David Penberthy, the joy of mob rule, the pleasure of tabloid hysteria, and hang those do-gooders high and hard

(Above: oh goody, time for a little mob rule).

The shit stirring tabloid heart of The Punch is never far from the surface, and usually stirs to life whenever David Penberthy feels moved to punch out a piece to be shared between The Punch, Australia's most dumb assed cheap skate conversation, and its soul sister the Daily Telegraph.

Cue In defence of the angry mob.

First a disclaimer. Over the road from us is a halfway house, which offers accommodation to crims on their way from jail to society. There used to be another one around the corner, but it got turned into a bunch of apartments.

Who knows what the crims over the road might have done. They never tell and I never ask. They've done their time, and they have to live somewhere, and they're extremely reticent. The reason we have bars on all the doors and windows has little enough to do with them, as they try to keep their heads down, but rather the petty thief junkies that come over the back wall.

The only time we've noticed any signs of life in the halfway house is when a nearby resident band of young junkies and alleged wannabe rock musos staged an all night marathon party, and their house got egged. I would have preferred that bunch of losers to be commonly assaulted, with hot chilis shoved up their noses (and elsewhere), but I guess I'm more inclined than them to outlaw thoughts.

And so it seems is David Penberthy:

I’m trying to think of an intro that won’t make me sound like a Dirty Harry-style vigilante. But I can’t so I’ll just admit it – if serial paedophile Dennis Ferguson moved into my suburb I’d be out on the street with the rest of the neighbours demanding he be kicked out immediately, and asking why he was ever let out of jail in the first place.

Well if I were Penbo I wouldn't bother trying to pretend he's anything but a mobster, because Dirty Harry is actually a film with a bit more subtlety and nuance than the hysteria that Penbo goes on to peddle.

Because he's outraged, he tells us, outraged, and nobody but nobody seems to be thinking of the children.

Lock 'em all up and throw away the key is his philosophy. Especially if they're creepy and weirdo.

... he’s been charged with other aberrant or disturbing conduct since then too. And is still quite obviously as mad as a meat axe, a genuinely scary-looking weirdo who would probably be safer and happier if he were still in custody, rather than popping up in an endless series of new locations across our continent, on every occasion confronted by parents who become frightened and angry when they realise who’s just moved in.

In the crowded annals of ludicrous political street theatre, nothing comes close for sheer creepiness to the statement from Ferguson yesterday that he intended to plant flowers in the front yard of his new home in Ryde as a demonstration of peace and forgiveness.

How poetic. How moving. How absurd.

Egged on by the prisoner support group Justice Action, whose spokesman Brett Collins showed an extraordinary degree of prescience (or optimism) in declaring Ferguson fully rehabilitated and no threat to anyone, Ferguson’s say-it-with-flowers gesture has done nothing to endear him to anybody.

Well actually I find people who love mob misconduct creepy and weird and inclined to be as mad as a meat axe, and not just because I have some sympathy for the French nobility caught up in the terror of the French revolution as their chickens came home to roost.

So can someone please lock up David Penberthy and throw away the key?

I'd be ever so grateful. Come to think of it, can they do the same for all the sensationalist tabloid media, with their clucking and their indignation and their finger pointing and their common gossiping ... and above all their insatiable desire for hysteria? The world would be better off without them, the hysteria levels would drop by several points, and we'd be less inclined to have films like Frankenstein end with a rioting mob.

Because mixed in with Penbo's rant is yet another standard diatribe about how the judicial system fails everybody and everyone. And yet he offers not one clue or whit of commonsense about how to deal with a social pariah.

It's just more 'be afraid', and yes, our fear mongering about being afraid is worthy and righteous:

The past scenes of him being chased by the media have been hideous. The footage of him last year smashing a tripod into the back of a camera crew’s car, running down alleyways and fidgeting and shouting madly – it was genuinely sad as the bloke clearly has something wrong with him, which he cannot control.

But that’s why parents have every right to be alarmed when he turns up living among them, because his pattern of behaviour has suggested he’s still unable to control his behaviour.

Their concerns are legitimate, and the coverage is legitimate.

Oh go jerk your chain in a broom closet. First the footage is hideous and his predicament is genuinely sad, and then we all have the right to be alarmed, and keep acting out this charade each time he's tracked down and revealed by the media as it slobbers and salivates? That's legitimate?

Well let's turn to Penbo's logic, which is a marvel of heart-felt compassion. First he discovers that nowhere is safe:

One perplexing and surprising feature of this week’s coverage has been the revelation that the State Government deems a convicted paedophile’s new location to be acceptable provided it’s no less than 400m from a school.

Now I’m no Usain Bolt but I reckon I could cover 400m in a few minutes. Most people could. Even a slightly unwell 62-year-old. It is not very far at all.

Well of course, this notion is just a bureaucratic trick to try to paper over media concern and Nimby-ism. Anybody wants to do a dirty deed with a child can catch a train or a bus and be in another suburb in ten minutes. It's an irrationality induced by the irrationality of community hysteria, whipped up and egged on by the likes of Penbo.

