What Does a Child Molester Look Like?<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />
 
Michael Sharman
 
What does a child molester look like?
When the Culpeper County Sheriff's Office went to arrest 49 year-old Tony Deal on a warrant out of <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" />Wisconsin for a charge of using a computer to facilitate a child sex crime[1], he looked like their neighbor. In fact, his apartment where they arrested him and seized his computers and illegal images was on the same block as the courthouse, the sheriff's office and the jail.[2]
            We wouldn't have seen Deal's face on any sexual offender registry. Deal's only publicly recorded conviction was back in 1998 when he was sentenced to five years, three suspended, for a third offense of domestic assault and battery[3].
John Utin looked like a 64 year-old retired middle school teacher from Blacksburg, Virginia who enjoyed coaching gymnastics, leading star-gazing trips, teaching Sunday school classes and managing the swim club in his retirement years.[4] At least that how he used to look before he was indicted in Butler County, Ohio on 16 counts of having sexual contact with a young girl when she was 5 to 9 years-old.[5] The detectives who arrested him said he confessed to the crime, and the prosecutor said they, "unearthed many, many other incidences which took place in Virginia."[6]
Leon Sprouse looked like a Wisconsin gay rights pioneer until he was convicted in the Philippines for paying 200 pesos to have sex with a 15 year-old boy.[7] Later, he looked like the head of Hawaii State Representative Rida Cabanilla's office until he had to admit he hadn't mentioned that conviction to her when she hired him.[8]
Mark Foley, the former co-chair of the House Caucus on Missing and Exploited Children, most recently looked like a shoo-in for re-election to Congress from his Palm Beach, Florida district. He didn't look like a child molester until he resigned on September 29, 2006 when his sexually explicit emails to underage House pages became public.[9] Though his attorney Foley later revealed that he had himself been a victim of child sexual abuse between the ages of 13 and 15. He refused to name his abuser, and just said he was a clergyman (who probably didn't look much like a child molester, either).[10]
            Charles Carl Roberts, IV also didn't look like a child molester, at least not until he'd shot 10 Amish schoolgirls and killed five of them in a sexual fantasy gone horribly awry. His friends said he was an ordinary church-going guy, who rooted for the Philadelphia Eagles, and drove a truck for a dairy. His wife, Marie, said he was a loving, supportive, and thoughtful husband who was an "exceptional" father to their three children.[11]
            But on the morning of the killings he told Marie he was a child molester.
On the morning of the killings, after Marie Roberts got back from her regular prayer time at her Moms in Touch meeting, she called her husband's cell phone just to check in with him. He told her that the police were there and he wouldn't be coming home that night. He told her he'd been wracked with guilt over past molestations of two young relatives and tortured by his dreams and desires to repeat those crimes.[12]
Pennsylvania State Police Commissioner Jeffrey B. Miller said if the SWAT team had not interrupted him, Roberts intended to live out those dreams. "He perhaps planned with the kind of wood and I-bolts and flex cuffs … and other things ... [I]t's very possible that he intended to victimize these children in many ways prior to executing them and killing himself," said Miller.[13]
            "What is there to say?" said Roberts' grandmother, Teresa Neustadter. "He was a good grandson."[14]       
            He certainly didn't look like a child molester, or a murderer, at least not until his actions proved that's exactly what he was.
           
           

[1] "Alert mom helps nab suspected predator" Green Bay Press Gazette, WI - Oct 5, 2006

[2] Liz Mitchell, "Culpeper Man Faces Child Sex Charges", Culpeper Star-Exponent October 6, 2006

[3] FAUQUIER CIRCUIT COURT Case Number 061CR9800059800

[4] "Ex-teacher admits sex with young child" http://www.middletownjournal.com/hp/content/oh/story/news/local/2006/09/22/mj092206childsex.html

[5] "Bond set at $250,000 for accused child molester"http://www.middletownjournal.com/hp/content/oh/story/news/local/2006/09/28/mj092806utinweb.html

[6] "Retired teacher faces sex charges", Cincinnati Post 09-28-2006 http://news.cincypost.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/AE/20060928/NEWS01/609280350

[7] "Wisconsin Gay Rights Pioneer Leon Rouse Languishes in Philippines Prison",  http://www.mkelgbthist.org/people/peo-r/rouse_leon/rouse_leon-instep-102902.htm
In Step, Issue: 19.21, October 29, 2002

[8] "Legislator's aide was child-abuse convict", The Honolulu Advertiser, April 9, 2005, http://the.honoluluadvertiser.com/article/2005/Apr/09/ln/ln01p.html

[9] "ExHomosexual Ministry Leader My Heart Breaks for Mark Foley" 2006-10-05 -- USA Religious News

[10] Victims Say Foley Should Name Abuser, by Brian Skoloff, Oct. 6, 2006
http://english.gospelherald.com/article/church/1937/section/victims.say.foley.should.name.abuser/1.htm

[11]"Schoolgirl killer told wife he was child molester" Yorkshire Post Today http://www.yorkshiretoday.co.uk/ViewArticle2.aspx?SectionID=55&ArticleID=1802251

[12] DEBORAH HASTINGS "The day murder walked into an Amish school house" Jackson Hole Star-Tribune AP Sunday, October 08, 2006http://www.jacksonholestartrib.com/articles/2006/10/08/news/national/8959625e85252735872572000077f677.txt

[13] "Amish school killer ' a child molester'" The Gulf Daily News:The Voice of Bahrain, October 4, 2006

[14] DEBORAH HASTINGS "The day murder walked into an Amish school house" Jackson Hole Star-Tribune AP Sunday, October 08, 2006http://www.jacksonholestartrib.com/articles/2006/10/08/news/national/8959625e85252735872572000077f677.txt