Transcription complète : In the Dark - S1 E6 - Stranger Danger

In the Dark : S1 E6 Stranger Danger

: Précédemment dans In the Dark.

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

: Des hélicoptères ont balayé une zone de 30 miles carrés, tandis que des chercheurs en contrebas ont ratissé la zone à pied sans trouver de trace.

: 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.

: Et pour comprendre comment tout cela est arrivé, il faut revenir aux années 1980, au monde dans lequel Jacob a disparu.

: Rappelez-vous, un étranger...

: Peut signifier danger. Maintenant, je sais.

: Et savoir est la moitié de la bataille.

: GI Joe.

: À l'époque, l'idée de danger pour les étrangers était partout. Elle était présente dans les émissions de télévision, les dessins animés du matin, les messages d'intérêt public avec des chiffres non scientifiques et toujours changeants sur le nombre d'enfants disparus.

: 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.

: Les enlèvements d'enfants et la maltraitance des enfants étaient l'un des genres de films télévisés les plus populaires auprès des parents inquiets.

: Mon petit garçon était là.

: Oui.

: Tu as vu où il est allé ?

: Un jeu mélodramatique.

: Lequel d'entre eux t'a fait du mal ?

: Ils l'ont tous fait. Ils nous ont montré et pris des photos.

: Et des intrigues torrides.

: Mais comment cela s'est-il produit ?

: 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.

: Ce n'est pas une fable d'Halloween. C'est une histoire d'horreur réelle.

: Les visages des enfants disparus ont commencé à apparaître sur les cartons de lait. Les parents prennent les empreintes digitales de leurs enfants au cas où quelqu'un les enlèverait. Des garderies sont accusées de pratiquer des rituels sataniques sur des enfants en bas âge.

: A symbol of every parent’s worst fear.

: Une tragédie nationale croissante est devenue un scandale national.

: 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.

: Au moment de l'enlèvement de Jacob Wetterling en 1989, après une décennie d'hystérie, le public et les législateurs sont avides de faire quelque chose, n'importe quoi, pour protéger les enfants et mettre fin aux enlèvements d'enfants.

: Dès le début, les enquêteurs sur l'affaire Jacob Wetterling étaient convaincus que le crime s'inscrivait dans le schéma d'autres enlèvements d'enfants, que la personne qui l'avait commis avait un mobile sexuel.

: Les enquêteurs disent maintenant qu'ils prévoient d'interroger toutes les personnes du Minnesota qui ont déjà été condamnées pour un crime sexuel ou un crime contre les enfants. Ils veulent savoir où étaient ces personnes dimanche soir quand Jacob a été kidnappé.

: L'agent principal du FBI chargé de l'affaire à l'époque, Jeff Jomar, a expliqué aux journalistes comment cela fonctionnait.

: 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, environ quatre ans après l'enlèvement de Jacob, un représentant américain du Minnesota a présenté un projet de loi au Congrès, le Jacob Wetterling Act, qui obligerait tous les États à vérifier chaque année les adresses des délinquants sexuels et à tenir des registres de ces derniers. Patty voyait le registre comme quelque chose destiné aux forces de l'ordre.

: Il n'a pas été conçu pour être ouvert au grand public.

: Mais alors...

: Juste avant, vous savez, nous étions déjà sur le point de finaliser le projet de loi quand Megan Kanka a été kidnappée.

: 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.

: Ils ont donc ajouté une phrase disant que les forces de l'ordre peuvent informer la communauté de la libération d'un délinquant violent.

: 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 loi Jacob Wetterling sur l'enregistrement des crimes contre les enfants a été adoptée dans le cadre de la loi fédérale sur la criminalité de 1994. Elle a marqué le début d'une nouvelle façon de penser les délinquants sexuels dans ce pays. Et une fois que l'idée s'est imposée que ce groupe de personnes, les délinquants sexuels, devait être enregistré et suivi, il n'y a pas eu de retour en arrière.

: 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.

: Aujourd'hui, l'Amérique prévient que si vous osez vous en prendre à vos enfants, la loi vous suivra où que vous alliez, d'un État à l'autre, d'une ville à l'autre.

: 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 là, on dirait que c'est presque devenu une compétition. Qui peut faire passer les lois les plus restrictives sur les délinquants sexuels ?

: Le tambour s'intensifie pour durcir les lois concernant les prédateurs sexuels.

