I'm going to say this real slow

Dr. Bill Glaser a forensic psychiatrist in the area of sex offenders said:

If we had some sort of plague or epidemic which affected one in four girls, one in eight boys, there would be a national outcry about it and we would be setting up national coordinated efforts to deal with the problem as we have with modern day epidemics such as HIV.

There are some who say that we are becoming unnecessarily panicky about child sexual abuse. The evidence is that we have not panicked enough.

We first wrote about Benjamin Radford here after he appeared on a podcast with a sex offender and a sex offender defender to commiserate about sex offender laws and what he refers to as a "predator panic".

I tried to clarify some of his errors, but that's a lot of information for such a small space and I suppose I failed to enlighten him. Still, I was rather disappointed recently on another podcast when I gave him the opportunity to explain his position and he once again did not want to be "confused with the facts". Only this time it was worse. In the intervening years he has forgotten his material and he confused the sex offender registry with community notification laws then argued against them both using residency restriction arguments. My head was spinning as Radford - puffed up and full of himself with delusions of superior intelligence and thinking skills - wove a web of lies, myths, half-truths and utter nonsense.

"People say there's no cure and that's simply not true"

Benjamin Radford said.

There's a cure? Even the most rabid pedophile apologists like Fred Berlin don't make that claim. Benjamin Radford must know something that experts who study sex offenders don't know because Benjamin Radford said the facts were there. He said they were clear. He said they were crystal clear. In fact, he said it at least 5 times in less than 5 minutes. I don't know if he was just trying to convince himself or not but he's surely convinced me. Now I know beyond any shadow of a doubt that he's a lying cockroach. Most importantly, he's intellectually dishonest.

Benjamin Radford has made his faulty conclusions based upon the DOJ recidivism report which showed a small percentage of recidivism after a three year period. At first I thought I would explain to Benjamin Radford why the DOJ report doesn't prove anything. I thought I might ask him why he believes it's proof when 80% of sex crimes go unreported. I thought I might ask him why he believes it's proof when almost 30% of those men in that report were ALREADY repeat offenders - sometimes multiple times. I thought I might ask him why he believed it was proof when almost half the men couldn't have committed another sex crime anyway considering that they were back in prison for another crime or a parole violation before the three year mark. I thought of asking him these things which he clearly failed to consider but he wouldn't be able to answer. He couldn't answer because he lied. He was intellectually dishonest. He read a report - not a study - and failed to question what the data actually meant.

Benjamin Radford says that to analyze information in his "investigations"

"critical thinking, critical reading and comprehension are essential"

He claimed to "thoroughly research" his topic. He claimed to "investigate" the issue. He claimed to analyze the information he found. But Benjamin Radford didn't actually analyze anything. He read it, didn't comprehend it, didn't question it and stopped looking. Why? Because it was what he wanted to hear. That is intellectual dishonesty.

Benjamin Radford has referred to the DOJ report on recidivism and a faulty Megan's Law report each time he has spoken of this issue. But that's it, that's all he got from his "investigation". If he had "thoroughly researched" and analyzed and comprehended he would know the report he references didn't even study the topic it claimed to have studied. He would know that it was rejected for inclusion in a meta analysis for its inferior methodology. He would know that the report he references said that sexual recidivism was lower in the time frame they studied but they didn't think it could be due to Megan's Law which may be effective but cost too much, they said they didn't know why recidivism was lower they just didn't think it was Megan's Law. So while Benjamin Radford claims "Megan's Law doesn't work" and that it is "crystal clear" - based on that study - he's either lying or ignorant. In either case - to attempt to persuade people on a topic such as this - or indeed any topic - while either lying or being ignorant is intellectual dishonesty.

