And they quoted me!

[morgan_dhu]

Of course, I'm in the last paragraph, which hardly anyone will read, but I'm one of two residents of the area quoted, and the article does report a bit of my argument.

The bit about me:

Some area residents say "hounding" those who are trying to rehabilitate themselves causes stress, and that may increase the chances of them re-offending.

"(Goodwin) being here doesn't bother me," said Morgan. "It's the guy we don't know about who I worry about." Goodwin is getting help for his deviant behaviour, she added.

There's my five minutes of not-quite fame for the year - defending a convicted paedophile to serve the supervised time he was given without facing a medieval witchhunt that's almost certain to make it impossible for him to change his behaviour.

By the way, for anyone who is interested in precisely this issue, I highly recommend watching the movie The Woodsman, with Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgewick.

Comments

[jenwrites.livejournal.com]

*applause*

I'm really glad they quoted you. This is an issue that I really feel we need to hear a diversity of voices on.

[morgan-dhu.livejournal.com]

Thanks.

I have a lot of points of agreement with the prison abolition movement (with the caveat that there may be a small number of people who commit repeated acts of physical or sexual violence who may not be able to be treated by any known therapies and who may require some form of humane long-term segregation from the broader community).

I'm just surprised that any of my perspective got into the article at all, given the extreme right-wing stance and tabloid news slant of The Sun.

[guyindkny.livejournal.com]

Indeed--given the tone of language used throughout the article. Nice to hear that you're the voice of reason. It's amazing how people don't realise that they're only making situations worse when they either hound, or think that the solution is to simply lock people up and throw away the key. Sadly, that's the viewpoint that our current government is pandering to.

[morgan-dhu.livejournal.com]

I actually had an interesting side conversation with the reporter about tone - I told him that what I was going to say was not particularly what his editor would want to hear, and noted that the Sun tends to sensationalise issues and that in my opinion the kind of story he was writing now was part of the problem.

He was quite forthright in acknowledging that his paper has a tone and a slant and he knew exactly what he was writing to and who he was writing for.

I didn't press him as to whether the editorial position of the paper matched his own - any professional is going to write to the tone and style of the paper she or he works for - but it was a bit surreal in that, as reporter and interview subject, we established certain awarenesses and almost a kind of metadiscussion of the role and function of the media around the core interview.

As for the law and order agenda of our American clone overlords... well, I imagine you can guess exactly what I think about that.

[lavendertook.livejournal.com]

Hey, md! wordweaverlynn just posted about her asthma that sounds similar to your environmental sickness, and it made me think of you together, and that you'd like each other, and I thought I'd introduce you 2. So check out her LJ.(-:

[morgan-dhu.livejournal.com]

I did. Thanks for the intro, it does seem as though we have some challenges in common, plus she seems to be a cool person.