Biography
Born in Omaha, Nebraska, Wetterling grew up in St. Paul, Minnesota and later moved to St. Joseph, where she raised four children with her husband Jerry. On October 22, 1989, their son Jacob, then 11 years old, was abducted at gunpoint by a masked man. An extensive search was carried out, but Jacob and the abductor have not yet been found. Four months after the abduction, the Wetterlings founded the Jacob Wetterling Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to child safety education. Recently, Wetterling sent a scathing letter to then Attorney General Alberto Gonzales decrying the dilution of sex offender registration laws and demanding that Congress and the Justice Department fix the flaws that their overzealousness caused. On June 18, 2007, Wetterling was interviewed on air by Minnesota Public Radio and discussed "Romeo and Juliet" offenders. Wetterling has found common ground with the National Association of Criminal Defense Attorneys and joined them in declaring the Adam Walsh Act unconstitutional and contrary to public safety. On September 14, 2007, Wetterling reiterated her perception of the harm that current sex offender laws are causing.
Read more about this topic: Patty Wetterling
Famous quotes containing the word biography:
“A great biography should, like the close of a great drama, leave behind it a feeling of serenity. We collect into a small bunch the flowers, the few flowers, which brought sweetness into a life, and present it as an offering to an accomplished destiny. It is the dying refrain of a completed song, the final verse of a finished poem.”
—André Maurois (1885–1967)
“In how few words, for instance, the Greeks would have told the story of Abelard and Heloise, making but a sentence of our classical dictionary.... We moderns, on the other hand, collect only the raw materials of biography and history, “memoirs to serve for a history,” which is but materials to serve for a mythology.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Just how difficult it is to write biography can be reckoned by anybody who sits down and considers just how many people know the real truth about his or her love affairs.”
—Rebecca West [Cicily Isabel Fairfield] (1892–1983)