By Leigh E. Rosen
Arizona Daily Wildcat
October 16, 1997

Child molester's election bid

Editor:

This letter is to Mr. Kanter.

Mr. Kanter, I figure you to be a decently fair-minded person. I enjoy reading your commentaries every week. However, your recent article on supporting a convicted child molester running for a position on his local school board ("Pedophilia shouldn't prevent a good election," October 8) is absurd.

He has not paid his dues to society as you stated. The only way a sick man like that can pay his dues is by taking himself out of this world, or at least let me do it for him. He molested his stepson! You wrote that he admitted to still having "occasional" thoughts of pedophilia. What sick person like that deserves any rights in this country? Do not feed me he argument of the Constitution.

Once a person violates child in such a way they have proven themselves to be unworthy of being a part of our society. I hold no, I repeat, no sympathy for such people. They cannot spend a few years in jail and counseling an overcome their desire to molest children. To go and place this man in contact with children is ludicrous.

You state that he would not have the opportunity to molest the children at school. Yes, he would, but to side with your belief, then I offer that he will get "turned on by some hot little number" and then take his desire out on an unsupervised child elsewhere. True, he would not win the election, but obviously, he is still not quite right in the head if he is entertaining the notion that he has a chance at winning.

I understand that some people may think that I am close-minded and being irrational, but when it comes to such heinous crimes as child molesting, the convicted offender loses his rights (in my eyes) and should live out his life in sham and disgrace.

Leigh E. Rosen
Criminal justice administration senior