Cable Man Accused Of Child Indecency (Comcast, of course --)

[elehhhhna]

Comcast got in BIG trouble hiring convicted rapists, etc. in Chicago a few years ago -- skipped the background checks -- guess they still haven't fixed their hiring problems...

Cable Man Accused Of Child Indecency
Incident Allegedly Took Place At Customer's House


Click2Houston.com
updated 7 minutes ago
HOUSTON - A cable technician was arrested and charged with abusing a child while at a customer's home, KPRC Local 2 reported Friday.

Investigators with the Harris County Sheriff's Office apprehended Russell Curtis Arcemont Friday morning at his Fort Bend County home and charged him with two counts of indecency with a child.

Officials said Arcemont, a Comcast employee, is accused of inappropriately touching a 5-year-old girl while on a service call to the family's house. The child told her mother later that day that the "TV man" had touched her while he was in the house.


http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32696729

[sakabatou]

1. Comcast sucks for other reasons too.

[tularetom]

2. I'm not a big fan of comcast but I sincerely hope this guy is guilty

because if he isn't his life is fucked up forever for no reason.

[LAGC]

3. Most kids don't lie about that kind of stuff when it happens to them.

In any case, he'll likely be given a polygraph (lie detector) test as part of his pre-sentencing investigation, so if he is by some chance innocent and wrongly found guilty, the truth will hopefully come out then.

[tularetom]

4. If he is innocent it won't make any difference - he's screwed anyway

In the eyes of Comcast's customers, he's a molester. Nobody will want this guy in their home, they wont remember he passed a polygraph examination. just that he was accused of touching a kid.

His life has totally turned to shit even if he didn't do what he is charged with.

So I hope he did it because then he will at least have earned what's going to happen to him.

[customerserviceguy]

5. Huh?

A polygraph test during a pre-sentence investigation can expunge a guilty verdict? That's a lot more power in an electromechanical device than I thought it had!

[LAGC]

6. It can cause investigators to re-examine the "evidence."

Namely, causing them to re-question the said "victim" and even asking the "victim" to take a polygraph to see if the "victim" is the one lying,

But it happens so rarely, because the vast majority of people charged with sex crimes are GUILTY as charged! I mean, why would a little girl make such a story up?

[customerserviceguy]

7. Kids are goaded into false testimony, although that's likely not the case here

I've never heard of a polygraph in a pre-sentence investigation causing cops to go out and re-examine the evidence. Maybe it happened a few times on TV, but I don't know about it happening in real life.

[LAGC]

8. Well, you do know why they make sex offenders take a polygraph right?

Its called "full disclosure" -- parole boards often order a polygraph too, before letting a sex offender out of prison. In order to find out how many more victims there are of the said perpetrator. Very often once a sex offender is caught, its not his first victim. Skilled technicians know exactly what kinds of questions to ask to find out the extent of a subject's crimes, even ones he hasn't admitted to yet... questions like: "How many kids have you molested?" or "Are there any more victims?" often generate deceptive answers by the subject. Naturally, in the very rare cases where a convict is truly not guilty and has a clean conscience, him being able to truthfully answer "never/none" -- that naturally raises red flags. Now, he wouldn't be released right away, as some sociopaths are able to trick the polygraph, but it would generally cause them to re-examine their case and make sure they have the right guy, often by asking the victim to voluntarily take a polygraph as well. If the victim refuses, that can be grounds for dismissal.

This is all according to a criminology class I took years ago, but I'm sure if you talked to someone in the field they could corroborate...

[customerserviceguy]

19. I do know that

but they're doing it to find out if somebody is "cured" (if that's even possible), and I think a true psychopath could beat the lie detector often enough to make even lenient people uncomfortable.

I cannot see any police agency asking a five-year old child to take a polygraph. If there are such circumstances where the criminal justice system deals with a convicted pedophile that they think might not have all the evidence stacked up against him, but the judge/jury convicted him anyway, they are more likely than not to ignore it.

[arcadian]

21. ...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satanic_abuse

[LisaL]

16. And so?

Even if most don't lie, that certainly doesn't prove anything in this particular case.

[anigbrowl]

10. Yeah. I don't agree with people's names being publicized until after conviction

Especially in cases like this, as soon as an accusation is brought some people treat it like a guilty verdict - false accusations make up a minority of police work but they do occur. If the court of public opinion was worth anything then we wouldn't need judges and courthouses. Same thing with mugshots etc., that should not be released by police departments.

[LAGC]

11. Well, what if he makes bail?

Would you want this guy around your kids? Doesn't the public have a right to know, even who the accused are?

[anigbrowl]

12. If he's so risky, argue he shouldn't

You know nothing about the guy. Maybe he's a child molester, maybe he found the customer was scamming free channels. If there's evidence that he's a danger to the community, then it can be argued at his arraignment that he's too high-risk to bail.

No, I don't think the public has an automatic right to know - individual rights generally take precedence over any kind of collective right, and the right to fair trial, unprejudiced by advance speculation, is one of the most basic elements in a free society.

A few weeks of unbailed jail or of home monitoring are intrusive on the individual, but nowhere near as much as a public rush to judgment without evidence.

[LAGC]

13. Hey, I'm as big of civil libertarian as the next guy.

But I just don't see how, in an open society, you can expect arrests of that nature to remain a secret. This has to do with open records and transparency in government, IMHO. Certainly the state has a burden of proof it must meet in order to convict, but you can't completely insulate public opinion on such matters without completely closing off access to records and shrouding the whole process in secrecy. Is that really what you want? Court cases are often backlogged months if not years depending on the venue -- do you really think they should just be able to hold suspects without bail clear until the trial, at which point it all becomes public only then?

No, I believe suspects have a right to reasonable bail (depending on the nature crime) and the public has a right to know about it. Sure, the media shouldn't make a big circus out of it, but in high profile cases its all about sensationalism and "selling a story" with them anyway... and that's a whole other argument.

[Liberal_in_LA]

9. Who leaves a 5 year old alone with a strange service man?

[customerserviceguy]

20. Also, what company has a policy that allows this?

At the utility company where I work, we do not allow our in-field people into any household where there is not a person eighteen years of age or older on the premises.

[LisaL]

22. I presume an adult was at home.

Presumably the adult at some point left the room where the cable man was working.

[Odin2005]

14. Evil sicko!

:puke:

[LisaL]

15. Why did the mother (or whoever was in charge) leave the child alone with the man?

If the guy is just accused of touching the child, I doubt there would be physical evidence. So, there most likely would be this guy's word against that of a child.

[elehhhhna]

17. Honey, you'd be surprised...

my Hubs stayed home w/ our 2 adaughters when they were infants. When we moved to TX, he was still the househusband . Total-stranger neighbors would let their kids come play in our house without even meeting him! We were startled by this, as we would never have been so trusting...ever.

[LisaL]

18. Well it goes both ways.

Your husband might have been too trusting to let these children come over. Because all it might take is an accusation.
I have no way of knowing whether the cable man did what is alleged or not. But his life is ruined just the same.