On Oct. 25 I was struck by the ironic contrast in two different news stories (Main news): One about a 17-year-old in Aurora who got six years for armed robbery of a liquor store, and the other about a 50-year-old Hinsdale man who got four years for sexually molesting a girl almost weekly over a period of eight years.
I am dismayed that 50-year-old John Tittlebach has been convicted three times for child sex crimes and yet DuPage County Judge George Bakalis sentenced him to only four years when the maximum is 15 years, essentially slapping him on the wrist. While the armed robber, most likely a first-time adult offender, was sentenced to a much harsher term of six years, one stole money while another stole a young girl’s innocence. Who should be more severely punished?
I wonder why our criminal-justice system treats armed robbery as a worse crime than repeated sexual abuse of children and why judges like George Bakalis sentence child-sex offenders to terms much shorter than the maximum sentence? We need to make our lawmakers and judges more accountable for doling out such short and lenient prison terms for repeat child-sex offenders.
All parents and guardians should write to their local lawmakers about changing our current laws and mandating life sentences for repeat child-sex offenders. Let’s work together to protect our children by keeping these predators off our streets and behind prison walls where they belong. As a parent, I shudder to think that a repeat offender like John Tittlebach will once again be walking the streets and preying on our children. Predators like him never stop victimizing children and should never again be free to commit these crimes. Let’s make the punishment fit the crime.
