Saturday, August 17, 2013
Tuesday, August 13, 2013
Sunday, August 11, 2013
WETTERLING ACT.........a call to make a real change?????
Patty Wetterling questions sex offender laws
The outspoken activist has a change of heart over the wide-reaching scope of laws she helped put into action
On an overcast spring day in 1996, a handful of people filed out of the Oval Office and assembled on the driveway of the White House before a scrum of reporters. They cast satisfied glances at the television cameras as birds chirped and a helicopter whirred nearby. Nothing except for the white memorial ribbons pinned to their lapels indicated the nature of their fateful connection to each other as the parents of children kidnapped by strangers and, in all but one case, viciously assaulted and murdered.
Standing together, they represented a grim who's who of notorious child abductions of the late 20th century. On one end was John Walsh, whose six-year-old son, Adam, was abducted from a department store inHollywood, Florida, in 1981 and later discovered decapitated. Then there was Marc Klaas, the father of Polly Klaas, a 12-year-old girl who was kidnapped at knifepoint from her bedroom in Petaluma, California, in 1993 and whose body was found two months later in a shallow grave. In the middle were Rich andMaureen Kanka, whose seven-year-old daughter, Megan, was kidnapped, raped, and murdered in 1994 by a convicted sex offender living across the street from their home in New Jersey. At the front of the group was Patty Wetterling, the mother of Jacob Wetterling, an 11-year-old who was abducted at gunpoint near his home in St. Joseph, Minnesota, in 1989 and never found.
There was a stoic, familial air between the parents, a soldier-like bond. Minutes earlier inside the Oval Office, they had watchedPresident Bill Clinton sign legislation known as Megan's Law, named for Megan Kanka, that required states to release information about registered sex offenders to the public. The law was an amendment to the Jacob Wetterling Crimes Against Children and Sexually Violent Offender Registration Act, which was part of a landmark violent crime bill in 1994 that required law enforcement in every state to maintain registries of convicted sex offenders and track where they lived after being released from prison. The original law gave states the option of whether to notify the community of a sex offender's presence. Two years later, Megan's Law said that they must.
But before long the victorious mood at the press conference abruptly shifted. After the group thanked legislators who'd helped shepherd the law through, some reporters mentioned challenges to its constitutionality. The parents grew defensive. John Walsh, whose son's murder had led him to become a renowned campaigner for children's safety and eventually the host of TV's America's Most Wanted, pushed himself before the microphones and raised his voice.
"This is letting parents know that the fox is in the henhouse," Walsh said, jabbing a finger in the air. "We're sick of seeing these people get all the rights and our children and the parents not getting any rights. Believe me, I've hunted these people for nine years now. They're predators, they prey upon children — that's their business. We deserve to know these people are in our neighborhoods!"
Patty Wetterling, a petite woman with a neat chestnut bob, looked dismayed in her taupe skirt suit. She interjected, explaining gently that Megan's Law was the equivalent of warning children about a dog in their neighborhood that's known to bite, and adding that it was not about revenge but ultimately just one piece in a large puzzle whose goal was a safe society.
"I do think it will have a positive effect," she said.
Several years later, Wetterling flew back to Washington for another press conference, this one announcing the most comprehensive proposed legislation ever to manage sex offenders. Again, she stood among a cohort of other parents who had suffered unspeakable tragedies.
The proposed law would set national standards for sex offender registration, establish civil commitment procedures for people deemed sexually violent predators, require the registration of kids as young as 14 who had committed sex offenses, and be applied even to people whose crimes predated the law and who had successfully completed their sentences.
By then, sex offender restrictions had mushroomed in a way that was starting to trouble Wetterling. In the years since Jacob's abduction, she had devoted her life to children's safety. But the more she learned about the nature of child sexual abuse, the more she felt like these laws simply didn't get to the root of the problem, and actually made it worse in ways that were hard for most people to grasp.
At the Washington press conference that day, members of the media sidled over to Wetterling to ask her for a comment about the proposed new law. In her earnest manner, she confessed to some misgivings.
