Kids don’t deserve this rapist’s release
We like to think of ourselves as compassionate people, instinctively reluctant to “lock ’em up and throw away the key,” clinging instead to a foundational belief in notions such as redemption and repentance.
But then we’re confronted with a barbarian such as Wayne W. Chapman, whose insatiable desire to molest young boys made him a monster unfit to remain at large.
At one point in his wretched existence he told authorities, “I need help because I cannot help myself from doing these things.”
That’s when there would appear to be no other logical choice but to throw away the key, figuratively if not literally.
But Chapman is 70 now and, in the opinion of two state-contracted psychologists, no longer poses any risk.
They’d have us believe he’s a new creation.
To hear them tell it, after 40 years of incarceration he’s as benign as Grandpa Walton.
Unfortunately for the rest of us and for whatever credibility they might have had, while Chapman’s appeal for release was winding its way through the court’s bureaucracy came news this sicko had repulsed staffers at MCIShirley by allegedly exposing and pleasing himself in front of them. Grandpa Walton? Please. Ask yourself: If Chapman acted that way with authorities looking on, how do you suppose he might conduct himself the next time he lures a kid into a secluded area?
Sure, your heart wants to believe everyone can change.
But where pubic safety is concerned, it’s the head that must call the shots.
Remember Nathaniel Bar-Jonah, a predator much like Chapman who spent a dozen years in a Massachusetts treatment center for sexually dangerous predators after attempting to murder two young boys?
In his own journal he wrote of “little boy pot pies” and “little boy stew.”
Nevertheless, in 1991 a Bay State judge determined he was no longer a threat to anyone and released him with the proviso he relocate to Montana where his mother lived.
Bar-Jonah, a Worcester native born as David Brown, soon demonstrated what that judge should have known:
There’s no geographic cure for madness!
After murdering a 10-year-old Montana boy he chopped his body into little pieces, stirred them into a spaghetti sauce and then served it to his neighbors.
Do you think Massachusetts bore any responsibility for what happened to that boy?
If Wayne W. Chapman is turned loose and ravages another child, do you think those two psychologists will feel any responsibility?
Or will they just shrug it off as a bad day at the office?
Kids deserve better. Indeed, we all do.