Posted on 03/25/2008 6:02:44 AM PDT by ShadowDancer
Sex Offender Ordered by Judge to Post Signs Tuesday, March 25, 2008
HUDSON, Kan. — Under a judge's order, a man who has admitted molesting a boy has posted signs around his house and a decal on his car proclaiming that he is a sex offender.
The hand-painted signs reading "A Sex Offender Lives Here" are posted on all four sides of Leroy Schad's white house in this central Kansas town of only about 150 people. His vehicle has a large decal with bold yellow lettering reading "Sex Offender In This Car."
Schad, 72, was originally charged with four counts of taking indecent liberties with a 9-year-old girl and an 11-year-old boy in 2005. He was allowed to plead guilty in March 2007 to a lesser charge of aggravated indecent solicitation of a child, and the original charges were dismissed.
District Judge Ron Svaty sentenced him to five years of probation and house arrest, and ordered him to post the signs during his punishment.
Schad is appealing the sign requirement. He could have faced about three years behind bars.
"I know that I deserve something for that, but I don't think I deserve what I got," he said.
The signs went up a few months ago. Schad said the loneliness and isolation imposed by the house arrest are the toughest to deal with.
"It's been pure hell," said Schad, who has lived in the town since 1971.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
No, you’re nitpicking. The man can leave his home, he can get outside the city limits, he can find other children. If you think there’s 100 miles between him and the nearest town or potential victim, you’re grasping at straws in search of an argument for the sport of it.
Never said there was 100 miles between him and the nearest town, I believe I said it was about 10 miles.
I did say there was about 100 miles between him and the nearest bus or cab service.
Like I said, I would have loved to see him jailed.
You’re points about the man’s mobility were quite ignorant of the situation though.
Among my hypotheticals, I suggested he could get a ride with someone he knows. You countered with “he said he raped because he was lonely”. This is an informed rebuttal?
My point was pretty obvious. If he’s not in prison and not monitored, he can gain access to children with minimal resources. I don’t need to know the bus routes for BFE, Kansas to figure that out. It should be self-evident.
Sounds like the name for a new heavy metal band.
Well, in this case it is personal, personal to the people who live in the town. This particular town is small enough that a town meeting to discuss this particular case would probably bring out nearly everyone.
I’ll also wager that the towns people are content and feel perfectly safe from this predator, along with their families, I’ll also wager that they are happier to be able to punish him every time he pokes his head outside to go to the grocery store.
You haven’t grown up in a small town so it’s understandable you’re ignorant of how much retribution is being heaped on this guy daily. And the judge has seen to it that he can’t run away from it, like he could in prison
They feel that way, because they know where this guy is, they know that everyone will be watching him, and they know how to handle him if he even hints at straying.
That’s something that you, no matter how many cows are along the street of your new development, can’t say.
I think I can safely speak for the folks of this small town when I say “Keep your know-nothing big-city nose the hell out of our business!”
Oh, that's right. You don't. You're just making stuff up. Hopefully your assumptions about the "townsfolk" of Hudson, Kansas aren't as wildly off-base as your assumption about me are.
“Keep your know-nothing big-city nose the hell out of our business!”
When your business is putting child rapists back on the street and leaving them free to travel because you think ridiculous yard signs are a superior punishment to the prison system the rest of the country uses, your business becomes my business.
You are leaving little ‘bread crumbs’ about where you grew up and where you now live. Obviously I don’t ‘know’, but my guess is close to the truth.
I grew up near a town 5 times as large as Hudson. I have lots and lots of family who still live in little towns where two cars meeting at a stop sign is as close to a traffic jam as it ever gets.
Everyone knows everyone, and knows who got stopped for speeding last week, who is having trouble at home, who’s kids are a problem in school, and, in this case, most importantly, who the bad guys are.
These kinds of bad guys have been around forever, and little towns knew, and still know, how to deal with them.
I realize that your intentions are good, and you do care about the kids in that tiny town, but you are arguing from a position of extreme ignorance.
Even with the predator living right in town, the kids in Hudson KS are much safer than your kids are in your neighborhood.
One more clue that you are unfamiliar with life in a small town.
Unlike life in a city, the yard signs are probably the least of this guys problem.
Bread crumbs, huh? You haven’t gotten a single thing correct. Not about where I was born, where I grew up, where I live now, what kind of house I live in, how safe my children are. You’re swinging with your eyes closed, missing every pitch and patting yourself on the back for a job well done.
But I’m the one coming at this from a position of extreme ignorance. Because I don’t think child rapists, in any town regardless of size, should be punished with yard signs and left to the devices of this vigilante neighborhood watch concept. If they’re dangerous enough and have done something awful enough to require a sign warning the world how dangerous and awful they are, they belong in prison. You would never support this kind of sentencing for a murderer. Yet, somehow, it’s sufficient for a man who habitually rapes children. That’s inconceivable to me.
I told a little about myself, how about backing up your assertions with a little about where you grew up and live and your claim to undertanding of the little town situation?
I didn’t make any assertions. You told me I never lived in a small town. You were wrong. You told me I lived in a “new development”. Wrong again. You told me I didn’t grow up in a small town. Strike three.
I have to back this up now? I don’t think so. My wife posts here, we’ve been here for over eight years and we’re both known by many posters. If I have to resort to lying — about something as basic as where I live or where I’m from — to get one-up on a stranger, that’s something she’ll see and something I’ll have to answer for. And I’d rather not be seen as some pathetic internet embellisher to the woman I love. You can take what I say as true or not, that’s up to you. But I don’t have to prove a thing.
And I never said I understood the “small town situation”. People generally baffle regardless of where I’ve lived... big cities, small towns, east coast, west coast, north, south, wherever. This was never about geography to me, because I never accepted your premise that this type of leniency for child rapists somehow amounts to real punishment in small towns. As far as I’m concerned, the creep with the sign on his lawn is still free to travel, free to cruise the internet and free to sleep comfortably in his own bed while the kids he’s destroyed get to spend the rest of their lives dealing with what he’s done to them. And that’s a travesty.
You don’t have to back up anything.
I was simply asking for your credentials in regard to understanding the resources that small town folks can bring to this case.
My assertion is that you don’t have any. Your refusal to provide any is hardly proof that I’m right, but it is curious.
Knowing small town folks, I’ll go further and assert that if you were to go into Hudson and begin talking about this guy in the same way you’ve been ragging on it here, they would do the same thing my own small town would have done. They would run you out of town as a meddling outsider.
And they’d throw you a parade, of course. Because certainly the good folks of Hudson walk in lock step behind this judge and his eccentric notions of crime and punishment. I’m sure they’re all thrilled that the child rapist isn’t going to see the inside of a jail cell. After all, you’re the voice of small town America, they must share your view to the letter.
No need for anger just because they probably don’t see things your way.
These are folks who are very much in touch with what they need, and what they don’t need. They are closer to the pioneer spirit than 99% of Americans, and they know when their kids are safe, and when they’re not.
Is this another assumption, or do you have some firsthand knowledge of Hudson, Kansas and how the community feels about this judge’s handling of child rapists?
I have no first hand knowledge of Hudson.
I grew up near a small town, and know a lot of folks who live in small towns, including a bunch in KS.
A drop form $32,600 to $32,598....wow....
If a Realtor showed me a house next door to the dude and I saw that sign, I don’t care how beautiful the house or how good the price, uh uh; it ain’t happenin’.
The appreciation after the slightest “tragic accident” would be amazing, however.
You bad.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.