1 "But they only see 'sex predator' and that's it. They don't bother to check any further," Jane Claxton said. WESH Channel 2 -Parents Say Son Had Diminished Mental Capacity After Childhood Illness In a case like this, it's not enough to be "Right." One must also be correct. It was not at all difficult to google for perspective. The parents said Clovis was childlike even at age 20 because of his severe meningitis. They said while he was at a baby sitter's 18 years ago, he and a 9-year-old girl exposed themselves to each other. "They badgered him into plea bargaining because they told him he was going to jail for the rest of his life, maybe even get the death sentence," said Chuck Claxton. And with perspective, a reality appears that is not what your story would suggest. This was a case of several people taking the easy way out or padding their arrest/conviction records at the expense of a disabled person. It's stretching the definition of sexual offense to even consider what happened to be ... well... even significant (in any legal sense), much less a crime. The sheriff's office is trying to get fingerprints off of the fliers. If the person who made them is caught, he or she could be charged with a misdemeanor. I think the term "Depraved Indifference" would apply, with a charge of 2nd Degree Murder. The clear intent was to harm. I think this should be charged in proportion to the outcome of the person's actions. And that might not be the "Right" response, but it is the correct one. For if your sympathy is limited for a mentally disabled person who was somehow "incapable" of facing the conseqeunces of his own actions, should not your sympathy be limited for the gutless wonder who altered these posters in secret? Oh, and even if these had been the "official" postsers you thought they were, it would simply have been gutless wonders in the position to make such an official action; being in official authority does not make one immune to moral consequence - it makes the weight of such bad decisions more immediate. In fact, this was a lie. He was not a child rapist, and even had he actually been one at some point, for whatever reasons nobody bothered to think about - even after the fact, when it it took a truly trivial effort to do so. I do not consider mob action, nor the solicitation of mob action to be civilized action. As a civilized person, I know that "circumstances alter cases." That's why people who wish to keep a very black and white view of the way things should be prefer to ignore circumstances AND cases. This subverts justice. Dispite your "correction" you seem not to have gone back to fact-check the circumstnaces, so you perpetuate the idea that the information was "truthful," which it was not - unless you consider two children playing I'll show you yours if you show you mine a sex crime. And he was a child, and probably still is. In any case, Washington State has possibly the most effective sex crimes treament of any state, and if he's not reoffended in 18 years, that can be counted as a rehab. However, it would still be an evil act had he been constantly offending at the same level. The responsible thing would have been this: as a parent, deciding that the risk was great enough that it would be worth disabling or killing him myself and taking responsility for that in front of a jury of my peers for my actions. But to make such a decision, one with such weight and consequence to myself, my family and eveyone else affected, that I should at least check the facts to see if they warrented such an action. Wouldn't you agree?

2 Actually, what I still see is a child rapist -- and I say that as one who worked with developmentally disabled adults. If he were truly as mentally incompetent as you (and his family) claim, it is unlikely that he would have been convicted originally -- or that he would remain uninstitutionalized. And publicizing true information is hardly grounds for a manslaughter charge, much less 2nd Degree Murder. My position stands.

3 I think the fact that you see what he did as being "no different" than child rape, and think that gutless act of mob incitement to be defensible instead of the hateful act that it was speaks volumes about you. You don't know the facts of the case. And don't really care. Neither did the person who "told the truth" as you would like to thing. Nor, for that matter, do I. Certainly not well enough to take actions that could be easily predicted to cause - at the very least - a great deal of harm. This is why vigilante justice is discouraged: it's almost always the act of some self-righteous, uninformed fool acting on surface appearances or outright bigotry. That is why we have courts, too, and all sorts of degrees of responses to various crimes. This is no different than "A nigger is just a nigger" or "the only good Indian is a dead Indian." It is depraved indifference - the idea that one single fact about a person is more significant than the sum total of everything else about them, justifying the lack of any consideration of them as a human being. I was raised by your sort of bigot, and it is founded upon a sense of entitlement; it warmed the cockles of my father's shriveled little heart to know - for certain - that he was better than other people by definition. The man actually thought that he, a morally bankrupt, lying, thieving, perping traveling salesman; someone the masons considered unfit for even an elks lodge membership - considered himself more worthy than the Rev. Martin Luther King. To him anyone