If you read nothing else on my blog, be sure to read this.....

Those sexual predator laws do more harm than good

By NEAL PEIRCE

EVERYONE wants children protected against sexual predators. Few crimes are more heinous than rape or murder of a child. Even lesser molestation can spell years of depression, anxiety and nightmares for victims. Some even suffer self-mutilation and suicidal tendencies.

But the national surge of states adopting Megan's Law and Jessica's Law — online registries of convicted sex offenders and stiff restrictions on where they can live — is going way overboard and causing more harm than good.

The statutes are named after young girls who were abducted, raped and murdered by convicted child molesters. Now there's federal law virtually forcing states to set up publicly accessible Internet registries showing sex offenders' residential addresses.

But the laws are turning out to be crude instruments with disturbing impacts.

First, they don't differentiate between truly serious sex offenders and others convicted of lesser charges such as urinating in public, or teenagers having consensual sex, or kids who expose themselves as a prank.

For one and all, there's a "scarlet letter," notes Human Rights Watch, a nonprofit monitoring group. The Internet registry sites can be accessed by anyone and use often-misleading criminal justice language — for example, "indecent liberties with a child" — to depict simple teenage sex. Former offenders have a tougher time getting a job or adjusting to normal life. Vigilante violence has led to instances of stabbings, houses burned, even targeted killings by strangers who found names and addresses through online registries. Other registrants have been driven to suicide.

Now things are turning even worse with a spate of laws restricting where former sex offenders can live. Twenty-two states, plus hundreds of municipalities, are setting minimum distances — from 500 feet up to 2,500 feet — that a former offender's residence must be from such places as schools, day care centers, parks, movie theaters, stores, swimming pools, even public transit.

The result, all too often, is to make most — or in some cases virtually all — of a community off-bounds for a former offender to live. An expose last spring by reporter Isaiah Thompson of the Miami New Times revealed a whole colony of former offenders camping out under the noisy Julia Tuttle Causeway because a stiff Miami-Dade County residency requirement left them practically no other place to live.

The offenders are still there, cooking with small portable stoves, using battery-powered televisions and radios, stowing their belongings in plastic bags — and living in fear of vigilante attacks.

One resident was "Big Man" — a 6-foot, 250-pounder forced to leave his home because 23 years ago, when he was 19, he was charged with sexual assault on a minor. Big Man's wife regularly showed up with food and supplies, telling Thompson: "Look at this place! There's no running water to take a shower; there's no toilets. My husband can't work now; nobody's going to hire him."

Big Man departed before Christmas, his case resolved by his parole officers. But with newcomers, the under-the-bridge census is still more than 30. Dade County officials continue to profess no concern.

Which in fact is not unusual. Pressing a residency requirement in Georgia, state House Majority Leader Jerry Keen said: "My intent personally is to make it so onerous on those that are convicted of these offenses that they will want to move to another state."

Mayors and county officials who press harsh residency restrictions are doing the same — effectively banishing individuals who've already been punished by the law. Talk about violating constitutional rights.

Reports from Iowa, which enacted stiff residency restrictions for sex offenders in 2000, show the statute may be promoting conditions that easily lead to crime. Ex-offenders are listing their residence at such spots as "the Raccoon River" or "behind the Target on Euclid." Close to half have simply disappeared, so police no longer know where they are.

Human Rights Watch doesn't underestimate the horror of many sex crimes, or the need for close controls on dangerous offenders. But neither states nor localities, it argues, should pass blanket restrictions on all released individuals. Instead, as a model Minnesota law mandates, restrictions should be based on a careful evaluation of the offender's personal and family situation by a panel of law enforcement, victim advocacy and specialized treatment providers.

The Megan and Jessica cases are deeply tragic, but they miss a glaring fact: that over 90 percent of sex crimes against children aren't committed by outsiders at all, but rather by family members or family acquaintances. If there's prevention work to be done, that's where it should be focused. Not by Internet scarlet letters, and certainly not by residency laws that hound ex-offenders out of their communities, separate them from their families, and quite possibly drive them into isolation and new criminal behavior.

Peirce is a syndicated columnist who specializes in city and state affairs. (nrp@citistates.com)   Link to article published in HOUSTON CHRONICLE

Thankfully Things do seem to be changing, although slowly.  Articles like this were never even seen a year ago.  Seems more and more folks are willing stand up for the facts.  This is a great example.  -- Willy

Sex offenders!!!
Do our laws really protect kids, or are they misdirected reactions based on myths, misperceptions and stereotypes?

By Kelly Davis

Excerpts:

In nine out of 10 sexual assaults, the victim knows the perpetrator. In roughly 35 to 40 percent of those cases, it’s a relative. And if it’s not a relative, it’s mom’s new boyfriend (one of the more common victim-offender relationships) or, as in my case, a babysitter.

“The mythology of the dirty old man in the trench coat with the candy lurking around kids at a school yard is misplaced,” says San Diego County Public Defender Marian Gaston. “The vast majority of sex offenders, they don’t look like that…. It’s not this easily identifiable group of outsiders who can then be cast away. It’s your sister’s new boyfriend; it’s your stepdad.”

