Report - Sex crimes mostly family related

Sex crimes mostly family related

By Bob Robinson

“Are we doing it the right way?”

That’s the concern of Darke County Sheriff’s Deputy Sgt. Mike Burns regarding John Graham’s sex offender program. While acknowledging Graham’s program is a city issue, he said the problem is countywide.

He added there is no doubt there is a need to deal with offenders, but is concerned about the lack of community involvement.

“There’s a right way to make it fit,” he said. “But that won’t happen without the community behind you.”

Burns said that citizens have a right to be concerned about what goes on in their community, and in his opinion, that’s a good thing.

“When they aren’t, we struggle,” he said. Law enforcement is busier when members of the community don’t care or don’t get involved because then there is no support in dealing with the problems.

He said the issue isn’t with John, he simply questions if it’s being done in the right locations.

Burns was in the Darke County DARE program until it was dropped due to lack of resources in 2002. He currently oversees sex offender investigations in Darke County.

He said the vast majority of sex crimes dealing with children are family-related.

“Stepfathers, boy friends who spend the night, that sort of thing. Stranger-related incidents typically involve teens and adults.”

He said that Darke County conducts 50 to 60 sex crime investigations a year.

“This year it’s off a little, not sure why,” he said, adding however that the decrease isn’t significant.

He said that interviewers have to be trained forensically in order to interview child victims of possible sex crimes.

“In the beginning I was the only one trained and assigned, now we have four,” he said.

“Incident occurrences are not uniform,” he added. In other words they don’t happen on average one a week…

“They come in waves… two’s, three’s, four’s,” and they have to be dealt with when they happen.

Bob Robinson is the retired editor of The Daily Advocate, Greenville, Ohio. If you wish to receive notification of his comments, opinions and reports when they are posted, send your email address to: opinionsbybob@gmail.com. Feel free to express your views.