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1. Perry Barnes May 12, 2014 at 4:23 pm

   Just curious, what time does the “red man” take place in?

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2. Old Man Parker August 13, 2012 at 5:20 am

   Scott, and folks, 

   Wow. This story also hit close to home for me. I worked with a movie director who had been convicted of “sex with a minor”. I didn’t know about it till I had worked with him for a while, became really great friends, like best buddies, then through some bad press – the story got dumped on us. The whole movie crew. I had to make the choice if he would still be the great friend I knew he was… or not. It was actually years later I heard the story from a 3rd party of all the details of what happened. Yes, he did a stupid thing. Yes the underaged person willingly engaged in sex with him. The young person’s family tried to get him to pay up some money, then when they couldn’t get enough, he went to prison… and got beat up every day for a year. Horrible. Every time we went on location… meaning every time he goes anywhere over night, he has to check in with the local police dept. and tell them who & where he is. Once, a officer got the hotel rooms wrong – came to my room, and just about beat the shit outa’ me when he didn’t believe me. Mostly the cops are cool. My friend (and, after much thinking, yeah,  he still is my friend) is one of the nicest guys you’d ever meet. But he lives in fear knowing that his address is listed for the world to know where he is. He’s just about a shut in. He did something stupid. something I’d never do. He paid for it. I think he was set up – but stupid. The family that sued him, has forgiven him long ago. But, it’s ruined his career for the most part. He lives in fear, much of the time. Very scary. I don’t know what the easy fix to all this is. Glad as hell it never happened to me… even by mistake. I am always amazed at how he goes on, keeps a good out look, and doesn’t hate the world. When ever I feel like the world sucks, I think of what my friend has gone through, and still is… and I get over myself. 

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3. agent_minivann August 7, 2012 at 6:30 am

   Scott, this is a beautiful story.  It kind of hit home for me.  I knew a couple guys on sex offender registries.  One was a guy I worked with.  The other was a guy across the street.  If you really looked at their listings, their crimes were sex with a minor.  It could have been a case of the girl either looking older than she was, or she said she was older. I don’t want to say they didn’t do anything wrong, but I had seen enough of the listings to know they weren’t doing anything to prepubescent kids.

   The guy at work had his listing disappear.  I don’t know much about what happened, and I didn’t know the guy well enough to even come close to asking about it. I can only guess that the charge was appealed or thrown out.  The guy across the street was another story.  We got to know him and his wife.  We never asked about it, but we saw him with his kids and step kids.  He was a decent guy from what we saw, and he tried to keep his kids out of trouble, like that meth house down the street.  There were times when people we met would bring up that there was “one of those guys” living in the neighborhood.  It was in the guise of a friendly warning to help make sure we are keeping our kids safe (read: make sure your <10 year old kids aren’t approached by the guy). We knew him fairly well.  We knew enough about what he did that we knew we didn’t need to worry about him in that way. It wasn’t like people were doing anything about it, but they were talking about him behind his back, and thinking that he was all kinds of creepy.  It was a sad case of people seeing the list and assuming the worst.  They never bothered to actually look at the details and see that he wasn’t what they thought he was.  It wasn’t exactly like Red Man, but the story rang true.

   Nice job portraying the good and bad of it all.

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