1. The intentional use of the erroneous term "convicted pedophile";
2. The misuse of the term pedophile when the offender's intended target was a teenager;
3. The dubious claim that "pedophiles molest hundreds of children on average"
4. Making the 17-year old claim of 100,000 "missing sex offenders"
5. Citing such resources as "A Secure Life", a home security business that completely pulled their stats out of the ether to sell their home security products.
Gianficaro: Readers demand longer prison sentences for child sex predators
Phil Gianficaro
Burlington County Times
Dana Harter is absolutely certain I was wrong to suggest in a recent column that convicted pedophile William Singleton, 25, of Pemberton Township, should not get the four-year prison sentence he recently received, but 10 years for attempting to lure 14-year-old girls to meet him for sex.
“He should’ve gotten 20, maybe 30 years!” said the Burlington City resident and mother of two. “You were too lenient. Scum balls like him should be off the street and away from our kids for as long as possible.
“Like you said, he gets out in four years and what do you think he’s gonna do? Why the law believes a guy who wants to trick young girls into having sex with him doesn’t deserve more time behind bars than four years makes my head hurt.”
Singleton was among 24 men arrested in September 2018 during “Operation Open House.” Detectives with the New Jersey Regional Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force posed online as underage girls. The defendants, believing the undercover detective was a 14-year-old girl, asked the "girl" to meet him at a Toms River house for sexual activity.
Jayne Marie Bardo is certain Harter is wrong to suggest Singleton should get 20 or 30 years.
“Throw away the key on guys like that — or worse!” the Willingboro resident said in her best hanging judge voice. “They shouldn’t be on the street.”
Unfortunately, predators like Singleton are not on the street, but in our children’s chatrooms, sometimes pretending to be teenage boys trying to convince them to meet for sex.
But a more common strategy applied by predators, experts say, is to manipulate teenage girls or boys into having sex by taking advantage of inexperienced and vulnerable young teens by appealing to the teens’ desire to be appreciated, understood, take risks, and find out about sex.
What’s more shocking to some of us than creeps like Singleton getting only four years in prison for using social media to lure children for sexual activity?
• According to riseaboveabuse.org, the average pedophile molests 260 victims during their lifetime. Other sites that monitor such data believe the number is closer to 400.
• Of the 750,000 registered sex offenders in the US, an estimated 80,000-100,000 are non-compliant or missing, according to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.
The good news for New Jersey: The state has the eighth-lowest rate of convicted sex offenders in the nation, with 183 per 100,000 people, according to asecurelife.com.
The bad news: We have no idea how many pedophiles like Singleton are out there who have never been caught. We have no idea how many live in your town or, more frighteningly, in your neighborhood. What's a parent to do?
"I trust my kids," Harter said. "But I do everything I can to track what they do online, who they're communicating with, what's their online history like. They don't like it, but I don't care. I see stories like the one about Singleton and it worries me to no end. I show them what can happen when you get tricked by a grown-up. I tell them that if they don't know the person, don't talk to the person. I tell them one bad decision is all it takes and they could be gone forever.
"I respect their privacy, but only to a degree. I love them too much to worry about them being mad at me for snooping. Guys like Singleton force me to snoop."
Columnist Phil Gianficaro can be reached at 215-345-3078, pgianficaro@theintell.com, and @philgianficaro on Twitter.