: La question est de savoir si quelque chose peut fonctionner, à part la vie en prison ou l'exécution.

: Le Congrès a adopté une loi stipulant que les délinquants sexuels les plus graves devaient être inscrits à vie sur le registre.

: 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.

: Les registres se sont élargis pour inclure les personnes qui commettent toutes sortes de crimes sexuels, et pas seulement des crimes contre les enfants. Certaines personnes se retrouvent désormais sur des registres pour avoir envoyé une photo d'elles-mêmes nues à leur petit ami par SMS ou pour avoir fait pipi dehors. Des adolescents ont commencé à être inscrits sur des registres. Et ça a continué. De plus en plus de lois, de plus en plus de restrictions.

: 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.”

: Une loi interdit à certains délinquants sexuels d'accéder aux abris publics contre les tempêtes. Le gouverneur de New York a même interdit à certains délinquants sexuels de jouer à Pokemon Go.

: Les responsables s'inquiètent de l'attrait de la composante du jeu. Avec 38 000 délinquants sexuels enregistrés dans l'État de New York, ils craignent qu'il soit facile de falsifier une identité et de traquer un enfant joueur.

: 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.

: Et finalement, elle a même commencé à aller dans les prisons pour parler aux délinquants sexuels adultes afin d'essayer de les aider.

: 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.

: Le problème est que ces lois prennent cette idée et l'appliquent aux personnes. Et ces lois traitent les gens comme s'ils étaient des objets dangereux qui ont certaines propriétés dangereuses.

: Comme des déchets dangereux ?

: Exactement, comme des déchets dangereux.

: 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.

: Il y a quelques mois, nous avons envoyé un producteur nommé Rowan Moore Gerety pour voir où ces lois nous ont menés. Rowan a rencontré le gars, Marcos, dans une zone commerciale de Miami, connue sous le nom de "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 sera derrière moi. Marcos sera là.

Quand Marcos s'est préparé à sortir de prison, il a commencé à réfléchir à l'endroit où il allait vivre.

: 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.”

: Mais il s'est avéré que c'était si difficile. À Miami, où vit Marcos, les délinquants sexuels doivent vivre à plus de 2500 pieds d'une école, et à plus de 1000 pieds d'une crèche ou d'un terrain de jeu.

: 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.

: Lorsque Marcos est sorti de prison, il a réussi à trouver un appartement qui correspondait à toutes les restrictions, et tout allait bien. Mais ensuite, environ un an plus tard...

: 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 première fois que Marcos est allé sur place, c'était dans l'après-midi. Il voulait vérifier avant qu'il fasse nuit.

: 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.

: Où les gens vont-ils aux toilettes ?

: 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.

: Dès la première nuit où il a dormi ici, Marcos a essayé de quitter l'endroit pour trouver une maison où il pourrait emménager. Et Marcos était mieux loti que beaucoup de gens de l'endroit. Il dirigeait sa propre entreprise. Il pouvait se permettre d'acheter une maison. Mais quand il a regardé sa carte de Miami, la carte avec laquelle il devait travailler, avec tous les cercles rouges autour des garderies, des écoles et des terrains de jeux, il n'y avait que 80 ou 90 maisons dans tout le comté de Miami Dade qui étaient en dehors de ces cercles rouges, pas des maisons à vendre, des maisons tout court.

: 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 regardait sa carte de l'endroit où il pourrait vivre.

: 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.

: Après trois mois de recherche non-stop.

: Ouais. Tu peux me faire visiter ?

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

: Marcos a finalement trouvé une maison qui répondait à toutes les restrictions pour les délinquants sexuels et a emménagé.

: 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 dit que toute cette expérience lui a donné l'impression d'être un paria.

: Et j'ai dit que la principale chose que je voulais faire passer était l'équité, pas seulement pour moi mais aussi pour les autres gars qui n'ont pas d'échappatoire, vous savez. Et quelque chose que j'ai fait il y a 10 ans va me hanter pour le reste de ma vie. Mais j'espère que les gens vont réaliser que ces lois n'ont aucun but. Ces lois ne sont là que pour punir davantage. Rien d'autre.

: 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.

: Donc, je suis allé chercher cette preuve. J'ai fait appel à Will Craft, un journaliste avec qui je travaille.

: Salut, Will.

: Bonjour.

: Alors, merci d'être venu.

: Pas de problème.

