Guest Post: Jeanne Sager Tells Moms to “Just Kidnap” Their Children to Save Them from Sex Offenders

This is a guest article written in response to a CafeMom article written by Jeanne Sager. For the backstory behind the article, CLICK HERE. A court has awarded custody of a six year old girl to a registered man, who may have been falsely convicted. Sager suggests the mother kidnaps the child. It is a hot topic at both Bakersfield Now and Cafe Mom.

Jeanne Sager Tells Moms to “Just Kidnap” Their Children to Save Them from Sex Offenders
By Wendy Testaberger

Jeanne Sager, blogger at “"The Stir," doesn’t seem to realize that her recommendation would, in many states, result in the mother committing the “mercy” abduction to register as a sex offender if found guilty.

Jeanne Sager

Like many websites whose content is mainly composed of private bloggers, it appears that The Stir (an offshoot of Café Mom) has little to no standards when it comes to picking those who will represent them. Obviously, you don’t have to know the first thing about a subject in order to write about it. Apparently, it’s also okay to encourage people to commit felonies as well. You know, in the best interest of children and all.

A quick review of online comments in reaction to this story – on Ms. Sager’s blog and more reliable news outlets (I use that term lightly) – highlight one of if not the most pervasive problems plaguing the prevention of sexual abuse. The public, particularly women, seem unable to read a five-paragraph story in its entirety, at least not before forming a staunch emotional opinion, which renders the whole picture moot anyway.

In their quest to “protect the children,” they are fully willing to support a woman who has been accused of forcing her young daughter to fabricate a molestation claim against her own father – and not just by the jilted husband. The “sex offender” father-in-question was convicted during a flurry of false child sex abuse allegations in Kern County, and plead guilty to one of twelve counts of “lewd and lavicious behavior with a child” in exchange for dropping the other eleven. One commenter on bakersfieldnow.com happily chortles that she was successful in preventing a sex offender from moving into their neighborhood (so much for the other neighborhood’s children!) and another claims the judge is “pro-pedophilia.”

It’s people like Ms. Sager who have the power to influence a major demographic on an immeasurably important issue. Sadly, she failed. “Convicted pedophile?” No such thing. Claiming the registry was created to protect children from “creeps?” Not so much. And again, the sweet irony of the entire thing is that if Ms. Sager were convicted of kidnapping her child, she’d be right up there on that list with all the “creeps” to whom she would just as soon deny any sort of parental rights. What was that about when the shoe’s on the other foot? (Oh, and just one more thing – Ms. Sager’s most recent blog post, prior to this one, was a giddy announcement that a new season of Teen Mom is starting. What exactly does she think happens to all those Teen Dads – you know, the ones whose girlfriends don’t star in reality TV shows glamourizing what the registry refers to as “sexual assault on a minor?”)

I suppose I should not be surprised by the assertion that sex offenders are bad – regardless of guilt or innocence or type or severity of crime – but kidnapping and child abduction is not. After all, this type of sentiment is regularly echoed in every day online commenting whenever the subject is sex offenders. Murder, torture, rape, and genital mutilation are fine and dandy as long as the victim is on the registry.

Do people fail to see that this makes them murderers, torturers, rapists and molesters too – and that in their quest to protect children, they are teaching them that those things are okay?