The truth is, of course, that the answer is not crystal clear. Consensus has not been reached and the only conclusion most experts can agree upon is the fact the registry and community notification has been around for a relatively short period - not long enough to determine its effectiveness. He has written about this, spoken about this, written letters to lawmakers and journalists informing them that they have "inaccurate information". "It's a MYTH!", he says. He's tried to influence people with information he knows nothing about, information he failed to properly research, failed to analyze and failed to comprehend. For a self-hailed "critical thinker" I'm almost embarrassed for him.

I could explain to him that the registry is not important because it tells you where a sex offender "gets his mail" but because it tells you who he is. The vast majority of sexually abused children know their offender in some way. This includes parents, siblings, grandparents, uncles, neighbors, coaches, family friends, etc. The registry doesn't give parents a false sense of security when they should be looking at Uncle Joe and the soccer coach. No, it empowers the parents to know not to let Uncle Joe around the kids, or not to let Susie sleep over at Mary's house. It keeps known risks from coaching soccer or luring kids in the neighborhood to their home. It helps young single mothers know not to become involved with that terribly nice guy at church who just happens to be a child molester of 5 year old girls when she has a five year old girl. It brings them out of the shadows and adds one more tool to try to help keep our children safe.

This study offers evidence that suggests broad community notification has a deterrent effect on sex offense recidivism, thus providing support for rational choice theory as a framework within which to explain, predict, and control sexual offending.

Why does broad community notification appear to have a deterrent effect on sexual recidivism? Sexual offending and, more narrowly, sexual recidivism frequently involve offenders who know their victims. To a large extent, then, sexual reoffending is about social relationships. Existing research reveals that when sex offender recidivists victimize someone they know, it is often a collateral contact victim whom they met through a friend, acquaintance, or loved one.

Examples include an offender who victimizes his girlfriends son or daughter, an offender who molests the daughter of a friend or acquaintance, or an offender who baby-sits the children of an acquaintance or co-worker. In all of these examples, the offender is able to gain access to the victim by first establishing a relationship with the victims parent, guardian, or family member.

Sex offenders often operate under a veil of secrecy, which enables them to obtain access, either directly or indirectly, to unwitting victims. By lifting this veil, community notification may severely limit their opportunities to form the types of relationships that facilitate sexual offending.

Radford didn't read that report. There are a lot of reports he didn't read. He only read the ones that appeared to prove the position he set out to prove. So why does he care anyway? Radford said that the "sex offender panic" was important to him because

"if you don't understand a social problem you can't fix it"

But he didn't try to understand the problem, he merely tried to prove there wasn't a problem at all and that none of our tools were helpful to combat it.......if there were a problem. He was intellectually dishonest.

I believe Benjamin Radford ran out of mythical monsters to disprove and decided to try and disprove real ones. He was ill equipped to do so and fundamentally misguided. Not only is this a complex issue beyond his mediocre "critical thinking" skills which he didn't even attempt to apply but only skimmed the surface and declared it was "crystal clear". He had already made up his mind. He's not a skeptic. Not really. A skeptic would have delved deeper, a skeptic would have eventually realized that the answer is not in that DOJ report. The answer is not so simple as all that.

Benjamin Radford is only "skeptical" about certain things. Things that will get him attention mostly. He doesn't believe in God, ghosts, psychics or Big foot. He doesn't believe in monsters who damage our children's hearts and their souls. I suppose he doesn't believe they even have one.

I issue a challenge to Benjamin Radford to actually do some real research in earnest on this topic otherwise he should apologize for being intellectually dishonest and retract the uninformed statements he's made. This is not Bigfoot. This is very real. You see, unlike Big Foot there are living, breathing witnesses to the monsters that do exist in this world. Benjamin Radford has become a victim-denier.

Personally I don't think he has the ability or the integrity to do either, so my expectations are low. I believe Benjamin Radford should stick with what he knows best: taste-testing gourmet monster dung

"On average most sex offenders are never caught again for a new sex offense, after five years, between 10 and 15 percent of sex offenders are detected, often convicted, of committing a new sex offense. If you follow them for ten years the rates go up somewhat, if you follow them as long as we’ve been able to follow them, which is about 20 years, the rates go up to somewhere between 30 to 40 percent of the total sample will eventually be caught for a new sex offense."

