News Items
Headlines About the Registry Hot Off the Presses
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Table of Contents
| Minnesota Considers More Strict SO Rules
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By posted by Fima <estrinyefim@gmail.com>
Posted on 06.01.2009
Link to this news item: [0089] |
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Comments should refer to News Item 0089 and be sent to Minnesota contact person,Fima, at the above email, with copies to alexm60@fastmail.fm, and also to the TV station listed below
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KAALTV (KVAALTV.COM)-contact News@KAALTV.com
Rochester, Minnesota
Nicole King
Dec. 29,2008
Strict Restrictions for Sex Offenders
(ABC 6 NEWS) - If a convicted predatory offender lived close to your kids' school or playground, would you want to know?
The truth is, many do.
In Minnesota, only level three sex offenders, those who are most likely to re-offend, are required to register with the state.
But there are no legal restrictions on where they can live once they've served their time.
A new law would change that.
But some say it goes too far.
Ella and her brother Quincy love to hit the slope at Skinner's Hill.
Their dad, Dan, keeps an eye on the action.
In the Muzik family, safety is a priority, whether it's a ride in a sled or talking about the danger of strangers.
That's why Dan wants to know if a sex offender lives close to where his kids play.
"If it's got anything to do with our children and any kind of sexual predator, we want to know where they're at,” he says.
With the support of parents like Dan, Minnesota Representative John Lesch hopes to toughen the state's sex offender laws.
That includes strict restrictions on where offenders can live.
"The areas that these individuals, high-risk sex offenders were moving into, they were near schools. They were near parks, playgrounds, areas where children would congregate,” says Lesch.
That's what exactly what Lesch wants to stop.
His plan is to ban sex offenders from living within 1,500 feet of school, day care center, park or another sex offender.
And unlike several other similar laws, Lesch wants to put these restrictions on all offenders, not just those who are most likely to reoffend.
"Because of the crime they committed, I don't feel sorry for them,” he says.
"It's not only not needed, it's unproductive,” says Charles Samuelson, the Executive Director of Minnesota’s Civil Liberties Union.
Samuelson says the ACLU will fight the proposed law.
"If this guy lives next to you, he's a monster and he's going to eat your children. That's basically what they're saying,” he says.
A level three-sex offender lived at the Sterling Motel for about a week, just a few hundred feet from Banfield Elementary.
While the school didn't want to comment on the issue, they say they did notify parents.
A new law in Minnesota would make this distance illegal.
But even if you push it back a few hundred feet and the offender can still see the school, will the law do any good?
"Where there's a will, there's a way. No matter what, they're going to find a way to get to their victims,” says Mower County Sheriff Terese Amazi, who adds the law would also put a strain on the state's law enforcement.
Instead of just watching Minnesota’s 141 level three-sex offenders, they would have to monitor more than 4,700 sex offenders.
"To keep track of all those individuals, it would be a cumbersome process,” she says.
And while 1,500 feet isn't as far as Iowa's 2,000 feet requirement, it would make finding a place to live difficult in small Minnesota towns.
Samuelson says it's unfair to offenders who have already served their time.
"It punishes people for crimes these people haven't committed yet, which overturns the American principle of innocent until proven guilty,” he says.
Until a law is in the books, Muzik will continue to talk to his kids about strangers who could harm them.
"They have rights, I understand, but we have the right to keep our children safe as well,” says Muzik.
Representative Lesch thinks the law will pass during the 2009 session, but admits it will likely be amended.
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Cast the 1st Stone: Register All Sinners?
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By Rev. Joseph Gleason <biblelighthouse@gmail.com>
Posted on 06.01.2009
Link to this news item: [0088] |
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Send comments to the minister listed at the above email address, as well as to the rsol Illinois contact, Renate, at gvr123@aol.com and Alex at alexm60@fastmail.fm. ALSO SEND COMMENTS TO THE EVANSVILLE, ILLINOIS CURRIER PRESS - the more positive comments the better!
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Evansville (Ill.) COURRIER PRESS
January 5, 2009
OPINION
OFFENDERS AMONG US
Past sins listed,not explained,in sex registries
I pastor a church in the cozy town of Omaha, Ill. A friend here recently confided in me that a number of people are concerned that a "child molester" has been attending my church. He asked if that is really true. Then he said, "This has been a big dark cloud hanging over your entire operation there."
Well, the guy was no "child molester." (And even if he had been, it would be irrelevant.) Over 15 years ago, as a stupid 20-year-old, he flashed a couple of minors, and he paid dearly. He admits he was wrong. But he now has a wife, a son, a good job and is one of the finest Christian men I know. I have five children, and I trust him with them. Unfortunately, a person can get labeled as a "sex offender" whether he urinated in public, physically assaulted someone or did something in between. But when the state requires a person to register, everyone assumes the worst. I never heard anyone say, "A sex offender moved into town. I hope he doesn't pee outside!"
I do understand the desire to have an online registry. While I have known the guy for years, I don't know those other guys.
Perhaps we should even expand the Internet registry. Then we could be even better protected. Before letting customers in your store, check the thief registry to ensure they never shoplifted as teenagers. Consult the marijuana registry to guarantee your baby sitter never smoked dope 20 years ago.
Are some sins worse than others? Display everyone's sins online and let readers decide for themselves.
It could expand even further. Screen potential dates through an online adultery database. Screen potential employees and friends through an online liar registry and gossip database.
If we create Internet registries to expose everyone with skeletons in their closets, those registries will contain everyone in your phone book. Everyone has the potential to hurt us.
If someone commits a heinous crime and is a danger to society, we have options such as execution and life in prison.
But it is nonsense to tell a person he is "free" to live normally in society, while broadcasting his past sins on the Internet.
If we must have registries, we need to include everyone's sins, not just a select few.
Repentance and forgiveness are what Christianity is all about. So after my friend informed me about the "big dark cloud" that has been hanging over my church, I responded something like this: "If you know any repentant murderers, adulterers, child-molesters, drunks, wife-beaters, liars, thieves or gossips who need Jesus, you send them to me. I'll gladly give them a warm welcome!"
Paul was a murderer, Peter denied Christ, King David was an adulterer and a murderer, and Solomon had lust issues. Yet God worked wonders through them, wouldn't you agree?
How many of your past sins do you want others to see online?
How much grace and forgiveness do you yourself wish to receive?
Contact Joseph Gleason at biblelighthouse@gmail.com.
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Another (teen) s.o. suicide: Stop This Now!
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By anonymous <alexm60@fastmail.fm>
Posted on 05.01.2009
Link to this news item: [0087] |
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Comments should refer to News Item No. 0087 and be sent to Alex at the above email address. Also see Ms. Low´s email at the bottom of the article.
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Oakland youth in sex diary case found dead, committed suicide after
finding out he would be placed on the sex offender registry for life.
BY MARSHA LOW
FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER
Jan. 5, 2009
Justin Fawcett, whose name was among 22 penned in a 14-year-old girl's sex diary, was found dead in his bedroom Friday.
The Oakland County Medical Examiner's Office has yet to determine the
cause of death, but David and Gayle Fawcett said their son died of a
drug overdose.
Fawcett, 20, learned recently that his name would appear on the state's sex-offender list. His parents said they believe learning that he would live as a marked man came as a shock, and he faltered.
In May 2002, at age 18, Fawcett was one of four young men charged with statutory rape for having sex with a 14-year-old Andover High School student.
The girl's diary later revealed she had been sneaking out of her
parents' Bloomfield Township home in the middle of the night to have
oral and anal sex with 22 boys and men.
In a May 2002 interview with the Free Press, the girl conceded that she was a predator and a victim: "I declare I am both. Yes, I'm a victim. I was a victim who was deceived by my own emotions and ignorance, of misplaced confidence, a victim of my own fantasies . . . Yes, predator for I chase people who themselves were victims of misplaced confidence."
In September 2002, Fawcett pleaded guilty to a lesser charge of
seduction, allowing him to avoid jail time and registry on the
sex-offender list.
But a complicated series of legal events would later change that plea
agreement, to the surprise of Fawcett and his parents.
Fawcett was sentenced under the state's Holmes Youthful Trainee Act.
Under the act, Fawcett's record would have been wiped clean as long as he met the requirements of his probation. In this case, Fawcett was instructed to stay out of trouble, not use drugs or alcohol and to pay his court fees.
Instead, Fawcett violated probation in December 2002 when West
Bloomfield police found him illegally possessing prescription drugs. He also failed to pay court fees. And in January 2003, he was arrested for stealing from a vehicle. He served 10 months in the Oakland County Jail.
Pleading to seduction as Fawcett did in 2002 meant his name would not
appear on the sex-offender list. But changes last year require those who pleaded guilty to seduction to appear on the list, said the county's Chief Deputy Prosecutor Deborah Carley.
Fawcett was released from jail on Dec. 30.
He enrolled at Oakland Community College with the hope of earning a
business degree. He was earning good grades and making plans to take a job this spring, his father said. His parents said he was working toward cleaning up his life.
In late February, Fawcett proudly took his well-received school reports to his probation officer as proof that he was a man getting his life in order, David Fawcett said. He was told then that he would be placed on the sex-offender list.
His parents called it a devastating blow to their son.The state enacted New Laws and applied them Retroactively, which is against the United States Constitution. His parents said it was wrong to for the state to break an agreement, their plea agreement, and do this to their son.They said they believe the plea agreement he made two years ago should stand.
The Fawcetts said juveniles have consensual sex all the time. And though they do not approve, they said they believe it is a mistake for the law to mark their son for life and label him a danger.
"We thought he was on the road back," David Fawcett said. "He would
sometimes say he'd kill himself, and that worried us. But we watched him and we didn't think he was suicidal."
Fawcett's parents described him as a strong-willed and artistic boy who played the piano and enjoyed baseball and soccer.
The Fawcetts said they will work to give meaning to their son's life.
They plan to campaign against drug use and to make the sex-offender list more meaningful.
Contact MARSHA LOW at 248-351-3299 or low@freepress.com
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GA S.O.s Must Hand Over Online Passwords
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By Terrence <tjwhite1963@gmail.com>
Posted on 03.01.2009
Link to this news item: [0086] |
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Comments should be sent to Terrence at the above address, with copies to alexm60@fastmail.fm.
Kelly Piercy should be commended for his courage in speaking to the press about this outrage!
See Terrence´s excellent response at the bottom of the URL summary here. The full article cannot but used because of permission requirements by AP.
