Thank you.
If the committee would bear with me, I'd like to ask one question, given that it pertains to information I've accumulated over a long period of time as a police officer dealing with, in many cases, abuse, and even low sentences. I've seen communities outraged by the fact that a sexual predator in their midst who had actually babysat many a child in the community was given a conditional sentence. The reaction from the community was very substantial. There was no appeasing what had happened there because, as so often has been expressed here, predators don't just stop--they keep on going and they keep on going. However, that's one reaction from the community on a conditional sentence. I see it as absolutely astonishing that anyone would consider wanting to put an offender right back into the midst of those whom he has offended.
Secondly, I've talked to a number of victims--and as a police officer you usually end up doing so--who have been touched sexually, especially the youngsters, and sometimes this may be by prominent members in the community. We'll even pick on one of the clergy as an example, but it doesn't have to be. It could be a person who goes around raising charitable funds for organizations. This is just touching ever so slightly, sexually, with the intent of doing it sexually. Those victims come back and say afterward, you know, I felt like I should be more promiscuous. If it's a girl maybe 12, 13, or 14 years old, it would trigger something within them and they would actually become more promiscuous because of the involvement with these adults, as they manipulated them into the positions that they, the adults, chose to go. The girls in particular would end up being more promiscuous as a result of it, and even state that, because it was part of what was encompassing them at the time. They were very, very vulnerable to that type of response.
I'm curious about everyone sitting up front here who have had opportunities to talk to victims. How do you accept that as a way of dealing with offenders--putting them into conditional sentencing--when a community is outraged and the victims are actually impacted in a very negative way?