two or three shades darker than him was "a nigger." Sometimes it didn't take even that; turns out that my great grand aunt on my mother's side was an Octoroon (one eighth black) which made my mother "a nigger" in his eyes. He wasn't smart enough to figure out that if she was, then I was, and he'd just told me what he thought of me. It sure explained the way I was treated, and I learned to appreciate the viewpoint of O'l Stepnfetchit, I'll tell ya. I also learned all about "Tomming," and figuring an objective calculation of relative worth. Although I was somewhat more charitable that people who'd talk to me behind his back. Aside from the color of his skin, there was not a thing my father prided himself upon that the Reverend King couldn't do better and more honestly. And that evident fact, my father felt, could be and should be ignored, simply because Rev. King was "a nigger." My father's bigotry was so delusional it made other racists uncomfortable. Context matters. Motive matters. Circumstances matter. Otherwise we make decisions in ignorance that label one person (a gimpy, creepy freak-show geek) as a sex offender for something less than what gets a pedophile priest a free pass and a new parish filled with fresh meat - not due to what we know, but do to what we do not wish to think about. 18 years ago was soon after rather wrenching lurch away from the previous conservative standard of pretending that when children said they were abused and molested, they were just making it up. A lot of people got caught in the gears at that time and are now registered sex offenders for things that were not sex offenses before and may well not be treated as such now. I have worked with a great number of survivors myself, some of which are developmentally or otherwise disabled, so my views are reality-based. To say this is the same thing as "rape" is to demean the concept of rape itself. Indeed, the adult flapping over the "incident" certainly did more damage to both individuals than the incident itself. It deprived the girl of her own moral agency - telling her that what she did "wasn't her fault" is harmful if she happens to know that she was equally responsible. That can lead to all kinds of potentially damaging weirdnesses - of the "It costs taxpayer money" kinds, if no other consideration moves you. Be that as it may, he needed to learn appropriate boundaries, and all evidence suggested that he had done so. True justice requires a sense of proportion. But in post this I see a bleak, pythonesqe mockery of justice: "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone" - Jesus says to the multitude wishing to stone the adulteress - and there you are, jumping up and down saying "ME! ME! I WILL!" Self-rightious judgmental prudery that can excuse such a murderous and cowardly act reveals you - rather than the person who is dead, after all - to be the true menace to civilized society. I believe that was His point, by the way. Oh, and he said to her, "Go forth and sin no more." She did, and did not, or if she did, it's not recorded. Exactly as in this case. I'm sure you'd be on the forefront of suggesting that western law flows from the Bible and the Ten Commandments. I'd agree. But I like to include the New Testament as well. Although "Judge not, lest you be judged also" is from the Old, and yet is a concept much neglected of late. What skeletons might we find in your closet, sir? Especially given Jesus' words about "He who has lusted in his heart has committed adultery." That is a principle that can and should be generalized to every sin; and I believe "Thou shalt not do murder" is right up there in the Ten. So is "bearing false witness against thy neighbor" and that is PRECISELY the essence of the crime here. As you validate it, justify it, and apparently approve of the result, you are no less guilty by the standards of Jesus than the "anonymous" person who modified the fliers - nor are either of you less guilty than had you stoned him to death. Consider yourself rebuked in the name of Jesus, sir. My faith tells me that any system of morality that morals that justify unethical actions and unjust outcomes are not moral. Your automatic response to the parents (who should know better than you) taking issue with your views is to assume they are lying to defend their little monster. Perhaps they are; it would be sad, but understandable. But it's not a reasonable first assumption, an unjust presumption that exists to allow you to think no further. Well, clearly you need to be driven forward with the rod of truth. A nine-year-old seeing the penis of a wheel-chair-bound cripple while showing off her own pubic area is not the same thing as being viciously raped by a stranger that broke into her bedroom, nor do two perps represent the same danger to society. Indeed, if the boy broke boundaries, so did the girl - and as he was developmentally disabled, should she not be considered a "sex offender?" Who was abusing power in this situation is open to a good deal of question. Indeed, perhaps the boundaries themselves deserve a moment's consideration in the face of such reflexive knee-flexing. In order for there to be an offense against a person, the person has to be offended against. Who, exactly, HAS been offended, given an assumption that the facts are as given? On what reasonable basis can we presume harm to the extent of even the official response? This was a violation of propriety, and - let us be blunt - parental rights. The crime of rape was originally in law, and