How many children must die before lawmakers and the courts decide to keep certain classes of sexual predators behind bars permanently? Joseph Edward Duncan III, a registered sex offender from Fargo, N.D., is the most recent addition to the pantheon of convicted pedophiles who have been let out of jail only to prey on other victims.
Duncan was convicted of twice raping a 14-year-old boy at gunpoint in 1980. He was 16 years old when he committed the crime.
Sentenced to 20 years, Duncan was first released after serving 14 years, violated his parole and was sent back to prison in 1997, where he remained until 2000.
When he finally got out, he enrolled in college and even made the dean’s list, but soon was trolling for more victims. Duncan was arrested for videotaping and fondling a 6-year-old boy on a playground in Minnesota last July, but instead of being sent back to prison — or at least held without bail — he was released on a $15,000 bond in April, then vanished.
On Saturday, Duncan was arrested and charged with kidnapping 8-year-old Shasta Groene, who disappeared, along with her 9-year-old brother Dylan, in May. Shasta’s mother, 13-year-old brother and a family friend were found bound and bludgeoned to death May 16 at the family home in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho.
An observant waitress at a local restaurant spotted Duncan and Shasta eating breakfast at 2 a.m. Dylan has yet to be found alive, and police fear remains uncovered in Montana over the weekend are his.
Duncan is only the latest in a long list of convicted sex offenders who have gone on to commit horrendous crimes after release from jail. Earlier this year, convicted sex offender John Couey was arrested for the murder of Jessica Lunsford in Florida. While Couey lived across the street from Jessica’s home, he is alleged to have taken the 9-year-old from her home, kept her hidden, sexually abused her, and then, according to his own admission, buried her alive.
David Onstott, a convicted rapist out on bail for another crime, was charged a month later with strangling 13-year-old Sarah Lunde near her Tampa home. In May, his jailers found Onstott trying to dig out of his jail cell with a metal towel holder.
Some states have enacted “sexual predator” laws to try to prevent similar horrors. These laws allow the state to commit pedophiles to maximum security mental hospitals after they have served their criminal sentences, a practice the U.S. Supreme Court has upheld on the grounds these men (and offenders are almost exclusively male) are being treated, not subjected to preventive incarceration.
Frankly, for most of these deviants, no treatment is possible. Men who prey on little boys are especially likely to do so again and again. Some estimate the re-offense rate (different than the re-arrest rate) is upward of 80 percent, with the average pedophile likely to commit 13 offenses before being caught. So why should such men ever be put back on the streets?
The punishment for raping a child should be life in prison, period. There should never be a second chance for such people. And while lesser sexual crimes — fondling or possessing child pornography, for example — might deserve a second chance, it must come under the most restrictive circumstances: lifelong, electronic monitoring.
Any second like offense should earn a life sentence, with no possibility of parole. Does that mean tens of thousands of ex-sexual offenders (some estimates there are 500,000) might end up in jail for life? Not likely, since most are not pedophiles, the category of sexual offenders least likely to be rehabilitated.
But even if we have to build many more jails to keep such criminals behind bars, wouldn’t it be worth it to save the lives of children like Jessica, Sarah, and so many others who have died because of our failure to do so?
Linda Chavez is a nationally syndicated columnist.
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