Fuld udskrift: In the Dark - S1 E6 - Stranger Danger

I mørket: S1 E6 Stranger Danger

: Tidligere på In the Dark.

: “Rochelle, someone took Jacob. Someone took Jacob. There was a man with a gun, and he took Jacob.”

: Helikoptere scannede et område på 30 kvadratkilometer, mens eftersøgere til fods gennemkiggede området uden at finde et spor.

: I wanted everybody in the world looking for Jacob. It was like my son, you know, we’re talking, getting him home. We did what we had to, what we felt we had to.

: Lots of kids that are taken are not taken by some caring person and taken to Disneyland. They’re taken by someone who is into sexually assaulting children. And if you’re lucky, you’ll find the body in a field.

: We pulled out all the stops and turned them upside down. Sometimes, you just can’t get it.

: A few weeks after Jacob Wetterling was kidnapped, Jacob’s mom, Patty, started getting letters from all over the country. Letters from kids, kids who had heard about Jacob, and wanted to tell Jacob’s mom their own stories of violence and abuse.

: “This happened to me,” or “My sister ran away, and this happened, and this.” And it was like this growing … It’s like a snowball.

: Before Jacob was kidnapped, Patty thought she understood how the world worked. The lives of kids, as she understood them, revolved around homework, and hockey practice, and playing outside, and getting into small and quickly resolved fights with friends. But Jacob’s abduction and this deluge of letters forced Patty into a world she’d never imagined.

: It’s bigger than Jacob. I knew that right away.

: This is In the Dark, an investigative podcast from APM Reports. I’m Madeleine Baran. Today, we’re going to do something a little different. We’re going to leave the dead-end road where Jacob was kidnapped 27 years ago. We’re going to look outward, far beyond this tiny town, far beyond Minnesota even, and see how the fear about what had happened to Jacob, and what it seemed could happen to any child would grow and spread until it took the form of a federal law that would alter the lives of millions of Americans.

: Og for at forstå, hvordan alt dette skete, skal vi tilbage til 1980'erne, til den verden, som Jacob forsvandt ind i.

: Husk, en fremmed...

: Kan betyde fare. Nu ved jeg det.

: Og at vide det er halvdelen af kampen.

: GI Joe.

: Dengang var tanken om Stranger Danger overalt. Den var i tv-udsendelser, i tegnefilm om morgenen og i offentlige reklamer med uvidenskabelige og konstant skiftende tal for, hvor mange børn der forsvinder.

: If she gets into that car, that may be the last time you’ll see Jenny. I’m McGruff, the Crime Dog. See those kids? Every day in this country, 60 kids disappear. Some run away, but a lot are kidnapped by strangers, or even by people they know. Take a bite out of crime.

: Børnebortførelser og børnemishandling var en af de mest populære genrer i tv-film med ængstelige forældre.

: Min lille dreng var her.

: Ja.

: Så du, hvor han gik hen?

: Melodramatisk skuespil.

: Hvilken af dem gjorde dig ondt?

: Det gjorde de alle. De viste os det og tog billeder.

: Og grumme plottræk.

: Men hvordan er det sket?

: One day I’m off doing something for myself, you know. I don’t know, eating a Danish. And these people raping our baby.

: This idea began to take root at the edges of the public’s consciousness that thousands of child abductors were out there waiting to strike the moment we let down our guard, even though this is actually a really rare crime. And that fear, it grew into a kind of national hysteria.

: Dette er ikke en Halloween-fabel. Dette er en gyserhistorie fra det virkelige liv.

: De forsvundne børns ansigter begyndte at dukke op på mælkekartoner. Forældre tog fingeraftryk af deres børn, hvis nogen skulle have taget dem. Dagplejere blev beskyldt for at udføre sataniske ritualer på småbørn.

: A symbol of every parent’s worst fear.

: En voksende national tragedie er blevet til en national skandale.

: I was talking to a man named Ernie Allen about what it was like back then. He’s a national expert in child abductions. And back in the early ’80s, Ernie was one of the first people raising alarm about missing kids. He would go on to help found the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

: This was a time, late ’70s, early ’80s, in which there were some horrendous cases involving the abduction and murder of children. Adam Walsh in South Florida, Etan Patz in New York.