The term “sex offender” conjures the kind of monolithic image Gaston refers to—one that’s reinforced by the news media and tough-on-crime politicians, despite evidence to the contrary. Misperception and fear, rather than good empirical research, seem to be what drives sex-offender laws.

A case in point is a new law that takes effect this week in San Diego.

The “Child Protection” ordinance, passed unanimously by the City Council in March, is a spin-off of California’s Jessica’s Law, approved by voters in 2006. Among other things, Jessica’s Law created mandatory sentences for sex offenders, requires that certain sex offenders be outfitted with Global Positioning System (GPS) devices for life and expanded the list of what constitutes a sexual offense. Most controversial are the 2,000-foot-radius “predator-free zones” the law established around schools and parks in which sex offenders who are paroled after Nov. 7, 2006, are forbidden to live (for a look at how this maps out in San Diego County, click here).

At the meeting where the City Council voted to implement the law, only one person spoke in opposition. Laura Arnold, a public defender, presented each council member with a 10-page memo that summarized what a number of studies have found: Restricting where a sex offender lives has no influence on whether or not he’ll commit another crime. In fact, Arnold told the City Council, research has found that such restrictions can be counterproductive, pushing sex offenders into low-income communities and rural areas or, worse, onto the street.

In 2006, the California Coalition Against Sexual Assault, an umbrella group for 84 rape crisis centers and sexual-assault prevention programs, issued a strongly worded position statement opposing Jessica’s Law: “Residency restrictions… don’t make communities safer. Residency restrictions don’t reduce recidivism, don’t improve supervision of offenders and ultimately do not protect children from sex offenders.”

And, according to a study by the Minnesota Department of Corrections that looked specifically at repeat offenders, it really does come down to relationships and not geography: “What matters with respect to sexual recidivism is not residential proximity, but rather social or relationship proximity.”

In Iowa, where a similar 2,000-foot rule has been in place since 2002, the Iowa County Prosecutors Association and more than three-dozen local governments have demanded that the state’s legislature repeal the residence restriction because of the number of offenders who’ve gone underground. And in Miami-Dade County, a reporter for the weekly Miami New Times discovered roughly 30 men living under a freeway overpass, the only place they could legally reside from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. or risk violating probation or parole.

Read Entire Article in The San Diego CityBeat

I have not posted for a long time. One person on my friends list had the humanity to ask how I was doing.  Thanks for the caring my friend!  I had always intended to make this a very personal blog with occasional news articles.  I wish I could say that I have been too busy but that is not the case.  I have been in a deep depression about my situation.  I have not felt like doing much of anything except sleeping.  I do love to sleep!  And anything that I have to do, I put it off again and again.  I just don't have much interest in anything. It seems like an easier thing to just post articles.  I have gotten lazy.

I don't mean to complain, I know there are many folks on the sex offender registry who are much worse off then me.  Many have dependents, many, like me have no job, no place to live (due to residency restrictions) no money and no hope for the future.  I am one of the lucky ones.  My family has some resources and I have not been allowed to starve, go without health care, or a place to live.  But I know that everyone is different and each has his own private hell, and each one's burden can seem impossibly difficult because it IS personal and unique.

That being said, I am a person who likes to keep busy and be useful.  So having no outlet for my talents and abilities is especially hard for me.  Since my arrest I have been on medication for my depression and it just no longer seems to be working.  I am going to try a different psychiatrist to see if a different medication and some therapy might help me.  But ya know, what I really need is a job or something to show me I have some sort of useful purpose. 

It has been several years since I was arrested and spent time in prison.  Since that time I have only been successful in obtaining a job twice.  Both jobs only lasted long enough for my employer to find me on the sex offender registry.  And no, both jobs had nothing to do with children. 

My most recent loss of employment was just a few weeks ago, and it hit me pretty hard.  I don't want to go into too many details because so far, I have been successful in keeping my identity secret.  Wish I could tell you more, but I hope you understand.  Wish I did not have to live like this.  I was doing very well in my job and everyone liked me.  That's why it was so hard to give it up.

I would like to forget that part of my life and move on, but I am constantly reminded of the lack of understanding and outright hate most folks have for me.  This is the biggest challenge of my life and sometimes I feel I am doing well.  And sometimes, like now, I just feel like taking a long sleep.  But suicide is not an option, and never will be, so don't worry about me. 

For those of you who have joined me on the sex offence registry I have some links that here that you should investigate.  Being closed off from the community and sometimes even by our families it makes it tough to feel supported.  I have stumbled onto a great organization that works hard to try and change the laws and to change peoples minds about the issue of sex offenders.  There you can find folks just like you who suffer the same way you do with these unconstitutional and inhuman laws.  They are folks who understand what it feels like to be treated as second class citizens, because they too are sex offenders and their families and friends.  It is a great place to vent and find support.  I am so glad I found it.  SOSEN: Sex Offender Support & Education Network

Here are the links:

http://sosen.us

http://forum.sosen.us

If this issue somehow has not touched you but you want to find a place that is a resource for the facts of this issue this is also a great place to go to.  I have discovered that there are fair minded people out there who really want to know the truth and look beyond their fears and prejudices.  For those folks, this site is dedicated to you along with all my fellow registered sex offenders.  I love you all!

-Willy