Buyer Beware? Citizen Beware?
I am so mad right now, I can hardly see straight. It’s a long story…
Recently, my cousin tells me he’s going to buy a house, what with all this foreclosure talk and good deals to be had. I bit my tongue at this news, despite my kneejerk reaction to profiting at someone else’s expense. Happily buying a foreclosed home seems like loan sharking or pawn shopping to me.
Instead of berating my cuz, I, instead, talked to him about my own home buying experiences, and the importance of home inspections (I got burned by my seller- now my neighbor- on a faulty electrical system. My own fault- but that’s another story…) I also pointed out that one of the best things to do is to check any prospective home out on any of the many National Sex Offender registry sites. I mean, who wants to live next door to a rapist or child molester? Especially if you have or want kids?
See, in this day and age you don’t have to buy a home then wait to hear gossip from the new neighbors. Nope, you can go online and see a nifty map of all the convicted scumbag perverts in the neighborhood. My personal favorite is www.familywatchdog.us
They give you a map and when you click on it, you get to see a picture of the perv and what they were convicted of doing.
I know this method isn’t infallible. Every day scumbags go free, unconvicted because some jury of bleeding heart saps refuse to accept the fact that, yes, there are evil reprobates in our society that would even harm children.
Okay, I’ll confess- in my day job, I work in law enforcement. I have tried to keep that out of my writing, but I feel it’s pertinent to this story. So I’ll just be ambiguous about the details of what I do and where.
Anyways, I advised my cuz, who’s like a brother to me, that he really needs to scope out the new digs before he buys. Amazingly, Mr. Internet doesn’t even know you can look stuff like that up. So I send him the links. And I wonder, how many other folks don’t know this INVALUABLE resource is out there. And it’s FREE.
A little time passed, and I asked Cuz how his search was going.
"I have made on offer on a house, we will close by the end of the month. It's in the CENSORED subdivision. The address is CENSORED. Please check out the area and let me know what the crime situation is."
No problem. I got online and looked.
Oh, crap.
There it is, right frickin’ next door to the house he’s buying:
Tommy R. Orberson. Convicted December 31, 1998 for Sexual Misconduct with a Minor,
Argh.
So then I go into the public access court records for the County of conviction. Turns out that the guy was originally charged with CHILD MOLESTING- he was allowed to plead the case down to the lesser offense of Sexual Misconduct.
I broke the news to my cousin. I asked if he was out any money- he was. $500. Well, better to lose the money than move in and find out about the perv next door later.
That evening, cuz sends me an email:
"I'm going to see how bad that guys case is…I hear he's really old and frail…looks far older than 66, he may be in bad health…maybe he will kick off before I have kids."
What?!!!
I’ve heard a lot of stupid things in my career, but that one has got to be in the top ten. He’s a frickin CHILD MOLESTER! The guy pled guilty to it, for God’s sake!
Let’s take a moment and look at just what
First off,
Now, before anyone reading this harps about the 14 to 16 thing, I’d like to take a moment to talk about plea agreements. See, when someone is charged with a crime, 9 times out of 10, they make a plea agreement rather than go to trial. The incentive for them is that the Prosecutor will often offer less time in jail or even change the offense to a lesser offense.
Tommy Orberson was originally charged with Molesting a Child under 12 years of age. That’s covered by Indiana Code 35-42-4-3, which defines Molesting as when a person performs, submits to sexual intercourse or deviate sexual conduct with a child under 14 years of age. Or, when a person performs or submits to any fondling or touching of or by a child under 14 years of age with an intent to satisfy the sexual desires of the child or older person. And again, there are lots of aggravators and other conditions that increase the severity of the offense. But, basically, we’re talking about sex with a child.
Oh, yeah, he’d make a “good neighbor.”
Now, I guess what really makes me mad about this is twofold. First, my cousin thinking the guy is a harmless old man about to kick the bucket. That’s just plain idiotic: Old doesn’t equal feeble. We, as a society have got to stop thinking of the elderly as feeble, silver-haired babies. They’re people. Grownups. Some could kick your ass. Some might be in poor health. But never, ever should they be treated as anything other than equal to every other citizen, good or bad.
Secondly, my cousin was being fed a bunch of Leftist pabulum about the harmlessness of the crime. Hello?! Hardened criminals in jail despise child molesters. Even rapists will condemn someone who hurts children. It is simply the most despicable of crimes to harm a child- to use them for sexual gratification. So if someone is evil enough to hurt a child, what won’t they do?
And let’s be clear on this- this perve was 56 when he committed his crime. He wasn’t just walking down the street and BAM! He decided to molest a kid. No, this bastard had more than likely been molesting for many years. He just got caught. Worse, at his age, if he had kids of his own, he more than likely molested them as well. Don’t try and tell me he’s a noble pedophile who protects his own. There’s nothing noble about a molester; they are the lowest of the low.
Yeah, the American Communist Liberties Union may think molesters are people too, but there are plenty of victims out there who would vehemently oppose that completely dumbassed point of view. And none of them would want to live next door to a molester. No one should want to.
The moral of this story is still forthcoming. My cousin is still considering buying this house- because he’s afraid to lose the money he’s put down to prepare loan papers and secure a hold on the house. His piece of $#!t realtor and the seller’s mutual $#!tbag realtor have done him wrong, throwing their morals to the wind in favor of a commission, rather than having the human decency to warn my cousin of the completely worthless, dangerous, scumbag living next door.
So anyone reading this, please use your head for more than a hat-rack. Buying a home is a big deal; check out your neighbors before you buy. If you don’t, you just might find yourself and your family living next door to the bane of even the criminal underworld.
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