: These cases became iconic. You might remember some of them yourself. Etan Patz snatched away on his two-block walk to the bus in Manhattan, the first time he’d been allowed to make the trip by himself. Adam Walsh, taken from a Sears Department Store and found beheaded two weeks later in a drainage canal off the Florida Turnpike. Johnny Gosch disappeared from his paper route in West Des Moines, Iowa.

: It just frightened people and made people think something’s going on. Something is wrong. This is not about one sick city. It’s not about one Jack the Ripper. This is happening to greater or lesser degrees in communities across this country, and America has missed it.

: Da Jacob Wetterling blev kidnappet i 1989, efter et årti med hysteri, er offentligheden og lovgiverne sultne efter at gøre noget, hvad som helst, for at beskytte børn og sætte en stopper for børnebortførelser.

: Lige fra begyndelsen var efterforskerne i Jacob Wetterling-sagen overbevist om, at forbrydelsen passede ind i mønsteret for andre bortførelser af børn, at gerningsmanden havde et seksuelt motiv.

: Efterforskerne siger nu, at de har planer om at afhøre alle personer i Minnesota, der nogensinde er blevet dømt for en seksualforbrydelse eller forbrydelse mod børn. De vil gerne vide, hvor disse personer var søndag aften, da Jacob blev kidnappet.

: Den øverste FBI-agent på sagen på det tidspunkt, Jeff Jomar, fortalte journalisterne, hvordan det gik til.

: What we’re trying to find out where persons who had been convicted of this type of crime before were at 9:15, Sunday night.

: But it wasn’t easy. Back then, the files of people convicted of sex crimes were spread out in boxes in small town police departments, sheriff’s offices, courthouses. There wasn’t a central directory of people convicted of sexually assaulting children. So, when Jacob’s mom, Patty, started asking some of the investigators who worked on that case if there was anything that could have helped, they told her, “Yes, there was one thing.”

: Knowing who was in the area would have made things move a lot faster at expediting, you know, ruling out. Actually, it works to rule people out. If you know who’s done this before, and you have their name and address, you can go, “Where were you?”, you know, right through the list much more quickly.

: What law enforcement and Patty had in mind was a private registry of the addresses of sex offenders, so they could quickly find all of the sex offenders who lived in a certain area. Some states already had laws like that, but Minnesota wasn’t one of them. So, about a year after Jacob was kidnapped, with the case still unsolved, Patty pushed for a state law to create a registry in Minnesota. But there was no national registry. Patty worried that offenders could easily cross state lines.

: I was, at that point, working closely with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. And people were calling the National Center and finding out which states don’t have sex offender registry. “My brother’s getting out of prison soon, and he’s trying to decide where he should live.” So, it was like, “Well, we can fix that.” So, we did. We just did it.

: I 1993, ca. fire år efter Jacob blev kidnappet, fremsatte en amerikansk repræsentant fra Minnesota et lovforslag i Kongressen, Jacob Wetterling Act, som ville kræve, at alle stater hvert år skulle kontrollere sexforbryderes adresser og føre registre over sexforbrydere. Patty forestillede sig registret som noget, der var beregnet til retshåndhævelse.

: Det var ikke beregnet til at være åbent for offentligheden.

: Men så-

: Lige før, du ved, vi var allerede ved at være klar til at færdiggøre lovforslaget, da Megan Kanka blev kidnappet.

: Megan Kanka, she was a 7-year-old girl from New Jersey who was raped and murdered by a convicted sex offender who lived across the street. Megan’s parents didn’t know the man was a sex offender. So, they asked Patty if they could add one tiny seemingly minor addition to the Jacob Wetterling Act, just a couple of words.

: Så de tilføjede en sætning, der siger, at de retshåndhævende myndigheder kan underrette samfundet, når en voldsforbryder løslades.

: May notify the community, it didn’t seem like much.

: But I had this nagging thought in the back of my head from the first time I heard it. I had this nagging thought, “What would the general public do with that information?” But I would be going against another victim family who saw another need. And I wasn’t strong enough to say, “No, I don’t think so.”

: Jacob Wetterling-loven om registrering af forbrydelser mod børn blev vedtaget som en del af den føderale lov om kriminalitet fra 1994. Den markerede begyndelsen på en ny måde at tænke på seksualforbrydere på i dette land. Og da først tanken om, at denne gruppe af mennesker, sexforbrydere, skulle registreres og spores, var der ingen vej tilbage.