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GEORGIA RULES THAT SEX OFFENDERS MUST HAND OVER INTERNET PASSWORDS
Associated Press article
URL:
http://www.firstcoastnews.com/news/local/news-article.aspx?storyid=126961&provider=rss
The article points out that so far only Georgia and Utah require than passwords be handed over - allowing state officials to read private email to and from family and other personal email. Kelly Piercy is quoted as asking ¨How much further down this road must sex offenders be chased?¨ After reading the article on the URL, read Terrence´s great response:
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The incredible fact (is) that Georgia has now joined the State of Utah in requiring all registered sex offenders to tender their internet and e-mail user names and passwords to their local Sheriffs Departments. The penalty for this new law, which went into effect in Georgia on 1st January, 2009, is (of course) a felony.
None of us were prepared for this new development; it quite literally blindsided us all. I am strongly suspecting another instance of Republican 'midnight legislation', which (as I'm sure you know) is their favoured tactic for sneaking in highly questionable legislation, under cover of darkness.
As you will I'm sure realise, this is not only a violation of the right to privacy, but it is also an end-run around the need to obtain a legal search warrant. It thus directly and brazenly violates the United States Constitutional Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable searches and seizures.
This is what I specifically had in mind when I said that I would refuse to cooperate, and allow myself to be arrested and incarcerated before ever going along with such a nefarious scheme.
It is now clear that the mighty behemoth State is intent upon annihilating not just all of our natural rights, but also our very identity, our sense of Self. Well, I refuse to consent to the annihilation of my inmost Self.
The State wants to literally hound and punish us to the ends of the Earth. But they do not want us dead: they want us alive, so that they can torment us the more, and so that we can suffer the more.
As I know you will realise, the only thing that will stop this is exposure: their evil deeds must be exposed, and brought to the light of day. Not until their evil deeds are decried from every housetop, not until the average and the ordinary people step up to demand that such evil cease, we we ever see any positive change.
As has been so truly said, the real evil is not the Hitlers of the world: it is the mass of simpering, terrified, "ordinary" citizens who cow in their corners and refuse to speak out against the evil, and thus enable it--permit it to happen. Hitlers are never possible without such enablers.
Europeans should take note of this new development with horror, and beware: how long will it be before this is repeated in your land?
How can fascism rear its ugly head so soon after we thought we defeated it in the last century? Simply and sadly, by reason of the apathy of the populace. This is what allowed it in the first instance, and is what is allowing it again.
Terrence
(From an email to Brian Rothery of Inquisition21.com)
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Wash Post Exposes S.O. Homelessness
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By posted by Margie <thesnappy1@gmail.com>
Posted on 02.01.2009
Link to this news item: [0085] |
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Comments should be sent to Margie at the address above, copies to alexm60@fastmail.fm, and also write the journalist at the email address given in the article.
This article may not be copied in full on a website, so we give the url only.
SEX OFFENDER HOMELESSNESS TRACKED ACROSS THE COUNTRY
The Washington Post
Dec. 27, 2008
by Karl Vick
An excellent summary of this problem, created by the poorly conceived sex offender residency restriction laws!
URL
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/12/26/AR2008122601722.html |
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Big Brother in W. Va. - No Rights for S.O.s
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By posted by Renate <gvr123@aol.com>
Posted on 28.12.2008
Link to this news item: [0084] |
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Comments should refer to News Item 0084, and be sent to Renate, above, copy to alexm60@fastmail.fm.
Note from Alex: This shows that places like W. Va. are in the dark ages on these laws. Some of the worst prejudices are in this article. We urge everyone to send comments to the journalist,
Samantha Perry at sperry@bdtonline.com, and urge her to research our site and some of the positive changes in other states!
SEE COMMENT FROM KELLY PIERCY, RSOL Ga. contact, at bottom of this story.
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Keeping tabs on sex offenders
By SAMANTHA PERRY
Bluefield (West Virginia) Daily Telegraph
Dec. 20, 2008
PRINCETON – From GPS monitoring and lie detector tests to registration of Internet screen names and vehicle identification, Big Brother is keeping a close eye on registered sex offenders in the two Virginias.
In the past three years, the Princeton Detachment of the West Virginia State Police has had more than 500 felony arrests on sex offender registrations. The charges can stem from various issues, such as a convicted offender failing to register with the state, to one who did not contact police within the mandatory time frame after changing a telephone number.
“We don’t play,” said Cpl. J.C. Long, an expert on the sex offender registry process at the Princeton Detachment.
The Mountain State’s sex offender registration process is detailed and complex, but its purpose is simple. The goal is take proactive measures by monitoring convicted offenders in an effort to prevent another child or adult from becoming a victim of a sex crime, Long said.
“Some sex offenders are child predators and they’ll never stop pursuing crimes against children,” Long said. “And we’ve dealt with numerous cases like that in the last three-and-a-half to four years in Mercer County.”
Registration of sex offenders varies according to the crime and court disposition. Some are sentenced to a 10-year registration; others must register for life.
The West Virginia State Police website lists all sexual offenders. Information posted includes the offender’s full name, date of birth, race, gender , hair color, eye color, age, home address, other properties owned, the offender’s conviction offense and the age and gender of the victim. To access the registrations, log on to the State Police web site, www.wvstatepolice.com, and follow the links to the sex offender registry.
Long said the information is posted “for public awareness — no more, no less.”
If a family discovers a sex offender is living nearby and has a concern for their children, Long said parents may want to advise their children not to speak with strangers. “If there is a concern about a specific person, they may want to tell them to stay away from that person.”
Long cited examples of crimes that carry a penalty of a lifetime sex offender registration, including any sex crime convictions (from first-degree sexual assault to third-degree sexual abuse); “the kidnaping of a child who is not their own”; and child pornography convictions.
Also, any sex offender convicted in another state who moves to West Virginia must register, as do offenders who live in another state but work or attend school in West Virginia.
This rule is also in effect in Virginia, said Tazewell County Commonwealth Attorney Dennis Lee, who noted “anyone convicted in another state of a sexually violent offense” must register on Virginia’s sex offender registry.
Lee said others required to register in Virginia include those convicted of any murder involving a victim under the age of 15, all sexually violent offenses — “and that pretty much covers the gamut of sex offenses in Virginia” — felony sex offenses and those convicted of indecent liberties.
“They have to register, and they stay on that registry for the rest of their lives,” Lee said.
Sex offenders who fail to register in West Virginia or Virginia or update their registration face felony charges.
For example, in West Virginia a convicted sex offender has 10 business days to notify the state police of status changes on his or her registration such as a new car, new job or a move to a new home. Long said if they do not notify the state police of this change within the required time frame, they are charged with a felony offense, which carries a potential prison sentence of one to five years. A second offense violation carries a possible 10- to 25-year prison sentence.
Failing to register as a sex offender is also a felony offense in the Commonwealth, with a first offense carrying a potential five-year prison sentence, Lee said. Those convicted of a second offense could face up to 10 years in the penitentiary.
Virginia also has strict time frames in place for offenders to notify authorities of changes on their registration.
For example, Lee said if a convicted sex offender was allowed to have an Internet connection and e-mail, this information would be part of his or her registration with the state. “If the offender makes a change to those services, they have within 30 minutes of the change to report it to the state police, and if they fail to do that it is a crime — a felony offense — punishable by up to five years in prison.”
Virginia also posts its sex offender registry online, which can be accessed at http://sex-offender.vsp.virginia.gov/sor/ .
“The website is pretty detailed,” Lee said. “You can actually get maps that show where the offenders are. I think people would be surprised by how many there are in any given community.”
•••
A new Virginia law enacted in July of this year adds additional limitations on sex offenders. The law prohibits anyone convicted of a sexual offense “to forever be prohibited” from loitering within 100 feet of places where children gather, such as schools, playgrounds, athletic fields and other such sites. While this law does not prohibit a convicted sex offender from picking up his or her child from school, it does prohibit the individual from hanging out there or having contact with a child that is not in his or her custody.
“They could not go to a playground and stand around and watch the kids,” Lee explained.
Additionally, convicted sex offenders are “routinely required to go through intense counseling programs that generally last five to 10 years,” and they may also be ordered to have “no contact with children whatsoever, no Internet services, websites or e-mail addresses and, depending on the circumstances, they can give them curfews. We have had cases in which they have them hooked up to GPS monitoring,” Lee said.
Sex offenders on probation may face even tougher monitoring in Virginia. “They bring in all offenders on probation before Halloween and go over their restrictions for the holiday,” Lee said. “And they’re required to sign a document stating they understand they can’t hand out candy, they can’t have their lights on, they can’t go to functions. If they fail to do that, it’s a violation of their probation.”
Lee said the probation office also brings in convicted sex offenders twice a year for polygraph tests, during which they question them on issues regarding any contact they may have had with children.
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Both Lee and Long said there has been much more awareness of the potential danger of sexual predators in recent years, and increased efforts in proactive measures for the prevention of crimes.
“Of course there have always been sexual predators, but I think there is much more awareness,” Lee said. “Now with the Internet, it’s such a scary world out there. The ability of sexual predators to reach out and make contact with victims has become much easier.”
Lee described the Internet as “a buffet for sexual predators.”
Parents who have a convicted sexual offender living in their neighborhoods need to speak with their children about the potential hazards, Lee said. The details of the conversation may vary depending on the age of the child. “As a parent, you need to advise them the person down the street or next door is a convicted sexual offender and potentially dangerous,” Lee said. With younger children, parents should discuss with them the importance of not having contact with the individual, not going to his or her house and not having contact if approached.
Living in small, rural communities does not isolate families from the dangers of sexual offenders.
Within the last six months in Tazewell County, charges have been brought against people in three separate cases for soliciting children and/or trading child pornography, Lee said.
Lee said the most surprising development he has witnessed in recent years is the increased number of juvenile sex offenders. “We have had quite a few cases in which juveniles have sexually assaulted other juveniles ... this has doubled, or even tripled, from what we were seeing 10 years ago.”
Lee reminded parents that the stereotypical image of a sex offender — “the guy in the raincoat” — does not always hold true.
“We’ve prosecuted community leaders and business leaders,” he said.
“My advice (to parents) would be to educate yourself,” Lee said. “If you see something that strikes you as not right, if you see a registered sex offender around a playground, by all means contact local law enforcement or the state police and report that.”
