Transcripción completa: In the Dark - S1 E6 - Stranger Danger

En la oscuridad: S1 E6 Stranger Danger

: Anteriormente en En la oscuridad.

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

: Los helicópteros rastrearon un área de 30 millas cuadradas, mientras que los buscadores de abajo peinaron la zona a pie sin encontrar ningún rastro.

: 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.

: Y para entender cómo sucedió todo esto, tenemos que volver a los años 80, al mundo en el que Jacob desapareció.

: Recuerda, un extraño...

: Puede significar peligro. Ahora, lo sé.

: Y saber es la mitad de la batalla.

: GI Joe.

: Por aquel entonces, la idea de Stranger Danger estaba en todas partes. Aparecía en los programas de televisión, en los dibujos animados matinales, en los anuncios de servicio público con cifras poco científicas y siempre cambiantes sobre el número de niños desaparecidos.

: 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.

: Los secuestros de niños y el maltrato infantil eran uno de los géneros más populares de las películas hechas para la televisión con padres ansiosos.

: Mi pequeño estuvo aquí.

: Sí.

: ¿Viste a dónde fue?

: Actuación melodramática.

: ¿Cuál de ellos te perjudicó?

: Todos lo hicieron. Nos mostraron y tomaron fotos.

: Y escabrosos giros de la trama.

: Pero, ¿cómo ha sucedido?

: 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.

: Esto no es una fábula de Halloween. Es una historia de terror de la vida real.

: Los rostros de los niños desaparecidos empezaron a aparecer en los cartones de leche. Los padres tomaron las huellas dactilares de sus hijos por si alguien se los llevaba. Se acusa a las guarderías de realizar rituales satánicos con los niños.

: A symbol of every parent’s worst fear.

: Una tragedia nacional creciente se ha convertido en un escándalo nacional.

: 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.

: Cuando Jacob Wetterling fue secuestrado en 1989, después de una década de histeria, el público y los legisladores están ansiosos por hacer algo, cualquier cosa, para proteger a los niños y poner fin a los secuestros de niños.

: Desde el principio, los investigadores del caso Jacob Wetterling estaban convencidos de que el crimen encajaba en el patrón de otros secuestros de niños; que la persona que lo hizo tenía un motivo sexual.

: Los investigadores dicen ahora que planean interrogar a todas las personas de Minnesota que hayan sido condenadas alguna vez por un delito sexual o contra los niños. Quieren saber dónde estaban esas personas el domingo por la noche cuando Jacob fue secuestrado.

: El principal agente del FBI en el caso en ese momento, Jeff Jomar, dijo a los periodistas cómo funcionaba esto.

: 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.

: En 1993, unos cuatro años después del secuestro de Jacob, un representante de Minnesota presentó un proyecto de ley en el Congreso, la Ley Jacob Wetterling, que obligaría a todos los estados a verificar las direcciones de los delincuentes sexuales cada año y a mantener registros de delincuentes sexuales. Patty concibió el registro como algo destinado a las fuerzas del orden.

: No fue diseñado para estar abierto al público en general.

: Pero entonces...

: Justo antes de que, ya sabes, estuviéramos ultimando el proyecto de ley cuando Megan Kanka fue secuestrada.

: 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.

: Así, añadieron una frase que dice que las fuerzas del orden pueden notificar a la comunidad la puesta en libertad de un delincuente violento.

: 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.”

: La Ley Jacob Wetterling de Registro de Delitos contra Menores se aprobó como parte del proyecto de ley federal sobre delincuencia de 1994. Marcó el inicio de una nueva forma de pensar sobre los delincuentes sexuales en este país. Y una vez que se impuso la idea de que este grupo de personas, los delincuentes sexuales, debían ser registrados y rastreados, no hubo vuelta atrás.

: 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.

: Hoy en día, Estados Unidos advierte que si te atreves a depredar a tus hijos, la ley te perseguirá vayas donde vayas, de estado a estado, de pueblo a pueblo.

: 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.

: A partir de ahí, parece que se ha convertido casi en una competición. ¿Quién puede aprobar las leyes más restrictivas para los delincuentes sexuales?