: Two years later, in 1996, Congress passed Megan’s Law. It took the idea of community notification, something that had been voluntary in the Wetterling Act, and made it mandatory. Now, local law enforcement had to notify communities about most sex offenders moving into their neighborhoods.

: I dag advarer Amerika om, at hvis du vover at udnytte dine børn, vil loven følge dig, uanset hvor du går fra stat til stat, fra by til by.

: This is letting parents know that the fox is in the hen house. Are we mad and bitter? No, but we’re sick of seeing these people get all the rights, and our children and the parents not getting any rights.

: Fra da af virkede det, som om det næsten blev en konkurrence. Hvem kan vedtage de mest restriktive love om sexforbrydere?

: Der bliver stadig mere trommehvirvel for at skærpe lovgivningen om seksuelle rovdyr.

: Spørgsmålet er, om der er noget, der kan virke, bortset fra livsvarigt fængsel eller henrettelse?

: Kongressen vedtog en lov, der sagde, at de mest alvorlige sexforbrydere skulle være registreret på livstid.

: By enacting this law, we’re sending a clear message across the country. Those who prey on our children will be caught, prosecuted, and punished to the fullest extent of the law.

: Registreringerne blev udvidet til at omfatte personer, der begår alle former for seksualforbrydelser, ikke kun forbrydelser mod børn. Nogle mennesker ender nu på registre for at sende et nøgenbillede af sig selv til deres kæreste eller for at tisse udenfor. Teenagere begyndte at blive opført på registre. Det blev bare ved med at fortsætte. Flere og flere love, flere og flere restriktioner.

: Missouri State Law requires sex offenders on Halloween night to turn off porch lights at 5:00, stay inside until 10:30, and post signs like this that say, “No candy or treats can be found inside.”

: Et sted har man indført en lov, der forbyder visse seksualforbrydere adgang til offentlige stormvejrshjem. Guvernøren i New York har endda forbudt visse sexforbrydere at spille Pokemon Go.

: Embedsmændene er bekymrede for at lokke en del af spillet til sig. Med 38.000 registrerede sexforbrydere i staten New York frygter de, at det kan være let at forfalske et ID og forfølge et barn, der spiller.

: Earlier this year, President Obama signed International Megan’s Law. It requires authorities to mark the passports of US citizens who have been convicted of certain sex crimes against children with what they call a visual identifier, presumably a stamp; though the government has yet to figure out what the exact marking will be. The marking passports, by the way, is something we’ve never done before in this country for any kind of crime.

: As efforts to get tough on sex offenders picked up steam, Jacob’s mom, Patty, was right on the front lines with the parents of other abducted kids pushing for more laws, for more restrictions. She met with President Clinton in the Oval Office, appeared at a news conference in front of the White House, and became a nationally-renowned advocate for child safety. She even ran unsuccessfully for Congress three times on a platform of keeping kids safe.

: When her son was abducted 17 years ago, Patty Wetterling told herself she’d do everything possible to bring Jacob home and everything possible to protect other families. From Minnesota to the US Congress, Patty Wetterling forced gridlock legislators to pass new laws to prevent child abduction, lock sexual predators behind bars, and keep our families safe. An ordinary Minnesotan with extraordinary courage.

: I’m Patty Wetterling, and I approved this message.

: But Patty couldn’t shake that nagging thought in the back of her mind that maybe some of this wasn’t such a good idea. She began getting another type of letter, letters from parents, parents of kids who had been put on sex offender registries. And one day, she went to Alabama to speak at a treatment center for kids who had been convicted of sex crimes.

: I walked in, and there all these kids wearing blue jeans and blue work shirts. You know, they’re kids. And the youngest one had just had his 10th birthday, and he was experimenting with a cousin or something when a relative walked in, and was horrified, and named him a sex offender. And I was so devastated by that.

: Og til sidst begyndte hun endda at tage ud i fængsler for at tale med voksne sexforbrydere for at forsøge at hjælpe dem.

: I want them to see a personal side, and I don’t need to be mean, and angry, and yelling at them. I want to show them a compassionate side of life.

: Patty thought more about all these sex offenders, about what all these laws and restrictions meant for them. She began to think about all this in a different way. She began to think, “I want these sex offenders to have a successful life.”

: Because that would mean no more victims, and that’s the goal. But we we let our emotions run away from us achieving that goal.