"I do have a little bit of concern about it being retroactive," she admitted, "and that it's now going to register juveniles."
Later, on a glorious midsummer day in 2006, President George W. Bush was joined in the White House Rose Garden by lawmakers and victims' families, including John Walsh and his wife, Reve. The president delivered a triumphant speech. Then he sat down and signed the legislation known as the Adam Walsh Child Safety and Protection Act.
There are nearly 750,000 registered sex offenders in America today, up 23 percent from six years ago. Hundreds of millions of dollars are spent each year on registering, publicizing, tracking, and confining them. Since the Wetterling Act was passed in 1994, laws governing sex offenders have grown successively stricter and more far reaching. In many places, residency restrictions dictate that sex offenders cannot live within a certain distance from schools, playgrounds, daycare centers, parks, bus stops, and other places where children gather. Online registries broadcast the names and pictures of offenders, often without specifying the nature of their offenses. Juveniles treated as adults and labeled as sex offenders for acts involving other kids bear that stigma well into adulthood.
Virtually all the major laws regarding sex offenders have been passed in the wake of grisly, high profile crimes against kids and, like Megan's Law, they bear victims' names as somber memorials. The laws tend to fuel the impression that sex offenders are a uniform class of creepy strangers lurking in the shadows who are bound to attack children over and over again.
That's what Wetterling used to believe about sex offenders, too. Yet over the course of two decades immersed in the issue, she found her assumptions slowly chipped away. Contrary to the widely held fear of predatory strangers, she learned that abductions like Jacob's are extremely rare, and that 90 percent of sexual offenses against children are committed by family members or acquaintances. While sex offenders are stereotyped as incurable serial abusers, a 2002 Bureau of Justice study found that they in fact have a distinctly low recidivism rate of just 5.3 percent for other sex crimes within three years of being released from prison.
Though the term "sex offender" itself seems to reflexively imply child rapist, a broadening number of so-called victimless crimes are forcing people onto the rolls. According toHuman Rights Watch, at least 28 states require registration for consensual sex between teenagers, 13 for public urination, 32 for exposing genitals in public, and five for soliciting adult prostitutes. Restricting where sex offenders can live, in many cases forcing them into homelessness and disconnecting them from family and social support, hasn't had any quantifiable reduction on the rate of sexual abuse. And many sex offenders are really children themselves: Juveniles make up more than a third of those convicted of sex offenses against children, and their high amenability to treatment suggests that their youthful mistakes don't predict a lifetime of abuse to come.
These days, Wetterling is a 63-year-old grandmother with a warm smile, soft blue eyes, and a folksy manner. She's well known for her two campaigns for Minnesota's Sixth Congressional District, which she lost to Mark Kennedy in 2004 and Michele Bachmann two years later, as well as her personal story, which is deeply imprinted in the state's collective memory. Her eyes still gloss over with tears when she talks about Jacob.
She's less well known for having quietly emerged as perhaps the most unlikely voice questioning sex offender laws. Although she remains a prominent advocate for child safety — she is the board chair of the influential National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and the director of the Minnesota Health Department's sexual violence prevention program — she has expressed gnawing doubts over the past several years about how we deal with sex offenders, a striking stance for someone who has been personally affected in such a devastating way.
"We have an intolerance for sexual violence, which I agree with," she said recently over coffee downtown. "People want a singular solution, and the solution that's been sold over the years is lock 'em up and throw away the key. But we've cast such a broad net that we're catching a lot of juveniles who did something stupid or different types of offenders who just screwed up. Should they never be given a chance to turn their lives around?"
She paused.
"They are very different than the man who took Jacob."
Long before Wetterling became a public figure, she was a stay-at-home mother in the small town of St. Joseph. On the evening of October 22, 1989, she and her husband, Jerry, went to a party celebrating a local arts festival that she chaired. Their 11-year-old son Jacob stayed at home with his best friend, Aaron Larson, along with their other son Trevor, 10, and their eight-year-old daughter, Carmen. Trevor called over to the arts festival party and asked permission for the three boys to go to a local convenience store, where they could rent a movie and buy soda. They got a neighbor girl to come babysit Carmen and took off on bikes.
