Pedophiles can’t be cured and shouldn’t be freed

Pedophiles can’t be cured and shouldn’t be freed

EDITOR:

“To save future children,” so begs Trumbull County Prosecutor Dennis Watkins in his plea to prevent the release of a convicted pedophile due for parole after serving just eight years out of eight life sentences for raping eight children under six years of age. There were six other counts of sex offenses too. A psychologist declared the man sane, but the fact is a pedophile cannot be cured. He is sexually oriented toward children. So if this man is released he will commit similar crimes against the unprotected innocent.

Psychologists admit there is no therapy that would change a gay-oriented person to become straight. I believe there is no way to change a pedophile’s attraction to children. Experience has shown a pedophile continues abusing children after release from prison. That is why incarceration is the only guarantee a pedophile will not abuse again. This is also why many citizens are concerned about the whereabouts of the defrocked priests who are not jailed. They are out of sight, but are they out of circulation? Some are sent to an institution for evaluation but then where do they go?

Polygraphs are increasingly being used to find parole violations. It has been suggested that released pedophiles are subject to periodic polygraph tests to determine if any violation of a child has taken place. Even if polygraphs are not 100 percent reliable, they furnish a tremendous incentive to tell the truth. A sex offender would be dissuaded from committing more crimes. The flaw of the polygraph is that it is not a 100 percent guarantee that no child be molested.

JOHN F. WIRTZ

North Jackson