Full Transcript: In the Dark - S1 E6 - Stranger Danger

In the Dark: S1 E6 Stranger Danger

: Eerder in In the Dark.

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

: Helikopters scanden een gebied van 30 vierkante kilometer, terwijl zoekers beneden het gebied te voet uitkamden zonder een spoor te vinden.

: 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.

: En om te begrijpen hoe dit alles is gebeurd, moeten we terug naar de jaren tachtig, naar de wereld waarin Jacob verdween.

: Denk eraan, een vreemdeling...

: Kan gevaar betekenen. Dat weet ik.

: En weten is het halve werk.

: GI Joe.

: In die tijd was het idee van Vreemdeling Gevaar overal. Het was op TV, en 's morgens in tekenfilms, in openbare aankondigingen met onwetenschappelijke en steeds veranderende cijfers over hoeveel kinderen er vermist worden.

: 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.

: Kinderontvoeringen en kindermisbruik waren een van de populairste genres van tv-films met bezorgde ouders.

: Mijn kleine jongen was hier.

: Ja.

: Zag je waar hij heen ging?

: Melodramatisch acteren.

: Wie van hen heeft je pijn gedaan?

: Dat deden ze allemaal. Ze lieten het ons zien en namen foto's.

: En lugubere plotwendingen.

: Maar hoe is het gebeurd?

: 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.

: Dit is geen Halloween fabeltje. Dit is een levensecht griezelverhaal.

: De gezichten van vermiste kinderen verschenen op melkpakken. Ouders namen vingerafdrukken van hun kinderen voor het geval iemand ze meenam. Kinderdagverblijven werden beschuldigd van het uitvoeren van satanische rituelen op peuters.

: A symbol of every parent’s worst fear.

: Een toenemende nationale tragedie is een nationaal schandaal 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.

: Tegen de tijd dat Jacob Wetterling in 1989 werd ontvoerd, na een decennium van hysterie, zijn het publiek en de wetgevers hongerig om iets te doen, wat dan ook, om kinderen te beschermen en een einde te maken aan kinderontvoeringen.

: Vanaf het begin waren de onderzoekers in de zaak Jacob Wetterling ervan overtuigd dat de misdaad paste in het patroon van andere kinderontvoeringen; dat de dader een seksueel motief had.

: Onderzoekers zeggen nu dat ze van plan zijn elke persoon in Minnesota te ondervragen die ooit is veroordeeld voor een zedenmisdrijf of een misdrijf tegen kinderen. Ze willen weten waar die mensen zondagavond waren toen Jacob werd ontvoerd.

: De top FBI agent op de zaak op dat moment, Jeff Jomar, vertelde verslaggevers hoe dit werkte.

: 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.

: In 1993, ongeveer vier jaar nadat Jacob was ontvoerd, diende een Amerikaanse vertegenwoordiger uit Minnesota in het Congres een wetsvoorstel in, de Jacob Wetterling Act, die alle staten zou verplichten elk jaar de adressen van zedendelinquenten te verifiëren en registers van zedendelinquenten bij te houden. Patty zag het register als iets voor wetshandhaving.

: Het was niet bedoeld voor het grote publiek.

: Maar dan...

: Vlak voordat, weet je, we het wetsvoorstel bijna rond hadden toen Megan Kanka werd ontvoerd.

: 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.

: Dus hebben ze een zin toegevoegd waarin staat dat wetshandhavers de gemeenschap op de hoogte kunnen stellen van de vrijlating van een gewelddadige overtreder.

: 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.”

: De Jacob Wetterling Crimes Against Children Registration Act werd aangenomen als onderdeel van de 1994 Federal Crime Bill. Het markeerde het begin van een nieuwe manier van denken over zedendelinquenten in dit land. En toen het idee doordrong dat deze groep mensen, zedendelinquenten, moest worden geregistreerd en gevolgd, was er geen weg meer terug.

: 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.

: Tegenwoordig waarschuwt Amerika dat als je je kinderen durft te beroven, de wet je zal volgen, van staat tot staat en van stad tot stad.

: 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.

: Vanaf dat moment leek het bijna een wedstrijd te worden. Wie kan de meest beperkende wetten aannemen voor zedendelinquenten?

: Er wordt steeds harder geroepen om strengere wetten voor seksuele roofdieren.