Dr. R. Karl Hansen

To Catch a Big Mouth

Benjamin Radford is a self-proclaimed "critical thinker", "research journalist", editor of The Skeptical Enquirer and author of a couple of very strange books and articles. I say strange because in Media Mythmakers he attempts to prove

"the ways in which deception is used in various media to influence decision making and public policy"

While I know for a fact that media is sometimes deceptive I know something else as well, and that is the fact that Benjamin Radford is committing the same types of errors he's accusing the mainstream media of.

Radford's specialty is disproving things that cannot be disproven by using his so-called "critical thinking skills". The problem is: he forgot to use them.

Radford recently appeared on Americans Reality Check to promote his book and spread his propaganda. He believes the American people are lazy and incapable of thinking things through on their own. I find it strange that he believes news journalists influence the way people think while claiming they aren't doing their jobs if they don't tell them what to think.

Listen:

"Should you take aspirin daily to ward off a heart attack? Aspirin makers say yes. Others say that there isn't enough evidence that it's effective. Who do you believe? Presumably the journalist presenting a story will tell you-unless he or she is bound by agnostic objectivity, in which case you'll get both sides and a shrug."

I suppose I'm incapable of "thinking critically" because I fail to see why anyone would expect a journalist to analyze conflicting medical information and then tell people what the correct answer is....when he can't possibly know what the correct answer is. All he can really do is state his opinion and influence people - whether or not he's right.

Radford claims that since he's a "research journalist" he thoroughly researched his topic aware that what he wrote would be controversial. So I'm a little confused here as to how he came up with his conclusion that recidivism for sex offenders is very low. For a critical thinker he made the same mistake as so many pedophile activists do - taking the DOJ recidivism report at face value and failing to question or analyze the results.

Listen to Karl Hanson explain that 30 to 40% of registered sex offenders are caught with a new sex offense within 20 years:

Here Sarah Tofte of the Human Rights Watch explains how surprised she was to find that 25% of sex offenders recidivate:

And Mary and Kevin's own guest Dr. Fox - who they made sure to inform the audience was "an expert" in his field explains that the recidivism rate is approximately 22% over 15 years. Listen:

And here Dr. Fox explains the reason why the recidivism rate is actually higher than 22%:

Radford also holds tight to his belief that Megan's Law is ineffective. He bases this on the fact that he didn't find anything that said it was, and on his misinformed belief that the very premise of the law was faulty. He believes that Megan's family KNEW about the violent rapist living on their street, and yet none of the neighbors knew. It appears he didn't do his research. Nor did he read the Minnesota study regarding the effectiveness of Megan's Law (community notification). Which said:

"community notification reduced the risk of time to rearrest by 84 percent, reconviction by 89 percent, and reincarceration by 93 percent"

In addition to proliferating their misinterpretation of David Finkelhor's Internet Predator report, just like Cheryl Griffiths - he took this

"The publicity about online “predators” who prey on naive children using trickery and violence is largely inaccurate.

Most online sex offenders are adults who target teens and seduce victims into sexual relationships. They take time to develop the trust and confidence of victims, so that the youth see these relationships as romances or sexual adventures.

The youth most vulnerable to online sex offenders have histories of sexual or physical abuse, family problems, and tendencies to take risks both on- and offline."

to mean that either internet predators don't exist or that it's somehow acceptable to exploit minors - as long as you seduce them, groom them and aren't physically violent I suppose.

Benji dazzled the sex offenders with amazing feats of distorted critical thinking and factoid production. For example he believes that the sex offender registry does nothing to protect children, he bases this primarily on two things. One being the fact that most offenders are known to their victims and Two being the myth that sex offenders don't re-offend.

