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Connecting on a personal level is an important part of sharing our ideas. On this page we'll present some
details about our organization and the people behind it.
Sisters Missi Pfeifer, left, and Kelli Duncan walk the streets in the Pairie Park neighborhood, trying to
collect signatures on a petition to keep a child predator, Leroy Hendricks, from moving to Lawrence.
Charlotte Hastings, left, Lawrence, collects
Lizz Conley's signature near Ninth and Massachusetts streets. Hastings and her mother, Keri Collins, pictured in background
at left, solicited signatures Tuesday from people downtown in an effort to keep convicted sexual predator Leroy Hendricks
and others like him from moving to town.
From left, Leavenworth County Commissioner Gerald Oroke and Charlotte Hastings and Missy Pfeifer, both of
Lawrence, watch the court hearing on the proposed group home in Leavenworth County.
Mother
of four, Grandmother of nine. After a call from my oldest daughter, to read an article in the Lawrence journal world.
About a sexual predator transitional housing facility, opening in Lawrence Kansas. I decided I was fed up with allowing issues
pertaining to sexual predators, to go unopposed. I wrote a letter to the editor,
protesting the facility in any town anywhere in a residential area. Then with the help and support of my daughters.
Ideas from all of us started to come together. A petition protesting the facility, was written and we began our
efforts to get signatures. We will take the petition to the governor in July of 2005. We now have the support of our representatives
and they assure us there will be a bill on the floor of the house next session, to control where these housing facilities
can be. We will also address the laws in Kansas, that registered sex offenders cannot live in locations close to where children
congregate. Schools, Churches, Parks etc. A 2000 foot rule is what we want.
Keri
We
are a concerned family, four mothers, (a grandmother and three sisters) who are worried that the futures of our children are
being threatened. It is not just our children. It is every child everywhere. It just happens that it is happening here in
Lawrence now.
We are not targeting every sex offender there is in Lawrence, only the “sexual predator”
and the facilities, which would transition them back into society. If they are in Lawrence, where do you think they will live
upon completion of their supervised care? It would most likely be Lawrence.
Everybody deserves a second chance, but a sexual predator has already used up his chances. So why do
we give them more rights than we do our children? A pedophile that has been deemed a sexual predator deserves no rights.
How many things can we say that 1 in 4 are affected by? Some statistics say 1 in 3 have been sexually
abused or molested. Unfortunately the longer it goes on, the more likely that the victim will become the perpetrator, because
no one protected them. It has reached epidemic proportions. It’s everywhere. It needs to be stopped.
Our prison systems are full of people whose life of crime was started because their own self worth as
ruined by sexual predators. What did we do for them, when their rights were violated
so early in life? Maybe we should protect them before it happens?
We have to take a stand. We have to say we do not want it here.
If we just sit quietly it grows. It’s not just Lawrence, It’s
Kansas, It’s Florida, It’s California, It’s Idaho, and It’s the USA.
We all need to stand up and say NO MORE! But Lawrence is where
we live and we don’t want it here.
Lawrence Community Innkeepers does a lot of good things.
We as a community can be proud of the work that they do with the mentally challenged.
They can house and help plenty of aged criminals that need physical care. We
just don’t want it to be sexual predators.
Community Provisional Living has chosen for it to be sexual predators with disabilities. A pedophile
should not be able to hide behind a mental disability and be put on our streets.
So what do we do with them? I am not going to pretend to
have all the answers. Maybe separate housing on existing prison grounds? Maybe abandoned ghost towns, where they can all keep one another? Ultimately, it needs
to be stricter sentencing and treatment, initially instead of after the fact. I think that the patterned behavior could more
easily be corrected on the first offense not the second. Lifetime monitoring is good.
We plan to try to tackle this issue. The laws should be stricter before hand, like Florida just did. Sexual offenders
and predators need to be kept away from schools, parks, libraries and any other place children congregate. Many states already have this in place, but not Kansas. These
are all issues that need rectified.
These are issues that we are working on.
Kelli
Missi
My reason for
getting involved was anger. I just couldn’t sit back and watch, while the organizations involved created a housing program that
would make my hometown a dumping ground for sexual predators. I am a mother of three boys, and it is my responsibility to
protect them from these vile human beings. I say the moment these individuals make the decision to harm a child they should
lose their right to be apart of our community. It is up to us to stand up and say "We will not allow you to put sexual predator
transitional housing any where in our neighborhoods." We decided to start the petition, and things just snowballed from there.
We were definitely not the only ones who felt strongly about this subject. The support we received was very heartening. Now
it is time to get the attention of those who are so willing to trade our children’s safety for the all mighty buck.
Our judicial system needs to be much harder on the sentencing of sexual predators. The punishment should fit the crime! Last
but not least we need to change the laws about where these repulsive people will end up if by chance they do serve their time,
and then have to register as a sexual predator. Kansas needs to change how close they can live to places children congregate.
It
is all up to us to stand up and let our collective voices Shout "NOT IN OUR TOWN!!!!!!!"
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