In West Virginia, Long also advised parents or others with concerns of potential danger to a child or other individual to contact the state police at (304) 425-2101.
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COMMENT
Dear Ms. Perry;
I read your article in the Bluefield Daily Telegraph and have to wonder where ethics in journalism has gone.
You depend heavily on quotes from Corporal Lee to give a biased and prejudicial slant to your story. The article constantly assails the reader with logical non sequitor. In this story, buy quoting Cpl. Lee, you jump from sex offender to immediate danger. You allow Cpl. Lee to advise parents to warn their children about the sex offender that lives in the neighborhood. Yet, you never provide the balance by reporting the truth that 95% of all sex offenses are not committed by former sex offenders. That the greater danger to children and adults is posed by persons known to them (90% of all sex offenses are not committed by a stranger, they are committed by someone known to and trusted by the victim.)
Your effort to 'protect' children is noble... and it is mis-guided. Parents who follow your advice may prevent the slim chance of being a victim of a former offender. A very slim chance indee. A study in Connecticutt demonstrates that a child 16 and under is 150% more likely to die from all causes than to be the victim of a sex offense committed by a person previously convicted of a sex offense.
While you and Corporal Lee are whipping parents into a hysteria watching the stranger down the block, 80% of all sex offenses against children are being committed in the home by a close relative, close friend, or baby-sitter.
Please have the journalistic integrity to do your research before producing such boiler-plate yellow journalism that actually serves to reduce the safety you so nobly hide behind. PLeae note that the comments link to this story appears to be closed. Does this suggest something about your agenda?
Reference: http://bdtonline.com/local/local_story_355192137.html
Kelly R Piercy
rrsol.corrcomm@gmail.com
RSOL Correspondence Committee
http://www.reformsexoffenderlaws.org/
Georgians for Sex Offender Registry and Residency Restriction Reform
http://www.gasorr.org/
— Contact Samantha Perry at sperry@bdtonline.com |
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HRW response to US Report on Anti-women Violence
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By posted by Margie <thesnappy1@gmail.com>
Posted on 23.12.2008
Link to this news item: [0083] |
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NOTE (from Alex Marbury) - This is a Human Rights Watch Report press release about a new U.S. Justice Department report on increased violence, and sexual violence, against women. It is written by Sarah Tofte - the author of a previous HRW study on problems with the ¨sex offender¨ registry and other sex offender laws. RSOL agrees that there is a huge amount of sexual and other violence against women, but we feel Ms. Tofte should have added to her list of things that need to be done, the reform of the existing ¨sex offender¨ registry and related laws that CLAIM to be helping the problem, but in fact help no-one - and harm many, including women and children in the families of ¨sex offenders.¨
Below the article are some further comments by RSOL activists.
Comments should be sent to Margie at the above email address, with a copy to alexm60@fastmail.fm, (refer to News Item No. 0083) as well as to Sahra Tofte at Human Rights Watch.
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US: Soaring Rates of Rape and Violence Against Women
More Accurate Methodology Shows Urgent Need for Preventive Action
December 18, 2008
Human Rights Watch Press Release
(http://www.hrw.org)
The numbers in this survey show an alarmingly high rate of sexual violence in this country. This should serve as a wake-up call that more must be done to address the problem in the US.
by Sarah Tofte, researcher for the US Program at Human Rights Watch.
A new government report showing huge increases in the incidences of domestic violence, rape, and sexual assault over a two-year period in the United States deserves immediate attention from lawmakers and the incoming administration, Human Rights Watch said today. The statistics show a 42-percent increase in reported domestic violence and a 25-percent increase in the reported incidence of rape and sexual assault.
The National Crime Victimization Survey, based on projections from a national sample survey, says that at least 248,300 individuals were raped or sexually assaulted in 2007, up from 190,600 in 2005, the last year the survey was conducted. The study surveyed 73,600 individuals in 41,500 households. Among all violent crimes, domestic violence, rape, and sexual assault showed the largest increases. Except for simple assault, which increased by 3 percent, the incidence of every other crime surveyed decreased.
"The numbers in this survey show an alarmingly high rate of sexual violence in this country," said Sarah Tofte, researcher for the US Program at Human Rights Watch. "This should serve as a wake-up call that more must be done to address the problem in the US."
The projected number of violent crimes committed by intimate partners against women increased from 389,100 in 2005 to 554,260 in the 2007 report. By comparison, the number of violent crimes against men by intimate partners went down.
"Domestic violence is often a hidden crime, and these numbers are a stark reminder of how serious and widespread this problem is," said Tofte. "The Obama-Biden administration should make prevention and protection against all forms of domestic and sexual violence a top priority."
The National Crime Victimization Survey is conducted every two years, with data gathered in phone calls made to a sample of households across the United States. Due to criticism from experts in the subject, the survey's methodology was adjusted in 2007 to capture more accurately the incidence of gender-based violence. The authors say in the report that the higher numbers may reflect the new, more accurate methodology rather than an actual increase. Two major shifts were to describe types of sexual assault to those being interviewed, and to replace "computer-assisted telephone interviews conducted from two telephone centers" nationwide with interviews "by field representatives either by telephone or in person."
"The new numbers indicate that previously, the government significantly underestimated the number of individuals affected by domestic and sexual violence in this country," said Tofte. "Authorities should urgently adjust public policies, law enforcement, and provision of support services accordingly."
Human Rights Watch is currently investigating and monitoring the criminal justice response to sexual violence. The organization's recent work includes investigating the backlog in untested DNA evidence collected in rape cases in the US. In Los Angeles City and County alone, there is a combined total of at least 13,000 untested sets of evidence, known as rape kits, sitting in storage.
Human Rights Watch's national recommendations include:
-The Obama administration should appoint a special adviser on violence against women in the US;
-Congress should restore full funding to the Office on Violence Against Women;
-The Department of Justice, through the National Institute of Justice, should authorize comprehensive studies that more accurately track sexual and domestic violence in the US, especially among individuals who are least likely to be surveyed by the National Crime Victimization Survey;
-Congress should increase funding for sexual and domestic violence prevention, intervention, and treatment programs;
-Congress should amend the federal Debbie Smith Act, a grant program designed to eliminate the rape kit backlog, but that states can and have used for other kinds of DNA backlogs;
-The US should ratify the UN Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), which obligates states to prevent, protect against, and punish violence against women.
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Further comments by RSOL Participants
Marge Furlong (thesnappy1@gmail.com)
¨We are appalled by this recent news. But, at the same time, the rights of many individuals are being stripped away whereas many are guilty of only a one time lapse of good judgement. Also, it would be
interesting to find out, how many were actual crimes? We are all too familar with 'guilty by accusation only' whether it be a messy divorce, or a pissed off mother, etc.¨
Kelly Piercy (gasoem@gmail.com)
¨The Problem is that this has been with us for the generations.
and Previously this 800 pound gorilla was ignored. It can no longer be ignored or allowed to continue.¨ (The Justice Dept. report is right in that, and Human Rights Watch is right to support the campaign against such violence. comment by Alex)
¨ But, we can not throw more 'feel good' laws at this problem.
We tried that with the ineffective Sex Offender Laws and we have learned that these draconian measures do nothing to address the problem and only continue the problem.
¨We propose addressing the problem through education and treatment instead of blanket ill conceived legislation.¨
Renate, gvr123@aol.com
¨I am kind of tired that woman cry rape too soon, and I am a woman too! It is, of course unfortunate and sad when there is a rape or any kind of violence against a woman. But as long as these cases, which are often mostly viewed from one-side only, are not realy investigated, the problem will not be solved. Often women use their "helplessness" against men to their advantage. There is then enough fuel for the public to ralley against men.¨...Of course others need to focus on violence against women, ¨but someone like RSOL must find out about injustice against offenders. Females are (nowadays) so protected, they are almost untouchable. I find that disturbing!¨
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Safety, Fear: Adam Walsh Legacy
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By posted by Margie <thesnappy1@gmail.com>
Posted on 22.12.2008
Link to this news item: [0082] |
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Comments should be sent to the above email, and mention News Item No 0082 (see also recent RSOL blogs about Adam Walsh case). Also, contact the reporter, whose email is at the bottom of the story.
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Safety and fear make up Adam Walsh's legacy
By Michael Kruse,
St. Petersburg (Florida) Times Staff Writer
Monday, December 22, 2008
We've never been more safe.
We've never been more afraid.
That's the paradox we're left with now that police have finally named a killer in the murder of Adam Walsh.
For 27 years, it seemed that the freckle-faced 6-year-old was snatched by the bogeyman Out There Somewhere. Last week, we got a name: Ottis Toole, drifter and serial killer, who died in 1996 while in prison for other crimes. But since 1981, when Adam was kidnapped from a Sears at a South Florida mall, we've become irreversibly more watchful, and more worried, and more aware of dangers both real and imagined.
We search for missing kids better now. We find more of them. But we're also a little paranoid. We put kids on leashes and track them by satellite. We teach them the world can be mean.
The legacy of Adam Walsh isn't fixed. It pulses on a sliding scale between cautious responsibility and hypervigilance.
Ernie Allen, president of the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, credits Adam's father, John Walsh, for changing the way parents and lawmakers think about and respond to the threat.
"Adam's story captured the attention of the American media and moms and dads all over the country," Allen said. "The results have been overwhelmingly positive."
A leading criminologist says not so.
"John Walsh, if he had raised awareness in a more rational, considerate and moderate way, he might have done some good," said Richard Moran, a sociologist and criminologist at Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts. "But he raised awareness in this hysterical way and he created enormous anxiety among parents.
"It robbed a lot of children of their childhoods."
The changes — in law, and in perception — started almost immediately after Adam Walsh went missing.
John Walsh and his wife lobbied Congress to pass the Missing Children's Act in 1982. It required the FBI to enter data about missing children into a national crime database. They also helped found the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children in 1984.
Security tightened at stores and schools. Pictures of missing kids appeared on milk cartons and shopping bags and fliers in the mail.
In 2006, on the 25th anniversary of Adam Walsh's kidnapping, the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act was passed, expanding the national registry of sex offenders and stiffening penalties against them.
These days, Amber alerts go out, practically instantly, all over the country, when a kid goes missing. Code Adam is an alarm set off in stores that alerts employees to a missing child and locks the doors.
Statistics from the U.S. Department of Justice show that since the mid 1970s violent crime has gone down, down, down.
