I thought I would, from time to time, post items of interest with a “Sexuality In The News” focus.

The first news item concerns two sex offenders in Maine who were murdered on Easter Sunday by 20 year old Stephen Marshall of Nova Scotia, Canada. Marshall allegedly got the two men’s names (Robert Gray – 57 years old – and William Elliott – 24 years old) from the Maine Sex Offenders Registry (http://sor.informe.org/sor), drove to the men’s homes in his father’s pick-up truck and shot the men dead. When found and cornered by police on a Boston bus, Marshall turned the gun on himself.

Understandably, this event has created quite a ripple of fear amongst registered sex offenders, whose names, photos and addresses are increasingly posted on the internet by states as a matter of public record. The Maine legislature has promised to reconsider the way in which this information is posted online, but other elected officials are disinclined to change the current system. One Democratic state representative, Patricia Blanchette, said “Nobody want to see anybody cut any slack for pedophiles. Other people such as Tim App, a Northeastern University criminal justice professor, thinks that sex offender registries should not be available to the public, but be information privy to the police only. Mr. App thinks that there should be “intense counseling and supervision backed up with lie detector testing” in order to reintroduce pedophiles back into the mainstream.

While I am against the death penalty, and do not wish to see anybody punished for their crimes by loss of life, even at the hands of a civilian, I also do not believe that communities should be left uninformed about the presence of pedophiles living in their midst.

I am unaware of the numbers of pedophiles who are murdered by concerned citizens who take matters into their own hands. However, I have to believe that it is relatively small in relation to the numbers of child victims persecuted by pedophiles. On balance, I believe that sex offender registries should be available online, complete with names, photos and addresses. Adults have at least a chance at protecting themselves. Children have little or no chance to of defending themselves against sexual predators. Any information that we can employ to keep children safe surely has to be worth the loss of a sexual predator’s privacy.