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

Well-meaning sex-offender laws

are doing more harm than good

February 10, 2008

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 exposé last spring by 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.

Mayors and county officials who press harsh residency restrictions are 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 more than 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 writes about urban issues. Send e-mail to nrp@citistates.com.

(This opinion comes from the Daily Press in Virginia)

This is one of the very  best articles I have read about the REAL issues involved in child sexual abuse:

SHATTERING THE SILENCE

Denial and silence allow abuse to continue 

Child sexual abuse destroys lives of so many

By PAULA BARR
and TERESA RESSEL
Daily Journal Staff Writers

Jan 13, 2008 - 05:49:20 CST

Excerpts:

Despite the publicity that pedophiles such as Michael Devlin receive, the perpetrators most often are close to us — often people we love and trust. That makes the already disturbing subject even more difficult to admit or discuss.  Denial and silence, however, allow the abuse to continue. Until the secrecy is eliminated, children will remain in danger, said Tammy Gwaltney, executive director of the Southeast Missouri Network Against Sexual Violence in Cape Girardeau.

An estimated 300,000 children in this country are sexually abused each year, according to Crimes against Children Research Center (CCRC) at the University of New Hampshire. Of those, approximately 90 percent of victims already knew their abusers when the abuse began.  A random sampling of 101 incarcerated child sex abuse cases done by the Missouri Department of Corrections indicated that only four of the abusers were strangers to their victims. Slightly more than half were acquaintances of the child before the abuse.
The other 43 percent were family members.

“We must stop the myth that the person to fear is the stranger lurking in the bushes,” said Gwaltney. “Does it happen? Yes, and that gets a lot of media attention. But that is not how it commonly occurs.”

Research shows that victims of child sex abuse often fail to report it, because they are afraid that the consequences of telling will be worse than being victimized again. They might feel that something is wrong with them and that the abuse is their fault, according to studies cited on the Pandora’s Box Web site (http://www.prevent-abuse-now.com/stats.htm).

Child sex abuse is a crime in every state. It happens in all racial, religious, age, socio-economic and ethnic groups. Child sex offenders are all ages and reflect a wide variety of lifestyles.  Some sex offenders are attracted primarily to children. Others are mainly sexually attracted to adults, but at some point they turned to a child, explained Craig McIntosh, a licensed clinical social worker who worked with sex in the Missouri Sex Offenders Program (MOSOP).  Sex offenders could be the woman who runs the day care, the youth pastor in church, the Scout leader or the coach. They might be dads, stepfathers, mothers, stepmothers, boyfriends or girlfriends, older siblings, cousins or a parent's friends.

“One of the best things we can do for victims and potential victims is to shatter the silence about the issue and bring the problem into the open to discuss and implement steps to eventually eliminate the problem,” Stop It Now! Public Education Director Peter Pollard advised in November 2006 newsletter.

READ ENTIRE ARTICLE

An interesting and thoughtful examination of the prison crisis in America.

WHY ARE SO MANY AMERICANS IN PRISON? 

Race and the tranformation Of Criminal Justice
By Glenn C. Loury, Brown University

"....the United States—with five percent of the world’s population—houses 25 percent of the world’s inmates. Our incarceration rate (714 per 100,000 residents) is almost 40 percent greater than those of our nearest competitors (the Bahamas, Belarus, and Russia).  Other industrial democracies, even those with significant crime problems of their own, are much less punitive: our incarceration rate is 6.2 times that of Canada, 7.8 times that of France, and 12.3 times that of Japan. We have a corrections sector that employs more Americans than the combined work forces of General Motors, Ford, and Wal-Mart, the three largest corporate employers in the country, and we are spending some $200 billion annually on law enforcement and corrections at all levels of government, a fourfold increase (in constant dollars) over the past quarter century. Never before has a supposedly free country denied basic liberty to so many of its citizens. In December 2006, some 2.25 million persons were being held in the nearly 5,000 prisons and jails that are scattered across America’s urban and rural landscapes. One third of inmates in state prisons are violent criminals, convicted of homicide, rape, or robbery. But the other two thirds consist mainly of property and drug offenders. Inmates are disproportionately drawn from the most disadvantaged parts of society. On average, state inmates have fewer than 11 years of schooling. They are also vastly disproportionately black and brown."