The Department of Justice estimates that 115 kids a year are kidnapped in what are labeled "stereotypical" kidnappings — a stranger taking a child with intent to keep or harm or kill. Fewer than half of those cases end in deaths.
In 1990, police recovered 62 percent of missing kids. Now it's about 96 percent, according to Allen, the president of the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children.
It's impossible to say exactly how much of this has to do with Adam Walsh.
On Tuesday, though, Allen's group called Walsh's parents "true American heroes" who "deserve the gratitude of every person."
It's safer now. Kids are far more likely to die by drowning, choking or in a car crash than they are to be kidnapped, raped and killed. Even accidental deaths are on the decline, thanks to bike helmets and seat belts and pool fences. It just doesn't feel safer.
Moran blames John Walsh.
"He created a sense of panic that was unrealistic," Moran said, "and he inflicted it on the nation."
Said author Richard Louv, who writes about overanxious, overprotective parents: "I'm not saying there's no risk out there, and I'm not saying the fear people feel is silly. But the stats in no way match the amount of fear parents feel."
In Florida a generation ago — before Carlie Brucia was taken and killed in Sarasota, before Sarah Lunde was taken and killed in Ruskin, before Jessica Lunsford was taken and killed in Homosassa — kids built tree forts and rode bikes all day till dark and played cowboys and Indians with cap guns in orange groves.
Not anymore.
Now we scan mug shots on sheriffs' Web sites.
Now we check for area pedophiles on the national sex offender registry.
America's Most Wanted, hosted by John Walsh, is on still, and has been for two decades.
Nancy Grace is on CNN every night talking about Orlando girl Caylee Anthony, confirmed dead.
Malls offer fingerprinting and DNA swabbing. Dentists can put ID chips in kids' teeth. Parents can buy GPS-based homing devices with names like Toddler Tag to stitch into their kids' clothes.
"This is all about this little boy," John Walsh said at last week's news conference.
More than 27 years had passed since a voice came over the loudspeaker at the mall.
"Adam Walsh," the voice said.
"Please come to customer service."
Michael Kruse can be reached at mkruse@sptimes.com or (727) 869-6244.
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BR S.O. Wins Groundbreaking Ruling
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By posted by Margie <thesnappy1@gmail.com>
Posted on 22.12.2008
Link to this news item: [0081] |
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Comments should refer to news item 0081 and be sent to the above email address, and to alexm60@fastmail.fm
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Sex offender wins groundbreaking court ruling
Dec 19 2008 Evening Chronicle
New Castle, England
A SEX offender has won a groundbreaking ruling that his "indefinite" placement on the sex offenders register with no right of review breached his human rights.
The test case of Angus Thompson came before three judges at the High Court in London.
Lord Justice Latham, Mr Justice Underhill and Mr Justice Flaux said the current system denied him the chance to prove in a review he no longer posed a risk of reoffending.
The judges ruled that Thompson was entitled to declarations that the scheme was incompatible with his right to private and family life under the European Convention on Human Rights.
Lord Justice Latham said it might well be that any right of review "should be tightly subscribed in the public interest".
But he added: "I find it difficult to see how it could be justifiable in Article 8 terms to deny a person who believes himself to be in that position an opportunity to seek to establish it."
Lawyers had argued that Thompson should be entitled to attempt to come off the register and stop having to notify the police of his personal details, including whether he intended to travel abroad.
The judges heard that the Sexual Offences Act 2003 means that a person sentenced to 30 months or more "shall be subjected for life" to the register’s notification requirements.
Pete Weatherby, appearing on behalf of Thompson, argued that he should be entitled to periodic reviews.
Thompson was sentenced in November 1996 to five years in jail on two counts of indecent assault on a female and other offences of actual bodily harm. The court heard he has since been released and he has not been in any more trouble.
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CA S.O. Homeless Rate Jumps 800%
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By Margie posted this <thesnappy1@gmail.com>
Posted on 22.12.2008
Link to this news item: [0080] |
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This was posted by Margie at the above email address. Refer in comments to News Item 0080 and send to her, and to alexm60@fastmail.fm
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California's homeless sex offenders on parole up 800%
December 19, 2008
LOS ANGELES TIMES
SACRAMENTO
Homeless sex offenders on parole jumps sharply
The number of homeless sex offenders on parole in California has increased dramatically since the approval two years ago of Proposition 83, an initiative that imposed harsh restrictions on where they can live, a state panel reported Thursday.
The Sex Offender Management Board said the number of parolees monitored by the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation -- one of the only government agencies to enforce what is known as Jessica's Law -- increased from 88 in November 2006 to 1,056 at the end of June 2008.
"Common sense leads to the conclusion that a community cannot be safer when sex offenders are homeless," the report states, citing research concluding that unstable housing can lead to recidivism.
Jessica's Law, which prohibits sex offenders from residing within 2,000 feet of schools and parks where children play, was proposed by state Sen. George Runner (R-Lancaster) and his wife, Sharon, a former assemblywoman, and strongly backed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.
When the state board looked at its effect on housing for all sex offenders, including those not on parole against whom the law has not generally been enforced, it found homelessness had increased 60%. Potential solutions mentioned included housing multiple sex offenders in the same place and putting them in mobile trailers until they can find a permanent home.
The governor's office said Thursday that Schwarzenegger still "strongly supports Jessica's Law, which all involved concede needs fine-tuning." Neither the governor nor the law's other sponsors have offered proposals to amend it.
-- Michael Rothfeld LOS ANGELES
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Phone calls alert residents to S.O.s
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By Chris <rsolnc@gmail.com>
Posted on 21.12.2008
Link to this news item: [0079] |
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Comments should be sent to Chris at the above email, refer to News Item No. 0079. Chris is the co-contact person for N.Carolina for RSOL N.Carolina, the NC affiliated state group.
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PHONE CALLS ALERT RESIDENTS TO SEX OFFENDERS
an Associated Press Story, Dec. 16, 2008
My statement to the attorney general is below. I'm really tired of this crap. (Chris)
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Mr. Cooper,
I'm writing regarding the latest article in the AP concerning phone alerts for Sex Offenders. As a sex offender, husband, and father of three children (ages 6, 8, and 10), I am also concerned about the safety of my children. The general public is under the assumption that every offender is a child molester or a rapist when this is simply not true. Many are like me, who made a one-time poor decision, did our time and are trying to rebuild our lives. It seems that every month that goes by, more and more laws are implemented in the name of "protecting our children". If we truly want to protect our children, keep the violent offenders, and repeat offenders in prison. Adjust the registry to reflect only those that do pose a true danger to the public so that it's not too confusing to distinguish between offenders. Also remember there are vigilante individuals who utilize the registry for the purpose of inflicting harm on offenders. This poses a significant risk to the offender's families as well. Please take this under consideration.
Sincerely,
Chris
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Dec. 16, 2008
Associated Press (North Carolina)
A state registry will begin notifying people by phone when sex offenders move into their area, courtesy of a new system from two state programs.
"Because tens of thousands of people still aren't online, this allows
them to use the phone system to get the notifications," Attorney General Roy Cooper said Tuesday.
Cooper and Governor's Crime Commission Chair Linda Hayes announced the program, an expansion of the North Carolina Sex Offender Registry and the North Carolina Statewide Automated Victim Assistance and Notification program, Tuesday morning.
The sex offender registry is already online, allowing people to search for convicted sex offenders in their neighborhood, view maps and sign up for e-mail alerts. Through NC SAVAN, residents will get the online information by phone.
NC SAVAN was first established in 1998 for victims to track court dates and custody changes of their attackers. Those services will remain.
Nearly 12,000 registered sex offenders live in North Carolina, including just over 1,100 currently incarcerated, according to the North Carolina Offender Registry's Web site. Their movements are tracked and funneled into the NCSAVAN system by sheriff's offices, the Department of Correction and district attorney's offices statewide. Cooper said he's aware parents like to know the information being made available to them.
"This helps them plan for the safety of their children," Cooper said.
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Keep S.O.s Away from Everybody?
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By margie <thesnappy1@aol.com>
Posted on 18.12.2008
Link to this news item: [0078] |
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Comments should be sent to Margie at the above email, with copies to alexm60@fastmail.fm. Always refer to the News Item No. - in this case 0078! Comments are also posted after the article below.
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Alex´s Note:
And so it goes on and one - the hatred, the hysteria, the hype. We have to demand that America is better than this!!!!!!! Eventually, Americans will see this for what it is.
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Council hears about local sex offenders
Tuesday, December 16
Lassen County (California) Times
There are currently 11 registered sex offenders registered with the Susanville (California) Police Department, and at least one person in the community is looking to make sure there aren’t any more.
Community member Jazmine Buchanan first came to the council at its regular meeting on Wednesday, Nov. 19. In that meeting, she explained how she had come across a registered sex offender in public. Buchanan has since come back to the council asking for its help in bringing about harsher punishments for sex offenders.
She came back to the council at its Dec. 3 meeting to ask the council to sign a letter of support for harsher penalties on all known sex offenders, which would then be passed on to Senator Diane Feinstein’s office.
“These offenders cannot be around schools and parks,” Buchanan said. “The reason why is because there’s children around. Well nowadays there’s children around everywhere. So they shouldn’t even have the privilege to be out walking the streets, like everyone else. We believe they should have life in prison. They lose their rights when they do the crime.”
Buchanan explained the current laws designed to punish sex offenders aren’t enough. She said that Jessica’s Law and Megan’s Law weren’t harsh enough for people who cause permanent damage to their victims.
The council eventually told Buchanan that it could not sign her letter because changing laws was something that had to be done at the state level, not at the city level. Mayor Kurt Bonham also said it would be difficult to pass any kind of new legislation asking for people who have already served their time in prison to go back.
Buchanan said she would continue gathering community support and bringing the issue before organizations like the city council until she started getting results.
To highlight how the sex offender issue’s it pertains to Susanville, Police Captain Tom Downing presented a report to the council at its request.
“Currently, 11 sex offenders are registered with the Susanville Police Department,” Downing said. “Out of the 11 registered sex offenders, one is in the Lassen County Adult Detention Facility, one is registered as a transient, and one resides in the county and is attending classes at Lassen Community College.
“The remaining eight are residing in the city. The city currently has no registered sex offenders who are on parole or probation, and no registered sexually violent predators.”
(article truncated by A.M. because of length and extraenous material....)
