Andy MATTHEWS

HOME AND AWAY

I sat next to Tony Gray Sloop for about an hour Tuesday afternoon in the Yadkin County Magistrate's Office.

It wasn't exactly a comfortable environment. After all, Sloop was now facing an additional 100 felony sex crimes, and it would take 30 to 45 minutes just to process all of the charges in Larry W. Adams' computer.

So what do you ask a guy sitting next to you in a wooden chair, accompanied by a couple of deputy sheriffs with the Yadkin County Sheriff's Office, who now stands accused of molesting underage girls dating back to 1991? Where does a reporter begin? And what will be the response?

All of those questions and several hundred more began to haunt me as I sat quietly, notebook in hand, occasionally glancing at Sloop to see if he showed any visible emotion. He didn't except for a couple of smiles he managed when Adams and the deputies exchanged some small talk and a couple of laughs.

Otherwise, Sloop just sat there, handcuffed, dressed in his black and white prison stripes, gripping some rolled-up court documents on a brief respite from the county jail. He was there to hear Magistrate Adams read out the latest charges and assign a $666,000 bond. (I won't speculate on the nature of that figure, but it does seem a little on the satanic side).

"100 counts in all," the deputy said. "Two counts per paper. 50 pages."

The sheer volume of the additional charges, with Sloop already facing multiple felony counts of having sex with underaged minors, was mind-boggling. At one point, Adams joked that he wasn't sure his computer would process all of the documents simultaneously. But Adams fed in the information. And now it was time to wait. There was an uneasy calm, at least for me. I had so many questions and didn't know where to begin. As a reporter I desperately wanted the exclusive story. But the social worker in me wanted to understand why Sloop had allegedly committed these horrifying, atrocious and depraved crimes.

I also had to deal with the human component. This was not just another story where I would collect the facts and disseminate the information. This was altogether different.

The 49-year-old Hamptonville man's mug shot and story draws thousands of visitors to our newspaper's Web site.

Yes, many people have made him out to be a monster. They have called him names and made accusations, many of which I have been forced to delete from our comment section because they are so distasteful.

Was I being too compassionate and soft on crime by trying to understand Sloop's behavior in the brief time that we spent together. Certainly, hard-line conservatives would take me to task. But it's not that simple. I understand the need to punish this kind of reprehensible behavior and to remove perpetrators from society, so they can longer ruin additional lives. And I also recognize that, regardless of counseling and the support they receive in the years to come, the victims' lives will never be the same.

Perhaps there was part of me that felt sorry for him. Or maybe it was just a sense of empathy and attempt of understanding of what causes such perversion.

This man, who once played the role of Jesus Christ in church plays, could easily spend the rest of his natural life in prison for committing what some would say are unpardonable sins. I'm not giving refuge to the accused and I'm not excusing the behavior. I'm just trying to understand how people develop those deeply disturbing patterns and whether we, as a society, can do anything to rehabilitate them.

Perhaps, as one court official once told me, there is no rehabilitation for some criminals and the only answer is to lock them up, effectively removing the cancer from the body. But what do we do the next time we are faced with a similar crime?

Sloop certainly stands accused of some horrible deeds. But there are no less than four other suspects accused of sex crimes in the county jail awaiting trial. Yadkin County, although we like to believe we are immune from certain aspects of criminal behavior, has its share of registered sex offenders.

I left the magistrate's office with more questions than answers, still wondering what had transformed this man from what many believed was a pillar of the community into an alleged pedophile. Perhaps, in the not to distant future, I'll have a chance to sit down with Sloop and pose a series of questions. That would help me better understand this troubled situation and come to grips with the dark side of this thing we call humanity.

Matthews is editor of the Yadkin Ripple and lives in East Bend.