".....imprisonment rates have continued to rise while crime rates have fallen because we have become progressively more punitive: not because crime has continued to explode (it hasn’t), not because we made a smart policy choice, but because we have made a collective decision to increase the rate of punishment."

"This new system of punitive ideas is aided by a new relationship between the media, the politicians, and the public. A handful of cases—in which a predator does an awful thing to an innocent—get excessive media attention and engender public outrage. This attention typically bears no relation to the frequency of the particular type of crime, and yet laws—such as three-strikes laws that give mandatory life sentences to nonviolent drug offenders—and political careers are made on the basis of the public’s reaction to the media coverage of such crimes."

"Yet the discourse surrounding punishment policy invariably discounts the humanity of the thieves, drug sellers, prostitutes, rapists, and, yes, those whom we put to death. It gives insufficient weight to the welfare, to the humanity, of those who are knitted together with offenders in webs of social and psychic affiliation. What is more, institutional arrangements for dealing with criminal offenders in the United States have evolved to serve expressive as well as instrumental ends. We have wanted to “send a message,” and we have done so with a vengeance. In the process, we have created facts. We have answered the question, who is to blame for the domestic maladies that beset us? We have constructed a national narrative. We have created scapegoats, indulged our need to feel virtuous, and assuaged
our fears. We have met the enemy, and the enemy is them. Incarceration keeps them away from us. "

Read entire article on page 26 of THE ADVOCATE

More than magic buffer to keep kids safe

12/11/2007 The Ames Tribute - Iowa

Excerpts:

"What's wrong with a system that let's such a clearly failed solution as the 2,000-foot rule for sex offenders live on indefinitely because lawmakers believe repeal will show them to be soft on crime?," The Tribune wrote. "What is it that makes them think the public doesn't understand? How long can they claim to be tough by backing a plan that actually weakens law enforcement?"

"The momentum opposed to the 2,000-foot rule keeps growing. County attorneys and sheriff's departments are now joined by city councils in their fight to fix the law. Far from making children safer, the rule that restricts those convicted of sex crimes against children from living within 2,000 feet of a school or daycare center is actually destroying safeguards."

Read Entire Editorial

Willy says:

The public seems to think that having access online to sex offenders addresses, photos, and criminal records is a good thing.  I understand the reasons for this feeling.  There are many reasons why the sex offender registry is a bad idea in my mind but by far the best reason I can think of for returning it to the exclusive use of law enforcement is that our listing on the registry opens all of us to assault, and yes even murder, by those self appointed enforcers of justice known as vigilantes.  Yes, we have been murdered because of our presence on the registry.  There is a segment of the population that has proven that they cannot handle this information in a rational way.  We SOs deserve a chance to return to normal life and to take our place as contributing members of society.  Forget the name calling, forget the posting of warning signs about us, forget about us not being able to find a place to live or to get a job, we are being murdered for our one-time mistakes by those who have no understanding of the crime or of the proper use of the sex offender registry. So lets get rid of it, ok?  Here is just the latest example of the price that some of us have paid for trying to re-enter society:

Megan's Law listing may have led to slaying

(Los Angeles Times 12-10-2007)

Excerpts:

Prosecutors said they have investigated the possibility that the slaying of Dodele, 67, stemmed from his having been listed on the state's Megan's Law database of sex offenders. If so, his death may be the first in the state to result from such a listing, experts said.

Although Oliver did not say he killed Dodele, he said that "any father in my position, with moral, home, family values, wouldn't have done any different. At the end of the day, what are we as parents? Protectors, caregivers, nurturers."  In fact, Dodele was not a child molester. But a listing on the Megan's Law website could have left Oliver with the impression that he had abused children because of the way it was written.