The boys were riding home in the dark when a masked man emerged from a gravel driveway along a country road. Pointing a gun, he told the boys to lie down in a ditch, demanded to know their ages, then ordered first Aaron and then Trevor to run into the nearby woods or risk being shot. By the time the two boys caught up to each other and dared to peek back, Jacob and the gunman were gone.
For the Wetterling family, the weeks and months that followed were an agonizing blur. Dozens of county, state, and federal investigators flocked to St. Joseph in the effort to find Jacob. Throngs of firefighters and student volunteers combed the surrounding woods and cornfields.
It soon hit the national news: Peter Jennings on ABC reported, "the effect on Jacob's family has been obvious, but his kidnapping has also torn the tightly knit social fabric of the entire town." Pictures of Jacob, a handsome, tawny-haired boy, were plastered at truck stops, tollbooths, and convenience stores across the Midwest. Billboards and bumper stickers pleaded for information. Thousands of fruitless tips poured in.
Investigators regretfully shared that the most common motive in this kind of abductions was sexual, and they felt all but certain that this was the case with Jacob.
Patty was shocked. "Who would do that?" she thought. "Who would ever think of sexually violating a child?"
The sheriff's office worked with a correctional facility in nearby St. Cloud to catalog recently released sex offenders and painstakingly created a database detailing where they lived to track them down for questioning.
By January 1990, the number of leads had dwindled and the FBI withdrew most of the agents it had assigned to investigate Jacob's abduction. Even so, his family remained hopeful. They poured their energy into keeping him in the public's awareness. It wasn't until about a year after his disappearance that Patty began to think beyond her immediate desperation to find her son and mustered some energy to try to help others.
She'd been ruminating about the database of local sex offenders the police had compiled, and how helpful they said such a resource would have been immediately after the abduction to enable them to quickly locate and rule out suspects. Patty felt certain that the database was a valuable law enforcement tool that shouldn't be filed away in some dusty cabinet. In fact, she thought there should be something similar for police to access wherever a child is abducted.
Around that time, Gov. Rudy Perpich asked Patty to serve on a task force examining the problem of child abduction and exploitation in Minnesota. Cordelia Anderson, an expert on child sexual abuse prevention, was appointed to the same task force and remembers feeling amazed at how Wetterling was able to separate her emotion from public policy decisions.
"Despite the extreme characteristics of Jacob's case, which play into the scariest stereotype and are very, very rare, she somehow quickly went to trying to educate herself," Anderson says.
Half a dozen states already had sex offender registries, and in accordance with one of the task force's recommendations, Wetterling helped craft legislation that would implement one in Minnesota based on what was working elsewhere. Accessible only to law enforcement, it would carefully distinguish between offenders based on the number of offenses, victim's age, degree of violence, and amenability to treatment. It wasn't long after the state law passed in 1991 that Wetterling turned her sights on implementing something similar on the federal level, with powerful allies including former U.S. Sen. David Durenberger.
Senator Durenberger was from St. Cloud, four miles from where the Wetterlings lived, so the abduction had struck close to home for him. It was a matter of days after hearing about it on the news that he had driven over to meet the family for the first time and offer whatever help he could.
"There's nothing like coming into the middle of a tragedy that doesn't have an easy answer," he recalled. "Everybody is going, 'What can we do?'"
Durenberger stayed in contact with the family, dropping by every so often to slip a supportive note in their mailbox, and he eventually led the effort to pass federal legislation requiring every state to maintain a sex offender registry accessible to law enforcement, and to regularly verify offenders' addresses for 10 years to life depending on the severity of their crimes.
Although Durenberger was out of the Senate when the law finally passed in 1994, he regarded it as a victory.
"Patty started the movement," Durenberger says. "Just a few people had the nerve to get out ahead of the problem and try to come up with a solution that could apply across the country. This was happening one kid at a time, one family at a time. If it had a potential preventable cause, than we ought to deal with it legislatively if we could. That was the imperative."
