The Today Show has a responsibility — having given this morning ample and sympathetic coverage to the lynch mob of Carbrook which is protesting against convicted s-x offender Dennis Ferguson being in their community — to remind viewers of some vital facts that could help to prevent the murder or at least infliction of a serious assault on Dennis Ferguson.
Mr Ferguson has had his trial on s-x abuse charges permanently stayed by a Queensland District Court judge Hugh Botting last week, because of an avalanche of highly prejudicial media and political coverage which has made it impossible for Mr Ferguson to get a fair trial. Now the Queensland government is providing Mr Ferguson with accommodation in an isolated house in Carbrook on the outskirts of Brisbane.
The vigilantes of Carbrook are out in force, even producing a hangman’s rope last night at a public meeting in which Queensland Police Minister Judy Spence gave new meaning to the phrase ‘entering the lion’s den.’
The views of Carbrook residents, given airplay this morning by the Today program, are simply, let’s not mince words here, ignorant and hysterical.
Why doesn’t the Today Show assist in seeking to eradicate the lynch mob mentality of Carbrook by laying facts, rather than emotion, on the table?
And what are these facts?
Well, for starters, the rate of re-offending by s-x offenders is low, between 5 to 14 percent — it is 50 percent in the case of property crimes. As one of the world’s leading researcher in this area, Karl Hanson from Public Safety Canada observes, “The observed rate of s-xual offenders’ recidivism is much lower than commonly believed.”
Dr Hanson’s comments are borne out by an exhaustive recent study conducted in Florida which showed that communities wrongly think s-x offender recidivism rates are about ten times higher than they are in reality.
Second, it is far more likely that child s-x abuse crimes will be perpetrated by a member of the victim’s family than by a stranger.
Thirdly, if a community or individual wants to increase the possibility that a s-x offender will re-offend, then destabilising their mental state will do the trick. The lynch mob of Carbrook is behaving in just such a way towards Mr Ferguson.
One hopes that the Channel 9 Today Show will tomorrow educate its viewers, rather than simply repeating what they did this morning, which was to expose the unseemly and distasteful conduct of some of the citizens of Carbrook last night.
It is time the media stopped egging on ignorance and prejudice.
It is disturbing to read the details of the ongoing farce that is the rehabilition of Dennis Ferguson. The manipulative support that the Murdoch press, along with the amoral producers of, Sunrise, Today, ACA and TT have given the people of Miles and Carbrook is what disturbs me the most. It is not just that the residents of outerlying suburbs and towns have risen to the distasteful level of fascist vigilantism akin to the Klu Klux Klan or the Brown/Blackshirt mobs of the 1930s in Europe but the cynical manipulation of the Ferguson saga by the media that has dismayed me the most.
The people that Today, ACA, TT, Sunrise and Murdoch’s sub-standard Courier-Mail have focussed on at Carbrook are being exploited as much as Ferguson exploited his victims. To listen to these people speak with such one-level vitrol and ignorant rantings, you are only hearing words that they have been fed by the manipulators from the media outlets covering the story – a story that they have been largely responsible for creating. German Nazi Minister for Propaganda Dr Josef Goebels was endeared of the maxim that if one tells a lie often enough and loud enough the public will, through ignorance or sheer laziness, come to believe it. The irresponsible media outlets know that the public is lazy and cling to their supposed ignorance like a security blanket. They fuel the outrage the public feel when their ignorance is challenged. They hype the outrage into the sickening displays of base mob rule like the scenes the Today Show decided to carry in such graphic detail. They should be held to account and the misguided people of places like Miles and Carbrook shown what fools the media take them for and take them ever so gladly.
You tell ’em Greg. Set a coffee shop in Carbrook with some tasteful Bill Henson prints on the wall, free copies of Art Monthly to browse through while their sipping their lattes( with skim!) and maybe a needle injecting room next door as a sign of your community concern and tell those poor b**tards they’ve got nothing to worry about.
Without the media’s help there’s a distinct sense that the law does not do enough with these people in the first instance.
Ferguson is a re-offender, so there go your stats Greg.
The argument that it’s just as likely a family member is the offender does not preclude the law appearing to many to be too forgiving of this generational abuse. The cycle has to be broken. That goes for alcoholism, spousal abuse, child abuse and especially child-sex abuse. Those abused children go on to be the next generation of abusers, or at the very least deeply troubled individuals who drift from what society may have been able to offer them (they need help).
To my ignorant, prejudiced and utilitarian mind these people are worthless. If we can’t capital punish them, lock them up forever. 2 chances is 1 too many.