: And some of these laws, the way Patty began to see it, were actually doing the opposite. They’re making it harder for sex offenders to rejoin society in a way that was safe for everyone.

: You’re screwed. You will not get a job. You will not find housing. This is on your record forever, and ever, and ever. Good luck.

: Today, the best estimate is that there are about 850,000 people on sex offender registries in this country. That’s about 1 in 400 people.

: There’s something that I think is really important to remember here, these are people who have already served their time. Many have spent years in prison. And this is the only crime that we do this for. Murderers don’t get put on a public registry. Arsonists don’t. Thinking about all this, it sounded unconstitutional.

: So, I got in touch with a guy who has studied sex offender laws extensively, even written a book about them. His name is Eric Janus. He’s a lawyer and former head of William Mitchell Law School in Minnesota. Janus told me that, yes, it’s true, the state is not allowed to punish people after they’ve served their sentences. That would violate the Constitution. But sex offender laws, according to the Supreme Court, are not punishment. They’re regulation.

: I think, and I don’t mean this in any kind of provocative way, but it’s like we’re regulating nuclear waste. We’re not punishing the nuclear waste. We are making sure that it’s kept away from us at a safe distance. And that’s perfectly acceptable, and the law does that kind of thing all the time. It’s not punishment. It’s regulation.

: Problemet er, at disse love tager udgangspunkt i denne idé og anvender den på mennesker. Og disse love behandler mennesker som om de er farlige genstande, der har visse farlige egenskaber.

: Som farligt affald?

: Præcis, som farligt affald.

: If someone is hazardous waste, there’s no safety measure that goes too far.

: But we’ll take a little quick right, to the right. Let’s go here. You’re not making it too obvious.

: For et par måneder siden sendte vi en producer ved navn Rowan Moore Gerety ud for at se, hvor disse love har ført os hen. Rowan mødtes med Marcos omkring et kommercielt område i Miami, kendt som "the spot".

: But there’s tents, and a few cars parked on here.

: The spot isn’t a house or an apartment complex. It’s just this outside area, a parking lot basically, next to some warehouses. And it’s where some of Miami’s sex offenders live. Marcos used to live here too.

: Here to my left, right behind, just next to the lighting pole is where I was parked there. Right there all the time. Right in front of me, there’ll be a gentleman pitching a tent every night with a car in front of us as well. So, you’ll see-

: Marcos as a Marine Corps veteran. When he was 21 years old, he tried to meet up for sex with two teenage girls he’d met in an internet chat room. The girls turned out to be undercover officers. Marcos went to prison for seven years and got out last year. He’s still on probation, and wears an ankle monitor. He asked us not to use his last name because he doesn’t want to be threatened or harassed.

: Marcos vil stå bag mig. Marcos vil være her.

Da Marcos var ved at være klar til at komme ud af fængslet, begyndte han at tænke på, hvor han skulle bo.

: You know, you’re like,”It can’t be that bad. You know, there’s got to be a place to live. It can’t be hard.”

: Men det viste sig, at det var så svært. I Miami, hvor Marcos bor, skal sexforbrydere bo mere end 2.500 meter fra en skole og mere end 1.000 meter fra en børnehave eller legeplads.

: That area right there, it’s good for any sex offender to live in. Right where we were at maybe five seconds ago, it is not good for sex.

: What’s a thousand feet that way?

: I have no clue, but the circle goes around in and as the crow flies. So, that means that, pretty much, there’s got to be some sort of school around there or some sort of daycare.

: Just think for a minute what this means. Imagine taking out a map of Miami and drawing a circle around every day care center and playground, a thousand feet in diameter. And drawing a larger circle 2500 feet around every school. And then, coloring in all those circles with a red marker. Once you’re done, almost the entire map will be red. That’s the map of Miami that Marcos has to work with for the rest of his life.

: Da Marcos først kom ud af fængslet, lykkedes det ham at finde en lejlighed, der passede til alle begrænsninger, og det går fint. Men så, omkring et år senere -

: Someone must have seen the registry, and they notified them. They notified the property that there was a sex offender living on the property. Obviously, you know, your face is plastered all over the internet. Anyone can punch in their address, and they’ll know you’re living close to them. And then, I mean, just that label itself, that says enough. You know, it’s the worst label you can have pretty much.

: The property manager gave Marcos 10 days to get out. That’s how he ended up at the spot. His probation officer told him about it.

