January 7

Events

• Current events

• 1946 - Anyone can be a victim of anti-pedo hysteria - Six year old Suzanne Degnan disappeared from her bed in the predawn hours on this date and was strangled to death, dismembered, and dumped into sewers near her home in Chicago. Someone had to pay. William Heirens, a 17 year old University of Chicago student, confessed and pled guilty to this and two other murders. Under a plea agreement prosecutors negotiated with his lawyers, he was sentenced to three consecutive life terms in prison. . Shortly after the sentencing, he disavowed the confessions, saying he had made them under duress only to save his life. Had he not confessed, he has maintained ever since, the consequence almost certainly would have been death in the electric chair. The police had previously arrested and brutally tortured another man for the same crimes before arresting Heirens. That man said that had he been tortured any longer, he would have confessed to anything. Overwhelming evidence showed he could not have committed at least one of the crimes and another man was almost certainly responsible for all the murders. Police charged Heirens anyway, and planted evidence against him. More than 50 years later, Heirens was still in jail, a model prisoner for all that time.

• 1997 - More consequences of hysterical people's actions - Robert Oatway served ten years in jail for sex offences against children. After his release, he was hounded relentlessly by the families of his victims, politicians and vigilantes. One politician serenaded him through a bullhorn at his home with, "Bobby Oatway, you are not wanted here, you are not wanted anywhere." Other people threatened violence against him - even to kill him. So Oatway took a drastic step. He requested that he be allowed to return to prison to serve the rest of his sentence. On this date, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation aired a documentary about him called Hunting Bobby Oatway. It gave a sympathetic portrayal of him and his situation. The documentary was chosen by the public as one of the best in the network's history, and resulted in many sympathetic reports of his case in the media.

• 2001 - "I saw on the 'Net that you live around the corner, so I decided to drop in and say hi!" - On this date police departments in California began to post maps on their Web sites showing the general location where registered pedos live. According to California law, exact addresses were not permitted to be made available to the general public. The reason, however, was not to protect pedos from possible vigilante actions as happened to Bobby Oatway. In fact, their main fear was that should they post exact locations of convicted pedos that other pedos might use that information to network and form pedo rings.

• 2002 - Lord of the pedo rings? - The Age newspaper reported on this date that Father John Tolkien, son of JRR Tolkien, was questioned by police over allegations that he sexually abused boys while working as a priest. The alleged offences were said to have been carried out against a number of boys during his ecclesiastical career. Detectives began their inquiry after they were contacted by Chris Carrie, a 56 year old man who claimed that he was sexually assaulted as an 11 year old by Father Tolkien.