Risk: The Science of Politics and Fear by Dan Gardner

Author:Dan Gardner [Gardner, Dan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Non-Fiction, Psychology, Politics
ISBN: 9780771032998
Goodreads: 2246398
Publisher: McLelland & Stewart
Published: 2008-04-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Nine

Crime and Perception

“Pedophiles watch our children from the shadows,” warned U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. “They lie in wait, studying, planning to ensnare and violate the innocent.”

The attorney general’s audience that day in February 2007 was trainees at the Project Safe Childhood Training Program, hosted by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. They had a mission, Gonzales told them. “It is our responsibility, in law enforcement and as adults, to find the predators first. To bring them to justice before they catch their prey: our kids… At this training program, you will learn how best to pursue them, to interrupt their sadistic hunt. Together, we can make these hunters feel like they are the hunted. Because we all pray for, and work for, a day when children in this country are safe from the leering eyes, the insidious stalking, and the unthinkable cruelty that pedophiles inflict upon them.”

There is probably no figure more reviled in modern Western culture than the man—he’s always a man—who hunts, sexually abuses, and even kills children. In the tabloid press, he’s a “monster,” a “pervert,” or a “paedo.” A headline in the Lancashire Evening Post blares, “Sex Beast Caged.” The British tabloid Daily Star warns, “Pervs Now Rife in Our Schools.” The revulsion is so profound and universal that even quality American newspapers, which are normally scrupulous about avoiding prejudicial language, have taken to calling sex offenders “predators.” Politicians have reflected the shift by making promises to crack down on lurking pedophiles a staple of election campaigns.

He is worse than the drug dealer, the murderer, even the terrorist. He is the embodiment of evil, the stuff of nightmares. “It is every parent’s fear, having your child taken,” intoned Anderson Cooper, the popular host of CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360, using the standard journalistic formulation to introduce a special, hour-long edition of his show in January 2007. “No child, of course, is immune.”

The focus of Cooper’s show was the story of Ben Ownby and Shawn Hornbeck, two Missouri boys. When Hornbeck was 11, he was abducted while riding his bicycle. Four years later, Ownby, 13, was snatched at his school bus stop. Acting on a tip, police found Ownby shortly after he was taken. They were also startled to discover a now 15-year-old Shawn Hornbeck. Both boys had been kidnapped by Michael Devlin, a seemingly ordinary man who is “a chilling reminder that the co-worker and neighbor you think you know so well may be a monster,” Cooper said.

CNN is not tabloid TV and this show—entitled “Taken: Children Lost and Found”—was relatively restrained in its presentation of what is an inherently terrifying issue. There were interviews with Hornbeck’s parents, Devlin’s former employer, and a psychiatrist who discussed why a kidnapped child may not run at the first opportunity. There was also a look at how forensic artists “age” photos of young children. But mostly, there were agonizing stories of lost children and shattered parents. “Four o’clock, the bus came and we heard it. And she just never came up the driveway,” said one mother who lost her daughter 20 years ago.

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