Why Do They Target Kids
...of Citrus County for little Jessica Lunsford. But when they finally found the 9-year-old's body March 19, it was in a 2-ft.-deep grave, wrapped in a plastic bag, just 150 yards or so from her Homosassa, Fla., home. "It's very hard for me to realize that all this was happening right under my nose," Jessica's father, Mark Lunsford, told PEOPLE while sitting in his living room. "I'm sad. I'm angry. There's a small part of me that is relieved we have some closure, but I was hoping for another outcome." (Meadows et al.)
Then on March 17 they arrested registered child molester John Evander Couey, 46, who was staying across the street from the Lunsfords when Jessica vanished. Cops say Couey, who had moved into the mobile home of his half sister Dorothy Dixon, 47, shortly before the kidnapping, slipped through the Lunsfords' unlocked front door on Feb. 23, put his hand over the half-asleep girl's mouth and led her to Dixon's trailer. Authorities don't know how long Jessica was alive after being abducted, but say she was sexually assaulted. (Meadows et al.)
Child Abuse Page 5
Couey was arrested 24 times beginning in 1977, including a 1991 conviction for fondling a child younger than 16. He was also fired from a dishwashing job in the early 1990s for writing a sexually explicit love letter to a 14-year-old coworker. (Meadows.)
WHO ARE ABUSERS
Why are there so many people who want to molest children? How can we stop them?
The enormous amount of reports and cases of child molestation could almost make you think that everyone who sexually abuses a child is a priest. In fact perpetrators are diverse lot of people. Not only priest molest children but also teachers, Boy Scout leaders and other adults who work with kids and their own family members.
So what and who is a child molester? The term "child molester" is often used as a synonym for "pedophile." Sex offenders...
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