So where to put the man?

The continuing problem is also the lack of notification. It’s an impertinence that the system is structured around giving protection to this man, organising new housing opportunities for him, without notifying the community where he is going to be placed.

Of course, the obvious rejoinder to that is that the moment you tell any community to hang out the bunting and strike up the band for the arrival of everyone’s favourite child molester, the answer will be a resounding: Pass.

Talk about impertinent self-defeating logic. Can I ban tabloid journalists from living my neighbourhood? No? Pity.

Well if everyone's got a veto and able and inclined to exercise it, how about the country then?

“Send him to the country,” one bloke in Ryde said yesterday, suggesting he should probably travel inland a bit as the last time we were driving through the bush we saw quite a few schools and children.

Nope. Perhaps then some kind of really stupid, fatuous example of why Penberthy should never get involved in government social work?

Perhaps what’s needed is some kind of carer system whereby fellows such as Ferguson are only ever freed on the condition that they spend the remainder of their days living with a designated minder, without whom they are not allowed to leave the house.

Oh sure, that'll work. The how and the why and the cost is as clear as mud, but I'll whip up a one page memo and that should sort it.

Whatever you do, don't get do gooder on Penbo, because while he might be allowed fatuous stupidity, he won't hear any do gooder nonsense go down.

There is one big-hearted lady in the Ryde apartment block called Mary who was on the news last night defending Mr Ferguson’s right to live there.

As an aside, I wonder if she has kids. But whatever the case, this woman showed a degree of forgiveness and generosity which most people, myself included, are unable to muster.

“What do we do with him? He’s got to live somewhere,” Mary said on radio. “He’s an elderly man now, he’s frail. Until he does something wrong, what do we do?”

“I just found him to be a very gentle and kind old man, the type of person you were happy to have as a neighbour. He wasn’t a drug dealer. I felt quite ashamed of the way he was treated yesterday morning.”

Silly woman. The answer's clear cut, persecute him, hound him into the grave, and then the job is done. Since we didn't do the job properly in the first place, hang him high and hang him hard.

The line that troubles me most is “until he does something wrong, what do we do”, as it suggests there’s a chance that he might do something wrong again.

If there are more Marys out there who feel as passionately about the persecution and vilification which men such as Ferguson will continue to suffer, maybe a minder’s program is the way to go.

Dear me, Mary, how tedious of you, to suggest that the media is just pack of baying bloodhounds. But if you will, let me propose a system of minders that will never happen and will be singularly useless, if that makes you happy. Now please, allow me to get back to my baying:

The Government might want to bump up the permitted distance from school communities the next time they’re housing men such as Ferguson too.

Oh yes, sure make it seven hundred metres. Or a kilometre. That should fix things, if you happen to have the brain of a gherkin.

But the people of Ryde should be spared the lectures about hysteria, moral panics, over-reactions. They’re acting as any normal community of families would.

And this is because they share the widely-held conviction that if you’ve done what Ferguson did, you’ve got nothing left to offer society, other than legitimate alarm at the prospect that if you’ve done something so evil to three children there is a fair chance that you will do something that evil again.

That's right, the only satisfactory resolution will be if he does something, and we can nod and sigh, and look wisely at the do gooders and tell them so, and then lock him up and throw away the key. QED.

And so Penbo achieved his aim, I'm sure. Nice hysteria in the tabloid, and heading towards the golden hundred comments in the blog. Including the usual requests for the immediate execution of the ex-felon. Mob rule rampant, talk of lynchings in the air, how bitter the fruit.

And what a jolly follow up to Tory Maguire's piece, What to do with Australia's least wanted man, which collared over a hundred comments.

But at least there was one comment willing to stand aside from the lathering and the foaming and the mob rule:

David Penberthy, you do NOT speak for me. I live in the neighbourhood Ferguson first moved to when he was released from jail. When I found out he was nearby, courtesy of an anonymous concerned citizen who dropped a poorly-spelled flyer in my letterbox, I complained to the police—about the unpleasant creep circulating hate mail in the area. Interestingly, the police said they were aware of it, they’d had a lot of complaints about the letterdrop.
And yes, at the time I had a pre-school aged child at home (my grandson). I didn’t feel the need to change our routine, because like any sensible parent these days I’m conscious of the potential risk presented by sexual predators both known and unknown, and supervise my grandchildren’s activities accordingly.

Hmm, just as well Vicki PS chipped in.

Inspired by Penbo, I was thinking I should head over and torch the half way house, just to get the cockroaches out of the neighbourhood jungle. Oh well I'm sure there'll always be another article in The Punch to get me going again ...

Pay for The Punch in some new digital content era? I'd rather pay for a punch in the jaw. Or join an angry mob wanting to run riot. So much easier than thinking ...

(Below: go on Clint, shoot him, kill him, Penbo's watching and cheering you on).