: She said, “Look, if you don’t find housing, this is where all the sex offenders are staying at.”

: Første gang Marcos gik hen til stedet var om eftermiddagen. Han ville undersøge stedet, før det blev mørkt.

: And I was like, “Wait a second. Here?” I’m thinking more of a safer area, I guess, you could say. And yeah, I mean, it was surreal that this exists in the United States. Forced homelessness is pretty much what it is. It’s a makeshift prison. If you think about it, it’s like one of those prisons in the future.

: But Marcos didn’t have any other choices. So, he found a place to park and moved in.

: Hvor går folk på toilettet?

: To be honest with you, my case, I went in a cup and a Gatorade bottle that I had in my car. I mean, it’s not safe to get out, obviously, at nighttime. At nighttime, there’s no lighting at all here. You don’t want to be, you know, going in and out of your car. You never know who’s out there waiting for you.

: Here’s what seems especially absurd about this. The spot was where Marcos had to come to sleep. It guaranteed that when Marcos was sleeping, he’d be far away from children. But during the day, he could pretty much go wherever he wanted.

: Later on, as the night gets closer, you’ll see a lot more cars here. I mean, this place is packed pretty much.

: Fra den første nat, han sov her, forsøgte Marcos at komme væk fra stedet for at finde et hus, han kunne flytte ind i. Og Marcos var bedre stillet end mange andre på stedet. Han drev sin egen forretning. Han havde råd til at købe et hus. Men da han kiggede på sit kort over Miami, det kort, han havde til at arbejde med, med alle de røde cirkler omkring børnehaver, skoler og legepladser, var der kun omkring 80-90 huse i hele Miami Dade County, som lå uden for disse røde cirkler, ikke huse til salg, huse i det hele taget.

: I was honestly looking. I was looking every day at the map where I could buy the houses. I told that to my best friend who was my realtor. I told him we’re finding a needle in a haystack here.

: Marcos kiggede på sit kort over, hvor han kunne bo.

: Small pockets. Some pockets were small as two homes. Some pockets were as big as 30 homes. And I remember the pockets. I wrote them all down. And then, I went on to Zillow.com, you know, the housing website. I would kind of like go off each other, kind of, you know, “Okay, there’s no different in this than here. Okay, now, go back to this site. Where’s more houses for sale? Boom.” Kind of constantly going back and forth, back and forth, back and forth looking every single day.

: Efter tre måneders uafbrudt søgen.

: Ja. Kan du vise mig rundt?

: Sure. It’s a new home. I mean, the main thing is that it was good for my residence restrictions.

: Marcos fandt endelig et hus, der opfyldte alle restriktioner for sexforbrydere, og han flyttede ind.

: It’s this little issue right here, which is nothing but a blanket pretty much. It’s better than sleeping in a car, which is what I was doing for the past two months and a half.

: Marcos siger, at hele denne oplevelse har fået ham til at føle sig som en udstødt.

: Og jeg sagde, at det vigtigste, jeg ønsker at få overbragt, er retfærdighed, ikke kun over for mig, men også over for de andre fyre, der ikke har nogen vej ud. Og noget, jeg gjorde for 10 år siden, vil hjemsøge mig resten af mit liv. Men jeg håber, at folk vil indse, at disse love ikke har noget formål. Disse love er der kun for at straffe dem yderligere. Intet andet.

: You can trace all of this, all these laws, the laws affecting Marcos, the spot, the passport markings, the Halloween restrictions directly back to a few specially dramatic abductions of children by strangers. The goal of all these laws was to protect kids from these kinds of crimes. And so, the obvious question is, did they work? Did they reduce the number of kids getting abducted by strangers? Jacob’s mom, Patty, have the same question.

: Is it working, or is it not working? You can’t pass legislation, and then 20 years later, strengthen it without any proof that it’s doing what it was set out to do.

: Så jeg gik på jagt efter dette bevis. Jeg indkaldte Will Craft, en datareporter, som jeg arbejder sammen med.

: Hej, Will.

: Hej.

: Så tak fordi du kom.

: Det er ikke noget problem.

: Og jeg bad ham prøve at finde ud af, om der er færre børn, der bliver kidnappet af fremmede i dag, nu hvor vi har alle disse love.

: Dette er den mest forvirrende rejse, jeg har været på.