still is in the minds of many, a crime against PROPERTY; the parental rights to decide what male would gain the right to the sexual favors of the girl in exchange for a dowry. The appropriate response to this situation by sane people would have been a stern talking to and an explanation to each in terms they could comp rend why this was a bad thing. If it were a pattern, (with either) that would lead to a more focused response, up to what occurred - a program for treatment of sexual deviancy. Compassion need not imply stupidity. But nobody has ever been harmed by demonic forces by seeing the bare genitalia of the opposite sex. Not once. Ever. Not in all of human history. Now, having it forced into one's body - that is another question. But even then, the victim is usually considered "soiled" and "degraded," an attitude that is provably more damaging than the actual crime. (This is based on a number of interviews of women, immediately after their rape, with five and ten year follow-ups.) The most effective response to male "indecent exposure" is a critique of their shortcomings. Such persons don't deserve the thrill of knowing that they have succeeded in making a prude have palpitations. Laughter at their expense takes all their fun away, and if it scars them for life, it does so in a pointedly USEFUL way, instead of the validation making a big whup about it gives them. You have set things up in your mind so that all such things are the same thing - and clearly you don't much care about the consequences to others if you don't have to think about "things." For instance, thinking too hard about what magical values you attach to the Holy Penis, that the mere sight of it is as dangerous to an innocent as seeing the naked face of God... goodness. It's just a penis, which I fondly think of God's little joke at Man's expense, to keep us from taking ourselves as seriously as we would like others to. Your sort of reasoning, Sir... is not. And I'm meaning that in a conspicuously Freudian sense. I'm sure you'd know that as well as I, if you were to think on it a moment. For that sort of reasoning has far more in common with the Maoists of the Killing Fields than it does with the tenants of Conservatism. "Kill them all, let God sort them out" is not justice - it's not even sane, and it is an example that once accepted, applies just as easily to the next pink monkey. Which could just as easily apply to Conservative evangelical Christians, given their conspicuously high albedo and a championing of a social hierarchy that resembles nothing so much as a troupe of chimpanzees. If they succeed in tearing away every vestige of charity, compassion and tolerance left in this society - there would be no barrier to such rough justice. "Ask not for whom the Cattle Cars arrive; they arrive for thee."

4 What a load of irrational gobbledy-gook. I won't delete your rambling, illogical statement because I think it says much more about you and the sad, pathetic, judgemental emotional cripple with a shriveled soul you became at the hands of the moral midget that was your male parent than it does about me. For you to dare to claim to speak in the name of Christ would be amusing were it not so hypocritical as to be blasphemous. You tell me not to judge -- but the entire comment you spew forth is one continuous judgement of anyone with whom you disagree. Physician, heal thyself!

5 Oh, by the way, does your version of scripture contain that little thing condemning the bearing of false witness? I'm curious, because given that you accuse me of saying things that I have never said, I think that qualifies as a violation. So Bob, I suggest you smell the sulfur and feel the flame that you direct at me and others who dare to disagree with your sense of morality.

6 What a load of irrational gobbledy-gook. Really? I'm curious; what example have you in mind? I'm curious as to your reasoning. I presume it's the same sort that equates a mentally disabled person waving his winky at a normal (and apparently curious) child with the brutal rape of an utter, unwilling innocent. Delude yourself as you choose; it's not likely to convince anyone else, and as you continue to insist the two are the same, the odds of really pissing off an ACTUAL rape victim climb. When they shriek "how dare you," what answer will you give, sir? sad, pathetic, judgemental emotional cripple with a shriveled soul Funny how people always see in others their own worse sins - to the extent, in this case of entirely missing the point. I say "judge not, lest you be judged also" and you call me "judgmental." Nor did I label you so offensively - but if the shoe fits... And as for the Claxton family, I’d like to say I’m sorry for your loss – but I won’t because I am not. Your son showed himself to be a self-centered bastard who violated others in an attempt to overcome his own inadequacies as a human being. Once he found out that he couldn’t hide from society and its disapproval, he took his own life rather than stand up like a man and face the consequences of his actions. Quite bluntly, I am glad he won’t victimize anyone else, and that is a sentiment I am sure is shared by anyone worthy of being called a civilized human being. ...now, considering that you are stating as fact the above conclusions that you could not POSSIBLY reasonably derive from any evidence I could find - what would YOU call this? Hm? You judged him based on baseless assumptions founded in nothing but your own fears and bigotry and condemn him as worthy of