‘Pervert Park’ Takes An Uncomfortably Humanizing Look At Sex Offenders

There are few criminals more universally despised than sex offenders. That’s the faction of America the latest documentary to hit Netflix examines — a mobile home community on the outskirts of St. Petersburg, Florida, comprised entirely of sex offenders. Pervert Park doesn’t make an argument for how we should or shouldn’t treat the roughly 500,000 people who fall into this criminal category. Rather, the documentary takes a disturbingly humanizing look at a group of people that society typically characterizes as monsters.

It’s cliched to say that a documentary will change the way you look at a subject, but that’s exactly what Pervert Park does without including a link to an activist group at the end. Focusing on Florida Justice Transitions, a trailer park dedicated to housing some 120 sex offenders, the film serves to let this group of people tell their stories. However, it’s the calm tone the documentary takes that makes it effective. Pervert Park isn’t campaigning for change or social reform. It merely exists to remind viewers that sexual offenders are people too. By following these people throughout their day-to-day lives, directors Frida and Lasse Barkfors show these criminals not as the villains we’ve grown accustomed to seeing them but as ordinary people who have done terrible things. That is a more alarming and uncomfortable narrative than any other the documentary could present.

That being said, Pervert Park rarely sugarcoats the crimes it presents, instead strategically choosing the subjects it interviews. The A.V. Club’s A.A. Dowd praised the documentary’s tongue-in-cheek coverage in his review, writing, “Without issuing any condemnation, Pervert Park questions a system that creates public-eye equivalency between pedophiles and, say, flashers.” And yet throughout the course of the documentary, it is hard to feel anything other than shocked repulsion about the stories flooding the screen. The New York Times’ Ken Jaworowski summed up the uncomfortable experience of watching the documentary best when he wrote, “To see the offenders struggle with their demons is to experience both revulsion and pity for those who have hurt others and have sometimes been hurt themselves.”

Pervert Park is not a watch for the faint of heart. It’s also not a watch for someone looking to see both sides of the difficult issue of how to treat sexual offenders. Because the documentary only focuses on the citizens of this one trailer park, the victims of these many crimes go unheard. However, if you’re interested in a documentary that takes an unflinching look at a topic that’s universally agreed to be dark and painful, it’s worth checking out.

[Where to watch Pervert Park]