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COMMENT: Ref: News Item 0078 - Maybe we should put everyone that ISN´T on the SOR in prison - this way they'll know they are safe. Or, we could put all the children on an island without adults - this way people like the lady (in California who made this proposal) would stop being an idiot. |
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S.O. photos decorate Christmas Tree
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By margie <thesnappy1@gmail.com>
Posted on 18.12.2008
Link to this news item: [0077] |
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Comments to Margie at above email address, with copies to alexm60@fastmail.fm. Note - We are not allowed to post the whole story because of Assoc. Press rules.
SEX OFFENDER PHOTOS DECORATE CHRISTMAS TREE
A very sick and sadistic police chief in New Baltimore, Ohio, has pasted the photos of the 8 registered ¨sex offenders¨ of that town on stars and other ornaments on the town Christmas Tree. What new low will be next in the witch-hunt against ¨sex offenders¨?
(Summary of article by Alex Marbury)
To view the whole story, go to this URL:
http://www.upi.com/Odd_News/2008/12/17/Police_Xmas_tree_bears_sex_offender_photos/UPI-78811229529238/ |
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NC Students who are S.O could be expelled.
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By Margie <thesnappy1@gmail.com>
Posted on 16.12.2008
Link to this news item: [0076] |
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Send comments to the above email address and to the address of the journalist below, as well as a copy to alexm60@fastmail.fm.
Refer to News Item No. 0076.
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Schools address student sex offenders Friday, December 12 (updated
Greensboro, NC News-Record
Saturday, December 13, 6:50 am)
By J. Brian Ewing
Staff Writer
Guilford County Schools officials are trying to decide how to handle students who are registered sex offenders, with one such student in a school now.
The system’s Governance Review Committee is developing policies to address a state law passed earlier this year restricting the access registered sex offenders have to places where children are, including schools.
One of those policies will address sex offenders who are students.
The board could decide to do one or a combination of several things including:
* expelling any student who is a registered sex offender
* expelling any student 16 years and older who is a registered sex offender, considering younger students on a case by case basis
* reviewing each case, applying various options to address the student based on the degree of the crime.
The policy could require that any student who is a registered sex offender be supervised or any student expelled be provided an alternative course of education, such as online classes.
School board attorney Jill Wilson said she has reviewed a few similar policies from school boards and her recommendation is that the board review each case.
“Do a true review of all the risks and benefits,” she said, noting that there is a wide range of crimes that can result in the person being a registered sex offender. Offenses can range from rape to cases of multiple peeping.
Wilson told the committee there is one registered sex offender enrolled in a Guilford County School.
However, officials declined to name which school or reveal any information about the student.
The committee also is working on a similar policy to address adult sex offenders coming on campus, specifically parents and guardians who are registered sex offenders.
A policy being considered would require all such parents and guardians to notify the school’s principal before coming on campus for things such as dropping their child off at school and parent/teacher conferences.
The school board is expected to debate the policy at its meeting Jan. 13.
Contact J. Brian Ewing at 373-7351 or brian.ewing@news-record.com
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Exiles on Main Street
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By Margie Furlong <thesnappy1@gmail.com>
Posted on 16.12.2008
Link to this news item: [0075] |
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Refer to News Item No. 0075, and send to Margie, who sent this in, at the above email address, and a copy to alexm60@fastmial.fm.
Also, write to the Baltimore City Paper, or email them.
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EXILES ON MAIN STREET
by Chris Landers
Baltimore City Paper
Dec. 10, 2008
Exiles On Main Street
City Council Request to Limit Residency of Sex Offenders May Be Too Restrictive Areas in black on the map are within 2,000 feet of an accredited school or full-time daycare center. Under a law requested by the City Council last month, sex offenders would not be allowed to live in those areas. More than 1,000 home-based day care providers and an unspecified number of other locations where children congregate are not shown. By Chris Landers
The City Council last month asked state lawmakers to introduce laws limiting where registered sex offenders in the city could live. The law, which would prohibit offenders from living within 2,000 feet of "a school, day care center, or location where children congregate," would effectively ban registered sex offenders from the city.
City Paper mapped the locations of schools and larger day-care centers, based on state data, and discovered that few, if any, residential areas of Baltimore are farther than 2,000 feet from either.
LOCATE: Child Care, the nonprofit which contracts with the state to keep a database of licensed day-care centers, provided the locations of 253 full-time childcare centers in the city. The nonprofit also tracks more than 1,000 home day-care centers, but declined to release those locations.
Across the country, residency restrictions on sex offenders have proven popular, but problematic. Childrens' advocates and sex-offender treatment experts say there is no evidence that residency laws do anything to reduce recidivism.
"It's kind of like thinking you're going to stop bank robbers by not letting them live in close proximity to a bank," says Fred S. Berlin, head of the Baltimore-based National Institute for the Study, Prevention, and Treatment of Sexual Trauma. "There is no evidence in the jurisdictions that have these laws that it's cut down on sex offenses."
A policy paper from the Jacob Wetterling Resource Center, a Minnesota nonprofit that fights child exploitation, says residency laws may do more harm than good because they drive registered offenders underground, making them more difficult to track. "Because residency restrictions have been shown to be ineffective at preventing harm to children, and may indeed actually increase the risks to kids, [the Jacob Wetterling Resource Center] does not support residency-restriction laws," the paper states. "Such laws can give a false sense of security while sapping resources that could produce better results used elsewhere."
Nancy Sabin, the director of the Wetterling center, in an e-mailed response to questions for this article, wrote this:
Councilman Warren Branch, who introduced the Baltimore resolution, says it was proposed in response to concerns he heard from his 13th district constituents.
"I was at one of the eastside community association meetings," Branch says, "and it was brought up that there were sex offenders living near two of the schools near Oliver Street and Lakewood, and some of the residents saw one of the offenders speaking to one of the young kids. They notified channel 45 and there were maybe 50 people who attended that meeting--screaming and shouting."
Upon investigation, Branch says, he came across a bill that had been introduced at the state level more than once, but died in the Judicial Committee. He says he was surprised no one in the city delegation had taken up the issue before, given the number of times he had heard complaints from residents. He says he drafted the bill hoping to spur state representatives to action.
Asked whether the 2,000-foot limit would force offenders out of the city, Branch says he would consider a smaller figure. "We can work on scaling it back," he says. "The way we have it, it's about eight or 10 blocks away from a school. I would feel comfortable with about two or three blocks. We don't want to send them somewhere where they would have to go and hide.
"I can relate to the constituents," Branch says. "We don't want to place [the children] out there like candy for them. The [offenders] who are going through treatment or something like that, we don't want to place them in the line of fire with some of the kids."
Critics of residency laws say they are based on myths about sex offenders--according to the U.S. Justice Department, the majority of sex offenses are committed by someone known by the victim, and that most sex offenders were unlikely to re-offend. The City Council resolution borrows language from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children to warn that sex offenders have a high risk of re-offending, and are largely unknown to the community, although the organization itself opposes residency laws.
According to the Council for State Governments, 24 states have passed blanket residency restrictions similar to the one Branch proposes, with restriction zones ranging from 500 to 2,000 feet. The council found that pressure on state legislators for tougher sex-offender laws had increased, even as the efficacy of residency restrictions was called into question.
In Iowa, one of the first states to enact a sex-offender residency law, some legislators are attempting to scale back the law after the number of offenders that police couldn't locate skyrocketed. The Iowa County Attorney's Association, made up of prosecutors in that state, issued a statement in 2006 calling for the repeal or amendment of the residency restriction, saying that it caused a reduction in the number of confessions and plea agreements made by sex offenders, forced offenders from established residences, and compromised the safety of children. The restrictions have proven difficult to get rid of. Keith Kreiman, an Iowa state senator and cochair of the state's judiciary committee, told USA Today last year that it was difficult to scale back or amend the residency laws once they had passed. "It is very politically risky to even hold hearings [on residency laws]" he said, because of fears of being seen as "soft on crime."
In Maryland, a residency law similar to the one requested by the City Council has been introduced in prior sessions by Baltimore County Del. Eric Bromwell (D-8th District), who did not respond to calls for comment for this story. In 2006, Bromwell wrote a letter to his constituents promising to introduce residency requirements after two registered sex offenders were discovered to be living near a school. The measure died in committee in 2007 and 2008 legislative sessions. Branch said Bromwell's bills prompted him to draft legislation asking for city delegates to support them.
"If we can put some laws in place for the safety of the child," Branch says, "that has to come first. It's sort of hard to call, but if we don't have any measures in place, then we don't have any guidelines to go on."
Del. Curtis Stovall Anderson (D-43rd District), head of the Baltimore delegation, was unavailable for comment. Ian Brennan, spokesman for Mayor Sheila Dixon, says the mayor would reserve judgment about supporting a residency law until it had been drafted at the state level.
The National Institute's Berlin cautions that the laws need to be based on available evidence.
"There are a lot of things that need to be looked at carefully," he says. "Sometimes in the rush to enact this legislation these things are not very well addressed. . . . I'm open to evidence that [residency laws are] serving a useful purpose in the community, but at this point it's really based more on fear--understandable fear, but fear and emotion--rather than something that's showing in a rational fashion that this is going to be effective public policy. . . . I understand the emotions, I understand the fears, but these laws are really important--first in terms of community safety, and second, as long as the community's safe, treating the people who have served their time fairly and helping them to get a new start in the community."
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Some Cities Pass Worse Laws - Belleville, Il.
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By Renate <gvr123@aol.com>
Posted on 16.12.2008
Link to this news item: [0074] |
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Comments should be sent to Renate (RSOL Il. State contact) who sent this in - email is above. Send comments also to the journalist, whose email is at the end of the story, and to alexm60@fastmail.fm
REFER to News Item 0074
SOME STATES PASS WORSE LAWS THAN EVER -
Belleville, Illinois for instance!
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Belleville OKs sex offender ordinance
BY JACQUELINE LEE AND LAURA GIRRESCH -
News-Democrat
BELLEVILLE, IL -- Metro East News and BND.com
Dec. 16, 2008
Boosts restrictions on where they reside
The City Council voted unanimously Monday night to pass an ordinance that will make it unlawful for registered child sex offenders to live or loiter within 1,500 feet of schools, parks or pools -- triple the distance required by state law.
The ordinance, effective in 10 days, will not affect child sex offenders who currently own or lease a property within 1,500 feet of the named areas: schools attended by people under age 18, parks and public pools.
