Kate, can you fix the link? Yahoo says no can do.

http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/07042006/3/canada-wrong-man-nabbed-case-molested-girl.html

Thanks - it's fixed now.

Somebody explain this:
http://www.canada.com/edmontonjournal/news/story.html?id=78cb68e8-323f-4019-8dda-84660faff004&k=37346
And then there is this glaring contradiction...But police released the man without charges after just a few hours of questioning. "He was the wrong guy," said police spokeswoman Karen Carlson, noting that investigators were able to determine the girl had only seen the man from behind." How can you have such a detailed composite sketch when it has been determined that the witness never saw her attackers face?

And we Canadians think Bush has over-reacted to terrorist threats!
I suspect that as the public feels more and more that our policing system is inadequate, there will be more and more "involvement" of the public. Although "neighborhood watch" in neighborhood security, and "home care" in medicine certainly can be good things, when will the pendulum have swung too far. Decreasing government cost so they can be everything too everybody ends up being nothing to anybody.
In medicine we have conscripted the loved ones to be the care givers and confiscated the bedrooms of the community to care for our sick and dieing. With sufficient help this can be appropriate. Unfortunately getting that help at times can be like pulling teeth without anaesthetic.

"Innocent until proven guilty." (Being a deranged 'frootloop' running around on the loose does not count- unless he actually does something). (He probably already has a Lawyer-prepared to represent his rights to be wierd and freaky in public- at the expense of the taxpayer.)

This story just gets weirder and weirder. If the girl who was allegedly sexually assaulted "had only seen the man from behind" how, as greg asks, could a composite sketch be made of the man's face? I'm also trying to feature how the man sexually assaulted her from behind--but maybe I'm just being naive. Did she back into the toilet stall?

It doesn't bear trying to reconstruct.

My feeling is that students should be sent to the washroom two-by-two, teachers of course having to be careful which students go with whom. A drag, I know, but there are just too many unlocked doors into schools, and when classes are in session, the halls can be pretty empty.

The other problem is that, at any time during the school day, you can have technicians, electricians, builders, and others in the building, and it's seldom that any of them are going to be questioned by school personnel. It's assumed--not a great stance, as it turns out--that adults in the school are there for an official purpose.

So, what's the solution? Parent or student vigilantes in the hallways, questioning any unknown person? I feel sorry for our kids today. When I was growing up, we didn't have to worry about any of these kinds of things. My sister and I actually spent hours in a local ravine, with our Movie Magazines and a picnic in the summer and tobogganing in the winter, and went to and from school, and to and from the classroom once in the school, with utter confidence.

Boy, being a kid today is a whole different ball game--and 'same for the teacher.

Nkob, it's a case of bad writing. I think Yahoo was trying to say that the girl made the positive identification of the apprehended suspect having only seen him from behind, not that she had only seen her purported assailant from behind.

Somehow the Susan Smith case keeps coming to mind. Does anyone believe that a seven year old could break away from a grown man? Is it sloppy reporting as EBD suggests or something more. I want to give the little girl the benefit of the doubt so I'll put it down to sloppy writing and poor media relations by the Edmonton police. Still I would have thought that a black guy with orange streaked hair wouldn't be so hard to find and that no adult saw him in or around the school also seems a bit strange.

Thanks EBD for trying to straighten out what the heck is meant by the girl having only seen her assailant from behind. Beats me just exactly what it does mean--still!

Something just seems fishy about this whole thing...and I can't quite put my finger on it.

Now that we're so politically correct, criminals seem to have more rights than victims, and the police don't like to "profile" anyone, I sometimes think that law enforcement personnel are under tremendous pressure to either cover up, or at least downplay, some of the information they have.

With no shared values anymore about anything, it's difficult to be on the same page. But it seems to me that for the sake of our children we'd better start to make it a priority for the school, the parents, the police, and the public to get the heck on the same page.

They should chemically castrate him. These are sick people. He should be jailed and sedated while in jail. This is just a tragedy. I chased a guy one time who taking pictures of kids on a playground. He was small so I wasn't scared to chase him. I lost him in a hospital entrance. If anyone sees a guy taking pictures or hanging around a park around kids, call the police.

