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An end to a sad story
Posted on June 11, 2007 by kraus2686
Filed Under Clinton, Downtown, Noah's posts |
When it was learned in February that a High Street businessmen running a shop that catered to teenage boys was a Level 3 sex offender, many community members wanted him out. Four months later he is out — permanently. Stephen B. Lemons, 52, a native Clintonian convicted of molesting a 15-year-old mentally handicapped boy is dead.
According to his obituary, he died at Clinton Hospital after a brief illness. We have no information yet that it was anything but that. When we first interviewed Mr. Lemons in late January he told us he had a bad heart. If we ran a story alerting the community to his crime, he said, it would kill him. His heart wouldn’t be able to take it. Not sure if community pressure made things worse for his health or not, but to be sure, he was struggling with health issues.
It’s a sad story all around. Molesters aren’t born that way, they are created. Shortly after our story ran in February I received an e-mail from a man in Texas who claimed to have lived with Lemons and his parents when he was a child. He told us that he’d been molested by someone else in the family and that Stephen appeared to be heading down that dark road, too. His conviction and long list of run-ins with the law — and young boys — leaves us to believe he did indeed go down that road. Abuse is cyclical. Behind most abusers is a little child who was himself abused. Those abusers often turn into the monsters themselves. This is simply a sad story all around.
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2 Responses to “An end to a sad story”
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So are we to feel sorry for him because of that? I mean really you want to publish “your thoughts” and “your opinions” as to his upbringing, etc….I don’t feel one bit sorry for him, I do however feel sorry for the children that he voiolated, you do NO justice what so ever with your Oh let’s feel sorry for him no that he is dead, he died beccause he might have had a bad heart, and because of HIS actions against innocent people, not because some local publisher did a story on him, I mean really!
I don’t disagree with you. The guy gave me the creeps and I’m glad I don’t have to drive by his store and see him standing there anymore. The thing that concerns me more, however, is that many of these guys start out as victims — not all, but most. That means that at one point — and I don’t know that this is the case for Mr. Lemons — they were innocent children who were abused. In time, they became the very evil that took advantage of them. And therein is the real tragedy in my opinion.