Transcrição completa: Na Escuridão - S1 E6 - Stranger Danger

Na Escuridão: S1 E6 Stranger Danger

: Anteriormente em In the Dark.

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

: Os helicópteros examinaram uma área de 30 milhas quadradas, enquanto os pesquisadores abaixo penteavam a área a pé sem encontrarem vestígios.

: 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.

: E para compreender como tudo isto aconteceu, temos de voltar à década de 1980, ao mundo em que Jacob desapareceu.

: Lembre-se, um estranho...

: Pode significar perigo. Agora, eu sei.

: E saber é metade da batalha.

: GI Joe.

: Nessa altura, a ideia de Stranger Danger estava em todo o lado. Estava em programas de televisão, e em desenhos animados matinais, em anúncios de serviço público com números não científicos e sempre a mudar, de quantas crianças desaparecem.

: 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.

: Os raptos e abusos infantis eram um dos géneros mais populares de filmes feitos para a televisão com pais ansiosos.

: O meu rapazinho esteve aqui.

: Sim.

: Viu para onde ele foi?

: Actuação melodramática.

: Qual deles lhe faz mal?

: Todos eles o fizeram. Mostraram-nos e tiraram fotografias.

: E as reviravoltas do enredo.

: Mas como é que isso aconteceu?

: 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.

: Isto não é uma fábula de Halloween. Esta é uma história de horror da vida real.

: Os rostos das crianças desaparecidas começaram a aparecer nas embalagens de leite. Os pais recolheram as impressões digitais dos seus filhos, no caso de alguém os ter raptado. Os prestadores de cuidados infantis foram acusados de realizar rituais satânicos em crianças de colo.

: A symbol of every parent’s worst fear.

: Uma tragédia nacional crescente tornou-se um escândalo 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.

: Na altura em que Jacob Wetterling foi raptado em 1989, após uma década de histeria, o público e os legisladores têm fome de fazer alguma coisa, qualquer coisa, para proteger as crianças e pôr fim aos raptos de crianças.

: Logo desde o início, os investigadores do caso Jacob Wetterling estavam convencidos de que o crime se enquadrava no padrão de outros raptos de crianças; que a pessoa que o fez tinha um motivo sexual.

: Os investigadores dizem agora que tencionam interrogar todas as pessoas no Minnesota que já foram condenadas por um crime sexual ou crime contra crianças. Querem saber onde estavam essas pessoas no domingo à noite quando Jacob foi raptado.

: O principal agente do FBI no caso na altura, Jeff Jomar, disse aos repórteres como isto funcionava.

: 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.

: Em 1993, cerca de quatro anos após Jacob ter sido raptado, um representante americano do Minnesota introduziu no Congresso um projecto de lei, o Jacob Wetterling Act, que exigiria que todos os estados verificassem anualmente os endereços dos agressores sexuais, e que mantivessem registos dos agressores sexuais. Patty considerou o registo como algo destinado à aplicação da lei.

: Não foi concebido para ser aberto ao público em geral.

: Mas então...

: Mesmo antes, sabes, já estávamos perto de finalizar a conta quando Megan Kanka foi raptada.

: 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.

: Assim, acrescentaram uma frase dizendo que a aplicação da lei pode notificar a comunidade aquando da libertação de um delinquente 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.”

: A Lei de Jacob sobre o Registo de Crimes contra Crianças, aprovada como parte da Lei Federal de Crimes de 1994. Marcou o início de uma nova forma de pensar sobre os infractores sexuais neste país. E assim que a ideia se concretizou de que este grupo de pessoas, delinquentes sexuais, deveria ser registado e rastreado, não havia volta a dar.

: 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.

: Hoje, a América avisa que se se atreverem a perseguir os vossos filhos, a lei seguir-vos-á para onde quer que vão de estado para estado, de cidade para cidade.

: 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 daí, parecia que quase se tornou uma competição. Quem pode aprovar as leis mais restritivas sobre agressores sexuais?

: A batida do tambor está a intensificar-se para endurecer as leis relativas aos predadores sexuais.

