Last week, a 34-year-old man pleaded guilty to coercing a 13-year-old girl he met at a 2010 anime convention.
It’s a sad story, and to some fans, a shocking one. Many fans think of conventions as a safe space, sometimes the only space, where they can truly be themselves. This case reminds us that anime conventions are just like the rest of society: not everybody present has your best interests in mind.
When a tragedy happens, everybody wants to place the blame somewhere. In true samurai fashion, Katsucon, the convention where the offender met his victim, has taken this moment to fall on its sword. They’re planning to “make every effort to check our pre-registration attendee list against local and federally published sex offender registries.”
I love Katsucon and attend every year, but I have a history of disagreeing with their policies. This one, while well intended, puts a huge burden on the convention, one I don’t think they need to bear. For one thing, I don’t think it, or any convention at which a coercion happens, should be held responsible.
A good anime convention needs to provide many services to its attendees. It should have a variety of activities and a logistics team to manage them. It should have an active security staff comprised of professionals as well as volunteers that makes every effort to keep attendees safe inside the convention area.
But it shouldn’t have to police attendees once they leave the area. (It’s important to note that no coercion took place inside the convention.) And Katsucon shouldn’t have to check each of their 7,264 attendees against a sex offender registry. While it’s a noble effort, it’s a huge job. Plus, there are all kinds of snags that can come up, like attendees having common or similar names to sex offenders and being wrongly left out of the con.
Katsucon’s statement says, “Even [with] all of these measures, many times persons of a predatory nature are difficult to identify until it is too late.” This is absolutely true. While this incident was a tragedy, it was not the convention’s fault. The blame lies squarely on the sex offender himself. As attendees, we can start to keep more incidents like this from happening simply by choosing not to coerce fellow attendees.
This is a complicated topic, so I asked my Twitter followers to weigh in on the question: Do anime conventions have a responsibility to screen their attendees for sex offenders? Here are some of the answers:
@laureninspace I’d have to say no. Are you suggesting that sex offenders can’t attend Anime Cons? Or they need to tell the Con they are one?
Patrick James Moylan
trickylove
@laureninspace Unfortunately, yes. Unless they are going to require all attendees under 18 be chaperoned by a parent.
Edward Sizemore
edsizemore
@laureninspace I think it’d be like candy or toy stores screening every customer
fumordotnet
fumordotnet
@laureninspace I dont think it would hurt, but I think they would have to be very delicate about how they go about it
Anji Savage
Anji_Beast
@laureninspace I believe in Order as long as it isn’t heavily impeding on any of the processes of the convention / “crossing privacy line”
Chris Gullo
cralor
Thanks to everyone for weighing in. I wish I could have posted every response. It is now clear to me that, well, there is no clear answer to this question. Feel free to add to the debate in the comments.
13 Comments.
Absolutely, they should! Honestly, there can be times that I don’t feel safe at a con, and I’m a 26-year-old male. Now that’s because of public drunkenness, but imagine if you’re a 18-year-old girl without her parents at a con. I wouldn’t feel safe at all.
I know of one convention who had a registered sex offender on staff. He’s since been let go, but that’s a little scary to me. I certainly don’t want anime cons to continue to have the reputation of “the place where the creepers go.” We can start to put an end to it by screening for these people.
I think that it’s a terrible idea, on so many levels I can barely address them all. First of all, because it’s rooted in fear and in pushing the blame away from the criminal.
The biggest reason is that the sex offender registry is already full of problems. These registries are actually not doing much good and are frequently punishing the wrong people.
Imagine this scenario: A guy has consensual sex with his underage girlfriend. He’s 18, it’s a teenage mistake. He’s charged and convicted of statutory rape. After he’s served his time and “repaid his debt,” he’s placed on a sex offender registry, because what he did qualifies as a sex crime.
Ten years down the line, he’s been a model citizen. He understands his mistake, and wouldn’t repeat it. He decides to hit the local anime convention for fun one weekend.
Then the convention sends him a letter saying he’s not allowed to attend just by virtue of his name being on a database. Because you know they don’t have the manpower or ability to check what the crime was, and if they were taking on the responsibility for their attendees then they would be erring on the side of caution (and paranoia, but I digress). They won’t check the nature of the crime to see if you could be a danger to attendees, they’ll simple cross reference the name and bar you from the door.
There are a ridiculous number of people who are on these registries for crimes that would be of no danger to other attendees.
There is nothing to stop a predator from approaching attendees at the nearby fast food places and in the hotels that people are staying at. I started attending cons when I was 18, and Katsucon was one of my first (that’s actually where I met my husband). I never felt any more or less safe at an event than I did at a mall, or at a theatre, a concert, or any other large gathering. Because it’s exactly the same, and conventions should take only the same precautions that say, Verizon Center takes before a boy band concert.
On top of all that, there’s the logistics and the cost to consider. I’ve known plenty of con staff, and I’ve seen what they have to go through and what it costs just to get the event to happen. If this became an expected practice, numerous conventions would fold under the stress of it.
(sorry for the novel, this is a particular topic I feel very strongly about, and I’ve done a lot of reading on the topic in other situations).
I agree with Mary on one point, wherein screening takes part of the responsibility away from the criminal and dumps it on the organizer if anything untoward happens at their con.
Instead of taking such a drastic measure and investigating all con attendees to keep out the “creepers” and the “pervs” (which will never happen where I live because of the free-wheeling nature of its cons), I have always advised female attendees and cosplayers — the younger ones in particular, to be more proactive about their own safety.
After all, if you do not place yourself in a situation where there is a potential for it to go very, very wrong — then you will never end up as statistic.