At the time, registration wasn't seen as a panacea for the problem of sexual abuse, nor a scarlet letter to be pinned on all sex offenders. As far as Wetterling was concerned, the registry was just something that would make it easier for the police to locate former offenders.
"I think [she] intended for registration to fill a gap in public safety," Anderson says. "The whole movement to register juveniles or to lump all who commit any kind of offense into something they can never in their lifetime shake was not the intent. I don't think anybody foresaw that it would turn into what it's become."
In 2008, Wetterling received a missive in the mail. "My name is Ricky and I'm a 19-year-old Registered Sex Offender," it began:
"One night, when I was only 16, I met a girl at a teen club who told me she was almost 16, and we hit it off. She and I dated for a few weeks, but because of some issues at home, she ran away. The friend she was staying with told her to tell the police we had sex, and that she was too scared to go home because she was pregnant. When questioned by the police, I told the truth, I said "yes we had sex twice." The police informed me she was only 13. I was charged with two felony counts of Sexual Abuse 3rd degree and tried as an adult. Now because of the laws regarding the age of consent I am a Registered Sex Offender. Things for me, as well as my family, have changed dramatically and our lives have been shattered."
Wetterling was dumbfounded. She had never imagined her idea being used against someone like this.
"It just makes no sense to me," she says. "The design of the law was not to punish kids for being kids. He thought she was 16, and she lied."
Wetterling found herself questioning not only cases of juvenile sex offenders like Ricky, but also adults who had clearly committed harm but still didn't seem to warrant the kind of permanent pariah status that registration conferred.
One woman contacted Wetterling to share the story of her husband, a former alcohol abuser who had committed a sex crime when he was 19. He went to jail and afterward turned his life around, getting married and having two kids. The Adam Walsh Act retroactively forced him to register as a sex offender, ushering him into a deep depression. He could no longer sit with his own family at church or chaperone school field trips due to the law's provisions.
Wetterling also met a biochemist and college professor who had been caught molesting his stepdaughter. In addition to his prison sentence, he successfully completed treatment as well as a reunification program with his family and was judged rehabilitated by those who knew him. Yet the unforgiving rules of his status as a registered sex offender eventually pushed him into unemployment, homelessness, and a rootless life at the fringe of society.
She kept coming back to the same nagging feeling: These men were not the same as the man who abducted Jacob. These were not serial child abusers who had no capacity to change, and in a terrible twist, their status as sex offenders might actually make children less safe instead of more. Clogging the registries with so many people who don't represent a real ongoing threat could make it harder to discern those who actually do. Moreover, by perpetuating the stranger-danger myth, the laws could be lulling parents into a false sense of security, blinding them to the much more likely threat of sexual abuse by family and friends. Wetterling started feeling that sex offender laws had simply gone too far.
"We've caught a lot of people in the net who could have been helped," she says. "We've been elevating sex offender registration and community notification and punishment for 20-some years, and a wise and prudent thing would be to take a look at what's working. Instead we let our anger drive us."
To those who support the expansion of sex offender laws, Wetterling's concern for offenders can seem naive and misguided. After his daughter's rape and murder, Marc Klaas became a vocal supporter of stiffer penalties and stricter post-prison monitoring of offenders. He founded an organization, KlaasKids, whose mission is "to protect America's children from the predators who lurk in our shadows," according to its website, and endorses both Megan's Law and the Adam Walsh Act.
"My feelings for Patty are very warm, but I think she's wrong," Klaas says. "I don't think the system is out to punish innocent people. These are people who've existed in anonymity for thousands of years and now we're finding out who they are, and they're whining about it."
Wetterling is quick to say that she still supports registries as a law enforcement tool and believes in civil commitment for some offenders who are truly too dangerous to live in society. Yet she has a fundamental disagreement with the other victims' families.