: Et je lui ai demandé d'essayer de savoir si moins d'enfants se font kidnapper par des inconnus de nos jours, maintenant que nous avons toutes ces lois.

: C'est le voyage le plus déroutant que j'aie fait.

: 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.”

: Qui sont-ils ?

: 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.”

: Pourquoi ?

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

: Elle a fini par dire à Will que les informations à ce sujet se trouvaient dans des documents papier rangés dans des boîtes.

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

: Vous pensez que vous avez demandé les codes nucléaires ?

: Oui, je veux dire...

: 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.

: J'ai continué à chercher. Et j'ai fini par découvrir que le Congrès exige effectivement que le ministère de la Justice mène ce qu'il appelle des études nationales périodiques sur les incidents, afin de déterminer combien d'enfants sont portés disparus et combien sont retrouvés. Mais au cours des trois dernières décennies, le ministère n'a réalisé que deux de ces études.

: La première portait sur l'année 1988. Elle portait sur 83 services de police et estimait que 200 à 300 enfants avaient été enlevés par des inconnus cette année-là aux États-Unis. La seconde portait sur l'année 1999. Elle a porté sur plus de 4 000 agences et a estimé que 115 enfants avaient été enlevés cette année-là.

: 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?

: Oui, parce que ce n'est pas, en aucun cas, une étude scientifique de ça. Il y a tellement de mises en garde. Ces chiffres sont inutiles.

: Will et moi avons passé six mois à faire des recherches sur ce sujet. Et au final, nous n'avons trouvé presque aucune donnée sur ce que les législateurs, les médias et la culture pop nous ont amené à croire être l'une des pires menaces pour les enfants de ce pays.

: 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.

: Yup.

: Il y a quelques mois, avant que les Wetterling ne découvrent ce qui était arrivé à leur fils il y a près de 27 ans, je suis allé avec notre producteur, Samara, pour parler à Patty Wetterling.

: Bonjour. Bonjour.

: Entrez.

: Merci.

: It’s finally spring.

: Nous voulions lui parler de ce qu'elle ressent aujourd'hui à l'égard des lois qu'elle a contribué à créer, en particulier celle qui est à l'origine de tout cela, la loi qui oblige tous les États à établir des registres des délinquants sexuels.

: Vérifiez-vous périodiquement le registre ?

: 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.

: Pensez-vous que tout registre public soit une bonne idée ?

: 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 voulait que son héritage soit un monde meilleur pour les enfants, un monde plus sûr et plus heureux. Mais elle craint que toutes ces lois n'aient eu pour effet d'amener les gens à rejeter cette idée et à considérer le monde comme fondamentalement violent, sombre et suspect, avec un danger qui se cache à chaque coin de rue.

: 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.

: Et Patty m'a dit que la réalité est que les enfants sont beaucoup plus susceptibles d'être blessés par quelqu'un qu'ils connaissent que par un étranger ou un délinquant sexuel enregistré.

: 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 prochaine fois dans 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.

: Le meurtre a choqué la communauté rurale du comté de Stearns et a laissé les enquêteurs du State Crime Bureau et les shérifs perplexes, à la recherche d'un fragment de raison derrière les meurtres.

: All at once, we’re locking doors.

: Oui, oui.

: Nous avons commencé à avoir une arme à feu dans la maison à ce moment-là.

: Qu'est-ce qui a changé pendant ces 40 ans ? Rien n'a changé. Donc, les problèmes qui existaient il y a 40 ans et au-delà sont toujours d'actualité, mais il faut un élément pour qu'il y ait une responsabilité. Et lorsque la responsabilité n'existe pas, des choses désastreuses se produisent.

: In the Dark est produit par Samara Freemark. La productrice associée est Natalie Jablonski. In the Dark est édité par Catherine Winter, avec l'aide de Hans Buetow. Le rédacteur en chef d'APM Reports est Chris Worthington. Les rédacteurs web sont Dave Peters et Andy Kruse. Le vidéographe est Jeff Thompson. Merci à Rowan Moore Gerety pour son reportage à Miami. Reportages supplémentaires pour cet épisode par Will Craft et Emily Haavik. Notre musique de générique est composée par Gary Meister. Cet épisode a été mixé par 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 est rendu possible, en partie, grâce à nos auditeurs. Vous pouvez soutenir davantage de journalisme indépendant comme celui-ci sur InTheDarkPodcasts.org/donate.

Convertir automatiquement l'audio en texte avec Sonix