An unpleasant memory returns to town

Adam James Brown returns to Riverside to face over 65 felony charges of child molestation, after a police department launched an investigation in 2004. Brown, who had spent the last 18 months at a federal detention center in Wisconsin has already plead guilty to felonies related to the bust of an Internet child molestatin ring, by the FBI.

Chief Russ Leach said that the only good thing to come out of this appalling situation is that Brown promptly resigned from the department after his arrest, sparing the city and everyone in it the difficulty of firing him. He was right about that.

Still one asks, how did he slip through the cracks? How did a child molester become an employee of the police department? Was he, as a son of a senior management member vetted as properly as he should have been? How does the department uncover a history of child molestation committed by one of its candidates?

Brown hurt his victims in ways that no one can fix. They'll bear the mark of his acts on their souls forever. He hurt the community, he worked in. He made every mother or father of small children who ever crossed his path worry about their kids. And he hurt his department, which has had its share of its own problems to fix during the past five years. Hopefully, he was the only one of his kind in its employment.

Will Brown take a guilty plea, as the prosecutor suggested? Hopefully yes. His young victims have been assaulted already. They don't need to be assaulted again during the criminal proceeding.

Adam Brown transferred back to face charges in Riverside