Halloween is the season for scary clowns. A social media influencer in Central Illinois makes it his business to protect children by harassing not only individuals on the sex offender registry, but anyone who dares to disagree with his tactics. Dressed in a clown costume, he organizes lynch-mob rallies outside courthouses and businesses that employ people he doesn’t like, holding placards that read “Dead Pedophiles Don’t Reoffend.” He seems not to know that most living ones don’t reoffend after a first conviction.
His harassment forced the closure of a bakery co-owned by a man who once had a consensual relationship with a 17-year old, putting nine people out of work. His followers placed a woodchipper outside the residence of a woman who tore down some of his offensive signs in her town. He has no children of his own and admits he was never molested, so why is this issue an obsession with him? Is it just because sex offenders are deemed an acceptable target for hate? Or is he really trying to exorcise the pedophile within? Could he be like John Wayne Gacy, another scary clown and repressed sex predator?