"He was convicted of other bad things, but nothing involving a minor," said Richard F. Hinchcliff, chief deputy district attorney for Lake County. But "it would be easy to understand why someone might think so looking at the website." Dodele's crimes involved sexual assaults on adult women, records show. A neighbor at the Western Hills Resort & Trailer Park, a tattered collection of mobile homes and bungalows, said that two days before the killing, Oliver "told every house" in the park that he'd found Dodele listed on the website of convicted sexual offenders and was uncomfortable living near him.

But when told that Dodele's victims were women and not children, Oliver seemed unfazed. "There is no curing the people that do it," he said.

"I think [Oliver and Dodele] are both victims of the Internet," said Charlene Steen, a psychologist who examined Dodele on behalf of the defense in two 2007 trials about whether he should be recommitted to Atascadero.

Read Entire Article

Editorial: 'Jessica's Law' one year later: Empty promises

Initiative aimed at protecting children is prohibitively expensive, unenforceable

This editorial was published on December 3rd in The Sacramento Bee:

"A little more than a year ago, California voters overwhelmingly approved Proposition 83, popularly known as Jessica's Law. That initiative, aimed at monitoring and controlling sex offenders, now is collapsing under its own excess.

Virtually no local government is enforcing the law because its sweeping provisions are both unenforceable and prohibitively expensive.

The measure requires lifetime monitoring for sex offenders – not just those charged with child sexual abuse and rapists whose victims were adults, but also those convicted of consensual sex with a teenager and even misdemeanor indecent exposure. It also bars offenders from living within 2,000 feet of a school or park.

 The legislative analyst predicted the measure would cost tens of millions of dollars initially, jumping to hundreds of millions of dollars within 10 years. After just one year, the costs of Jessica's Law are beginning to mount rapidly.

According to the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, there are 5,669 parolees subject to monitoring now. Another 400 to 700 leave prison every month. Each is supposed to be fitted with a global positioning system device, or GPS. According to the department, these devices cost $2,500 apiece if purchased. The state leases them for $8.50 a day.

Once parolees are fitted with a GPS, they must be monitored. State parole officers now monitor 2,746 parolees fitted with GPS devices. (The state doesn't have enough devices for the rest.) Labor and equipment cost $33 a day or $11,616 per offender per year.

Who will pick up the burden of monitoring sex offenders when they leave state parole? The poorly drafted initiative was silent on this point.

Corrections Director James Tilton wants offenders who finish parole to turn in their state-issued global positioning devices and report to local authorities. But sheriffs and city police departments are reluctant to take on these duties. It's easy to see why nobody wants the job. Where will the manpower and money come from?

So for now at least, the law is not being enforced, and there is a real question whether it ever will or even can be. Deputy Mike Jones, who heads the Sacramento County Sheriff's Department Sex Offender Task Force, says Jessica's Law is not being enforced in the county. He doubts it ever can be in its current form.

For example, there are no sanctions in the law for sex offenders who fail to keep their GPS anklet devices charged or who remove them after being released from state jurisdiction. If sex offenders travel to other counties or cities or outside of state, which they are free to do, no one knows how they will be tracked.

The arrest of a high-risk offender in Placer County last week shows that GPS monitoring can pay off – in the right circumstances and if the right people are being monitored. But because it overreaches so badly, Jessica's Law fails to deliver what proponents promised and what the public wants – real protection from sexual predators who target children.

State corrections officials predicted the residency restrictions in the law would drive sex offenders underground and make our communities less safe. Now it also turns out that the measure would bankrupt local governments if it is enforced as written. California will be wrestling with this mess for years to come. "

Willy says:

At last the ACLU is beginning to take notice of these incredibly stupid residency laws for us sex offenders.  This is a battle that seems very well suited to them.  But in the past we have not seen the organization have the courage to face overwhelming opposition from the general public.  I hope this editorial helps change peoples minds about denying constitutional rights to sex offenders.  If legislators can do this to our group, it could be your group that is next.  Think about it.