"We just view the problem differently," she says. "I have a tremendous amount of respect for what John and Reve Walsh have done, and I used to sit down with Marc Klaas to have a drink or six. We've undergone a shared experience, and I'm never going to tell a parent the way they're dealing with it is wrong or the way I'm dealing with it is right. I just think some of this really angry, punitive stuff is letting the bad guys win. They're building a world that isn't caring and believing in one another. That's not who I am."
Inside a hotel ballroom in downtown Atlanta a few years ago, Wetterling stood at a podium and held a crowd of 1,300 people at rapt attention. She cleared her throat and told the story she's told hundreds of times, the story of Jacob's abduction. She talked about her determination to help prevent child sexual abuse, not just punish it, and about her resistance to simplistic solutions to a complicated problem.
Among those listening to her address the Association for the Treatment of Sexual Abusers, a national organization dedicated to preventing sexual abuse, was Joan Tabachnick, a co-chair of the organization's prevention committee.
"I think almost everybody in that audience was in tears because of the vulnerability she's able to show, speaking about the horrific experience she's had, as well as how she's translated that into public policy," Tabachnick recalls. "It's amazingly courageous to ask what can we do to prevent this given that there are so many other parents who don't want anything to do with what she's saying."
Wetterling approaches the issue of sexual abuse prevention with the same sense of complexity and nuance that she brings to her understanding of who sex offenders are. To help keep them from reoffending, she believes we need to aid their success with housing, employment, counseling, and social support, all of which the current system does much to dissuade.
"There's a whole bunch else that needs to happen," Wetterling says. "We can't just keep locking them up, putting satellite monitoring on them, registering them for life. That doesn't change the problem."
Wetterling is also focused on primary prevention — that is, stopping abuse from happening in the first place. It's a bitter irony that almost all our public funds are funneled into punishing known sex offenders and virtually none are aimed at preventing sexual abuse from happening in the first place. Waiting until a child is harmed, hoping to find out about it, and then reacting with vengeance might satisfy the public's bloodlust and win points for politicians, but it's not a strategy that actually protects kids.
Yet a growing number of clinicians, researchers, activists, and public health officials are turning their focus to primary prevention, which means examining risk factors, protective factors, and even the neurological origin of why some adults may be sexually drawn to children.
For Wetterling, primary prevention also means taking a broad, holistic view of what's happening in our culture. She rues the effects of a porn-soaked, over-sexualized culture on young people and espouses teaching children about healthy relationships and appropriate behavior starting at an early age.
It's a testament to her preternatural faith in the power of prevention that she sees even her own son's abductor as someone whose vile behavior might have been averted. In 1999, on the 10th anniversary of Jacob's disappearance, Patty wrote an open letter to his kidnapper:
"I have found some comfort picturing you not as a mean old, ugly, bad guy, but at one time, you were an eleven year old boy," she wrote. "Someone's son...possibly someone's brother needing and hopefully sharing the love an 11-year-old boy deserves. If this love wasn't shared in your family, I'm sorry. Every child is entitled to the love and caring that family and friends provide."
She kept a list of questions she was desperate to ask next to the phone in case the abductor called: Why did you do it? Why Jacob? Where is he? But he never called.
Wetterling still harbors hope that Jacob is alive and will return to her someday. In the meantime, she spends her life thinking about what can be done to help children right now — those who might be victimized, as well as those who might grow up to become victimizers someday.
"We can spend the rest of our years talking about how to manage sex offenders," she says. "But wouldn't it be better if we could quit growing them? That's the bigger problem."
Tuesday, August 6, 2013
Notice the blame-shifting cover-up going on here. A State employee forgets to do their job, and somehow the registry needs changing to compensate for that, why not just get employees to do their jobs and be responsible. Oh yes, there is no proof that even if the State employee did their job, that it would have prevented this crime.
The above caption was copied from a news article, but really backs up what my point has been all along.........Having the sex offender registry, public or private, does not prevent crime. That would be like saying, there is less crime because we know the where a bouts of all felons. Its ridiculous and a waste of tax payers time and money to monitor ALL sex offenders.....Hey while we are at it....lets just monitor all felons so we can prevent crime!!!! NOT!
