Vollständiges Transcript: In the Dark - S1 E6 - Fremde Gefahr

In the Dark: S1 E6 Fremde Gefahr

: Zuvor bei In the Dark.

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

: Hubschrauber suchten ein Gebiet von 30 Quadratmeilen ab, während die Sucher unten zu Fuß das Gebiet durchkämmten, ohne eine Spur zu finden.

: 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.

: Um zu verstehen, wie es dazu kam, müssen wir in die 1980er Jahre zurückgehen, in die Welt, in der Jacob verschwand.

: Vergessen Sie nicht, dass ein Fremder...

: Kann Gefahr bedeuten. Nun, ich weiß.

: Und Wissen ist die halbe Miete.

: GI Joe.

: Damals war die Idee der "Fremden Gefahr" allgegenwärtig. Sie war in Fernsehsendungen und Zeichentrickfilmen zu sehen, in Werbespots mit unwissenschaftlichen und sich ständig ändernden Zahlen darüber, wie viele Kinder vermisst werden.

: 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.

: Kindesentführungen und Kindesmissbrauch waren eines der beliebtesten Genres von Fernsehfilmen für besorgte Eltern.

: Mein kleiner Junge war hier.

: Ja.

: Haben Sie gesehen, wo er hingegangen ist?

: Melodramatisches Schauspiel.

: Wer von ihnen hat Sie verletzt?

: Das taten sie alle. Sie haben es uns gezeigt und Fotos gemacht.

: Und reißerische Handlungsstränge.

: Aber wie ist es dazu gekommen?

: 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.

: Dies ist kein Halloween-Märchen. Dies ist eine Horrorgeschichte aus dem wahren Leben.

: Die Gesichter vermisster Kinder tauchten auf Milchkartons auf. Eltern nahmen von ihren Kindern Fingerabdrücke, für den Fall, dass jemand sie entführt. Tagesmütter wurden beschuldigt, satanische Rituale an Kleinkindern durchzuführen.

: A symbol of every parent’s worst fear.

: Eine zunehmende nationale Tragödie ist zu einem nationalen Skandal geworden.

: 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.

: Nach der Entführung von Jacob Wetterling im Jahr 1989, nach einem Jahrzehnt der Hysterie, wollen die Öffentlichkeit und der Gesetzgeber unbedingt etwas tun, um Kinder zu schützen und Kindesentführungen ein Ende zu setzen.

: Von Anfang an waren die Ermittler im Fall Jacob Wetterling davon überzeugt, dass das Verbrechen in das Muster anderer Kindesentführungen passte und dass der Täter ein sexuelles Motiv hatte.

: Die Ermittler wollen nun alle Personen in Minnesota befragen, die jemals wegen eines Sexualverbrechens oder eines Verbrechens gegen Kinder verurteilt worden sind. Sie wollen wissen, wo diese Personen Sonntagnacht waren, als Jacob entführt wurde.

: Der damalige leitende FBI-Agent, Jeff Jomar, erklärte Reportern, wie dies funktionierte.

: 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.

: 1993, etwa vier Jahre nach Jacobs Entführung, brachte ein US-Abgeordneter aus Minnesota einen Gesetzentwurf in den Kongress ein, das Jacob-Wetterling-Gesetz, das alle Bundesstaaten verpflichten sollte, die Adressen von Sexualstraftätern jedes Jahr zu überprüfen und Register von Sexualstraftätern zu führen. Patty stellte sich das Register als etwas vor, das für die Strafverfolgung gedacht war.

: Sie war nicht für die breite Öffentlichkeit bestimmt.

: Aber dann...

: Wir waren schon kurz davor, den Gesetzentwurf fertig zu stellen, als Megan Kanka entführt wurde.

: 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.

: Daher wurde ein Satz hinzugefügt, der besagt, dass die Strafverfolgungsbehörden die Gemeinde bei der Entlassung eines Gewalttäters informieren können.

: 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.”

: Das Jacob-Wetterling-Gesetz zur Registrierung von Straftaten gegen Kinder wurde 1994 als Teil des Bundeskriminalitätsgesetzes verabschiedet. Es markierte den Beginn einer neuen Denkweise in Bezug auf Sexualstraftäter in diesem Land. Und sobald sich die Idee durchgesetzt hatte, dass diese Gruppe von Menschen, die Sexualstraftäter, registriert und verfolgt werden sollte, gab es kein Zurück mehr.

: 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.

: Heute warnt Amerika, dass, wenn Sie es wagen, sich an Ihren Kindern zu vergreifen, das Gesetz Sie verfolgen wird, wo immer Sie hingehen, von Staat zu Staat, von Stadt zu Stadt.

: 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.

: Von da an schien es fast ein Wettbewerb zu sein. Wer kann die restriktivsten Gesetze für Sexualstraftäter erlassen?

: Die Forderung nach einer Verschärfung der Gesetze gegen Sexualstraftäter wird immer lauter.

: Die Frage ist, ob etwas anderes als eine lebenslange Haftstrafe oder eine Hinrichtung möglich ist.

