The Beginning of Sorrows

     The nightmare continues. The sentencing is past. Between one day and the next, my son was labeled a sex offender. It did not matter that what he did in many states is a misdemeanor, and in many more, not even that—in Oklahoma it is a felony. It did not matter that the only person harmed was himself, that the incident happened years ago and was not repeated, that until then his worst offense was a speeding ticket.  What mattered was that the charge pertained to the three-letter word: “sex”. 

In the beginning, the Asst. D.A. gave us hope for leniency. Considering that his career and reputation were destroyed, he had paid enough. Then the press got a hold of it. They lifted that one act out of the context of his life, because it is easier to report a fact than a person.  After that, everything was infected with politics. Both the judge and D.A. are thinking of reelection and no one wants to appear soft on crime, especially crimes that have anything to do with the three-letter word. My son was transformed from a human being, to a column inch. to an example.

     As for the judge, he did his job with the cold, detached efficiency of a machine, if a machine could be said to be arrogant. Yes, I understand the customary groveling is supposed to show the respect due his office, but it only shows fear, and breeds hubris. He has forgotten that he is but a man with all the weaknesses and inclinations to sin as the rest of us. When my son’s lawyer explained that his client’s home, wife, therapist, and support group were in another state, and requested he be allowed to return to them under D.A. supervision, the judge denied it out of pure malice. It could be nothing else, for what judge anywhere would not want to rid his state of convicted felons?  
     Now my son has begun his thirty year exile in the mine field of restrictions that is the Sexual Registration Act. We will visit him and the others in that hell in my future posts. For now it is enough to say that the lawmakers have done just about everything they can to shame, hound, and isolate these people.  All that is lacking is for them to be required to bare the tattoo “RSO” on their foreheads. Who knows, maybe that very requirement is pending in some legislature somewhere.

  If they would have allowed me, I would have gladly registered in his place. But then, if the law allowed that sort of thing, the prisons would be filled with the mothers and fathers, wives and husbands, brothers and sisters of the convicted.  It would be a world where people thought twice about committing crimes, knowing that someone they loved would take there punishment. But that is not the way the world works. That is the way God works.