Why are People So Terrorized?

I was reading a short article tonight about a man who was accused of molesting a child. There weren't many details but in the comment section afterwards there were many hateful comments. This is not a new thing I do understand that but I got wondering why people responded this way? This is the link to the article and the responses  http://www.wcsh6.com/news/local/story.aspx?storyid=114928. Today the mere accusation of any sex offense heaps scorn and fury onto the person proported to have committed it. There was a time when you were innocent until PROVEN guilty. But today there exsists such terror and hysteria that anyone accused is got to be guilty even if they do "prove" they aren't. People will forever hold onto the accusation and always wonder if they really were guilty after all "Where there's smoke...." Forget that many are falsely accused by someone with an agenda, like an ex who wants custody or someone else who for whatever reason you got angry with you. If it wasn't such a serious thing I would feel sorry for the responders but it raises a spector of vigilantes. I wish the media would think before they issue statements about people caught in these deliemas. There are crazy people out there who take these situations as a license to kill. Like Herbert Jones who showed up with a gun last May to hunt down a man who served time for a sex offense. Luckily he was stopped before anyone got hurt by an alert school officer. Jones told reporters he had seen a documentary on "child molestors" and decided it was his life's mission to kill them. The question I ask is are we safer in knowing who has done time for sex offenses or even who is accused of them? If Jones had not been stopped before going in the AA meeting do you think he would have left without killing someone? The man he was hunting for was in jail for a probation violation and was not at the meeting. The orginal registry was intended as a tool for Law Enforcement only. As a way to rule out those who had sex offenses when a child went missing. I believe that until the registry is rolled back to it's orginal intent then all of us are less safe because of the crazy people out there who feel that they are the judge and jury, once that happens there will be less instances of this hatard and lunch mob mentality that this article and it's responses promote.