: You’d think this would be pretty easy to figure out, that you just go to the FBI and say, “FBI, how many kids are kidnapped by strangers every year?” And they’d say, “Glad you asked. Here’s our annual report on that very topic.”

: The FBI’s website even says, “Get in touch with us if you want archived statistics.”

: So, Will get in touch. The FBI said, “Submit a FOIA request for the data.” FOIA stands for Freedom of Information Act. It’s the formal way you request records from the federal government.

: So, I submitted a FOIA request. It was rejected. I submitted a second FOIA request, and then a FOIA negotiator got in touch with me and said, “We can’t give you the information that you want. They say it’s too difficult to gather all of it, and would take a really long time.”

: Hvem er de?

: That’s a good question. I asked, “Who is they?” And the FOIA negotiators said, “I’m not allowed to tell you.” And then, I pressed her on that, and I said, “Well, I’d want to know, is this the people who have gathered the data? Is this the custodians of the data?” And she said, “I would really like to tell you more, but I would get in trouble with my bosses if I released any more information about this basically.”

: Hvorfor?

: She wouldn’t tell me that either. It’s very strange.

: Hun fortalte til sidst Will, at oplysningerne om dette var i papirdokumenter, der var opbevaret i kasser.

: She basically said, “I cannot tell you where, and I cannot tell you who is in control of it.”

: Tror du, at du bad om atomkoderne?

: Ja, jeg mener ...

: So far, the FBI has refused to let us look inside those boxes. And even if they did, we still wouldn’t be able to figure out whether fewer kids are being abducted these days. That’s because the whole process of local law enforcement reporting missing kids to the FBI is voluntary. A lot of local agencies don’t do it.

: There’s no national requirement. There’s no national standard for how these things need to be reported.

: Jeg blev ved med at undersøge dette. Og til sidst fandt jeg ud af, at Kongressen faktisk kræver, at justitsministeriet gennemfører det, som det kalder Periodic National Incident Studies, for at finde ud af, hvor mange børn der forsvinder, og hvor mange der bliver fundet. Men i de sidste tre årtier har ministeriet kun foretaget to af disse undersøgelser.

: Den første vedrørte 1988. Der blev taget stikprøver fra 83 retshåndhævende myndigheder, og det blev anslået, at 200-300 børn i USA blev bortført af fremmede det år. Den anden undersøgte 1999. Den omfattede mere end 4 000 myndigheder og anslog, at 115 børn blev kidnappet det år.

: But these numbers don’t tell us anything because they’re only two years, and they used different methods of counting, so you can’t compare them. The federal government actually says not to.

: This is like shining a flashlight into a cave. You see a small number of cases, and you get a few details, but there’s so much still left in the dark.

: Yeah. And you don’t know, like, if you were to shine it in a different area, like, would you be looking at something completely different?

: Ja, for dette er på ingen måde en videnskabelig undersøgelse af dette. Der er bare så mange forbehold. Disse tal er ubrugelige.

: Will og jeg brugte seks måneder på at undersøge dette. Og i sidste ende fandt vi næsten ingen data om det, som lovgivere, medier og popkultur har fået os til at tro er en af de værste trusler mod børn i dette land.

: We spent a lot of time doing work that can basically be summed up by the shrug emoji. It’s like, “Ugh.”

: That’s so depressing.

: Jep.

: For et par måneder siden, før Wetterlings fandt ud af, hvad der var sket med deres søn for næsten 27 år siden, tog jeg sammen med vores producer, Samara, over for at tale med Patty Wetterling.

: Godmorgen. Hej.

: Kom ind.

: Tak.

: It’s finally spring.

: Vi ville gerne tale med hende om, hvordan hun nu har det med de love, som hun spillede en så vigtig rolle i at skabe, især den lov, der startede alt dette, nemlig den lov, der kræver, at alle stater skal have registre over sexforbrydere.

: Kontrollerer du registreringsdatabasen med jævne mellemrum?

: No. It doesn’t do me any good to know the registry. I know they’re out there. So, no, I don’t I don’t check registries.

: Mener du, at et offentligt register er en god idé?

: You ask hard questions. I think, the way it was set up at the beginning can be a helpful law enforcement tool, much as, the same as when you get pulled over by a state trooper, they got your entire record, man. They know what you’ve been up to. And if it’s been a lot, they may be more likely to issue the ticket than the warning. And it’s all there. Your neighbors don’t know that. Most people don’t know that. And the rest of the world doesn’t need to know that.