: Der Kongress verabschiedete ein Gesetz, das vorsah, dass die schwersten Sexualstraftäter lebenslang in einem Register geführt werden mussten.

: 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.

: Die Register wurden erweitert, um Menschen zu erfassen, die alle Arten von Sexualverbrechen begehen, nicht nur Verbrechen gegen Kinder. Manche Menschen landen nun in Registern, weil sie ihrem Freund ein Nacktfoto von sich selbst geschickt haben oder weil sie draußen gepinkelt haben. Teenager wurden in die Register aufgenommen. Und so ging es weiter. Immer mehr Gesetze, immer mehr Einschränkungen.

: 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.”

: An einem Ort gibt es ein Gesetz, das bestimmten Sexualstraftätern den Zutritt zu öffentlichen Notunterkünften verbietet. Der Gouverneur von New York hat einigen Sexualstraftätern sogar verboten, Pokemon Go zu spielen.

: Die Beamten sind besorgt über die anlockende Komponente des Spiels. Bei 38.000 registrierten Sexualstraftätern im Bundesstaat New York befürchten sie, dass es leicht sein könnte, einen Ausweis zu fälschen und ein Kind als Spieler zu verfolgen.

: 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.

: Und schließlich ging sie sogar in Gefängnisse, um mit erwachsenen Sexualstraftätern zu sprechen und ihnen zu helfen.

: 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.

: Das Problem ist, dass diese Gesetze diese Idee auf Menschen anwenden. Und diese Gesetze behandeln Menschen, als wären sie gefährliche Objekte, die bestimmte gefährliche Eigenschaften haben.

: Wie Sondermüll?

: Genau, wie Sondermüll.

: 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.

: Vor ein paar Monaten haben wir einen Produzenten namens Rowan Moore Gerety losgeschickt, um zu sehen, wohin uns diese Gesetze geführt haben. Rowan traf sich mit Marcos in einem Gewerbegebiet in Miami, das als "Spot" bekannt ist.

: 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 wird hinter mir stehen. Marcos wird hier sein.

Als Marcos sich auf seine Entlassung aus dem Gefängnis vorbereitete, begann er darüber nachzudenken, wo er leben wollte.

: 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.”

: Aber es stellte sich heraus, dass es so schwierig war. In Miami, wo Marcos lebt, müssen Sexualstraftäter mehr als 2.500 Meter von einer Schule und mehr als 1.000 Meter von einer Kindertagesstätte oder einem Spielplatz entfernt wohnen.

: 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.

: Als Marcos aus dem Gefängnis kam, gelang es ihm, eine Wohnung zu finden, die allen Anforderungen entsprach, und die Dinge liefen gut. Aber dann, etwa ein Jahr später...

: 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.”

: Das erste Mal ging Marcos am Nachmittag zu diesem Ort. Er wollte sich den Ort ansehen, bevor es dunkel wurde.

: 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.

: Wo gehen die Menschen auf die Toilette?

: 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.

: Seit der ersten Nacht, in der er hier schlief, versuchte Marcos, den Ort zu verlassen und ein Haus zu finden, in das er ziehen konnte. Und Marcos ging es besser als vielen anderen an diesem Ort. Er führte sein eigenes Geschäft. Er konnte es sich leisten, ein Haus zu kaufen. Aber als er sich seine Karte von Miami ansah, die Karte, mit der er arbeiten musste, mit all den roten Kreisen um die Kindertagesstätten, Schulen und Spielplätze, gab es in ganz Miami Dade County nur etwa 80 oder 90 Häuser, die außerhalb dieser roten Kreise lagen, nicht Häuser zum Verkauf, sondern Häuser überhaupt.

: 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 sah sich seine Karte an, auf der er eingezeichnet hatte, wo er wohnen könnte.

: 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.

: Nach drei Monaten ununterbrochener Suche.

: Ja, klar. Kannst du mich herumführen?

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

: Marcos fand schließlich ein Haus, das alle Auflagen für Sexualstraftäter erfüllte, und zog dort ein.

: 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 sagt, dass er sich durch diese ganze Erfahrung wie ein Ausgestoßener fühlt.

: Und ich habe gesagt, dass ich vor allem Fairness vermitteln will, nicht nur mir, sondern auch den anderen, die keinen Ausweg haben, wissen Sie. Und etwas, das ich vor 10 Jahren getan habe, wird mich für den Rest meines Lebens verfolgen. Aber ich hoffe, dass die Leute erkennen, dass diese Gesetze keinen Zweck haben. Diese Gesetze sind nur dazu da, um weiter bestraft zu werden. Für nichts anderes.

: 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.

: Also machte ich mich auf die Suche nach diesem Beweis. Ich habe Will Craft hinzugezogen, einen Datenreporter, mit dem ich zusammenarbeite.

: Hey, Will.

: Hallo.

: Danke, dass Sie gekommen sind.

: Kein Problem.

