Patty Wetterling
speaker
95 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Jan 2024
last heard Jan 2024
Patty Wetterling’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsNo recordings in the last 12 months.Older appearances are listed below; set an alert to hear about the next one.
Appearances
But the other one was sex offender registry, and it would help law enforcement to know who's done this before in the past. And I think it's a good law enforcement tool, but when it became community notification so everybody knows about these people, it got a little more complicated. And I think that we need to revisit what part of this is working, what part of this is interfering with.
with people building a better life. Maybe they made a mistake when they were 17, but they're 27 now and want to start a family and whatever. Are we restricting the possibility of them going forward? What really troubled me was we passed this law. So there's sex offender registry in all 50 states, but then they started strengthening it thinking, you know,
This is a tool, and they made it harsher and harsher and started registering children. Children as young as 10 years old are on a sex offender registry in Minnesota. Wow. I was shocked. I did not know. And because I just said, they're the best recipients of getting treatment and the least likely to reoffend. So why would we – that's like a life sentence if you put a child on a registry. Yeah.
I've been working really hard. That's not the best manner of dealing with a child who acts out sexually. Let's get them some help, change the trajectory, give them some resources and better ways of interacting with one another. So I think that if you pass laws that you need to revisit and see what part needs to be changed or revised to make it better.
And that this is certainly one that I think it's a good law enforcement tool. Mm-hmm. But sometimes people act out on it stupidly and burn down houses of somebody or, you know, cause other harm. And that's not what you want. And it kind of gets back to community. In the Native community, they have healing circles.
Somebody does wrong, they bring people together and they make sure that this person stays on the path that they're supposed to be. It can be healthier for everybody. So there's, there's a lot I've learned along the way. There's no magic pill. There's no one easy thing that will fix all of it.
But I, I do believe it is building better citizens and having kids that after Jacob was found, it's a, it's a great story. The one of my friends at the national center called her office and her nephew wanted to put 11 on his cheek because that was Jacob's Jersey number. And, um, asked for permission to do that for a soccer tournament in Maryland or Virginia. It was right around the DC area.
And we thought it was a great idea, but our office thought it'd be good if it stood for something. So they put together all the 11 things they've heard me say over and over that Jacob knew and believed in. Can I read them to you?
It's just be fair, be kind, be understanding, be honest. be thankful, be a good sport, be a good friend, be joyful, be generous, be gentle with others, and be positive. And I truly believe if we taught our kids to do these 11 things, that we would build kids who wouldn't harm another. And, and we would have more peaceful communities.
Just think about that.
And I get a card from one of Amy's friends. Every year she has her kids. Well, the first year I was like, what does it mean to be fair? What does it mean to be kind? And they each had a little explanation, you know, sitting by a new kid in the school that At lunchtime, you know, just I was at one school and there was a sign in the back. They'd all made posters and it said, be gentle with others.
It was really messy. I went up close and these kids had made it out of brown band-aids.
on blue construction paper be gentle with others kids get it they want that they want to be good friends and i just think it's nurturing how we want them to be instead of just saying don't do this and don't bully and don't do you know it's like be kind be understanding and it is great discussion i hear from parents and kids all the time that it's helpful
Absolutely. Absolutely. Yes. I don't have the numbers in front of me, but, um, I think the National Center for Missing and Exploited or the Office of Justice Programs has, has numbers of them and it is brilliant. It's getting people while they're out, they're driving or they're on, they got their headset on while they're running and they're, they're looking.
And I know cases in Minnesota where one child was looking out the window and she saw the car, you know, called her mom in and, and they, they reported it. Um, It's empowering people to be part of the solution. And it's brilliant and it works. And I actually know one other case in Minnesota where a child was missing and it was an older guy that she was not supposed to be hanging with.
And everybody texted him. It's like, dude, everybody's looking for you. Let her off. And he did. He let her go and left.
um she was safe you know so it's like using the tools we have social media is out there where people are and it gets i've been in stores where an amber thing went on all of a sudden everybody's looking at their phone and it's it's it just made me smile you know yeah i mean that's the way kids come home is when somebody knows the story and they see something and it's like um how it is that we can use uh technology
The book was for me, you know, I was charging forward for 27 years. I was just driven. And it was a chance to reflect. I kind of like look back at what just what just happened. I really felt when Jacob was found, I went through horrific experiences. feeling a failure. It's like, oh, what was that all about?
I lived my whole life searching, my whole career, 27 years is a career, you know, and didn't get the answers we wanted. So I had to look at where we had come and what had happened and what things are better and just reflect on the whole journey. It was very therapeutic for me. A lot of people thought it would be too painful, but I'd already lived through it. So it was just like,
making meaning of something that I couldn't make meaning of at the time. So that was good. Joy Baker was a big part of helping us find the answers because she was asking questions nobody had asked. And she found those other victims who had told the police, but nothing had been investigated way back in Painesville in 1987. You know, it was a different world then.
Showing 61–80 of 95 · page 4 of 5
← Previous
Next →