: A questão é: pode alguma coisa trabalhar com vida curta na prisão ou na execução?

: O Congresso aprovou uma lei que dizia que os agressores sexuais mais graves tinham de estar inscritos no registo para toda a 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.

: Os registos foram alargados para incluir pessoas que cometem todo o tipo de crimes sexuais, e não apenas crimes contra crianças. Algumas pessoas, agora, acabam nos registos por enviar uma foto de si próprias nuas ao namorado ou por urinar lá fora. Os adolescentes começaram a ser colocados em registos. Continuou. Mais e mais leis, mais e mais restrições.

: 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.”

: Um lugar tem uma lei que proíbe certos agressores sexuais de abrigos públicos contra a tempestade. O Governador de Nova Iorque proibiu mesmo alguns abusadores sexuais de jogar Pokemon Go.

: Os funcionários estão preocupados com a componente de sedução do jogo. Com 38.000 criminosos sexuais registados no estado de Nova Iorque, temem que seja fácil falsificar uma identificação e perseguir um jogador 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.

: E eventualmente, ela até começou a ir para as prisões para falar com agressores sexuais adultos a fim de tentar ajudá-los.

: 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.

: O problema é que estas leis levam essa ideia e aplicam-na às pessoas. E estas leis tratam as pessoas como se fossem objectos perigosos que têm certas propriedades perigosas.

: Como os resíduos perigosos?

: Exactamente, como os resíduos perigosos.

: 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.

: Há alguns meses atrás, enviámos um produtor chamado Rowan Moore Gerety para ver para onde estas leis nos levaram. Rowan encontrou-se com o tipo, Marcos, em torno de uma área comercial em Miami, conhecida como o local.

: 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 de pé atrás de mim. Marcos estará aqui.

Quando Marcos estava a preparar-se para sair da prisão, começou a pensar onde viver.

: 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.”

: Mas afinal era assim tão difícil. Em Miami, onde Marcos vive, os agressores sexuais têm de viver a mais de 2500 pés de uma escola, e a mais de mil pés de uma creche ou de um 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.

: Quando Marcos saiu da prisão pela primeira vez, ele conseguiu encontrar um apartamento que se adequava a todas as restrições, e as coisas estão a correr bem. Mas depois, cerca de um ano mais tarde...

: 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.”

: A primeira vez que Marcos foi ao local foi à tarde. Ele queria verificar antes de escurecer.

: 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.

: Onde é que as pessoas vão à casa de banho?

: 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 a primeira noite em que dormiu aqui, Marcos estava a tentar sair do local para encontrar uma casa para onde se pudesse mudar. E Marcos estava melhor do que muitas pessoas no local. Ele dirigia o seu próprio negócio. Ele podia dar-se ao luxo de comprar uma casa. Mas quando olhou para o seu mapa de Miami, o mapa com que tinha de trabalhar, com todos os círculos vermelhos à volta das creches, e escolas, e parques infantis, havia apenas cerca de 80 ou 90 casas em todo o condado de Miami Dade que caíam fora desses círculos vermelhos, não casas para venda, casas período.

: 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 olharia para o seu mapa de onde ele poderia viver.

: 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.

: Após três meses de busca ininterrupta.

: Sim. Pode mostrar-me as redondezas?

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

: Marcos finalmente encontrou uma casa que satisfazia todas as restrições para os agressores sexuais e mudou-se para cá.

: 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 diz que toda esta experiência o fez sentir-se como um proscrito.

: E eu disse que a principal coisa que quero transmitir é justiça não só para comigo mas para os outros tipos que não têm saída, sabem. E algo que fiz há 10 anos atrás vai assombrar-me para o resto da minha vida. Mas espero que as pessoas se apercebam de que estas leis não têm qualquer propósito. Estas leis existem apenas para mais castigos. Nada mais.

: 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.

: Por isso, fui à procura dessa prova. Trouxe Will Craft, um repórter de dados com quem trabalho.

: Olá, Will.

: Olá.

: Por isso, obrigado por terem vindo.

: Não há problema.