Dedham, state sex laws studied

Excerpts:

"If a law effectively forces ex-sex offenders out of town and out of other towns and cities with similar laws, it thereby creates a population of itinerants whose lives are destabilized by homelessness, unemployment, and inaccessibility to supervision networks, says the ACLU. The law also impinges on the Sex Offender Registry law, says the ACLU, and denies convicted sex offenders rights protected by the Massachusetts and U.S. constitutions. "

"If all the cities and towns of Massachusetts adopted the Dedham law or one like it, they could effectively drive ex-sex offenders out of state. And if a federal law did the same for all the states, ex-sex offenders would have no place to go.  That would create an underground culture of sex offenders with no homes, no work, and no-where to seek or get help.  And that would be far more dangerous than any other setup.  This cannot happen. "

"Either way, the nation has to apply itself to drawing up a law that protects the innocent and gives the offenders their constitutional rights.  This is not bowing to sex offenders, it is keeping society’s eye on troublesome individuals."

 Read Entire Editorial in The Daily News Transcript

Willy says:

Well, we have tried the idea of banishing sex offenders from our communities because we hate em.  That does not seem to work.  Maybe it's time to try something different, 180 degrees different:

Vermonters help offenders find their way back home

Excerpts:

"Getting residents involved in the lives of felons improves public safety, says Wilson and other proponents. The volunteers become invested in the successful reintegration of the former inmates, and serve as role models who help steer their charges away from activities that could lead to crime. In an interview, Wilson said former prisoners fare better under the Canadian approach than when they are shunned in their communities. "

"A Canadian study compared 60 convicted sex offenders who were deemed most likely to reoffend, but who had the help of support teams, with 60 felons convicted of similar crimes who lacked such support. The study, conducted by Wilson in 2005, found that the returning felons without support teams were more than three times more likely to commit new sex crimes than those with support teams, and more than twice as likely to commit any violent crime, within four to five years of their release from prison. "

Read The Entire Article

Perils of bans on ex-sex offenders

Politicians should heed a state supreme court that has voided a ban on where sex offenders live.

Excerpts:

"Several studies show no correlation between child sex offenses and where perpetrators live. Law enforcers now argue that bans make things worse. Zones overlap, ruling out living possibilities in urban areas. Offenders are forced into rural America, far from jobs, treatment, and family, which provide stability and rehabilitation. "

"Meanwhile, many bans don't distinguish between a child rapist and an offender who had consensual sex as a teen. There are 14,500 people on Georgia's sex-offender registry; about 40 of them are labeled "predators." Yet the ban covered them all. States report that bans have forced thousands of ex-offenders into homelessness and caused them to no longer register. "

"Politicians can respond to public anxiety through greater education about warning signs of abuse by family and others whom kids trust. They can focus resources on serious offenders who may repeat. "

"Instead of passing blanket laws that include all ex-offenders, they should leave the job of determining where such people should live to the professionals who know these cases and who have made these determinations in the past – probation officers and treatment providers. "

Read Entire Story In The Christian Science Monitor

Willy Says:

If you go back a few blogs you can read about our upcoming rally on December 1st to protest the highly restrictive RSO laws that are about to take effect there.  If you want to know why Ohio was chosen as the location for this historical first SO rally please read the following story in the Ohio Free Times:

Sex In The Time Of Hysteria

Ohio's Efforts To Get Tougher On Sex Offenders Could Backfire

Excerpts:

"The climate right now is so punitive around what to do with people who commit sex offenses," says David Singleton, executive director of the Ohio Justice and Policy Center (ohiojpc.org). "Elected officials don't care that these new changes are going to impose incredible hardships on certain individuals. They don't care, frankly, that maybe these registries don't do any good any way ... because no one wants to come out and look like they're the friend of a sex offender.

"You've got plenty of people in the legislature in the state of Ohio who hold their noses and vote to approve these very punitive restrictions that we're seeing on sex offenders. They know that it's bad policy, but they do it anyway because they can't take the political risk."