"This ordinance is intended to apply to and prevent such new residential lease agreements, and renewal of expired residential leases, entered into after the effective date of this ordinance," the ordinance states.
Those who violate the ordinance would be fined $100 to $1,000, including landlords who rent to offenders if their building's lot line is within 1,500 feet of the lot lines of a park, pool or school property.
"It will potentially make criminals out of law-abiding (landlords) who make mistakes," Metro-East Landlord's Association President Donn Schaefer said, referring to landlords who may not keep track of where sex offenders are supposed to live. "Will they provide the public with maps? That's a very, very tight list there."
Ed Yohnka, of ACLU in Chicago, agrees that sex offenders should be the ones to register and abide by the rules, and not "a third party to somehow enforce them."
"We're seeing just a lot more of these kinds of restrictions. Fifteen hundred feet from every park or other place may frankly leave out large swaths of the city from a place where someone could even live," Yohnka said.
Mayor Mark Eckert said he doesn't mind that child sex offenders may not want to live in Belleville because of all the restrictions: "That doesn't hurt our feelings. It makes it safer for our residents."
Eckert said the Police Department learned of what other cities were doing and decided to follow suit; Collinsville passed a similar law in September.
Contact reporter Jacqueline Lee at jlee@bnd.com or 239-2655.
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Journalist wins Emmy for ¨Jessica´s Law Fallout¨ article
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By Margie Furlong <thesnappy1@gmail.com>
Posted on 15.12.2008
Link to this news item: [0073] |
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Comments should refer to News Item No. 0073 and be sent to our intrepid regular contributor, Margie Furlong, at the above email address, with a copy to alexm60@fastmail.fm, and to the journalist at the Gallup Independent.
Journalist Wins Emmy for Exposing ¨Jessica´s Law Fallout¨
Gallup, New Mexico Independent, Dec. 12, 2008
John Sandoval, a TV journalist, did an excllent 8 minute clip, exposing the negative fall out for ¨sex offenders¨ who become homeless as a result of ¨Jessica´s Law.¨
The URL:
http://www.gallupindependent.com/2008/12december/120808emmy.html |
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SEND IN THE CLOWNS!
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By Margie Furlong <thesnappy1@gmail.com>
Posted on 15.12.2008
Link to this news item: [0072] |
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Comments should be sent to the above email - obviously the person listed as ¨author¨ is the author of our News Item, not the journalist listed below who wrote the article. You might also send an email to the Rome News Tribune, and send a copy to alexm60@fastmail.fm., too!
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Send In The Clowns
Rome, Georgia, News Tribune
editorial
12/09/08
IT’S ALMOST time to send in the clowns again, meaning the General Assembly will be back in session next month.
As an Atlanta editorial quite correctly observed recently, “Most of the bills that the legislature enacts are pantomime — symbolic acts designed to give the appearance of decisiveness.”
Would that these clowns were actually mimes whereby citizens would only have to see their pratfalls instead of also having to listen to them boast about them.
One of the legislature’s worst pratfalls in recent years has been its sex-offender residency/registry law, one of the lousiest, most unconstitutional, absurd and brain-dead bits of political posturing ever to disgrace a deliberative body.
No doubt one of the first items on the legislative agenda come January will be an effort — once again — to rewrite and repair yet more portions of this law as courts continue to strike down section after section of it. Unfortunately, the way the legal system works, issues must be raised piecemeal instead of doing what’s actually required and ash-canning the entire thing.
MOST RECENTLY, the Georgia Supreme Court deemed the portion requiring an automatic sentence of life in prison for released sex offenders who don’t register where they are living (because the legislators also made it near impossible for them to live anywhere) to be unconstitutional because it amounted to “cruel and unusual punishment.” Not a one of the 23 other states with similar laws exact anywhere near this severe a penalty.
And, after the coming rewrite, there are certain to be more revisions in future years as the legislators hold onto their ugly creation with a death grip. This bunch simply refuses to admit it can be wrong about anything.
Still pending in federal courts are suits challenging the provision banning sex offenders, who have served their sentences, from volunteering at a church and the one not allowing them to live near churches (of which Georgia has thousands) and school-bus stops (of which Georgia has 150,000).
Actually, a challenge is needed to the core problem of this law, which is its overly broad, sweeping definition of what constitutes a “sex offender” who must be kept tabs on for life. Basically, it’s anyone who had sex, natural or unnatural, at a time, place or age that the legislators believe inappropriate ... and go caught at it.
ONE WONDERS how many Georgians, including those in the legislature, are not now governed by the awful law simply because they were never caught.
If the definition were limited to known predators not vouched for as “cured” by psychiatric professionals, that would be one thing. But just about anybody for anything?
In the specific instance of the latest court ruling, the state was trying to send away for life a 26-year-old who, at the age of 19, was convicted of statutory rape for consensual sex with a 15-year-old. Were it not for U.S. Supreme Court rulings striking down rape being a capital offense, one wonders if the current batch of Georgia legislators would try to make have sex out of wedlock a hanging offense.
Far-fetched? Just remember, this same bunch has already made active membership in a church community illegal for those they don’t appear to believe worthy of salvation.
Repairing the law’s definition of what constitutes a sex offender who poses an actual threat to concentrate on predators would solve much of its problems. There’s nothing wrong with protecting “our children,” the cover excuse the legislators use. There’s something very wrong with violating the fundamental civil rights of tens of thousands of largely upstanding citizens who once made a mistake (as the state sees it) and are now back on the straight and narrow.
ONE SUSPECTS that a large part of the legislature’s problem in this regard is the mindset of its current majority. Some (not all) of the Republican leaders actually appear to believe they are infallible.
Indeed, it was worrisome in the recent Georgia Supreme Court ruling to note that the sole objector in the 6-1 decision, Justice George Carley, said the law should stand because to do otherwise would be a “monumental abuse of this court’s authority to determine the constitutionality of legislation.”
If whatever a legislative body does is legal, as Carley seems to imply, and the constitutional rights conferred to citizens so easily discarded, why even have courts? The judiciary is the sole check (other than the ballot box) against legislators who believe they are gods.
Would Carley uphold a law banning all Georgians from participating in any church activity other than services themselves? After all, “freedom of religion” may be protected but there is no “freedom to operate a food bank” in the state and national constitutions.
To amplify on what our Atlanta peers noted, the General Assembly engages in more than “symbolic acts designed to give the appearance of decisiveness.” They engage equally in symbolic acts designed to give the appearance of omnipotence.
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¨SEXTING¨ - Teens & Younger Making ¨porn¨
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By Kelly <gasoem@gmail.com>
Posted on 15.12.2008
Link to this news item: [0071] |
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Comments should be sent to the above person and email address, who posted this News Item, and should refer to News Item 0071.
SEXTING
Teens and younger children are using cell phones to ¨text¨ their friends and others nude and sometimes sexual pictures of themselves or their friends. Some teens have been arrested, and at least one is serving a long prison sentence, for this practice! We urge parents and others to warn their children that their ¨sexting¨ may be illegal and that they could be charged!
This ABC News video touches on a ¨taboo¨ subject - that kids themselves are making what may be called ¨porn,¨ and that they often are sexually provocative.
The URL to see the ABC Video is
http://abcnews.go.com/video/playerIndex?id=6457011 |
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Md. RSOL Contact in a Courageous Interview
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By Caryn Tamber <caryn.tamber@mddailyrecord.com>
Posted on 08.12.2008
Link to this news item: [0070] |
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NOTE - This incredibly good article is the result of a courageous interview (my term, not hers) with the Maryland RSOL affiliate group, Sandy Kennedy. We urge everyone to contact the author of the story, Caryn Tamber, at the Maryland Daly Record (URL MDdailyrecord.com) - her email is caryn.tamber@mddailyrecord.com.
She has gone into more depth than almost anyone - quoting Dr. Fred Berlin, an rsol signatory, and Paul Shannon our lead contact person, as well as Kennedy and many others. Congratulate her - and also congratulate Sandy, whose email is above, for her courage!!!!
Comments should refer to News Item No. 0070, and be sent to Caryn Tamber, Sandy Kennedy (SDK5460@yahoo.com) and to me, alexm60@fastmail.fm.
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Advocates for sex offenders take aim at registry, other rules
CARYN TAMBER
Daily Record Legal Affairs Writer
Maryland
December 7, 2008 7:37 PM
Sandy Kennedy hates that her husband’s picture is on Maryland’s sex offender registry.
Elected officials and victims’ advocates say tough sex-offender laws are necessary to protect society from dangerous criminals. But some offenders and their relatives, like Kennedy, see the restrictions as overly intrusive and unnecessary.
Her husband has served his time and is a danger to no one, Kennedy argues.
“In Salem, they had a witch-hunt, and in America, we’re still having a witch-hunt, and the witch-hunt is just different,” said Kennedy, a Parsonsburg nurse. “It’s the sex offender.”
Kennedy runs a blog called Sex Offenders and Their Wives, where she vents about the difficulties of living with sex-offender restrictions and debunks what she said are myths about offenders, like the high probability that they will re-offend and their imperviousness to treatment.
Sex offender package
SIDEBAR: Federal law ties funds to tougher state restrictions
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SIDEBAR: Michael Kennedy's conviction
She also heads the Maryland chapter of the national group Reform Sex Offender Laws. So far, there are only three other members, she said.
Out eight years
Sandy Coulbourne, now 48, met Michael Kennedy, now 53, in 2007 at a bookstore. Both were browsing the murder mysteries.
After only a couple of dates, Michael Kennedy sat his new girlfriend down and told her he had spent 20 years in federal prison for rape and murder before being paroled in 2000. He hadn’t done it, he insisted.
She cried at the thought of an innocent man imprisoned for that long. The two married a few months later, despite his parole officer spending 45 minutes trying to convince her not to go through with it.
People ask how she can love a killer and rapist, but the man she knows could never have done those things, Sandy Kennedy said. She can recite the details of his case, pointing out police, prosecution and witness errors along the way. In fact, it took three trials, with two hung juries, to convict him.
She was spurred to activism when Michael Kennedy was required to register as a sex offender earlier this year, even though he had been out of prison for eight years.
The directive to register came out of a recent federal law that Kennedy and other convicted sex offenders are fighting.
She started reading about sex offender laws on the Internet and found that lots of offenders, their family members and some advocacy groups agreed the restrictions had gone too far.