: E pedi-lhe que tentasse descobrir se há menos crianças a serem raptadas por estranhos nos dias de hoje, agora que temos todas estas leis.

: Esta é a viagem mais desconcertante em que já participei.

: 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.”

: Quem são eles?

: 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.”

: Porquê?

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

: Ela acabou por dizer ao Will que a informação sobre isto estava em documentos em papel armazenados em caixas.

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

: Pensa que estava a pedir como os códigos nucleares?

: Sim, quero dizer ...

: 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.

: Estive sempre a investigar isto. E, eventualmente, descobri que o Congresso exige de facto que o Departamento de Justiça conduza o que chama Estudos Periódicos de Incidentes Nacionais para descobrir quantas crianças desaparecem e quantas são encontradas. Mas nas últimas três décadas, o departamento fez apenas dois desses estudos.

: A primeira olhou para 1988. Recolheu amostras de 83 agências de aplicação da lei, e estimou que 200 a 300 crianças nos Estados Unidos foram raptadas por estranhos nesse ano. A segunda analisou o ano de 1999. Recolheu amostras de mais de 4000 agências, e estimou que 115 crianças foram raptadas nesse ano.

: 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?

: Sim, porque este não é, de forma alguma, um estudo científico sobre isto. Há apenas muitas advertências. Estes números são inúteis.

: O Will e eu passámos seis meses a investigar isto. E no final, quase não obtivemos dados sobre o que os legisladores, os meios de comunicação e a cultura pop nos levaram a acreditar ser uma das piores ameaças que as crianças enfrentam neste 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.

: Sim.

: Há alguns meses atrás, antes dos Wetterlings descobrirem o que tinha acontecido ao seu filho há quase 27 anos, fui falar com a nossa produtora, Samara, para falar com Patty Wetterling.

: Bom dia. Hi.

: Entre.

: Obrigado.

: It’s finally spring.

: Queríamos falar com ela sobre o que sente agora sobre as leis que desempenhou um papel tão importante na criação, especialmente aquela que deu início a tudo isto, a lei que exige que todos os Estados tenham registos de agressores sexuais.

: Verificam o registo periodicamente?

: 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.

: Acha que qualquer registo público é uma boa ideia?

: 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 queria que o seu legado fosse um mundo que fosse melhor para as crianças, um mundo mais seguro e feliz. Mas ela disse que se preocupa que o que todas essas leis realmente fizeram foi fazer as pessoas rejeitarem essa ideia e, em vez disso, verem o mundo como fundamentalmente violento, sombrio e desconfiado com o perigo à espreita por trás 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.

: E Patty disse-me que a realidade é que as crianças são muito mais susceptíveis de serem prejudicadas por alguém que conhecem do que por um estranho ou um agressor sexual registado.

: 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.

: Da próxima vez no 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.

: O assassinato chocou a comunidade rural do Condado de Stearns e deixou os investigadores e xerifes do Departamento do Crime do Estado perplexos à procura de algum fragmento de razão por detrás dos assassinatos.

: All at once, we’re locking doors.

: Sim, sim.

: Começámos a ter uma arma em casa nesta altura.

: O que mudou nesses 40 anos? Nada mudou. Assim, os problemas que recuaram há 40 anos e mais além ainda hoje estão connosco, mas tem de haver um elemento para que haja responsabilização. E quando não há prestação de contas, acontecem coisas desastrosas.

: In the Dark é produzido por Samara Freemark. A produtora associada é Natalie Jablonski. In the Dark é editada por Catherine Winter, com a ajuda de Hans Buetow. O chefe de redacção da APM Reports é Chris Worthington. Editores Web ou Dave Peters e Andy Kruse. O videógrafo é Jeff Thompson. Obrigado a Rowan Moore Gerety pela sua reportagem em Miami. Reportagem adicional para este episódio por Will Craft e Emily Haavik. A nossa música temática é composta por Gary Meister. Este episódio foi misturado 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.

: Na Escuridão é possível em parte, graças aos nossos ouvintes. Pode apoiar um jornalismo mais independente como este no InTheDarkPodcasts.org/donate.

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