I think it’s important for people to realize that there are always “bad” people looking to pick your pocket, steal your identity, or do something much worse and that attendees should be vigilant even while having fun.
Just to be clear it’s not your fault if you become the prey of one of these bad people. The bad people are entirely to blame.
Here are some reasons why I think this policy is dangerous.
1) It provides parents and congoers a false sense of security.
2) The convention opens itself up to questions of liability when it suggests that one of its duties is to proactively watch for sex offenders. Should something unfortunate with a registered sex offender happen again, then people have the right to question if the convention fulfilled its duty to protect its clientele.
I realize that Katsucon needed to respond to this, less they look like they don’t care about the safety of their attendees. But this policy decision reminds me of the TSA’s.
I’m with Mary on this one. Much like how many states (including my own) are in a rush to enact “Caylee’s Law” after the media circus that was the Casey Anthony trial, Katsucon is displaying a typical kneejerk reaction to public outcry over an admittedly terrible event.
The problem with both cases (Caylee’s Law moreso, but I don’t want to threadjack) is that the legislation and policies are being created quickly and in a reactionary manner. Both should be enacted under emotionally neutral conditions (if such an abstract exists) with plenty of time for debate, consideration, and due process.
Katsucon- and all other cons- should in no way be required to perform background checks on guests to ferret out potential sex offenders until amusement parks, concerts, and science museums are required to do the same.*
*: The above list of attractions likely to be trawled by pedophiles was created off the top of my head and makes me look pretty bad in retrospect. If any FBI agents are reading this, I love you guys. Keep up the good work!)
Seeing as how I have been mistaken for a sex offender who not only has the same name as me, but is also the same age and ethnicity, I can easily see how this is a VERY VERY bad idea. Imagine being someone like me, who lectures and goes to cons to meet people and share the love of anime, suddenly being blacklisted because someone shares my name/age/race and nobody bothered to double check their sources. It’s like the same issues the TSA deals with, banning 3 year olds from flying because they are “listed” on a watch and might be a terrorist.
I agree with the idea that this is kneejerk at best, and will only cause more friction when it comes to organizing and growing cons.
Screening attendees for sex offenders at anime cons is a terrible idea. Anime conventions aren’t parents, shouldn’t be expected to be parents, should not do the job of parents.
What anime cons SHOULD do is welcome supervisory parents to their show via reduced or free admission, educate parents on the convention’s policies, and work with parents, facilty security, and staff to create a safe environment for all. Checking sex offender lists is an empty gesture.
Not everyone on the list is going to be a dangerous stalker, or a serial pervert, or a child molester. Is it really fair to bar someone who likely isn’t a threat to anyone else just because they messed up at a party one time when they were an idiot teenager or college student at one time?
I think a more appropriate thing to do is enact an age limit (and anyone below that limit need to be accompanied by a legal guardian [perhaps with a half price ticket for the guardian]). They can also hand out some sort of “strangers & safety” leaflet with the welcome package/baggies that they usually seem to have at cons.
My idea is also better because I imagine that not all predators have been caught yet… meaning they won’t appear on a registry. The leaflet and age+guardian idea is much more sound (and would make the cons more money while also protecting people).
I’m in agreement with the others-this is an ill-thought out policy. Education would work so much better, and could be as simple as a section in the con booklet:
Girls: Don’t go off with people you don’t know well, especially older men, don’t accept offers of alcohol, stay in groups, etc.
Guys: If you spot one of your fellow male cosplayers engaging in sketchy behavior, call him on it! Tell him to stop being creepy, alert the staff, remove the girl, kick him in the groin if you have to (actually, that goes for everyone). Just don’t tolerate this shit.
Would-be creeps: Don’t fuckin’ do it! It could get you ostracized, kicked out of the con, or kicked in the groin repeatedly. Bad idea.
Also, I agree that anime in particular is getting a lot of flak because it’s new, different, and strange. Other hobbies/subcultures tend to get overlooked as they’re established and therefore respectable. But I can guarantee that they have their own sordid under-stories. The horror stories I could tell about the model-railroading community alone would be news-worthy.
@Brad, Hate to be like this, but I feel like education would just encourage people to blame the victims even more. “You got raped? You must have not read the manual!”
However, I agree with what you say about anime being new. As I later told a Washington Post reporter: “Sex offenders have many different hobbies, they’re not just in one place.”
Yeah, that occurred to me as well, which is why I tried to put some emphasis on the responsibility of guys to police this stuff as well. I feel like we men don’t do nearly enough to prevent rape, even when it’s in our power, but that’s probably an issue for another day.
I am absolutely dead serious about the bit about the model-railroaders, though. I know it’s waaayy outside your range of expertise and comfort zone, but you’re the only journalist I know well enough to trust.
I think it is best to go to conventions with friends of people who you know.
Mostly anime friends or friends who like anime and such.
I had never been to an anime convention until this year and I am 26, that is because I had nobody to go with and the only conventions were at a city where I never visited that much, so I needed to go with people who I knew, and this year I was lucky enough to go with people who I knew at an anime shop in my local town.
So I consider myself lucky to finally have people to go to conventions with,
As for the screening of sex offenders…well I may as well stay out of that one because it does not matter what my opinion is, I know that people who control these events are not going to listen to a otaku fan like me.
Why should an anime convention be any more liable for sex offenses committed during the event than any other event likely to attract the young? What about carnivals, county fairs, baseball games,….? It’s simply not feasible. Convicted child molesters are prohibited from being around children. It’s law-enforcement’s responsibility to enforce that.