Read Entire Story Here

Willy Says:       MAJOR GOOD NEWS!

The state of Georgia is well know in our circles as probably the most unfriendly place of all for RSOs.  The Supreme court of Georgia has struck down that state's highly controversial residency law.  This is great news.  We are all hoping this will set a precedent for other state's attempts to restrict where we can live.  Keep hope alive!

Georgia's Housing Restrictions Overturned By The Supreme Court

Excerpts:

 "It is apparent that there is no place in Georgia where a registered sex offender can live without being continually at risk of being rejected," read the opinion, written by presiding Justice Carol Hunstein.

"While many states and municipalities bar sex offenders from living near schools, Georgia's law, which took effect last year, prohibited them from living, working or loitering within 1,000 feet of just about anywhere children gather -- schools, churches, parks, gyms, swimming pools or one of the state's 150,000 school bus stops."

Read Entire Story on CNN

Willy Says: 

The US has the largest prison population in the world.  One in every 25 people in this country is in jail or prison.  We Americans love to send people to jail and keep them there as long as possible.  We like the idea of prisons, but we hate the idea of having to pay for them.  Something has to give.  Study after study shows that shorter prison sentences and sooner release into the community saves costs almost by one half.  For the most serious offences prison, in my view, is still the only choice, but for the less serious crimes like drug and sexual crimes where the criminal possesses less of a risk to the community why do we continue to push our prisons to the breaking point?  Do we really want to solve the problem and expense of prison time or do we just want the emotional satisfaction of punishing the criminal?  What do you think?

Before answering, read this article By Randall Mikkelsen Of Reuter's News Service:

Prison system a costly and harmful failure

Excerpts:

"The number of Americans in prison has risen eight-fold since 1970, with little impact on crime but at great cost to taxpayers and society, researchers said in a report calling for a major justice-system overhaul."

"It recommends shorter sentences and parole terms, alternative punishments, more help for released inmates and decriminalizing recreational drugs as steps that would cut the prison population in half, save $20 billion a year and ease social inequality without endangering the public."

" The report was produced by the JFA Institute, a Washington criminal-justice research group, and its authors included eight criminologists from major U.S. public universities. It was funded by the Rosenbaum Foundation and financier George Soros's Open Society Institute."

"Although the U.S. crime rate declined in the 1990s and much of this decade, it is still about the same as in 1973, it said. But the prison population has soared because sentences have gotten longer and people who violate parole or probation are more likely to be imprisoned."

"There is no evidence that keeping people in prison longer makes us any safer," JFA President James Austin, a co-author of the report, said in a release.

Read the full story here

Willy Says:  If you have heard about the group Perverted Justice you have probably seen the NBC show To Catch A Predator.  This is the group that reportedly gets about $100,000 from NBC to carry out so called sting operations to bring unsuspecting victims to a meeting with someone the person believes is an underage teen for sex.  As you watch this show on NBC you should keep in mind that only about 1.7% of all the adults arrested in these video taped stings is a registered sex offender.  That's right they are almost all first time offenders!

For a look inside the workings and tactics of this organization called Perverted Justice, check out this article by JONATHAN SILVERSTEIN of ABC News:

Controversial Web Site Claims to 'Out' Would-Be Child Molesters

Protecting Kids or Perverting Justice?

Excerpts:

"A controversial Web site is raising questions about where the line between justice and vigilantism is drawn. "

"I think that, at the very least it's a gross invasion of privacy and I really don't believe that it does any good," said Julie Posey, an internationally recognized cybercrime fighter.  Posey, whose life and work were made famous when she became the subject of a TV movie for the Lifetime channel, believes the site's tactics only make online predators savvier.  "I personally believe it's a bunch of vigilantes," said Posey.

"Mark Rasch, a former U.S. attorney who has prosecuted numerous cybercrime cases, questions how useful Perverted-Justice's chat logs would be in court. "What do you do if someone who they claim to have had the conversation with says 'I didn't type that'?" Rasch asked. "How do you prove it?"