Human Rights Watch released a study last year arguing that registration laws are overbroad, that registries have led to violence and harassment against registrants, and that residency restrictions “banish[] offenders from entire urban areas.”
Like Sandy Kennedy’s blog, offender-advocacy Web sites argue that the majority of registered sex offenders are not monsters who repeatedly kidnap and rape children — or, as Baltimore criminal defense lawyer Thomas P. Bernier put it, “some lecherous guy pulling 10-year-olds into a van.”
Many don’t pose a continuing threat to children, Bernier said; some never did in the first place.
Challenging the premise
Fred Berlin, founder of the Johns Hopkins Sexual Disorders Clinic and an associate professor of psychiatry, said sex offender monitoring laws and restrictions are predicated on the premise that offenders are more likely than not to commit another offense.
Recent studies have shown that, at most, 20 percent to 30 percent re-offend, a lower rate of recidivism than other criminals, he said. (Other sources point out that different types of sex offenders re-offend at different rates, and that this statistic only covers reported offenses.)
Annapolis lawyer Thomas A. Pavlinic said few offenders need to be monitored for life, although many are anyway.
“There are these evil people,” said Pavlinic, who specializes in defending accused child molesters. “Those are violent sexual predators, people from whom the public has to be protected. There are a lot of people who have in the course of their life simply made a mistake, either with their own children or because of the age difference.”
They “get treatment and then they never do it again,” he said.
Sandy Kennedy suggested that the government register criminals with a higher risk of recidivism, like drug dealers.
She said she is not opposed to all sex offender restrictions, just the pointless ones.
“I’m not against totally what they make us do,” she said. “I know there’s a reason people need to be protected. But come on, that Halloween stuff was a joke.”
She was referring to a widely mocked Maryland effort to get certain sex offenders to post “no candy” signs on their houses, turn off their outside lights and ignore knocks on the door on Oct. 31.
The signs were provided not only to child sex offenders but to those registered as sexually violent. So Michael Kennedy received a sign, even though the crime for which he was convicted did not involve children, his wife said.
Elizabeth Bartholomew, who runs Maryland’s Sex Offender Registry, said the effort was merely a “request” on the state’s part, designed to protect the offenders “so the community knows that they’re trying to make sure everyone’s safe.”
Opposing the registries
“Safe,” though, was not what Sandy Kennedy felt when a local newspaper published her husband’s name.
“[O]ur hick town’s little newspaper, decided to use a full page to report every sex offenders name and address,” she wrote on her blog. “I’ve read about the vigilantes who prey on sex offenders. We are small town Delmarva and I could just see some red neck get his buddies loading up in his pick up and start working on the list.”
Vigilantism is one reason some activists oppose putting offenders’ identifying information, including pictures, on Internet registries.
Paul Shannon, a founder of Reform Sex Offender Laws, said registries encourage people to target sex offenders, citing the 2006 murder of two Maine offenders by someone who found their names online. (Shannon would like to see public registries abolished; information about truly dangerous criminals should be shared among law enforcement officials, who would decide whether to alert the community.)
One of the men killed in Maine had served time for having otherwise consensual sex with his girlfriend when he was 19 and she was a few days shy of 16.
So-called “Romeo and Juliet” offenders shouldn’t be required to register as child sex offenders alongside pedophiles, Shannon said.
“Virtually all adolescent sexuality is now criminalized,” said Shannon, who said he is not an offender or ex-offender, just a civil liberties advocate. “This is a serious attack on children and their right to grow up.”
ABC reporter John Stossel did a series earlier this year on offender laws gone overboard; among other people, he featured a man who had, had sex with his girlfriend when he was 19 and she was 15. Twelve years later, they are married with four children, but he must still register as a sex offender.
Russell P. Butler, executive director of the Maryland Crime Victims’ Resource Center Inc., said cases involving two consenting adolescents are usually dealt with less harshly than other sex cases. Judges often give statutory offenders probation before judgment so they do not have to register, he said.
Besides which, he said, he is primarily concerned with protecting children who don’t have the capacity to consent to sex, not the older people who have sex with them.
“If we have to balance the rights of pedophiles versus the rights of children, I’m going to balance those to protect children and not pedophiles,” Butler said.
Legislators seem to feel the same way, said defense lawyer Bernier, a shareholder at Segal, McCambridge, Singer & Mahoney Ltd.
“In general, the real problem is, any time someone in the legislature feels they haven’t done enough, they propose a law on sex offenses,” he said.
He said sex offenders have begun pushing back against the regulations but haven’t gotten much traction.
“Who wants to be the guy who wants to be known as out in [the] legislature championing sex offenders?” Bernier said.
‘Opportunity to know’
Bartholomew, of the state’s Sex Offender Registry, said critics of sex offender laws actually have much less to complain about in Maryland than they would elsewhere.
For example, some states prevent offenders from living within a certain distance of schools, daycares or churches, forcing them out of cities, into the country or even onto the streets. Critics say such residency restrictions ultimately do more harm than good by forcing offenders underground.
In Florida, several sex offenders were famously discovered to be living together in a colony under a bridge because it was the only place where they wouldn’t be living too close to a forbidden landmark.
Maryland does not have automatic residency restrictions, Bartholomew said. Judges can, however, order individual offenders as a condition of parole or probation not to live within a certain distance of a place.
For those who doubt the necessity or fairness of registries, U.S. Attorney Rod J. Rosenstein points to Richard D. Morris.
Morris was a baseball coach about to take three of his players on a trip to Florida, according to a press release Rosenstein’s office issued earlier this year. A suspicious grandfather of one of the boys searched the Maryland Sex Offender Registry and found that Morris was a convicted sex offender.
The trip was halted. The grandson told police Morris had touched him inappropriately in the past, and when police searched Morris’ home computers, they found child pornography.
“The community ought to have an opportunity to know and therefore be alert to any sex offenders who might present a risk to other people,” Rosenstein said.
Freedom to fight
As a convicted rapist and murderer, Michael Kennedy is hardly a sympathetic poster boy for changes to the sex offender monitoring laws.
Still, his wife tries.
Sandy Kennedy said she started the blog and the Maryland chapter of Reform Sex Offender Laws so she could find other women who could relate to the experience of living with a convicted sex offender.
“I can talk to my husband and I do a lot, but I thought it would be nice to talk to other wives or other girlfriends,” Sandy Kennedy said.
Shannon, the national organization’s founder, said it’s typical for women who are close to sex offenders to advocate on their behalf. The offenders themselves don’t necessarily want to call more attention to themselves, he said.
“These stories are absolutely heartbreaking,” he said. “The people who are carrying around the pain are mostly the women: the mothers and the wives.”
Kennedy has her own pain. She said her sister, who didn’t know about Michael’s past, stopped returning her calls after his picture went online.
Though Kennedy worries about her safety and that of her husband, she said she needs to speak publicly in order to bring change.
“I figure he’s on the registry; how much more visible can you get?” she said. “I felt that if we didn’t want publicity, that we won’t be able to change the way things are.
“We were trying to keep a low [profile], not being public,” she said, “until he registered and they kind of gave us the freedom to go on out and make it known, and fight some of the injustices.”
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Erase Laws Marking S.O.s For Life
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By Mary Sue Molnar <marysueintx@yahoo.com>
Posted on 07.12.2008
Link to this news item: [0069] |
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Comments should refer to News Item No. 0069 and be sent to the above email address, as well as to alexm60@fastmail.fm
NOTE (from Alex Marbury): This excellent article which quotes Mary Sue Molnar of Texas Voices, and is a well reasoned look at the Texas s.o. laws, is being used by extreme fanatics who would undermine the work of RSOL and Texas Voices. We urge EVERYONE to post comments to the story, by going to the URL, reading the story and following the prompt.
URL: http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/Sex_offenders_try_to_erase_laws_marking_them_for_life.html
SEX OFFENDERS TRYING TO ERASE LAWS THAT MARK THEM FOR LIFE
by Lisa Sandberg
San Antonio Express News
Dec. 7, 2008
AUSTIN — Martin is tired of the dead-end jobs and unrelenting stigma that comes with being a registered sex offender.
Although he has a master's degree in liberal arts and wants to be a teacher, employers have been unable to see beyond his presence on the state's sex offender registry, which he is required to be on for the rest of his life.
It's true that a decade ago, he was convicted of sexually abusing a 16-year-old girl who was half his age. But the registry doesn't divulge that his victim was his girlfriend who now is his common-law wife, with whom he has three children.
Glancing at his profile, there's little to distinguish him from the repeat pedophiles and violent rapists who are among the 54,000-plus registered sex offenders in the state's database.
“I just can't equate my offense with the guy who sat next to me in my therapy sessions who raped his 5-year-old stepson,” said Martin, 42. He asked that his last name not be used for this article for fear that his children will be stigmatized.
The military veteran, who lives with his family in a bedroom community south of Austin, is so mad about his lifetime registration requirement that he's joined forces with hundreds of other sex offenders similarly aggrieved about being on the registry.
This unlikely political force, which dubs itself Texas Voices, is vowing to fight the state's — and the nation's — sweeping registration laws.
The group believes community notification laws fail to protect the public because they don't distinguish dangerous predators from otherwise harmless men and women who foolishly had sex with underage lovers, served their sentences and don't need a lifetime of public scrutiny.
While Texas Voices hasn't yet turned anyone away, the group targets its message at those who committed non-violent offenses that didn't involve young children.
Selling the concept to the public may be more difficult; Texas law stipulates that minors, defined as anyone younger than 17, can't legally consent to sex with an adult.
But Texas Voices is finding agreement in unusual places.
Ray Allen, the former Texas House Corrections chairman who helped shepherd into law many of the past decade's toughest sex registration bills, said he and his colleagues went too far.
“We cast the net widely to make sure we got all the sex offenders. Now, 15 years on, it turns out that really only a small percentage of people convicted of sex offenses pose a true danger to the public,” he said.
Sen. John Whitmire, D-Houston, the powerful Senate Criminal Justice chairman, said: “If we're not careful, we're going to have a sex offender registry that is so large and so encompassing, it's not much good.”
Texas Voices members know their chances for success hinge on politicians risking their careers on a population with just about zero political clout.
Sen. Florence Shapiro, R-Plano, who has been a driving force behind the community notification laws, isn't ready to assume that risk — or have victims assume it. She insists that if the registry is too large, it's because there are too many people out there committing sex crimes.
“If one child is saved, then the laws will be worth what we've done,” Shapiro said.