However, he fails to realize that a sex offender registry was never about 'strangers'. It is the very fact that offenders ARE known to their victims which makes the registry such a valuable tool. Nobody could memorize every person on the registry to be able to know them if they saw them on the street, however, they can absolutely know NOT to bring these monsters into their home.

Radford believes that those on the registry were convicted of minor crimes - he knows this for a fact because --- people who commit bad crimes go to prison for long periods of time. Listen:

How does that compare to Michael Jacques who raped a 13 year old girl, then an 18 year old girl, negotiated a plea deal - had the first rape expunged from his record, served a miniscule sentence and convinced a judge to let him off supervision several years early because he was a "probation success story" - even though he was sexually assaulting a child at the time........and continued to for the next 5 years. Is Jacques an exception?

Or how about John Couey? Another registered sex offender who went on to kidnap a child from her bed then rape her repeatedly for days and then bury her alive. Is he an exception?

Joseph Duncan raped a 9 year old boy at gunpoint when he was only 15 years old and stated that he had committed 13 rapes by the time he was 16. He was sentenced as a juvenile and went on a few years later to do the same to other kids. This time he served 14 years of a 20 year sentence, got out and immediately molested a 6 year old boy. The judge let him out on bail. And we all know what happened then, don't we? He's responsible for the deaths of at least 7 people. Is Duncan an exception? He said he wasn't in his sex offender propaganda he wrote. The propaganda that mirrors exactly the rhetoric of the current sex offender activist groups. In fact, he wrote

The truth is that I am not an exception, I am the rule! Most sex offenders are just like me

What about Jim Freeman, the one-time leader of the largest pro-sex offender activist group on the internet. Was he an exception? Or Jon Schillaci, or Johnny Ray Lee, how about Corey Deen Saunders who raped a 6 year old in the library after a judge refused to civilly commit him? Are they exceptions?

Sex offender activists who talk out both sides of their mouth claim men like this should have never been released in the first place. They say this while demanding an end to civil confinement and long prison sentences. So how are these people exceptional to them? Because they know NOW what they were capable of? When do you think they reached that conclusion? Certainly not before they created more victims.

Sex offender coddlers frequently demand that we realize how easy it is to end up being labeled a sex offender. They say things like "It could happen to anybody". The truth is entirely different of course. You don't sexually assault someone, groom and molest a child, or join the "greatest group of pedos" by accident. It is not something that "happens to you". But we do know that people are sexually offended against every single day, those are the people that something "happened to", we can see obviously, how easy it is to be sexually assaulted or have your child abused by a freak.

"Is this a serious problem? I mean, come on, the average child is far more likely to be killed in a car accident on the freeway than to be molested by some sex offender, so put these things in perspective."

Perspective?

In 2007 there were 41,259 traffic fatalities - this includes adults and children.

Every 13 minutes someone dies in a car accident.

In 2007 there were 248,000 victims of rape, attempted rape or sexual assault. (This figure DOES NOT include victims 12 years old and younger)

34% of all victims of sexual assault reported to law enforcement were under the age of 12.

Every 2 minutes someone in the United States is sexually assaulted.....not including children.

Now besides the obvious things wrong with his statements, I would strongly suggest that Mr. Radford is out of his league. Police Chiefs and Supreme Court Justices do not make the law, they never have and they never will as long as America's system of government continues. There are three branches of government, the executive branch, the legislative branch and the judicial branch. They function within a system of checks and balances. The primary function of the Supreme Court is not to analyze studies and reports and then make a determination of which they believe. Their function is to interpret the constitution despite what this critical thinking idiot believes. How embarrassing.

Mr Radford needs to go back to disproving Big Foot, or ghosts and ghoulies and other pretend monsters because he very successfully stuck a big foot in a very big mouth. There are over 40 millions survivors of very real monsters in America today. The monsters DO exist, survivors have lived to tell about it and we applaud their strength and courage for speaking up....despite the constant barrage of blaming, mocking and denial from such shallow thinking fools as Benjamin Radford.