"While the group's critics do not question the volunteers' desire to protect children, they express concern that they get carried away by the thrill of the hunt. Woloson, who was an active member of Perverted-Justice for several months, agrees. He says the feeling of power he had when harassing the group's targets was intoxicating, and he thinks many of the other members were motivated by the same thrills. Woloson does question the volunteers' basic motivation. He believes the site's members are not motivated by a desire to protect kids, but instead by the "kick" they get from going after the targets. He fears that the "kick" makes them reckless and clouds their judgment. During his time as a Perverted-Justice volunteer, Woloson says he helped seek out information on targeted individuals and then used that information to harass them. "

"At least one of the group's targets -- a man caught in a media bust in the Kansas City area -- is planning to file a lawsuit against Perverted-Justice and the station that participated in the bust, KCTV. The man's lawyer, Miriam Rittmaster, says her client believed the chat was a joke set up by his fraternity brothers.  "He didn't do anything wrong," she said. "I've spoken with several police officers and prosecutors and they all said absolutely not, he hasn't broken any laws."

"KCTV's news director, Regent Ducas, says he is unaware of any lawsuits, and that although to his knowledge no arrests were made as a result of the story, the station stands by its reporting.  Rittmaster says she has been in contact with lawyers for other Perverted-Justice targets who are considering filing lawsuits. "

Read The Entire story here

Willy Says:  It is easy to judge sex offenders as long as you do not know one.  Then things are different all of a sudden.

Letter To The Editor Published in the South Florida Sun-Sentinel

Excerpts:

"Most studies show that more than 90 percent of sex offenses against children are committed by friends or family members. More than 90 percent of new sex offenses are committed by people who are not registered sex offenders. Studies have found no correlation between sex offenses and the proximity of the offender's residence to a place where children congregate."

"But again, who cares right? They're sex offenders!"

"At first glance, most of us would agree, until someone we know or care about is convicted of an offense that would qualify that person to be registered as a sex offender. So what offenses would qualify someone to be a registered sex offender? Rape and child molestation, right? Obviously, but a significant portion of people on the registry include teens who engage in consensual sex, parents who allowed their teens to engage in consensual sex, adults who engaged in consensual sex with a minor who may have misrepresented their age, and even people arrested for public urination."

"Why are we wasting our tax dollars and law enforcement resources supervising people who pose little or no threat to our children, or to anyone for that matter?"

".....if we are willing to sit back and watch while we allow our government to deny registered sex offenders their civil and human rights guaranteed by our constitution, who is going to be the next group of people?"

Elizabeth Girardi -- Fort Lauderdale, Fl.

Read Her Entire Letter Here

Guest Editorial From A Fellow Registered Sex Offender

With respect to the residency restriction issues that are affecting many sex offenders and their families as of late, undoubtedly with more to come, let me ask these questions of those who have structured these laws and those who promote them .

Under the rally cry of these people " To protect just one child, it is worth it" , (or something to that effect).  What gives you the right to disregard the safety of the children of the sex offender?  You spew from one side of your mouth words such as," that by distancing sex offenders from the general populous we are protecting the children"., but what of the families, children included, of the sex offenders?

From the other side of your mouth you will reason , and say, what? That they don't have to move with him?  Do the children have a choice? Is it not preferable , and necessary for these families, to remain viable, to stay together?  You seem to have no compunction about possibly placing these children in the way of an exponential multiple of more potential danger. Just by their forced relocation to live among a higher concentration of sex offenders within a localized proximity than they would have normally been exposed to prior to these restrictions their danger is increased.

What do you tell these children?

That they are worthless, and undeserving of equal protection under the law, just because they are the offspring of a sex offender? But , your answer would be , what? If you do the crime, you do the time? Tough luck?  How can you profess one thing, and allow yourself to create a worse situation for these children? By your own reasoning for these restrictions, more distance between sex offenders and children, Not the other way around, much less, more sex offenders in closer proximity.  How hyper-critical of you all , for turning a blind eye. 

