The Lowell Sun reports that a 62 year old male was arrested, tried and pled guilty to the sexual assault on two young males. The district attorney’s office has yet to release the age of the victims, but since Mr. Dennis Collins, listed as being both homeless and living at 68 Baldwin Road, Billerica, MA was convicted of child rape; it is safe to assume that the victims were less than 16 years of age. Although, Mr. Collins admitted sexually assaulting 2 minor boys, he was allowed to deal for a 7 year sentence with a 5 year probation and an order to keep away from children under 16. Before we judge whether or not justice was done for the boys and for the community, let’s examine some facts from the federal government’s Justice Department:

The following information comes from the Bureau of Justice Statistics; Criminal Offender Statistics:

Recidivism

Of the 272,111 persons released from prisons in 15 States in 1994, an estimated 67.5% were rearrested for a felony or serious misdemeanor within 3 years, 46.9% were reconvicted, and 25.4% resentenced to prison for a new crime.

The 272,111 offenders discharged in 1994 accounted for nearly 4,877,000 arrest charges over their recorded careers.

Within 3 years of release, 2.5% of released rapists were rearrested for another rape, and 1.2% of those who had served time for homicide were arrested for a new homicide.

Sex offenders were less likely than non-sex offenders to be rearrested for any offense –– 43 percent of sex offenders versus 68 percent of non-sex offenders.
Sex offenders were about four times more likely than non-sex offenders to be arrested for another sex crime after their discharge from prison –– 5.3 percent of sex offenders versus 1.3 percent of non-sex offenders.

Sex offenders

On a given day in 1994 there were approximately 234,000 offenders convicted of rape or sexual assault under the care, custody, or control of corrections agencies; nearly 60% of these sex offenders are under conditional supervision in the community.

The median age of the victims of imprisoned sexual assaulters was less than 13 years old; the median age of rape victims was about 22 years.

An estimated 24% of those serving time for rape and 19% of those serving time for sexual assault had been on probation or parole at the time of the offense for which they were in State prison in 1991.

Of the 9,691 male sex offenders released from prisons in 15 States in 1994, 5.3% were rearrested for a new sex crime within 3 years of release.
Of released sex offenders who allegedly committed another sex crime, 40% perpetrated the new offense within a year or less from their prison discharge.

Child victimizers

Approximately 4,300 child molesters were released from prisons in 15 States in 1994. An estimated 3.3% of these 4,300 were rearrested for another sex crime against a child within 3 years of release from prison.

Among child molesters released from prison in 1994, 60% had been in prison for molesting a child 13 years old or younger.

Offenders who had victimized a child were on average 5 years older than the violent offenders who had committed their crimes against adults. Nearly 25% of child victimizers were age 40 or older, but about 10% of the inmates with adult victims fell in that age range.

According to the General Laws Of Massachusetts: CHAPTER 265. CRIMES AGAINST THE PERSON

Chapter 265: Section 23. Rape and abuse of child

[ Text of section effective until October 22, 2008. For text effective October 22, 2008, see below.]

Section 23. Whoever unlawfully has sexual intercourse or unnatural sexual intercourse, and abuses a child under sixteen years of age shall, for the first offense, be punished by imprisonment in the state prison for life or for any term of years, or, except as otherwise provided, for any term in a jail or house of correction, and for the second or subsequent offense by imprisonment in the state prison for life or for any term of years, but not less than five years; provided, however, that a prosecution commenced under the provisions of this section shall not be placed on file or continued without a finding.

Chapter 265: Section 23. Rape and abuse of child

[Text of section as amended by 2008, 205, Sec. 2 effective October 22, 2008. For text effective until October 22, 2008, see above.]

Section 23. Whoever unlawfully has sexual intercourse or unnatural sexual intercourse, and abuses a child under 16 years of age, shall be punished by imprisonment in the state prison for life or for any term of years or, except as otherwise provided, for any term in a jail or house of correction. A prosecution commenced under this section shall neither be continued without a finding nor placed on file.

According to the text of the General Laws, a sentence of LIFE is possible. So, one would have to wonder why anyone who would harm a child would be allowed to plead to less than life; let alone all the way down to 7 years (minus time served, time off for good behavior, etc.)

Before judging the AG, Gerry Leone, too harshly for not being more aggressive, as many on Topix have already done, consider this abstract from Science Direct, Child Abuse and Neglect, Volume 24, Issue 9, September 2000, pgs 1215 – 1225:

Abstract

Objective: This is an exploratory study that describes the process and outcomes of a Midwestern US community’s approach to case management of child sexual abuse.

Method: Data were abstracted from 323 criminal court files. Specific information gathered included child and suspect demographic data, law enforcement and CPS involvement, child disclosure patterns and caretaker responses, offender confession, offender plea, trial and child testimony information, and sentences received by offenders. Both case process and outcome variables were examined.

Results: In this community, criminal court records reflect a sex offense confession rate of 64% and a sex offense plea rate of 70%. Only 15 cases went to trial and in six the offender was convicted. [ED. 9 of 15 were not convicted]

Conclusion: Communities can achieve successful outcomes when criminal prosecution of sexual abuse is sought, but the child’s testimony is not necessarily the centerpiece of a successful case. In this study, desired outcomes were a consequence of the collaborative efforts of law enforcement, CPS, and the prosecutor’s office, which resulted in a high confession and plea rate.

And my conclusion is that you generally get justice at the level you are willing to settle for. If 7 years seems too lenient, even in the face of risking losing a conviction of these cretin savages by a mistake at trial, a breech of protocol during the investigation, or the unwillingness or inability of the minor under 16 to testify, then, the thing to do is to let your feelings be known. There are lots of advocacy groups available to pressure DAs, Courts and the Legislature. These groups did a fairly good job with renegade priests for crimes decades old; so, it would seem they could be equally effective with fresher crimes.

If you believe that values exist and must be taken into account, and if you believe that man has free will; then you, by definition, believe that every choice man exercises, it carries with it a values component. I also believe this to be true. I further believe the values cannot be separated from human activity, which is why everything he does, he does as a matter of choice. When one performs an action, one decides what values to include and which ones to exclude. As Ayn Rand would say, “everytime a man exercises a choice, he is directed by some kind of values (consciously or not). He cannot escape the fact that he must choose”.

If you have a choice and the free will to choose, then, in the simplest of terms, you have a philosophy. And conversely, having a philosophy, you use that to formulate your choices, consciously or not. Reason is the tool with which we construct a philosophy that is most beneficial to our own rational self interest and the more we understand our philosophy and how it came to be, the better chance we have of approaching our ultimate goal, or life’s purpose — happiness.

The more we evade developing a core philosophy to guide us, the more unlikely we are to find happiness. Instead of developing a road map with the power of GPS to guide us, we pursue happiness with an outdated paper map. This leaves us to the mercy of our sub-conscious where we are guided by chance or random generalizations, undigested abstractions accepted on faith with or without any basis in reality. As such, we are ultimately left without a clear understanding as to why we’ve decided as we did, or how our choice got us to where we end up, instead of where we wanted to be.

It’s easy to blast a decision thought to be bad or poor in a comments section of a news blog. It’s quite another to discuss a decision with logic and arrive at a result that serves one’s rational self interest and with wide agreement. This can come with a result that also benefits the community, which, after all, is no more than a collection of individuals with a similar culture and similar history The differences are ultimately philosophical as is always on display with warring political or religious factions. If you don’t like the results of the decisions being made on your behalf; then work to have your say and to be a legitimate and consistent voice of influence and reason.