Editorial:

Convicted sex offenders are the editorial writer’s low-hanging fruit.

Their actions have outraged the community. Everyone wants justice. All the editorialist has to do is show sufficient outrage, join in the community outcry and watch the water boil over.

Today, we’ve decided to pick these easy apples because we, like the rest of Newport Beach and Orange County, are having a hard time accepting the latest chapter in the continuing and tragic saga of Greg Haidl, Keith Spann and Kyle Nachreiner.

The young offenders, who were bright enough to videotape their unspeakable acts against an unconscious teenage girl in 2002, are now grown men appealing their thinnest of cases to the state Supreme Court.

By asking the justices to overturn their convictions and remove their sex offender status, the men continue to show no remorse for sexually assaulting an unconscious teenage girl in Corona del Mar, inserting foreign objects into her private areas and videotaping the affair.

Their legal position is in itself a reversal of any half-hearted apologies that have preceded it.

The men argue that they were minors at the time of the crime but tried as adults, and now they’ve grown up and can’t get past the ugly labels that follow sex offenders around for the rest of their lives.

We agree that it must be difficult to start your adult life — the men are in their mid-20s — with a tag that makes employers not want to hire you, women not want to date you and neighbors not want to live near you.

However, the road to a new life begins with acts of contrition. The men need to admit their crimes and ask the victim and the general public for forgiveness. And they need to mean it.

Asking the state’s high court to throw out their convictions makes any other half-hearted admissions or attempts at apologizing appear insincere and are an insult to the victim.

These men committed an adult crime, were tried as adults, served time as adults and lost their appeals as adults.

But they still refuse to man up.