2006

Megan Kanka was only seven years old when she was lured from her Hamilton Township, New Jersey, home by Jesse Timmendequas, the convicted sex offender who lived across the street from her.  He had a puppy, was the ruse, and Megan wanted to see it.  Instead, she was sexually assaulted, strangled, and her body dumped in Mercer County Park.  Richard and Maureen Kanka were oblivious to the predator lurking in a lair that was visible from their front porch.  The great treachery, so covert and sinister, was that their little girl, out playing, had become prey, watched and obsessed over, by the neighbor man.

It took only eighty-nine days for the Kanka's to get four hundred thousand signatures on a petition to mandate the registration of sex offenders in New Jersey and for the state to pass the first Megan's law.  In 1996, President Clinton signed it into federal law.  No longer do vigilant parents have to wonder if the man next door is a molester lying in wait for their child.  Faces are posted next to addresses of sex offenders, and their crimes against children are exposed for all to see.

On a late spring day in 2006, I walked into my office.  I was the owner of an after-school tutoring facility, and the director of the center was accessing the California Megan's Law website in order to follow up on a client's concern that another tutoring business close by was actually run by a man whose name and address appeared on the sex offender list.  Unnerved by the discovery, our new client had immediately removed her child from the man's program and brought him to us for tutoring.  That he could still be allowed to work in any capacity around young boys was unconscionable to her.

"There he is!"  A picture appeared on the screen as my employee sat back in his chair, pointing at it.  A mug shot, really.  Hair disheveled.  Whiskers ratty.  Eyes bloodshot.  Face distorted - too close to the camera so the nose was flattened and the cheeks too prominent.  "He is a moderate offender who molested children under the age of fourteen."  My director was incredulous. "And he runs a tutoring business!  How does he get away with that?"

In his every day world, this business man seemed innocuous.  Normal.  Likes kids.  Works with them one-on-one. That is his specialty. Individual instruction. Smiles. Pats the kids on the back. "Nice job!"  Did not think to wonder if he is Satan in a suit.

"I wonder if my father is on the Texas list."  A new thought.  Was I really ready to see my father's mug shot staring back at me, proclaiming him to be the criminal in the neighborhood against which parents dead-bolt their door?  That he was feared and disdained seemed incongruous with the Daddy of my childhood; but, that father was buried beneath years of shame.

My expectation was I would have an as yet undefined visceral reaction to my dad sharing the criminal website with the likes of Jess Timmendequas.  When my father's face appeared on the computer screen, however, sadness surprised me with an aching longing to see Daddy as I once did.  As a face I loved.

"Jim Strickling. 11-16-1919. Lewd and lascivious behavior with a child under the age of fourteen. Moderate offender."

Squeezed dry of respect, loosened from the binding chains of transferred ignominy, and freed at the fountain of divine forgiveness, I saw the "man next door" and not my father.  A man who had earned his place with the untouchables - the lepers of our society.