death. How exactly did he "fail to stand up like a man" and "take responsiblity for his actions?" Seems the Sherriff thought he did. Seems the State of Washington thought he did. They have a lot more face to lose in case they are wrong than you. Fact is, he couldn't stand up without braces. He was less of a potential threat to nine-year old girls than a randomly selected religious figure; he looked creepy and a turtle could outrun him. Now, for the real facts - you can find them at my site. The flyers were downloaded from the offender's database, altered to say Child Rapist, which he wasn't, and his address added by a County Commissioner taking advantage of a tense situation caused by other, legitimate concerns. All this cynical sonofabitch wanted to do was to manipulate fools (such as yourself) into doing something foolish so that he could get his name in the paper, being "tough on crime." But it appears it IS a crime to do that, and apparently this guy did it anway, after having been advised that it was both illegal and wrong. Those who willfully break the law, and lie about another person in order to benefit, or see harm come to another; tell me; what penalty does the Bible suggest? Or perhaps you'd prefer Common Law - it's a bit more merciful. Surely, though, you would not suggest such an offense against the laws of God and man be applauded? UPDATE: It seems that someone altered the posters in question, adding Claxton's address and the words "CHILD RAPIST" to the poster. That is appears to be a violation of Florida law, and a spokesman for the Marion County Sheriff's Department is talking about investigating the matter and referrign it for prosecution. I hope the local prosecutor has the decency not to file charges over someone adding truthful information to more fully inform the public of the monster in their midst. And if charges are brought, it sounds like an excellent time for a little bit of jury nullification. Oh. It appears you did. For you to dare to claim to speak in the name of Christ would be amusing were it not so hypocritical as to be blasphemous. You tell me not to judge -- but the entire comment you spew forth is one continuous judgement of anyone with whom you disagree. Physician, heal thyself! By the measure of your own rod, so shall you be measured. Yes, I am judging you, and I do find you wanting. Nor is it hypocritical of me. I know that I must and will be judged in return. And to that end, I try very hard to make my public judgments ones of a standard I'm willing to live with. There is nothing at all blasphemous in rebuking you in the name of Christ, sir; indeed, it's my sincere conviction that Christ, who I have known on a personal level for most of my life, would be quite disappointed with me were I not to point out that the standards you judge others by lack even the slightest resemblence to His. It would be trivial to provide chapters and verses in plenty to illustrate what they DO resemble. Now go forth and sin no more.

7 Well, I finally had to go to your site to get a link that I could get to work, and finally get all the details you alluded to. It would have been nice if you had spelled them out rather than giving a headline that just indicated a mental deficiency. All the material I had seen up to the point that I went to your site never indicated anything other than that the words on the poster were, in fact, true. Now that I find that the words were not true, my point of view differs. To have posted such signs was wrong, and my view regarding possible criminal charges has changed to supporting them -- though I do not see grounds for charging murder or manslaughter. On the other hand, I disagree with your analysis of the original charges. I think he was properly charged and properly sentenced -- and find your attempt to turn the nine-uyear-old victim into a perpetrator to be one of the most offensive thins I have encountered in my life. For you to claim to have any sort of relationship with Jesus while doing so -- for you to trivialize sexual abuse and rape as you do -- is astounding, especially when you appear to do so in the name of Jesus. Sorry, your god appears to bear no relationship to the God of the Bible. On the other hand, I'll take a basic stand against sex offenders. I'll do it on behalf of my classmate Susan, raped, murdered, and dumped like refuse in the woods by a teen who had a history of exposing himself to younger children. I'll do it on behalf of my friend Kathy, raped by a neighbor boy at age 13. I'll do it for Laurie, raped by her manager as she closed up shop with him at a local restaurant. I'll do it for the dozens of students who have faced sexual abuse at the hands of friends, family members, clergy, and teachers. I'll do it for the family member who was twice raped by "good upstanding men" whose charges were rejected by police who believed their stories that she "just changed her mind". And I'll do it for the family member who was sexually abused at age 3 by a neighbor teen who began with "I showed you mine, now you have to show me yours" and who suffered years of guilt and shame because he was told it was his fault for complying. You, on the other hand, seem intent upon minimizing the acts of those who commit such acts by calling them crimes against propriety and property and parental rights. You seek to minimize them by making them no different in kind than garden-variety lust. Were I you, I would be out looking to buy a millstone. And for that reason, I stand by my analysis of you, though.

