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To be clear, I am not advocating doing nothing when a known sex offender has approached your child. Just that there are ways to go about it that don't involve baseball bats.
And just to expand a bit on what Xazy says above, there is a huge difference in recidivism rates between pedophiles and other child molesters. 'Other child molesters' representing a very wide range of offenders, the majority of which do not offend again...the majority of whom are convicted of having consensual sex with teenagers. Yes, check out your local registries if you don't believe me! Rapists have a much higher rate of recidivism than most child molesters because rape is often an obsessive mental preoccupation, much like pedophilia (and pedophilia is not a common disorder). This man was a Level 3 which is definitely more of a threat than the vast majority of men and women who are convicted of child sex crimes, but without knowing the nature of his previous crimes it's hard to say if he is a pedophile. In the article he is called simply a 'sex offender.' Perhaps other articles could illuminate more details about his past, but he is not necessarily a pedophile.
And the point of saying all that is, I think people react too quickly when the words 'sex offender' and 'child molester' start getting thrown around. It's really easy to fall into the 'lynch mob' mentality. Just slow down.
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Most people go through life dreading they'll have a traumatic experience. Freaks were born with their trauma. They've already passed their test in life. They're aristocrats. - Diane Arbus
PESSIMISM, n. A philosophy forced upon the convictions of the observer by the disheartening prevalence of the optimist with his scarecrow hope and his unsightly smile. - Ambrose Bierce
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