Contd: How Marco Archer's Death May Change How The Bahamas Deals With Abused Children

I digressed in my post earlier because I had to address a nation filled with religious Eli's.

The Bahamas' number one crime has always been incest and sexual abuse even though the news mainly focuses on property crimes and murders. I shook my head when I read the article detailing Marco's death "the murder count is now 104 for the year of 2011 (because this is the public's main focus)." For every murder there are hundreds of molestations that does not receive any attention.

How the predators are getting away with such an outrageous number of abuses? Often times family members are not willing to act (in addition, because of incest, in order to safeguard the victims names, these rapists are not revealed); cases take a long time to be adjudicated and the predators island hop from one island to another evading bench warrants, and preying on new children. There is no systematic way to track these predators without up-to-date technology. This is why a sexual offenders registry should be implemented by the Bahamian government.

There should also be a mandatory probation of two years where they will be required to check in with a probation officer whether they have served their time. It is utterly wrong to unleash these criminals on our society without our knowledge of their whereabouts. Prison does not deter their conscience of evil only solidifies it. They spend days trading stories and learning new ways to evade detection.

Convicted offenders should be banned from having contact with minor children (anyone under eighteen years of age). In addition anyone who aids them in continuing their vile trek through society should be held accountable by the law.

When I was thirteen I had taken a babysitters job for the summer. It was for a successful insurance agent, and his wife, in Freeport at the time. The job was without incident, but I am mentioning it because a year later, he was sent to jail for molesting his wife's niece. He, like most, went to jail for a short time, nothing was written about him in the newspaper. About  four to five months ago (twenty-four years later he was in the newspaper) for molesting a young girl in his congregation. Turns out this guy went to jail, came out and became a pastor and continued his mayhem.

Certainly his family knew his history and warned no one. Certainly a sex-offenders registry would have saved this young girl this unwanted pain.

to be continued......