"The world is dangerous to live in not because of the people who do evil things,
 but because of the people who know about it but do nothing to stop it."

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Fredericks won't be on it. A fellow inmate hacked him in the chest with a pair of shears at Kingston Penitentiary in January, 1992. No one came forward to claim his body.

He was unwanted in death and in birth.

Fredericks was born in Ottawa in February, 1943, to Rosa Anna Poirier. He was the 11th of her 13 children. She was described as slow, unpredictable and excitable, with no morals. It's not clear who his father was, either an alcoholic who denied paternity or a man who served a jail term for assaulting a 15-year-old girl.

The files of the Children's Aid Society of Ottawa noted, "The entire family is either defective or of borderline intelligence... The family is considered almost the worst in the district of Ottawa."

Fredericks did not stay in that family long. His mother sent her infant son to Children's Aid and the boy began bouncing from one foster home to another.

In 1991, Saturday Night magazine ran a piece called Frankenstein's Orphan.

"Joe Fredericks' parents are, in fact, us, the tax-paying public: His many mothers were our public agencies and experts. He spent his childhood in foster homes, his adolescence in an institution for the severely retarded, 24 years of his adulthood in a hospital for the criminally insane, and his middle age in Ontario's prisons. 'It is as if Joe was left as a baby on Dr. Frankenstein's doorstep,'" says a lawyer who has worked with him.

"The unwanted baby grew into an empty, destructive man, afflicted by two of the most untreatable pathologies known to forensic psychiatry: pedophilia and psychopathy. Then he walked out of Frankenstein's laboratory and made wreckage of several young lives."

Fredericks never stayed in a foster home long. In an essay written when he was 32, he described "playing doctor" with a little girl in a foster home when he was five.

"I never found out if I was moved because they just could not keep me or if they found out what I did to the little girl."

He skipped school. He ran away. He set fire to one foster family's barn, stole a gun from another.

At 10, he was expelled from Grade 3. Children's Aid could find no one to take him. At 11, they put him in the Ontario Hospital in Smiths Falls, a centre for the mentally retarded and severely handicapped. Four of his sisters were residents there.

He was soon having sex with other boys at the institution. In his essay, he wrote: "Sexuality was a need that needed to be filled two to three times a day. Most of my partners were willing, except two or three boys who were forced into sexually acting out with me."

At Smiths Falls they determined he had an IQ of only 73 . But the tests were in English, and his first language was French. Decades later, other tests showed his intelligence was average to bright.

When he was 20, he escaped from the Oak Ridge facility in Penetanguishene. In less than two days of freedom, he raped two boys at knifepoint and fondled a six-year-old girl. He couldn't be charged, because he was already incarcerated under the Ontario Mental Health Act.

But in the 1980s, the act changed and it got harder to hold people against their will.

Fredericks was not considered legally insane and was out of prison on mandatory supervision when he murdered Christopher 12 years ago.

"He was such a nice kid," said Fredericks after his confession. "Why did he have to die?"

That crime made Fredericks infamous. But as a profile of a pedophile, he is the exception. Most molesters don't look like villains.

"We think of these things as being committed by someone who is sick, retarded, bizarre and strange and think you ought to be able to spot them on the street. But that isn't the case." So said Hamilton psychiatrist Ken Finkel when we spoke to him five years ago about the phenomenon of people being so willing to defend a convicted pedophile.

A Stoney Creek man had been found guilty of five sex charges involving young hockey players. Yet 49 friends and family members wrote glowing endorsements of him.

Refusing to believe that a highly esteemed member of the community could be capable of molesting children is a common phenomenon, Finkel said.

"It's so disturbing because it could be anyone, a neighbour, a family member, a minister, a teacher, a doctor, anyone who has access to children."

So the citizens on Ontario's new registry of sex offenders will come from all walks of life. The province estimates there will be 2,000 new names to be added each year.

Pedophilia
Pedophilia is a desire to have sex with children 13 or younger. They may use force or develop complicated techniques to get access to children -- winning the trust of a child's mother, marrying a woman with an attractive child, trading children with other individuals with pedophilia.

Psychotherapy and drugs have been used to try to alter the sex drive, but most pedophiles don't respond to treatment.

Joseph Rosenow, 46, of Hoodsport was charged Thursday in the death of 15-year-old Jennie Osborn, a friend of his daughter.

Mason County Superior Court Judge Toni Sheldon ordered Rosenow held on $1 million cash-only bail. His arraignment was set for March 15. Thursday's proceeding had been scheduled for Wednesday, but the courthouse was closed after the earthquake.

In addition to first-degree murder, Rosenow is charged with second-degree murder, first- and second-degree rape, first- and second-degree kidnapping, second-degree assault and third-degree rape of a child.

Under the three-strikes law, "He would be subject to life in prison if he was convicted of any of them," county Prosecutor Gary Burleson said.

In 1993, he was convicted in Pierce County of raping a stranger at knifepoint. He spent less than a year behind bars. In 1999, he was convicted of sexually attacking an acquaintance at knifepoint and choking her until she was unconscious. He was released six months ago after eight months in prison.

Prosecutors had considered charging Rosenow with aggravated first-degree murder -- the only charge that carries the death penalty in Washington state -- but there was no evidence immediately available to suggest the death was premeditated, Burleson said.

"As a matter of fact, after he raped her, he brought her back for help," the prosecutor said Thursday.