Posted on 01/30/2009 5:05:50 PM PST by Free ThinkerNY
A homeless man found dead in the cold earlier this week in Michigan had been denied a place to stay in local homeless shelters because he was a sex offender, social workers said.
The body of Thomas Pauli, 52, was found in the snow in an auto body salvage shop in Grand Rapids Monday. The results of an autopsy were not yet available.
Homeless service staffers who have worked with Pauli said he has been denied a spot at local shelters because of a state law that bars sex offenders from staying within 1,000 feet of a school. It was not immediately clear whether Pauli had tried to stay in a shelter the night he died; shelter directors said they don't keep records of people who are denied beds.
"It is such a tragedy that I can hardly even speak about it, thinking of this poor man who froze to death because of a law that the missions had to enforce," said Marge Palmerlee, the director of the Degage Ministries. "As a community, we need to do something about this. Change has to take place."
(Excerpt) Read more at abcnews.go.com ...
Agreed. At the very least, he was made aware that he couldn’t rely on shelters in Michigan, so by staying in that state during the Winter with no means of support, he took his life in his own hands.
It’s a start.
Yeah, the laws are tricky and vary state by state. Some of these “sex offences” don’t seem to merit the level of ostracism that occurs by being lumped in with rapists and pedophiles. I haven’t led a perfect life myself, and there were surely a few times in my teenage years where if I had been caught in the act with my consenting girlfriend who was a couple years younger than me, I would be on one of these lists as well. Now I’m not proud of all of my former escapades, but at the same time my conscience is not worried that I am really an unpunished “sex offender” for my youthful indiscretions.
It must suck to die that way, but it also sucks to have your life destroyed by a pervert with no respect for one’s life and body.
It does damage to real children who are victimized when people use these laws inappropriately and cheapens the meaning of the term.
Here’s something I wonder about this stuff. Politicians must know full well the kind of visceral disgust that rapists and pedophiles endgender in decent people, yet they don’t have a problem lumping them together with other offenders who don’t normally bear that stigma. Are they trying to lessen the stigma against the worst offenders by putting them in a more nebulous group, or are they trying to increase the stigma on any kind of “sex offense” so that they have another weapon in their arsenal to villify a good portion of the citizenry?
Sex-offenders are such vermin in my thinking, that I cannot find a single crocodile tear to waste on any of them.
Before anyone gets hot at me- Ask yourself when the last time was that YOU got raped???
King said Pauli wanted people to realize that he wasn’t “a monster.”
NOT a single sex offender thinks THEY are a monster.
Nor does a drunk think they are a drunk...
A bad driver thinks they are just swell.
God gave him a kinder ending than I would have if he showed up on my property and I knew what his hostory was...
Agree.
Sometimes there are accusations that are not true.
Thank you for this thoughtful post. I’m appalled that people here are celebrating someone freezing to death; that’s uconsionable.
I think you’re right. Check my tagline.
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“Pauli, who was convicted of criminal sexual conduct in 1991,”
I’d kind of like to know what he did. You can get sex offender status for streaking or public urination some places. That’s not death sentence stuff (unless you urinate on my pristine ‘64 GTO or something similar).
I wonder if there were kids in the shelter, too.
I'm really tired about how the press so often studiously avoids mentioning relevant details. Its like the elephant in the room already.
There ya go. Too bad I don’t really have one.
well that makes maybe 4 of us here LJ
warm regards dear.
Forget about whether we should keep those adjudged sex offenders in shelters or not. If a sex offender’s payoff to committing a crime (perhaps even another sex crime) is now “three hots and a cot”, we will have some serious societal issues.
I’m just wondering why this thread shows up as new on the Michigan list.
Oh well, happier days in Grand Rapids today.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPjjZCO67WI&feature=player_embedded
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