: Se está intensificando el ritmo para endurecer las leyes relativas a los depredadores sexuales.

: La pregunta es: ¿puede funcionar algo que no sea la cadena perpetua o la ejecución?

: El Congreso aprobó una ley que decía que los delincuentes sexuales más graves tenían que estar en el registro de por vida.

: 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.

: Los registros se ampliaron para incluir a las personas que cometen todo tipo de delitos sexuales, no sólo los delitos contra los niños. Algunas personas, ahora, acaban en los registros por enviar una foto suya desnuda a su novio o por orinar al aire libre. Se empezó a inscribir a los adolescentes en los registros. Y así sucesivamente. Más y más leyes, más y más restricciones.

: 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.”

: En un lugar hay una ley que prohíbe a ciertos delincuentes sexuales entrar en los refugios públicos contra tormentas. El gobernador de Nueva York incluso ha prohibido a algunos delincuentes sexuales jugar a Pokemon Go.

: Los funcionarios están preocupados por el componente de atracción del juego. Con 38.000 delincuentes sexuales registrados en el estado de Nueva York, temen que sea fácil falsificar una identificación y acechar a un jugador infantil.

: 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.

: Y con el tiempo, incluso empezó a ir a las cárceles para hablar con los delincuentes sexuales adultos para intentar ayudarlos.

: 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.

: El problema es que estas leyes toman esa idea y la aplican a las personas. Y estas leyes tratan a las personas como si fueran objetos peligrosos que tienen ciertas propiedades peligrosas.

: ¿Como los residuos peligrosos?

: Exactamente, como los residuos peligrosos.

: 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.

: Hace unos meses, enviamos a un productor llamado Rowan Moore Gerety para ver a dónde nos llevaban estas leyes. Rowan se reunió con el tipo, Marcos, en torno a una zona comercial de Miami, conocida como el 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 estará detrás de mí. Marcos estará aquí.

Cuando Marcos se preparaba para salir de la cárcel, empezó a pensar en dónde vivir.

: 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.”

: Pero resultó que era así de difícil. En Miami, donde vive Marcos, los delincuentes sexuales tienen que vivir a más de 2500 pies de una escuela, y a más de mil pies de una guardería o parque infantil.

: 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.

: Cuando Marcos salió por primera vez de la cárcel, se las arregló para encontrar un apartamento que se ajustara a todas las restricciones, y las cosas van bien. Pero entonces, alrededor de un año después...

: 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.”

: La primera vez que Marcos fue al lugar fue por la tarde. Quería comprobarlo antes de que oscureciera.

: 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.

: ¿Dónde va la gente al baño?

: 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.

: Desde la primera noche que durmió aquí, Marcos estaba tratando de salir del lugar para encontrar una casa a la que pudiera mudarse. Y Marcos estaba mejor que mucha gente en el lugar. Tenía su propio negocio. Podía permitirse comprar una casa. Pero cuando miró su mapa de Miami, el mapa con el que tenía que trabajar, con todos los círculos rojos alrededor de las guarderías, y las escuelas, y los patios de recreo, sólo había unas 80 o 90 casas en todo el condado de Miami Dade que caían fuera de esos círculos rojos, no casas en venta, casas y punto.

: 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 miraba su mapa de dónde podía vivir.

: 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.

: Después de tres meses de búsqueda incesante.

: Sí. ¿Puedes mostrarme los alrededores?

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

: Marcos finalmente encontró una casa que cumplía con todas las restricciones para delincuentes sexuales y se mudó.

: 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 dice que toda esta experiencia le ha hecho sentirse como un paria.

: Y dije que lo principal que quiero transmitir es la justicia, no sólo para mí, sino para los otros chicos que no tienen salida, ya sabes. Y algo que hice hace 10 años me perseguirá el resto de mi vida. Pero espero que la gente se dé cuenta de que estas leyes no tienen ningún propósito. Estas leyes están ahí sólo para castigar más. Nada más.

: 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.

: Así que fui a buscar esa prueba. Traje a Will Craft, un reportero de datos con el que trabajo.

: Hola, Will.

: Hola.

: Así que, gracias por venir.

: No hay problema.

