Resume Of A Kansas Youth Pastor

In November of last year, a Northeast Kansas youth pastor by the name of James Bugbee was arrested for sexual assault of a minor. For reasons only known to the shadow, this matter only got nominal notice and coverage from local media, and a lot of people in Northeast Kansas are unaware that a youth pastor of Washington Christian Church in Kansas went to court for molesting a child. Last week, he was sentenced to sixty-four months, with credit for time served since his arrest. This garnered even less attention in the news. Fortunately, the court was more impressed than the media with Reverend Bugbee's accomplishments. Sixty-four months is the longest sentence with which a first time offender can be sentenced for this crime in Kansas. But shouldn't all the churches be proud enough of Reverend Bugbee to announce his evangelical talents everywhere? Should parents in Washington County Kansas and surrounding areas have a chance to peruse his resume in the sex offender registry prior to allowing children to attend church?

Bradley Manning Acquitted of Aiding The Enemy

Bradley Manning has been found not guilty of aiding the enemy, the most serious of the charges leveled against him by military prosecutors. He was also found not guilty of a charge of espionage, but found guilty of most of the other crimes with which he was charged. This is good news for our civil liberties; while betrayal of professional confidence and contract breaches are still torts, high treason continues to have a very specific definition, and the United States government does not have carte blanche to accuse and convict anyone of whom they decide to make an example.

 

James Holmes, Ronald McDonald Clone

I wasn't going to do this. I really thought James Holmes, Aurora Colorado movie theater shooter, was getting too much attention. In the face of all the things that are more deserving of the FBI's attention, such as missing children, why did this creep have to stop taking his thorazine and fulfill his mentally ill ambitions of forcing the rest of us to feel his pain? But after seeing this picture, and the entry on Bent Corner, I was unable to stop myself. Rick talks about the fact that others who commit crimes like this might be prosecuted as terrorists, which is completely true. If our Ronald McDonald wannabe had a darker-than-olive complexion, and spoke with an accent from a faraway, Middle Eastern place, or had friends who practiced Islam, (as opposed to having no friends!) or practiced Islam himself, he would probably be facing slightly different charges than the charges he is facing now. Yet despite a slightly different motive, the crime and the intent are the same. The bias is illogical. But there is one more place I would go with this, before deciding not to give this creep any more attention, and that is this: why do our courts fail and often refuse to hold anyone who has been diagnosed with a serious mental illness accountable for his or her crimes? If someone who has decided that the side affects of his medication are too inconvenient, and therefore stops taking it, exposing the rest of us to the dangers presented by his symptoms, why can't he be placed on a locked ward? Why is that such a problem? Why is it so important that the rest of us understand, as we clean up the crime scenes and bury the victims, that the poor, sick, deranged, mentally ill thugs have merely been "misunderstood"? Ronald McDonald's understudy, here, certainly was misunderstood. His doctor thought it would be okay for him to live outside of the insane asylum.

Kiddie Porn In Tennessee

Lately, I have noticed a lot of hits on my tracker focused on this post, from several months ago. Just over a year ago, this person, Robert Neil Boyd, was arrested in Tennessee for "indecent liberties with a minor", and for possession of hundreds of images of kiddie porn. He also had a warrant out for his arrest in Maryland for the same crime. There isn't really much that is new to be found about this case; just that Mr. Boyd's picture now graces the national sex offender registry. When Tennessee releases him, he will begin to answer for his crimes in Maryland.

This arrest seems to have come as a bit of a surprise to some people in several communities in which Neil made a few contributions. A lot of his friends either rejected values that baby boomers tend to consider "out dated", or never brought up children of their own. They remain completely unsympathetic to anyone who protects children. When Neil ran afoul of conventional mores and the law via his abuses of underage girls, he got away with it for many years before someone finally alerted law enforcement in Maryland. Then, when he disappeared into Tennessee, quite a few of his "avant garde", "hip", and extremely brilliant friends and cohorts knew exactly where he was hiding, but did not value the childhoods of any of the girls whose indecent pictures graced his computer enough to speak up. To make matters even more interesting, Neil continued to support the same kiddie porn industry while hiding from law enforcement in Maryland. All with the blessings of friends who had long accepted these behaviors from him, and did not care about children or the community enough to put a stop to it.

Anyone who has a question about the above linked post, or the case, can ask. I will not publish any comment marked "private". Please believe me when I tell you that the problems we read about  every day featuring victimized and murdered children will only get worse as long as we remain passive about crimes against children.