MovieChat Forums > Rising from Ashes (2012) Discussion > Jock Boyer was a convicted sex offender

Jock Boyer was a convicted sex offender

posted 9 years ago by Foot_of_Davros
2 replies | jump to latest

I feel pretty sickened having watched the start of this documentary.

It does make clear that Jock Boyer had done prison time, pretty much from his introduction. However what it doesn't do is state the nature of this conviction until after a lengthy piece on the background to and impact of the Civil War and genocide in Rwanda.

This is a pretty poor narrative trick, attempting to emotionally attach you to the plight and hopes of the Rwandan people, at the expense of overlooking this sex offender. As soon as the reason for his incarceration was revealed, I paused this to read up on the detail of his offense, and subsequently stopped watching.

This guy was 42 years old when he began molesting an 11 year old, according to VeloNews' reporting of his sentencing. I find it deeply unsettling the manner in which a person from a such a privileged white American background, who's committed such a disgusting act, can travel to such a poor, ravaged part of the world, and use the people there in order to try to make himself seem like some sort of redeemed hero. Woefully transparent and pathetic...

[–] lardo2003 9 years ago

And yet I like the guy 1000 times more than I like someone who writes what you have written. (I´m sure you think I must be a nasty, nasty pedophile myself, huh?) :D

Anyway champ, say hello to my little ignore list!

[–] Foot_of_Davros 9 years ago

I'm not particularly interested in what type of person you are one way or other. And likewise, whether you like some paedophile 1,000 times more than somebody you know literally nothing about, again is of no interest to me.

What was of interest - and I believed worth mentioning to give some balance to anyone thinking about watching this - was, as previously stated, what I saw as a pretty poor narrative trick. Introducing this character as some sort of gentle friend of animals is a bit of a joke. Honesty from the start would have been much fairer, rather than using using the plight of people who've been through desperate times to emotionally hook the viewer before the "reveal"...