This just goes to show its not about the children, its about the votes!

Otherwise, I will say, you all believe you are God like, and have the right to pick and choose who's rights you will protect, and who's you will ignore!  Does it make you feel any better that the appearance is that the families of sex offenders are cheap trash, inconsequential chattel , in your fight to protect the children?  What if it were your family? The first thing you would be screaming is that your constitutional rights are being violated!

What of ours? Do they not deserve the same protections that you are affording others with these laws? You are representatives of ALL the people!  Sex offenders and their families included.  Stop the madness and the double speak. Get Smart about how you deal with this, and protect all of us and our rights!  Allow us the same rights you allow other offenders. 

Give us our right to reasonable classifications to distinguish the repeat offenders, from those who have reformed and abided by the laws for years, and jumped through your hoops.  Stop pushing the carrot further out , as has been done time and time again! A deal is a deal! If you said registration was for 10 years, what gives you the right to change that at the 11th hour?

You are oppressing a group of the people of this land under the guise of "regulatory" laws.

Fix the registry to reflect its original intent and allow those who are of no danger to get on with their lives, and to continue to try and better themselves.  Stop hurting our children with these feel good laws, as they suffer

tremendously from the association of being the child of a registered sex offender.

You would not want these things visited on your children, nor do I want them on mine.

Willy Says:

Are California's children made safer by this popular new law?  As they say on Fox Noise, "you decide"

Calif. offenders say they are homeless

By DON THOMPSON, Associated Press Writer

Excerpts:

Some who have had trouble finding a place to live are avoiding re-arrest by reporting — falsely, in some cases — that they are homeless.

Experts say it is hard to monitor sex offenders when they lie about their address or are living day-to-day in cheap hotels, homeless shelters or on the street. It also means they may not be getting the treatment they need.

"We could potentially be making the world more dangerous rather than less dangerous," said therapist Gerry Blasingame, past chairman of the California Coalition on Sexual Offending.

Similar laws in Iowa and Florida have driven offenders underground or onto the streets.

"They drop off the registry because they don't want to admit living in a prohibited zone," said Corwin Ritchie, executive director of the association of Iowa prosecutors.

Read Entire Story

We are starting to see an encouraging trend these days of courts stepping up to the plate to decide the constitutionality of sex offender residence laws.  In the rush to pass "feel-good" laws that only give the illusion of safety, I believe many legislators are passing these laws knowing that they will be challenged in court.  When they are challenged, and are found to be unconstitutional, these vote hungry legislators can always go back to the voters and say: "Look I am on your side in this battle, it's the 'activist judges' who are your enemies."  We need a few brave law makers to begin to stand up and speak for what is right, fair and effective.  They need to begin saying: "These laws, though they might be popular, are not doing the job of keeping our children safer and are harming our society instead of helping it"

Until that day comes we will have to look to the courts to turn the tide.  A sad and tragic fact I am afraid. 

-Willy

For a ray of hope for the future please read this story by reporter Paul A. Long of the Kentucky Post:

Sex Offender Law Facing Court Challenge

Constitutionality under review  

Excerpts:

"The state Supreme Court has agreed to decide the constitutionality of a state law mandating that sex offenders cannot live within 1,000 yards of a school or playground after a Kenton County judge declared it unconstitutional."

"A key issue in the high court's review of the case will be whether the residency restriction law is punitive or merely part of the regulation of sex offenders. The difference is important because the former makes it an unconstitutional ex post facto law, while the latter is allowed."

"Sheehan's order said, though, that much of that protection is illusory. The laws are popular with the public because their main impact is against sex offenders, "the political pariahs of our day," he said."

"A problem with residency requirements is that it merely limits where a sex offender can live, Sheehan said, not what he can do around children."

"Residency restrictions do no restrict the sex offender from sitting on a bench in or near the very playground which serves to restrict his residency," Sheehan said.