: Y le pedí que tratara de averiguar si hoy en día hay menos niños secuestrados por extraños, ahora que tenemos todas estas leyes.

: Este es el viaje más desconcertante que he hecho.

: 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.”

: ¿Quiénes son?

: 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.”

: ¿Por qué?

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

: Al final le dijo a Will que la información sobre esto estaba en documentos de papel guardados en cajas.

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

: ¿Crees que estabas pidiendo como los códigos nucleares?

: Sí, quiero decir...

: 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.

: Seguí investigando. Y finalmente descubrí que el Congreso exige al Departamento de Justicia que realice lo que denomina Estudios Periódicos de Incidentes Nacionales para averiguar cuántos niños desaparecen y cuántos se encuentran. Pero en las últimas tres décadas, el departamento sólo ha realizado dos de esos estudios.

: El primero se refería a 1988. Tomó una muestra de 83 organismos policiales y calculó que entre 200 y 300 niños fueron secuestrados por desconocidos en Estados Unidos ese año. El segundo se refería a 1999. Tomó una muestra de más de 4.000 agencias, y estimó que 115 niños fueron secuestrados ese año.

: 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?

: Sí, porque esto no es, de ninguna manera, un estudio científico de esto. Hay muchas advertencias. Estos números son inútiles.

: Will y yo pasamos seis meses investigando esto. Y al final, no obtuvimos casi ningún dato sobre lo que los legisladores, los medios de comunicación y la cultura pop nos han hecho creer que es una de las peores amenazas a las que se enfrentan los niños en este país.

: 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.

: Sí.

: Hace unos meses, antes de que los Wetterling se enteraran de lo que le había ocurrido a su hijo hace casi 27 años, fui con nuestra productora, Samara, a hablar con Patty Wetterling.

: Buenos días. Hola.

: Entra.

: Gracias.

: It’s finally spring.

: Queríamos hablar con ella sobre cómo se siente ahora con respecto a las leyes en cuya creación desempeñó un papel tan importante, especialmente la que inició todo esto, la ley que exige que todos los estados tengan registros de delincuentes sexuales.

: ¿Comprueba el registro periódicamente?

: 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.

: ¿Cree que cualquier registro público es una buena idea?

: 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 quería que su legado fuera un mundo mejor para los niños, un mundo más seguro y feliz. Pero dice que le preocupa que lo que todas esas leyes han hecho en realidad es hacer que la gente rechace esa idea y, en su lugar, vea el mundo como algo fundamentalmente violento, oscuro y sospechoso, con un peligro acechando detrás de cada esquina.

: 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.

: Y Patty me dijo que la realidad es que es mucho más probable que los niños sean dañados por alguien que conocen que por un extraño o un delincuente sexual registrado.

: 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.

: La próxima vez en En la oscuridad.

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

: El asesinato conmocionó a la comunidad rural del condado de Stearns y dejó a los investigadores de la Oficina Estatal del Crimen y a los sheriffs desconcertados buscando algún fragmento de razón detrás de los asesinatos.

: All at once, we’re locking doors.

: Sí, sí.

: En ese momento empezamos a tener un arma en la casa.

: ¿Qué ha cambiado en estos 40 años? No ha cambiado nada. Así que los problemas que había hace 40 años y más siguen con nosotros hoy, pero tiene que haber un elemento para que haya responsabilidad. Y cuando no hay responsabilidad, ocurren cosas desastrosas.

: En la oscuridad está producida por Samara Freemark. La productora asociada es Natalie Jablonski. En la oscuridad está editado por Catherine Winter, con la ayuda de Hans Buetow. El editor jefe de APM Reports es Chris Worthington. Los editores de la web o Dave Peters y Andy Kruse. El videógrafo es Jeff Thompson. Gracias a Rowan Moore Gerety por su reportaje en Miami. La información adicional para este episodio es de Will Craft y Emily Haavik. Nuestro tema musical está compuesto por Gary Meister. Este episodio fue mezclado por 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.

: En la oscuridad es posible, en parte, gracias a nuestros oyentes. Puedes apoyar más periodismo independiente como este en InTheDarkPodcasts.org/donate.

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