Until then
What do you do if a known, convicted paedophile moves into your area? How do you protect your family, your kids, when someone who has done gaol time is living down the street? The news has bubbled over with stories of late about Dennis Ferguson, who, having served over fourteen years for child sex offences, having been driven out of several towns in Queensland who did not want him living among them, has now landed in public housing in Ryde.
I’ve been asking people what they think should happen next – it’s the ideal issue to see how strongly people feel the need for justice – and the feedback is more or less variations on the theme of, ‘Put him somewhere else, somewhere where he can have no contact with children ever’, with the exception of a few people who say things like, ‘You’re assuming he has the right to live.’ But the obvious difficulty is, if you take the former position, where is an appropriate place for him to be housed? Will he be relocated from Ryde to another suburb where residents will complain? And will he then be relocated again, and again? At what point does depriving a person of adequate housing – even a person who is a paedophile – become a human rights problem?
Pragmatically, can the State effectively protect children by capriciously relocating Ferguson? Economically, can the State sustain the cost of compensating Ferguson (which he is entitled to, should they relocate him), or the cost of imprisoning him again? Judicially, is the public awareness of Ferguson’s whereabouts eventually going to lead to the public taking the law into its own hands?
In the interests of full disclosure (and, perhaps, to avoid lots of angry comments from people who think I am speaking in defence of Ferguson), I used to work in child protection and I have seen, first-hand, the physical, sexual, and psychological damage that paedophiles do to their victims. It’s vile. It’s horrible. The wounds take decades to heal. Perhaps they never fully heal. I know that the conviction rates for child sex offences in the criminal court are poor. I know the prognosis for rehabilitating paedophilic offenders is not favourable because of the extraordinarily high rate of recidivism. And, having scanned some of the news stories on Ferguson, it appears that the media have brought up a lot of circumstantial evidence suggesting that he continues to engage in employment and activities that bring him into contact with children. I feel the force of the community outrage. It is right to be outraged that a man could do such terrible things to another human being, especially children.
As someone who will be a father in less than six weeks, I think I would agree that the need to protect children outweighs the rights of the offender. But as a Christian, I also feel that I am in the business of extending grace and forgiveness to sinners – and, as Jesus knows most powerfully, grace and forgiveness are never cheap. God gives grace freely, yet He is also a God who is just and whose soul hates the wicked. He has chosen His Son, Jesus, the Firstborn from among the dead, to bring judgement down on the heads of the sinner at the end of time. That is when Ferguson will receive what he deserves for his defiance of God. But until then…what?
davidgawthorne said,
I would normally defend this man’s liberty, given that the State has imposed a penalty and he has served his time. That includes the right to live where he pleases. In my view, this stands even in the hard cases.
Yet, in this case, he lives in public housing – i.e. housing owned by the state of New South Wales.
I do not believe in a right to housing, though it is undoubtedly a good thing that people are housed if that can be managed.
What this means, though, is that a libertarian view that would defend even the rights of a paedophile would also allow him to be moved on if he is not the owner of his own property and his landlord was not otherwise bound by contract to let him be.
Kathleen said,
I don’t know. I’m inclined to say I wouldn’t want him there either, but at least they know and can guard against it. There are so many people out there who commit these crimes and aren’t caught. My parents were careful, and neither my sister and I were victims, but both of us have ended up as witnesses.
Haoran said,
I am going to defend Dennis Ferguson. Not for his past actions, but for the helpless harried man that a community of intolerant, unforgiving people (and the media monster they create) have made him.
Watching some of the “Ryde residents” being interviewed is sickening. It is a profound case of NIMBY: Not In My Backyard.
I understand that these people are far, far, away from the redemptive grace and forgiveness that’s found in the cross, but by the legal system, he has paid his penalty! More importantly, By the blood of Christ, he is entitled to forgiveness.
Here is a man who needs the love of Christ as much as anyone, and moreso. He probably recognises his own sinfulness. You watch on TV a man who needs the transforming love of Christ, and needs to be loved by a welcoming, unjudgemental community… that is, the church.
Now of course there’s wisdom to be applied: you let him into your church but you’re not going to let him run the kid’s club.
But there is a place for him amongst God’s people.
Ben said,
That’s helpful, Haoran (though one wonders how effectively the legal system has dealt with Ferguson in the first place – he has really only done one significant gaol term for offences in the 1980s).
I agree that the church community should be unjudgemental of him (and that is clearly a difficult thing). However, were a paedophile to join your church, how do you also faithfully protect the children of your congregation?
Realistically, I don’t think it’s enough to say ‘let him in, just don’t let him run the kid’s club’.
Haoran said,
Sorry, I was being a bit rhetorical rather than practical.
In practice, you would probably want to supervise him. His history is a matter of public record, there are many young people at most churches, and he can’t not realise that people would be worried about him re-offending.