Society Must Deal with Child Sex Offenders Harshly

Mary Vincent hitched a ride with a monster in 1978. The 15-year-old got into a truck with Lawrence Singleton, a retired merchant marine. The free ride nearly cost Vincent her life when Singleton raped her, bludgeoned her, cut off her forearms and threw her off of a cliff.

On March 29, 1979, Singleton was convicted of his crimes against Vincent and sentenced to a mere 14 years in prison. Singleton was paroled on April 25, 1987, after serving just over half of his sentence. He moved to Tampa, Florida, where he stabbed Roxanne Hayes, a 31-year-old prostitute and mother of three, to death in his home. He was sentenced to death for that crime on April 14, 1998.

In October 1984, 15-year-old Cheryl Bess was on her way to school when she was abducted by the maintenance man at her apartment building. Jack Oscar King, a repeat sex offender on parole for the rape and attempted murder of a 9-year-old girl, took Cheryl to the desert where he attempted to rape her, doused her face and arm with acid and left her to die. The attack left Cheryl blind, deaf in one ear and permanently disfigured.

Five year old Mari Luz Cortés walked the short distance from her home in the El Torrejón district of Huelva City in Spain on January 13, 2008, to a sweet kiosk to buy crisps. Mari Luz never returned. Her body was found 54 days later, on March 7, floating in the Ría de Huelva estuary. Santiago del Valle, a convicted pedophile, has confessed to killing Mari Luz. Although the confessed killer had been convicted of sexual crimes against children twice-including a conviction for sexually abusing his own five-year-old daughter- and sentenced to a total of 4 years and 9 months in prison for those crimes, he managed to avoid serving one day behind bars. In addition, del Valle was given a distancing order for attempting to arrange a sexual encounter with a 13-year-old girl over the Internet.