: Und ich habe ihn gebeten, herauszufinden, ob heutzutage, wo wir all diese Gesetze haben, weniger Kinder von Fremden entführt werden.

: Dies ist die verblüffendste Reise, die ich je gemacht habe.

: 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.”

: Wer sind sie?

: 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.”

: Warum?

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

: Sie erzählte Will schließlich, dass sich die Informationen dazu in Papierdokumenten befanden, die in Kisten aufbewahrt wurden.

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

: Sie glauben, Sie hätten nach den Atomwaffen-Codes gefragt?

: Ja, ich meine ...

: 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.

: Ich bin der Sache weiter nachgegangen. Und schließlich fand ich heraus, dass der Kongress das Justizministerium tatsächlich verpflichtet, so genannte Periodic National Incident Studies durchzuführen, um herauszufinden, wie viele Kinder verschwinden und wie viele gefunden werden. Aber in den letzten drei Jahrzehnten hat das Ministerium nur zwei dieser Studien durchgeführt.

: Die erste Studie bezog sich auf das Jahr 1988. Sie befragte 83 Strafverfolgungsbehörden und schätzte, dass in diesem Jahr 200 bis 300 Kinder in den Vereinigten Staaten von Fremden entführt wurden. Die zweite Studie bezog sich auf das Jahr 1999. Es wurden mehr als 4000 Behörden befragt, und es wurde geschätzt, dass in diesem Jahr 115 Kinder entführt wurden.

: 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, denn dies ist in keiner Weise eine wissenschaftliche Studie zu diesem Thema. Es gibt einfach so viele Vorbehalte. Diese Zahlen sind nutzlos.

: Will und ich haben sechs Monate lang zu diesem Thema recherchiert. Und am Ende fanden wir fast keine Daten zu dem, was uns Gesetzgeber, Medien und Popkultur als eine der schlimmsten Bedrohungen für Kinder in diesem Land glauben machen wollen.

: 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.

: Jawohl.

: Vor einigen Monaten, bevor die Wetterlings erfuhren, was ihrem Sohn vor fast 27 Jahren zugestoßen war, ging ich mit unserer Produzentin Samara zu Patty Wetterling, um mit ihr zu sprechen.

: Guten Morgen. Hallo.

: Kommen Sie herein.

: Danke.

: It’s finally spring.

: Wir wollten mit ihr darüber sprechen, wie sie heute über die Gesetze denkt, an deren Erarbeitung sie maßgeblich beteiligt war, insbesondere über das Gesetz, mit dem alles begann, nämlich das Gesetz, das alle Bundesstaaten verpflichtet, Register für Sexualstraftäter zu führen.

: Überprüfen Sie die Registrierung regelmäßig?

: 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.

: Glauben Sie, dass ein öffentliches Register eine gute Idee ist?

: 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 wollte, dass ihr Vermächtnis eine Welt ist, die besser für Kinder ist, eine sicherere, glücklichere Welt. Aber sie sagte, sie mache sich Sorgen, dass all diese Gesetze dazu geführt hätten, dass die Menschen diese Idee ablehnten und stattdessen die Welt als grundsätzlich gewalttätig, dunkel und verdächtig ansähen, mit Gefahren, die hinter jeder Ecke lauerten.

: 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.

: Und Patty sagte mir, dass die Wahrscheinlichkeit, dass Kinder von jemandem, den sie kennen, verletzt werden, viel größer ist als von einem Fremden oder einem registrierten Sexualstraftäter.

: 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.

: Das nächste Mal bei 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.

: Der Mord schockierte die ländliche Gemeinde von Stearns County und ließ die Ermittler des State Crime Bureau und die Sheriffs ratlos zurück, die nach einem Bruchteil des Grundes für die Morde suchten.

: All at once, we’re locking doors.

: Ja, ja, ja.

: Zu diesem Zeitpunkt begannen wir, eine Waffe im Haus zu haben.

: Was hat sich in diesen 40 Jahren geändert? Nichts hat sich geändert. Die Probleme von vor 40 Jahren und darüber hinaus gibt es also auch heute noch, aber es muss ein Element geben, um Rechenschaft abzulegen. Und wenn es keine Rechenschaftspflicht gibt, passieren katastrophale Dinge.

: In the Dark wird von Samara Freemark produziert. Assoziierte Produzentin ist Natalie Jablonski. In the Dark wird von Catherine Winter mit Unterstützung von Hans Buetow bearbeitet. Der Chefredakteur von APM Reports ist Chris Worthington. Webredakteure sind Dave Peters und Andy Kruse. Der Videofilmer ist Jeff Thompson. Dank an Rowan Moore Gerety für seine Berichterstattung in Miami. Weitere Berichte für diese Folge stammen von Will Craft und Emily Haavik. Unsere Titelmusik wurde von Gary Meister komponiert. Diese Folge wurde von Johnny Vince Evans gemischt.

: 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 wird zum Teil dank unserer Hörer ermöglicht. Unter InTheDarkPodcasts.org/donate können Sie mehr unabhängigen Journalismus wie diesen unterstützen.

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