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March 27, 2005
It happened again
Much has been written in the past few days about the Jessica Lunsford case where a girl about the age of my daughter went missing last month and was found dead less than a couple hundred yards from her home a little over a week ago. The vile shred of human debris who did it, John Couey, has confessed to assaulting and murdering this precious young one.
As I was motoring east on I-80 towards Iowa City, Iowa yesterday afternoon, I knew it had happened again. Yet another young girl, Jetseta Marie Gage, had been missing since Thursday night when she was abducted from her home in Cedar Rapids. When an Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation van went flying by me on I-80 at 90 miles an hour towards the area the girl was abducted from with its lights flashing, I knew she wasn't missing anymore.
The guy who was seen taking her from her grandmother's home about 8:15 Thursday night, Roger P. Bentley, a registered sex offender and apparent "friend of the family" was apprehended at 7AM Friday morning at a rural Johnson County residence. The silver 1982 Datsun pickup he was driving was sitting outside the ramshackle trailer where the girl's body was found. He's been charged with abducting Jetseta Marie for the time being and there's not much doubt that murder charges will follow.
Apparently, it's all in the family for this sick bastard and his brother, because his brother, Jetseta's mother's former boyfriend, James Bentley, is sitting in jail awaiting trial on a charge of molesting this little girl last November.
Obviously, the mother in this case could have been a little more proactive. I guess if my boyfriend had been busted for molesting my daughter, I'd probably be a little wary of having his brother around her. And it's hard to believe that she wouldn't have known that the guy was on the Iowa sex offender registry for lascivious acts with a seven-year-old. You can check it out with a phone call or a by simply going on line to the sex offender database. And if my ex-boyfriend, who was this guy's brother, was about to go on trial for molesting my daughter, I'd at least be curious as to whether or not he was a pervert as well. So this little girl has been through several months, or years perhaps, of on unimaginable hell, apparently at the hands of two sick bastard brothers which has evidently ended in sexual torture, abuse and death.
This is really what it boils down to: No law or sexual predator registry can stop these sick bastards from raping and killing our kids, so we've got to be more aware of what is going on with our children, particularly our little girls, and who they are coming into contact with. One hundred children are said to be abducted, sexually assaulted and murdered by strangers who are sick sexual predator freaks each year and hundreds more are abducted, assaulted and murdered by family acquaintances. The average age of children who are abducted, sexually assaulted and murdered is 11. It's no surprise that the majority of these children are little girls.
America in 2005 isn't slaphappy Mayberry, USA where the biggest concern is Grandma Jones's cat stuck in a tree. And this girl deserved a little more care and concern from those who loved her and were charged with protecting her. All of us have to be proactive when it comes to protecting our kids from these vile scum. Polly Klaas.org has some good tips on keeping your kids safe. It also has dozens and dozens of names of kids -- boys and girls alike -- who have gone missing over the past couple of years and have yet to be found. There are plenty of other resources for information on how to keep your kids safe. It's every parent's job to be informed.
Unfortunately, liberal groups such as the ACLU are fighting tooth and nail against some of the tools parents and law enforcement use to help protect their kids from sexual predators. The Ohio chapter of the ACLU boasts on their web site of suing to prevent an Ohio sheriff from posting sex offenders on a sex offender registry:
Working together with the lawyers in the Office of the Cuyahoga County Public Defender, the American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio Foundation filed suit in federal court on April 25, 2002, in an effort to block plans to list hundred of sex offenders on a website maintained by Cuyahoga County Sheriff Gerald McFaul.
The website, which already lists the names, addresses and photographs of designated sexual predators, is slated to include a wide variety of lesser offenders by the end of April. Many of the over eight hundred offenders eligible for inclusion on the site under new criteria have been convicted of only misdemeanors.
Federal appeals courts in New York and California have held that the indiscriminate disclosure of information regarding sex offenders violates constitutional guarantees of privacy, freedom from double jeopardy (by imposing a new punishment after an offender has already completed his sentence) and the right to be free from ex post facto laws (because the punishment is imposed after the offender has already been sentenced).
And as we all know, this isn't just some rogue branch of the ACLU gone awry. Just check out their national web site. Do you see anything on there about the rights of young girls not to be raped, tortured, strangled and killed? Nope. But you sure do see a hell of a lot about guaranteeing the rights of the sick freaks who torture and kill them.
Roger Bentley's previous child crime was a class "D" felony -- a step above and aggravated misdemeanor. I'm wondering, would he be one of the "many" sex offenders the ACLU would have sought to exclude from the Ohio web site? As long as the ACLU wants to split hairs here, would John Couey's "sexual battery on a child less than 12 years of age" be good enough for the ACLU to think he's worthy of having his picture on a web site? Sorry, but I'm thinking that you give up your right to privacy if you rape a kid and, as far as I'm concerned, you should give up your right to freedom for the rest of your life, if not just be executed outright. If the sick bastard John Couey had been locked up for good the first time he preyed on a child, Jessica Lunsford would be alive right now. And if we would have seen to it that Roger Bentley got more than a slap on the wrist when he diddled with a seven-year-old, Jetseta Marie Gage might just have lived to see this Easter and many to come. And, with the knowledge of an aware parent who used the tools at their disposal, Jetseta may have been able to be saved as well. But in looking at the ACLU's site, it's quite obvious that the rights of these sick, perverted bastards come before the safety of our children. Wouldn't want to stigmatize a child rapist by putting his picture on a sex offender registry!
How horrible of me to try to turn the tragic deaths of these little girls into a partisan issue, you say? Really? Well we all know where the "non-partisan" ACLU stands: For gay rights, against school prayer; for rights for criminals, against the death penalty; for terrorist's rights, against homeland security; for Muslim prayers broadcast through American neighborhoods, against any public displays of symbols that represent this country's majority religion. And now for the rights of child rapists and murderers and against the rights of us parents to know the whereabouts of these vile predators. Now think about the party affiliation of the politicians that tend to champion the same causes as the ACLU. Then, next time you set foot in a voting booth, think about these violated and murdered little girls and think about the liberal politicians the leader of your local ACLU chapter is probably pulling the level for. Then vote against them.
POSTED BY STEVE
Posted by Nealus at March 27, 2005 09:53 PM
