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Name:Polimom
Location:near Houston, Gulf Coast, United States

Conservatively liberal, moderately well-educated, and highly opinionated...

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Monday, August 29, 2005

Oh for goodness' sake

Every person who reads this blog knows that I am highly concerned with the sex offender problems. Today, though, my attention is focused fully on the Central Gulf Coast area; I'm thinking nothing but hopeful thoughts for my friends and family there. Yet even in the midst of potential disaster, the madness continues.
The Times-Picayune (a local New Orleans newspaper) has an online forum, where hundreds of people are posting messages of support, and queries about various localities in the city. Amazingly, in the midst of all that, I found this:

712. Where are they putting the registered sex offenders?

The poster reminded everyone of Florida's new policy for denying public shelters to registered sex offenders, and wondered whether New Orleans is trying to do something similar.

As one of the responders wondered, if you and your children are at a public shelter in the midst of a disaster, you surely wouldn't take your eyes off your children for even an instant..... would you???? Or would you assume that since all the registered offenders were elsewhere, everyone could roam freely?

No matter how I try, I can't picture the officials at the doors to the Superdome trying to determine whether people were registered offenders. Furthermore, despite my level of involvement lately with RSO issues, I hadn't even wondered or worried about their presence in the shelters. I'm a parent, and I still accompany my child to public restrooms, even though she's plenty old enough to handle the details on her own.

At what point does parental vigilance get replaced? In my opinion, never... but in an emergency situation (such as Katrina), even raising the question makes it manifestly clear that normal concern has been replaced by outright paranoia and hysteria.

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