Another story that is weird is the kidnapping in Vancouver. Why was the girlfriend left alone to call the police. Reminds me of Patricia Hearst.

If you read one thing today. This should be it.

This Swiftonian tale is chilling. Not least because all that is written has been verified by other Muslim takeovers of other Nations. Exactly what he tries to describe actually has occured in EVERY Country Islam has taken over. Its an interesting bit of an attempt at using fiction to set out a cronology. Personaly I think this started at the Olympics in 1968. It took 30 years to realise we are in a war of survival. The enduring ideals of Western civilization are now under assult. The freedom & dignity of billions is at stake. In any case, this guy writes a good story. Lets just pray its not prophetic.

http://www.dansimmons.com/news/message.htm

loewen, if you find the blog so bad, why the hell are you here? Lonely? No life? Too stupid to amuse yourself any other way?

Ummm...don't see any mention where the townsfolk apologised to the dishevelled man for gangtackling him whilst bumming a smoke...

I think that when you have your mind made up ,you will mold the facts (however vague) to fit the situation(however tenuous)

I am sure all the soccor moms and dads are busy patting themselves on their collective backs.After all,the "suspect" is disenfranchised and hey,probably could have done it,given time...

I'm trying to figure out how stupid you have to be, to share the description that has been shown everywhere, and then show up at the school. Come on. I know if some white guy early 40's 6ft with greying brown hair and medium build was thrown out into the airwaves, unless I was well known by the parents in the area, would out of consideration make other arrangements. I doubt it but could this guy show up at the school to get a little free publicity (or some perverted sense of humour...dare?)

To Peter Loewen (5:54 p.m.): You're perfectly entitled to your opinion, but how, I ask, has Kate exposed a scared seven year-old? We know that her school is in Vancouver, but we don't know her name or what she looks like. So what are you talking about?

Isn't the story that an adult, apparently, entered a school and sexually assaulted a seven-year-old girl, and now it seems quite a mystery about what actually happened?

That's at least how I see it, and there's no exposure of a scared young girl. Let's get to the bottom of this story (no pun, honestly, intended.) Either a young girl has been sexually molested in a venue where she should have been safe and the pedophile needs to be apprehended and sentenced OR there is more to this story than meets the eye. Whatever the case, fact needs to be separated from fiction, no matter whose feelings might be "offended."

NKOTB - um - actually it happened in Edmonton and it was Oliver School.

Of course, in our politically correct society, teachers all over the city have now had a "conversation" with their students about the incident and little kids are going home telling their moms and dads that a little kid was stabbed, kidnapped and such! Talk about creating monsters under the bed!

Correction: re my recent post where I wrote, "We know that her school is in Vancouver'; change that to "in Edmonton".

"Innocent until proven guilty." (Being a deranged 'frootloop' running around on the loose does not count- unless he actually does something). (He probably already has a Lawyer-prepared to represent his rights to be wierd and freaky in public- at the expense of the taxpayer.)

Davie

You're probably the type of guy who would like "suspects" i.e not proven guilty, to be placed on a police list "just in case." To bad the USSR is no longer functioning. It'd be a perfect place for you. Suspected quote from "Davie": Hey, that guy has long hair and is wearing ripped jeans, that means he must be a homosexual or some type of liberal hippy. Let's get him!!"

If I was very wrongly assulted by a group, you can be damned sure I'd be sueing. I know that they were some upset parents and all, but if we all took the law into our own hands, most of the Alliance/Tory party would be shipped to Mars GO CHUBBS MCHARPER!!

The vigilante circumstance is a little worrying, and I don't think the press are really helping either. The headlines from today's Sun was a little aggressive.

I'm pretty sure one of the parents would have been able to simply use a cellphone and call the cops. If the guy left someone could have followed him.

Tackling him was the wrong thing to do.

I mean, great that their enthusiastic about helping to catch the guy, but they couldn't be sure that was him in the first place.

Now they've put themselves in a bad spot.

I don't know who said it About him going to the area if he looked like the suspect but if he was as described chances are he doesen't even really know a lot about what is going on with the rest of the world