: De vraag is, kan iets werken zonder levenslang of executie?

: Het Congres nam een wet aan die zei dat de ergste zedendelinquenten levenslang in het register moesten staan.

: 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.

: De registers zijn uitgebreid met mensen die allerlei seksuele misdrijven plegen, niet alleen misdrijven tegen kinderen. Sommige mensen komen nu op een lijst omdat ze een naaktfoto van zichzelf naar hun vriend sturen of omdat ze buiten plassen. Tieners kwamen op registers terecht. Het ging maar door. Meer en meer wetten, meer en meer beperkingen.

: 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.”

: Er is een wet die bepaalde zedendelinquenten verbiedt in openbare schuilkelders. De gouverneur van New York heeft zelfs een aantal zedendelinquenten verboden om Pokemon Go te spelen.

: Ambtenaren zijn bezorgd over de lokkende component van het spel. Met 38.000 geregistreerde zedendelinquenten in de staat New York vrezen zij dat het gemakkelijk is een ID te vervalsen en een kind te stalken.

: 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.

: En uiteindelijk ging ze zelfs naar gevangenissen om met volwassen zedendelinquenten te praten en hen te helpen.

: 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.

: Het probleem is dat deze wetten dat idee toepassen op mensen. En deze wetten behandelen mensen alsof het gevaarlijke objecten zijn met bepaalde gevaarlijke eigenschappen.

: Zoals gevaarlijk afval?

: Precies, zoals gevaarlijk afval.

: 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.

: Een paar maanden geleden stuurden we een producer genaamd Rowan Moore Gerety om te zien waar deze wetten toe hebben geleid. Rowan ontmoette de man, Marcos, rond een commercieel gebied in Miami, bekend als 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 zal achter me staan. Marcos zal hier zijn.

Toen Marcos klaar was om uit de gevangenis te komen, begon hij na te denken over waar te wonen.

: 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.”

: Maar het bleek zo moeilijk te zijn. In Miami, waar Marcos woont, moeten zedendelinquenten meer dan 2500 voet van een school wonen, en meer dan duizend voet van een kinderdagverblijf of speelplaats.

: 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.

: Toen Marcos voor het eerst uit de gevangenis kwam, slaagde hij erin een appartement te vinden dat aan alle beperkingen voldeed, en de zaken gingen goed. Maar dan, ongeveer een jaar later-

: 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.”

: De eerste keer dat Marcos naar de plek ging was in de middag. Hij wilde het bekijken voordat het donker werd.

: 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.

: Waar gaan mensen naar het toilet?

: 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.

: Vanaf de eerste nacht dat hij hier sliep, probeerde Marcos de plek te verlaten om een huis te vinden waar hij in kon trekken. En Marcos was beter af dan veel mensen op deze plek. Hij had zijn eigen zaak. Hij kon het zich veroorloven een huis te kopen. Maar toen hij op zijn kaart van Miami keek, de kaart waarmee hij moest werken, met alle rode cirkels rond de kinderdagverblijven, en scholen, en speeltuinen, waren er maar ongeveer 80 of 90 huizen in heel Miami Dade County die buiten die rode cirkels vielen, geen huizen die te koop stonden, huizen uit de tijd.

: 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 keek op zijn kaart waar hij kon wonen.

: 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.

: Na drie maanden non-stop zoeken.

: Ja. Kun je me rondleiden?

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

: Marcos vond uiteindelijk een huis dat voldeed aan alle beperkingen voor zedendelinquenten en trok er in.

: 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 zegt dat hij zich door deze hele ervaring een buitenbeentje voelt.

: En ik zei dat het belangrijkste dat ik wil overbrengen is eerlijkheid, niet alleen voor mij maar ook voor de andere jongens die geen uitweg hebben. En iets wat ik 10 jaar geleden deed zal me de rest van mijn leven achtervolgen. Maar ik hoop dat mensen zich realiseren dat deze wetten geen doel hebben. Deze wetten zijn er alleen voor verdere bestraffing. Niets anders.

: 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.

: Dus ging ik op zoek naar dat bewijs. Ik haalde Will Craft erbij, een data reporter waar ik mee werk.

: Hé, Will.

: Hallo.

: Dus, bedankt voor je komst.

: Geen probleem.

: En ik vroeg hem uit te zoeken of er tegenwoordig minder kinderen door vreemden worden ontvoerd, nu we al die wetten hebben.