8 I found out these things by googling " fficial">Clovis Claxton" and hitting return before posting. You didn't need MY site to find out about it. Here, check this out, to understand why I rebuke you. Or even if you don't, it's still a fine read. Now that I find that the words were not true, my point of view differs. To have posted such signs was wrong, and my view regarding possible criminal charges has changed to supporting them -- though I do not see grounds for charging murder or manslaughter. Have you heard of the term "Depraved Indifference?" The politican was warned of the consequences and did not care. in Speaking with the Devil, psychiatrist Carl Goldberg uses a multi-step theory to explain the deformed personality from which evil emanates. To his mind, the devil represents "individuals who have transformed themselves into beings capable of extreme brutality and atrocity." It's a developmental sequence that involves: * shame and humiliation during childhood that impairs self-esteem * protecting their own "defects" by developing contempt for others * adopting belief systems that allow them to rationalize and justify their actions * losing empathic bonds with others * acquiring a habit of treating others without respect * learning to enjoy the infliction of cruelty * losing the ability to be self-aware * magical thinking—‘I can make it happen if I can imagine it thusÂ’ People who go through this process can then create a frame through which they can inflict deliberate cruelty on others without seeing how they themselves have regressed as moral beings. They can identify with monstrous acts and behave in the same manner. It's a series of logical steps from point A to point Z that evolve in the direction of antisocial destruction rather than social integrity and repair. If you want to see examples of all of these behaviors, read the responses of your wingnut collegues, or anything about anyone, anytime on Little Green Footballs. You hear it in the words of James Dobson and Pat Robertson. It's evil. On the other hand, I disagree with your analysis of the original charges. I think he was properly charged and properly sentenced -- and find your attempt to turn the nine-uyear-old victim into a perpetrator to be one of the most offensive thins I have encountered in my life. For you to claim to have any sort of relationship with Jesus while doing so -- for you to trivialize sexual abuse and r*pe¹ as you do -- is astounding, especially when you appear to do so in the name of Jesus. Sorry, your god appears to bear no relationship to the God of the Bible. I'll grant that what the people who tell you what the good book says say God looks a lot different than the one I know. Here is what I said: nine-year-old seeing the penis of a wheel-chair-bound cripple while showing off her own pubic area is not the same thing as being viciously r*pe¹d by a stranger that broke into her bedroom, nor do two perps represent the same danger to society. Indeed, if the boy broke boundaries, so did the girl - and as he was developmentally disabled, should she not be considered a "sex offender?" Who was abusing power in this situation is open to a good deal of question. Indeed, perhaps the boundaries themselves deserve a moment's consideration in the face of such reflexive knee-flexing. In order for there to be an offense against a person, the person has to be offended against. Who, exactly, HAS been offended, given an assumption that the facts are as given? On what reasonable basis can we presume harm to the extent of even the official response? Abuse is harm. If she was part and party to this event, even if she was "scarred" by the sigt of an Evil Naked Penis, that is a consequence of an act she was party to, and the usual Conservative, right wing response to ANYTHING like this (other than sex) is "well, serves them right." Like, say, a black kid pointing a water pistol at a white cop and getting shot. "Serves that seven year old right." I wouldn't go so far as that, but there are things in life that happen as the result of stupid things we do, and it's not always possible to legislate them away, nor does the fact that another person was involved make it a crime. I'm not trying to turn a victim into a perpatrator; I question the validity of either term in cases such like this; I smell a horror of the alien MH boy, and fear of what such a "mental case" might do. And mothers who's daughters are exposed to such things do tend to lose their objectivity. We expect that, love them for it, and that is why we have judges and juries to sort such things out, instead of just stringing folks up. Oh, and abuse-sizing by proxy is silly - when you are doing it to a sexual abuse survivor. If I can be calm and forgiving of such a thing (and no, I do not take it lightly, not at all) what's YOUR excuse? Given what I know about the sexual abuse panic, given what I know about what happens to MH persons who get caught up in that, and given what I know what happens to the judgement of DA's who see an easy layup just before an election, forgive me for granting the deceased some charitable slack. But even if I were convinced he was a serial winky-waver - which I'm not, it's the sort of thing people remember - to say, as you did, that it is just the same as child r*pe¹ is in fact, to trivialise r*pe¹. It is to equate clueless male sexual behavior with r*pe¹, and to suggest that women cannot tell the difference. It's bizarre that you accuse me of it! Oh, and then you drag in the "slippery slope" fallacy. Yes, and if you attend church, you run the risk of becoming a mind-controlled slave of Jerry Falwell. I've seen it happen! Really, I have. But it's a damn silly arguement, none the less. I don't suggest that what he did was right or a good thing. I just don't automaticly presume what she did was any better, nor do I think that he was under the circumstances, any more mature than she was. If I find two 9 to 12 year-olds waving their wabblies at each other, depending on the circumstances, I handle it right there and then. I hardly think cops are required. But if they got involved, and charges were filed, I think it reasonable to presume that when someone as circumstantially harmless as this is allowed to go home the situation has been dealt with and is done. Hysteria and over-reaction always leads to worse evils than the ones they attempt to stamp out. Always. "Let him who is without sin cast the first stone." -JC Which of us is in favor of lobbing rocks at presumed sinners, and which is not? I think I'll go with my God, thank you. 1- "Your comment could not be submitted due to questionable content: rape\. Please correct the error in the form below, then press Post to post your comment." Yes, the word itself is so much worse than considering what it means.