successfully reintegrate back into society. His laws feed into the notion of stranger danger. These are the same laws that gave me a false sense of security, thinking if a sex offender doesn't live near me, my children won't be harmed.

The entire problem with the Mark Lunsfords, the John Walshes, and the Ron and Lauren Books of this world is that the pain they have suffered has turned them into such vengeful people that they have overcompensated and allowed their emotions and grief to attack the wrong people.

The young man who downloaded a few naughty pictures is not the same type of offender as the John Couey who kidnapped and raped Jessica Lunsford and buried her alive. He was just a sick, evil person.

The young 19 year old adult who decides to have consensual sex with a 14 year old is not in the same category as the monster who murdered Adam Walsh and cut his head off.

The older horny, lonely guy who tries to set a date up with an underage minor over the internet is hardly the same kind of person that sexually abused Lauren Book for years on end.

But all the offenders are treated the same with the same blanket treatment.

The fathers mentioned and Miss Book no doubt suffered a tremendous tragedy with their loss and I am the first to acknowledge that fact. If my child was buried alive or treated like Adam Lunsford or Lauren Book, I don't think I could ever get over it.

But you cannot punish 800,000 offenders for what a few have done. It is not feasible, it is not moral, it is too expensive, and it is simply against everything this country should stand for.

But Mr. Lunsford, Mr. Walsh, Mr. Book and Lauren garner so much sympathy that nobody has the courage to tell them that their approach is wrong. For some reason, nobody wants to tell them the truth for fear their feelings will be hurt.

If we ever hope to solve some of these problems with crime and sex offenders, we must take the politics out of the equation and look at the unvarnished facts for a solution.

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Their approach may be right for the monsters that did what they did to their children. But that approach is not appropriate for the majority of sex offenders. There is too much emotion with the parents of these tragic situations to tell them what they are advocating for is wrong. Politicians could never do that, and they won't. It's easy money, why would they change?