"That same offender can operate his car and 'cruise' the area around the very daycare which serves to restrict his residency. He can return to the family home from which he was forced to move, on a daily basis if he so chooses, provided he does not sleep there, and peer out the window in deviant lust at the toddlers frolicking on the playground."

Read the entire article

"No One Likes Child Rapists"

(Including Me - Willy)

"Parents should have a healthy concern for all things concerning their children, but they should fear the right bogeyman, who nearly always is someone they know. Almost never is it the mysterious predatory pervert cruising the neighborhood in a black pickup. That's one reason the Ashley Estell and Amber Hagerman cases were such major news stories – the exceptions, not the rule. "

  Check out the full editorial from the Dallas Morning News

 "BOO!  Vote For Me"

"The scariest sights I’ve seen so far this trick-or-treat season are the stern faces and contorted postures of politicians, masquerading as super-heroes in the fight to protect our children against a horde of halloween sex offenders."

Read Entire Opinion here

Lesson #1  -- How to recognize a sex offender, I mean, Lawmaker     >>>>>>>>>>>

Willy Says:

Anyone who cares about the lives of kids growing up today should read this blog from FOXFIRE on The Daily Kos.  Is this the wave of the future?

Criminalizing Sex In Georgia

"Georgia's Sex Offender law is written in such a way that it 'inadvertently' roped in many teenagers whose crime was to, well, be teenagers. Each year it has been tightened, requiring the registration of all those convicted of a sexual crime, even when that 'crime' was consensual sex between teenagers attending the same school."

"In fact, this strategy is already so discredited by abolition and the drug war that there should be little need to rehash it. Criminalizing behavior is not sufficient to prevent it. It merely overburdens the criminal justice system, marginalizes people who otherwise might be productive citizens, and does more to encourage crime than prevent it."

Read The Entire Opinion Here

Willy says:

Passing more and more extreme sex offender laws are hurting, not helping the effort to stop the abuse in the place where almost all of the abuse takes place:  The home of the victim.  And the abuser is almost always a family member or close trusted friend of the family. Here is a news story published in The Dallas Morning News Oct 21st by DIANE JENNINGS and DARLEAN SPANGENBERGER.  Here are some excerpts:

"Deena Harbaugh worries that instead of keeping more sex offenders off the streets, the new laws may discourage victims from speaking up.  When she was being abused, she didn't know her father's actions were criminal. But even had she known, she said, she probably wouldn't have prosecuted because she wouldn't want the responsibility for sending Daddy to prison or death row.   

Deena Harbaugh, a sexual abuse survivor and counselor, worries that instead of keeping offenders off the street, new laws will keep victims from speaking up.

"I just wanted the abuse to stop," she said. "I didn't want my dad to be killed."  She also didn't want to destroy her family. "

"Dr. Hodges said families find it difficult to report a relative or friend because it's hard to believe a loved one would do such a thing. Wives, in particular, may find it difficult to acknowledge that their husband is capable of molestation because they believe it reflects poorly on them. And reporting the offense may destroy the family. They may also be pressured into not reporting friends accused of abuse.  "It's not hard to get the guy hiding in the bushes," she said. "But it's hard to get people to look into their children's bedrooms. We ask children every night in this country to live with their rapist."

The the entire story here.

Question From Willy directed to all those who say the Government is not doing enough to track registered sex offenders:

"How much are you willing to pay in new taxes to 'keep your children safe' "?

Jessica's Law Vague: No One Monitoring GPS of Sex Offenders

Excerpts:

"Some cities and counties are upset sex offender monitoring has fallen in their laps. They hardly have the money to take on this new task, which can cost $8 a day just to rent the GPS ankle bracelet."

"The Corrections Department asked the Sex Offender Management Board to clarify within 60 days who's responsible. In the meantime, local governments will have to make a choice -- come up with the money, or let sex offenders go without GPS monitoring."

Read this article by Nannette Miranda of ABC News 7 about the cost of GPS monitoring in California