JACKSONVILLE, Fla. -- Jimmie Clark grew up in Starke, graduated from Bradford High School, and returns Friday night for a country music concert he hopes “packs out” the school auditorium.
But he returns wearing what he calls, “our current society’s Scarlet Letter.”
Clark, lead singer of the country music band Clark Hill, is a registered sex offender.
That label has prompted a social media firestorm in advance of his performance, and threats of pickets at his Friday night concert.
Arrested in 2004, Clark pleaded guilty to two counts of lewd and lascivious molestation of a young female relative. His victim was 11 when the first abuse occurred.
“I’m 18, almost 19 years old -- nowhere near as mature as I think,” he reflects. A former football star, then working as an EMT, he says, “I think I’m a hero. I think I can do anything I want to, honestly.”
Clark doesn’t excuse what he did, which he says wasn’t a “mistake” as much as a terrible decision. He plead guilty, apologized, and served his sentence -- 87 days in jail, two years’ house arrest, 10 years’ probation. He had a pregnant wife and a baby at the time of his offense. But it was his father, an investigator with the state Department of Corrections, who took a particularly harsh view of what he did.
“I literally thought my dad was going to kill me. Literally,” he says. “My dad’s primary concern wasn’t getting me out of trouble. My dad’s primary concern was: Was I what they said I was? Because his dealings with people like that was they didn’t deserve to live.”
It’s a common perspective – one fueling complaints about his Friday show, which is being held in a high school. Nothing prevents Clark from being in the school, but it has prompted a social media backlash and the threats of protesters.
Clark successfully petition to get off probation in 2011, with the backing of Starke police chief and even Bradford County Sheriff Gordon Smith, who has garnered statewide attention for posting large red warning signs at the homes of registered sex offenders.
But Clark, who will be a registered sex offender his whole life, and remain there in death, says rather than trying to run from the label, he hopes to use it to educate, possibly even inspire.
“I’m already out there vulnerable for whole world to roast me, anyway,” he says. “If I can do something to change one life tomorrow night, and I died next day, at least I died doing something good. Who cares at that point? My legacy at that point wouldn’t be that I was a sex offender. It would be that I encouraged one person to believe anything was possible.”