: It’s hard. It just seems like where we’re at right now, it’s like-

: We’re stuck. Right now, we’re stuck because it’s a trap. We want people to be angry about sexual assault. And then, when they’re angry about it, they want to toughen it up for these people, you know, these bad boys who do this. And if we can set aside the emotions, what we really want is no more victims. Don’t do it again. So, how can we get there? Labeling them and not allowing them community support doesn’t work. So, I’ve turned 360 or, no, 180 from where I was.

: Patty ønskede, at hendes arv skulle være en verden, der var bedre for børn, en mere sikker og lykkeligere verden. Men hun sagde, at hun er bekymret for, at alle disse love faktisk har fået folk til at forkaste denne idé og i stedet betragte verden som grundlæggende voldelig, mørk og mistænkelig med fare, der lurer bag hvert hjørne.

: It’s all the fear. I think, fear is really harmful in this topic. You’re more likely to get struck by lightning than to get kidnapped. But the fear of sexual abuse, especially with parents, is huge. And they think that making their kids scared is going to keep them safer, and that’s absolutely not true. It’s probably the opposite.

: Og Patty fortalte mig, at der er langt større sandsynlighed for, at børn bliver udsat for skade af en person, de kender, end af en fremmed eller en registreret sexforbryder.

: It is somebody who knows the family and knows the child, the teachers, the coaches. They are in our community, and it’s not somebody jumping out from the bushes.

: Here’s what seems so remarkable to me about this. Patty’s own experience is of her son being taken by a stranger in the dark. It really is that nightmare scenario. And yet, what she’s telling us is that we should not be making any more laws based on what happened to Jacob. But we did talk about Jacob. We talked about Danny Heinrich. By that point, Heinrich was already known to the public as a possible suspect in Jacob’s kidnapping, but he hadn’t confessed yet.

: I just want to say this after all of our hours and hours of conversing. Most of the offenders, most of the suspects that we have had were never on a registry. Danny Heinrich that they have now, he wouldn’t have been a registered sex offender.

: Danny Heinrich had never been convicted of a sex crime. Even if all of these laws had been in place back then, it wouldn’t have mattered. None of them would have alerted authorities to Heinrich.

: And even when Patty learned all the awful things that Danny Heinrich had done to her son, she didn’t ask people to be more vigilant or pass tougher laws. Instead, she asked people to play with their children, to eat ice cream, to laugh, and to help their neighbors. She asked people to celebrate living in the kind of world where Jacob lived before he was kidnapped, a world where people were so scared of each other.

: Næste gang i "In the Dark".

: Crimes are being committed that were unsolvable for the education and background of the individual who’s holding a position of chair.

: Mordet chokerede det landlige Stearns County-samfund og efterlod efterforskere fra State Crime Bureau og sheriffs i en forvirret søgen efter en eller anden form for årsag til drabene.

: All at once, we’re locking doors.

: Ja, ja, ja.

: Vi begyndte at have en pistol i huset på dette tidspunkt.

: Hvad har ændret sig i løbet af disse 40 år? Intet har ændret sig. Så de problemer, der fandtes for 40 år siden og længere tilbage, er stadig til stede i dag, men der skal være et element for at opnå ansvarlighed. Og når der ikke er ansvarlighed, sker der katastrofale ting.

: In the Dark er produceret af Samara Freemark. Den associerede producent er Natalie Jablonski. In the Dark er redigeret af Catherine Winter med hjælp fra Hans Buetow. Chefredaktør for APM Reports er Chris Worthington. Webredaktører eller Dave Peters og Andy Kruse. Videografen er Jeff Thompson. Tak til Rowan Moore Gerety for hans reportage i Miami. Yderligere rapportering til denne episode af Will Craft og Emily Haavik. Vores temamusik er komponeret af Gary Meister. Denne episode er mixet af Johnny Vince Evans.

: Go to InTheDarkPodcast.org to watch a video of Patty Wetterling talking about how she’s changed the way she thinks about sex offender registries, and to find ways to get help if you or someone you know has been sexually assaulted.

: In the Dark er til dels muliggjort takket være vores lyttere. Du kan støtte mere uafhængig journalistik som denne på InTheDarkPodcasts.org/donate.

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