Fighting back
Dozens of offenders, along with moms, dads and significant others, show up for the monthly Texas Voices' meetings, sharing stories and plotting strategy.
Some meet privately with lawmakers. The most committed spend days and nights scrolling through the registry seeking to recruit new members. Nearly 1,000 offenders have been contacted and about 300 have heeded the call to action, organizers say.
“We're getting letters from ladies in their 20s who say, ‘I was never a victim and I didn't know my offender was on the registry,'” said Mary Sue, the mother of a jailed sex offender who helped establish the organization earlier this year. She asked that her last name not be used for fear it would have negative consequences for her son.
Martin's common-law wife, Avea, now 27, says she's ready to tell lawmakers that her husband is a decent man whose dream of being a high school teacher is forever dashed because of a decade-old offense that, barring changes in the registry law, will follow him the rest of his life.
“Even murderers can get out of prison and lead a normal life,” she said.
And Martin's public profile raises questions about the registry's ability to keep tabs on offenders.
The registry listed an old Austin address for Martin, despite the fact that Martin registered his new address with police in October, confirmed a police captain in the town where Martin relocated several months ago.
Officials with the Texas Department of Public Safety, which maintains the sex offender database, said Friday they received the information in late October, but hadn't updated the registry. The site was updated only after the San Antonio Express-News called.
The registry also gives an inaccurate age for Martin's victim at the time of the offense, listing her as 17, rather than 16.
At a recent Texas Voices meeting, Richard Calderon tells those gathered that the road to public acceptance is to advocate for victims, not sex offenders.
“Once elected leaders hear sex offenders, you've lost them,” he said, adding, “Concern about public safety and how we can improve public safety” is much more effective.
Calderon, 38, is one of the group's founders. He served probation for having sex with a 14-year-old when he was 23 and a student teacher.
He tells his audience not to expect miracles.
About the best members should expect in next year's legislative session, Calderon said, is a bill that would distinguish pedophiles and violent offenders from those who had sex with an underage girlfriend or who urinated in public a few times.
Ashley's law
Texas' first community notification law was passed in 1995 and named for Ashley Estell, the 7-year-old girl who was snatched from a North Texas playground and murdered by a sex offender parolee.
The first notices were printed in local newspapers. An online registry followed in 1999. Since then, the number of registered offenders has more than tripled to 54,000, including nearly 7,500 who committed their crimes as juveniles, according to the Texas Department of Public Safety. Most offenders now must register for life.
But not all sex offenders pose the same dangers.
According to a 2003 U.S. Justice Department study, about 5 percent of sex offenders released from prison were re-arrested for another sex crime within three years, a recidivism rate lower than for many other types of crimes. And 3 percent of all child sex offenders were arrested for another sex crime involving a child within the same time period.
Dr. Fred Berlin, founder of the John Hopkins Sexual Disorders Clinic, said most studies showed that “as a group, sex offenders show lower recidivism rates than people who commit most other crimes. If you look at almost all the laws out there on the books, they usually have been enacted following a horrible crime, a sexual assault and murder, which represent a tiny fraction of sex offenses.”
Advocates generally have pushed for the registration laws, believing parents needed to know when a sex offender moved into their neighborhood.
Annette Burrhus-Clay, executive director of the Texas Association Against Sexual Assault, concedes the registry may include people who don't pose a public safety threat.
However, the bigger problem, she said, is the number of those who aren't on the registry — but should be — because they either weren't caught or they pleaded to a lesser, non-sex-related offense.
Linda Ingraham, a psychologist in Dallas who has treated sex offenders in her private practice, said most people would be surprised at the number of low-risk misdemeanor offenders. She said she's probably treated 200 people who were forced to register because they were caught several times having consensual sex in a park.
“It's yucky,” she said, “but as a group, they're not a danger to anyone.”
Searching for victims
From her two-story suburban home north of Austin, Jan Fewell, 50, searches for sex abuse victims in order to help their perpetrators.
“Do you know a man named Stephen Fisher?” she asked into her cell phone. “Do you still keep in touch with him? You do? Was it consensual sex or was it rape?”
She had just phoned a now 23-year-old mother of two. Combing through court records, Fewell learned the woman, at age 13, had had sex with Fisher, a man five years her senior. Fewell knew the woman had refused to help prosecutors and now, a decade later, Fewell wanted to know if she considered herself a victim, and if not, if she would be willing to help her group.
The call from a stranger to a sex abuse victim could have easily ended badly, but the woman indeed had remained close to the man who's serving eight years in prison in connection with sexually assaulting her.
Later, in an interview, the woman explained she regularly visits the man in prison, is raising the two children he fathered with her, and counting the days until his release. Yes, she would be receptive to helping the group.
As the mother of adult daughters, Fewell is an unlikely advocate for sex offenders. She became involved after one of her daughter's teenage schoolmates was arrested for sexually abusing a younger teen. Now, she works full time recruiting members for the group.
At one of the group's recent meetings, Jerry Tuckner, who sat beside his mother and his girlfriend's 8-year-old son, talked about how hard it is to get a job.
Tuckner, 36, was sentenced to probation for having sex with a 15-year-old when he was 23.
The victim's father, Patrick Peterson, 55, said he was furious when he found out a 23-year-old man was having sex with his teenage daughter. He turned Tuckner in after he refused to stay away from her.
But Peterson was disturbed to learn that Tuckner remains on the state's sex offender registry. “I felt obligated at the time because (Tuckner) was a bit older,” Peterson said by phone last week. Now he said he'd gladly sign a petition urging leniency for Tuckner.
Neither landlords nor minimum-wage employers want to deal with sex offenders, Tuckner complained.
“I've tried everything from fast food to dry cleaners to warehouse work to temp agencies,” he said. “Even the temp agencies won't hire me because they say I'm a liability.”
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Murder Because of S.O. Status?
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By Joel Pentlarge <joelpent@comcast.net>
Posted on 06.12.2008
Link to this news item: [0068] |
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Comments should refer to News Item No. 0068 and be sent both to Joel at the above email, and to alexm60@fastmail.fm, as well as to the journalist who wrote the story (his email is at the bottom of the story).
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I received a call from RSO who lives in or near Crescent City, California. He was calling because another RSO was murdered a few days ago. He thinks that the victim Terry Maddon may have been murdered because of his status as a RSO. He also thinks that the police may be covering it up, claiming that the murder was motivated by a prior altercation. Below is a news article on the murder and the arrest of a suspect, who allegedly confessed to the murder.
Man admits to stabbing victim in trailer killing
Published: November 26, 2008
By Adam Madison
Triplicate staff writer
Crescent City, CA
The killing of a Crescent City man last week may have been retaliation for an altercation the night before, authorities said Tuesday.
Mario Contreras Garcia, 21, and Guillermo Montanez, 21, have been charged in connection with the Nov. 19 killing of Terry Eugene Maddon, 39, outside his residence at the Shangri-La Trailer Court, 1130 U.S. Hwy. 101 North.
Garcia has confessed to stabbing Maddon, according to Del Norte County Superior Court documents.
The night before the murder, an altercation occurred between the victim and two people the suspects were familiar with, the documents state.
In the early morning of Nov. 20, hours after the stabbing of Maddon, Garcia was found hiding in the trailer park with "blood stains on his clothing and on his hands," the documents state.
Sheriff's Detective Ed Fleshman said that Garcia was a Sureño gang member and that an altercation that occurred Nov. 18 was "a contributing element to one of the motive theories we're looking into."
Fleshman said that a motive has not been determined.
Garcia was arrested on suspicion of murder, while Montanez was arrested on suspicion of being an accessory to the murder after it occurred.
According to the court documents, Montanez was found to be in possession of bloody clothing. He had a bruise on his face when authorities arrived at the trailer he resided in with a woman, who said the clothing was waiting to be laundered.
The documents also state that Garcia claimed he had acted in self-defense.
Garcia said he had been walking back to the trailer park with the woman and Montanez when they passed Maddon's trailer, the documents said. Garcia told authorities he got into a fight with Maddon. Montanez and the woman gave similar accounts, but neither acknowledged seeing a knife, the documents said.
Nevertheless, the woman later led authorities to a bloody knife, the documents said.
According to the document, Garcia stated that he had been struck by Maddon and had been knocked to the ground. Garcia then "blacked out" while on the ground, pulled out his knife and then opened it when he got to his feet. He stated that "he stabbed Maddon, he believes, only once," the documents said.
District Attorney Mike Riese said Tuesday he is "still awaiting DNA testing" on the knife and clothing.
Fleshman said the Sheriff's Office is still investigating other suspects.
Reach Adam Madison at amadison@triplicate.com.
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S.O. Laws - More Harm Than Good
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By Chris <rsolnc@gmail.com>
Posted on 06.12.2008
Link to this news item: [0067] |
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Comments on this, or for suggestions, contact Chris in NC at the above email, and send a copy to alexm60@fastmail.fm.
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MORE HARM THAN GOOD
by Melissa D. Grady
North Carolina News and Observer
Chapel Hill, NC
Dec. 5, 2008
This is an excellent article about the unitended consequences of the ´sex offender´ registry and other laws in North Carolina, by a clinical asst. professor at the University of North Carolina School of SOcial Work.
WE URGE YOU TO READ THIS AND CONTACT HER, thanking her for an important article, and urging her to support national reformsexoffdenderlaws.or, as well as rsolnc (the North Carolina group). Her email is mgrady@email.unc.edu, or write her at U.N.C. School of Social Work, 301 Pittshurst St., CB3551, Chapel Hill, NC 27599.
The URL is:
http://www.newsobserver.com/opinion/columns/story/1321233.html |
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22 yr old Gets Hearing: Held as Predator Since 14!
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By anonymous <alexm60@fastmail.fm>
Posted on 03.12.2008
Link to this news item: [0066] |
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Comments about this news article should refer to News Item 0066, and be sent to me Alex at the above email address.
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Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Appeals court orders hearing in sexual predator case
By Mike Johnson of the Journal Sentinel
Nov. 19, 2008
A Washington County man who was locked up as a teenager in a state
mental health institution after he was determined to be a sexual
predator will get his day in court to argue for his release.
Daniel Arends, 22, filed a petition for discharge in Washington County
Circuit Court, but a judge last year denied the petition without holding
an evidentiary hearing.
Arends appealed, and the state Court of Appeals said Wednesday that the
judge erred and ordered that a hearing be held. | |
