{"id":377,"date":"2008-12-24T15:05:00","date_gmt":"2008-12-24T19:05:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/2008\/12\/24\/big-news-part-ii-the-ortloff-nightmare\/"},"modified":"2008-12-24T15:05:00","modified_gmt":"2008-12-24T19:05:00","slug":"big-news-part-ii-the-ortloff-nightmare","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/2008\/12\/24\/big-news-part-ii-the-ortloff-nightmare\/","title":{"rendered":"Big News! Part II – The Ortloff Nightmare"},"content":{"rendered":"

We’re recapping some of the big stories of the year and today’s announcement that former Assemblyman Chris Ortloff has pleaded guilty to a felony child-sex charge certainly makes the list.<\/p>\n

Ortloff was a twenty-year veteran in upstate New York politics, an Assemblyman and a tough-on-crime member of the state Parole Board.<\/p>\n

He was a member of a dozen different non-profit boards and was also a prominent businessman, author, and former journalist.<\/p>\n

The details of his attempts to arrange a sexual liaison with two girls, age 11 and 12, are so revolting and harrowing that even hardened journalists were at a loss to know how to cover the story.<\/p>\n

The good news is that the children Ortloff meant to victimize were, in fact, fictional — a trick crafted by New York state police.<\/p>\n

The bad news is that the 61-year-old apparently suggested in his conversations with undercover cops that he had victimized other underage children in the past.<\/p>\n

Some of those questions still haven’t been sorted out.<\/p>\n

It’s always heartbreaking when a prominent community leader is exposed as flawed — case in point, Eliot Spitzer. But this case went beyond all that.<\/p>\n

This tale has a David Lynchian, Twin Peaks quality that suggests a deeper kind of predatory evil at work.<\/p>\n

Ortloff’s sentencing is set for April 23rd. One hopes that the court will heed these words:<\/p>\n

\n

\n

“When a convicted sex offender is released, this type of crime has almost no remediation, it has a higher recidivism rate, they tend to do it, and do it again.”<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Who said that? None other than Chris Ortloff himself, during an interview with WCAX TV in 1995.<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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