: Dit is de meest verbijsterende reis die ik ooit heb meegemaakt.

: 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.”

: Wie zijn ze?

: 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.”

: Waarom?

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

: Uiteindelijk vertelde ze Will dat de informatie hierover in papieren documenten in dozen zat.

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

: Je dacht dat je vroeg om de nucleaire codes?

: Ja, ik bedoel...

: 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.

: Ik bleef dit onderzoeken. En uiteindelijk ontdekte ik dat het Congres van Justitie eist dat het periodieke nationale incidentenonderzoeken uitvoert om uit te zoeken hoeveel kinderen er vermist worden en hoeveel er gevonden worden. Maar in de afgelopen drie decennia heeft het departement slechts twee van deze studies gedaan.

: De eerste had betrekking op 1988. Er werden 83 wetshandhavingsinstanties onderzocht en geschat dat er dat jaar 200 tot 300 kinderen in de Verenigde Staten door vreemden werden ontvoerd. De tweede keek naar 1999. Er werden meer dan 4000 bureaus onderzocht en er werden dat jaar 115 kinderen ontvoerd.

: 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, want dit is op geen enkele manier een wetenschappelijke studie hiervan. Er zijn zoveel voorbehouden. Deze cijfers zijn nutteloos.

: Will en ik hebben hier zes maanden onderzoek naar gedaan. En uiteindelijk vonden we bijna geen gegevens over wat wetgevers, de media en de popcultuur ons doen geloven als een van de grootste bedreigingen voor kinderen in dit land.

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

: That’s so depressing.

: Yup.

: Een paar maanden geleden, voordat de Wetterlings erachter kwamen wat er bijna 27 jaar geleden met hun zoon was gebeurd, ging ik met onze producer Samara naar Patty Wetterling.

: Goedemorgen. Hoi.

: Kom binnen.

: Bedankt.

: It’s finally spring.

: We wilden met haar praten over wat ze nu vindt van de wetten waar ze zo'n belangrijke rol in speelde, vooral de wet waarmee dit alles begon, de wet die vereist dat alle staten registers van zedendelinquenten hebben.

: Controleer je het register regelmatig?

: 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.

: Denkt u dat een openbaar register een goed idee is?

: 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 wilde dat haar nalatenschap een wereld was die beter was voor kinderen, een veiligere, gelukkigere wereld. Maar ze zei dat ze zich zorgen maakt dat al die wetten ervoor gezorgd hebben dat mensen dat idee verwerpen en in plaats daarvan de wereld zien als fundamenteel gewelddadig, donker en verdacht met gevaar dat achter elke hoek loert.

: 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.

: En Patty vertelde me dat de realiteit is dat kinderen veel meer kans lopen om gewond te raken door iemand die ze kennen dan door een vreemde of een geregistreerde zedendelinquent.

: 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.

: Volgende keer in 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.

: De moord schokte de landelijke gemeenschap van Stearns County en liet onderzoekers van het State Crime Bureau en sheriffs in verwarring achter, op zoek naar een reden voor de moorden.

: All at once, we’re locking doors.

: Ja, ja.

: We begonnen toen een pistool in huis te hebben.

: Wat is er in die 40 jaar veranderd? Er is niets veranderd. Dus de problemen van 40 jaar geleden en daarna zijn er nog steeds, maar er moet een element zijn om verantwoording te kunnen afleggen. En als er geen verantwoordelijkheid is, gebeuren er rampzalige dingen.

: In the Dark is geproduceerd door Samara Freemark. De geassocieerde producent is Natalie Jablonski. In the Dark is geredigeerd door Catherine Winter, met hulp van Hans Buetow. De hoofdredacteur van APM Reports is Chris Worthington. Webredacteuren of Dave Peters en Andy Kruse. De videograaf is Jeff Thompson. Met dank aan Rowan Moore Gerety voor zijn verslaggeving in Miami. Aanvullende verslaggeving voor deze aflevering door Will Craft en Emily Haavik. Onze themamuziek is gecomponeerd door Gary Meister. Deze aflevering is gemixt door 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 wordt mede mogelijk gemaakt door onze luisteraars. U kunt meer onafhankelijke journalistiek zoals deze steunen op InTheDarkPodcasts.org/donate.

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