There are lots of reasons why Lauren Book should not be trusted for public office and why Ron Book should have been fired from his position as head of the Miami-Dade Homeless Trust long ago. For almost a decade, the Book family has been synonymous with the international embarrassment that was the Julia Tuttle Causeway sex offender causeway camp. In fact, those living at the camp called the place "Bookville" after Ron and Lauren Book. [There is a lengthy and comprehensive look at this camp HERE.]
The population of Bookville increased as much as 150 before Ron Book had the place demolished in 2010. As head of the Miamo-Dade Homeless Trust, it was his responsibility to clean up the mess created by the controversial Lauren Book Child Safety Ordinance, which made roughly 99% of Miami-Dade off-limits to registered sex offenders. Ron Book never solved the problem. Instead, former Bookville residents have spent the past five years living a nomadic existence, from the Department of Corrections parking lot to Shorecrest to Allapattah to Hialeah.
Florida Action Committee, a legal reformist group, recently reported the transient camp at 7100 NW 36th Court now has over 200 "residents." Feel free to go to the Florida Sex Offender registry yourself, enter 7100 NW 36th Court as the address, Miami as the City and 1/4 mile as the radius, and see for yourself.
Despite how you feel personally about people listed on the public sex offender registry, consider the fact that Miami (and the entire state of Florida, for that matter) has become synonymous with sex offenders (like the cutscene from the Family Guy episode "Grumpy Old Man" where an entire block is "SOs").
If you are looking for someone to blame for all this, blame Ron and Lauren Book. They have made it their life's mission to make Miami a place full of homeless registrants. Ron Book uses his position as head of the Homeless Trust to push this homeless issue into other communities. As for Lauren Book, don't expect her senate bid to address much about issues other than sexual abuse. When asked about her political stance by the Miami New Times, Lauren's response was, "Political points? I want to be clear about one thing. I was raped every day for six years, and they were the six most horrible and horrific years of my life. I felt guilty, ashamed, invisible, bad, dirty, hurt, and afraid every single day from the time that I was 11 until I was 16... Children in every community on the planet are also enduring the pain I suffered. I am trying to turn my personal pain into something positive and hopefully prevent this from happening to others." I somehow doubt Lauren Book will be any better at representing the mostly good people of Ft. Lauderdale than Ron Book has been at running the Miami-Dade Homeless Camp.
Ron Book and his daughter Lauren have made people all across the world think "sex offender" whenever they think of South Florida. Voting for Lauren Book will simply solidify that view.
While her fear and hatred are valid and understandable -not to mention palpable (she's living it everyday, and wants those she hates to live it everyday), HATE is CAUSTIC and CORROSIVE. It eats away the vessel holding it. So she allows herself to remain unhealthy, but we wouldn't (nor shouldn't) allow the sickness imposed on her to go on perpetrating. Two wrongs NEVER make a right, NEVER. She continues to do herself, the punishment that was done to her as a defenseless child. No-thing but herself can stop that. And no, that's neither easy or fun to see through. Victims victimize if not healed, ...she's responsible for the victimizing SHE now DOES in the vein of her having been victimized. This is insanity. Stop the insanity, break the cycle.
ReplyDeleteAnd the really sad thing is that her abuser was not on the registry. She was a person well known to her and close to her in her everyday life, as almost all child abusers are. Had the laws in Florida then been exactly the same as they are now, with registrants being tracked and restricted within an inch of their lives, it wouldn't have made any difference at all to what happened to her. Yes, what happened to her was horrible, but she is keeping it alive, which keeps her from healing. She is exacting revenge for her pain. I could feel sympathy for her were she not helping to destroy so many lives.
DeleteLauren will never escape the specter of her "let-them-live-under-a-bridge" father. Her stance of "protecting children" is a farce, for that is not what she is about. Child advocacy organizations that are actually protecting children focus on victims and children. Lauren focuses on how much continuing damage she can wreak on registered citizens. Lauren is a pawn in the "scorched earth” policy declared in Florida that does everything possible to keep law-abiding registered citizens from having the services necessary to further rehabilitation and successful re-entry. The children are a stage prop to her. She should hang her head in shame.
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