Once again I'm not saying we shouldn't keep tabs on these predators and violent offenders. But there is an efficient way to do it.
The above caption was copied from a news article, but really backs up what my point has been all along.........Having the sex offender registry, public or private, does not prevent crime. That would be like saying, there is less crime because we know the where a bouts of all felons. Its ridiculous and a waste of tax payers time and money to monitor ALL sex offenders.....Hey while we are at it....lets just monitor all felons so we can prevent crime!!!! NOT!
Once again I'm not saying we shouldn't keep tabs on these predators and violent offenders. But there is an efficient way to do it.
Saturday, August 3, 2013
Friday, August 2, 2013
Letter to the U.S. Department Of Justice, Congressman, legislature and anyone who will listen.............
I would like to thank you in advance for taking the time to read my letter. I am a very concerned citizen with some VERY SERIOUS issues with Escambia county sheriffs office and the FDLE. I have been doing extensive research on the sex offender registration program here in Escambia county for almost a year now, all due to the false arrest of a sex offender that was complying with the local as well as federal law.
1) I will start with the problem I found the FDLE official website that list Sex offenders in this county and all over Florida. I went to the website to check out how many sex offenders lived within a 5 mile radius of my address. I found 501. But once I started looking at the list, only 102 of the offenders were CURRENT. Why? This list is NOT current. Megan's law was put into effect so that the public was aware of where in the community these sex offenders are located so that we could better protect our children. It was also to aid law enforcement should something happen to a child in the area. But this is not the case here. And
2) The other problem I have is FDLE wants to go after the offender for NOT complying with the registration laws, yet they don't comply with federal regulations. Why is this being allowed? Why is FDLE and the sheriffs office allowed to give excuses and not be punished for there inadequacy? I believe the federal government needs to find a better system. They need to hold the counties accountable for their actions, just like the county holds the offender accountable.
3) The sex offender list has caused many widespread problems in the United States, such as vigilantes who takes matters into their own hands, which is exactly what a couple in N.C. has done. The way the registry is set up, it puts ALL sex offenders on this list, whether they are a threat to society or not. I have heard the deputies say that the system needs to be reevaluated. They think its a waste of time and money to monitor sex offenders who don't pose a threat to our community. If they didn't have to monitor these offenders, it would leave time and money to monitor the ones our community should fear.
4) Within the State of Florida, there are many cases where persons where prosecuted and convicted of sex crimes without DNA, and little to NO evidence except for the word of the accuser. There should be a full investigation into all allegations before a formal charge is made. In the case I've been reviewing, The defendant was charged with a lewd and lascivious act in the presence of a minor. The mother stated that this person allegedly broke into her home through her 14 yr old daughters bedroom window tapped her on the shoulder and asked her to smoke a joint. How is this a sex act. And now these people prosecuted basically have a life sentence. Why? Because of the way the law is structured.
5) I found that in some cases, where someone being charged with a sex offense, the defendant was not counseled correctly as to the severity of the offense. The majority of these cases where handled by the Public defenders office, and in one case, no investigating was done by the ASA or the attorney on record. The defendant wasn't even informed he would have to register as a sex offender. This is a grave injustice. It's reasons like this that the sex offender laws need to be reevaluated. This point is only part of the fall out of the failing system. Not to mention the issue of double jeopardy.
6) The ASA is not knowledgeable in the sex offender laws, yet they prosecute defendants and ad lib the law when it is convenient. This is not about another win for them this is about the lives of possibly innocent people. And on the flip side the don't know enough and have let some of these dangerous people go, simply to offend again.
These are the main points I wanted to make and propose the following:
1) Have Escambia County and FDLE investigated and made to comply with the federal law of SORNA.
2) To rework the tiers of sex offenders. Low Level sex offenders should have to report to the sheriff office in the same manner as a release felon. The way I and many others look at it, what makes these offenders any less dangerous then a murderer or an armed robber. These people can be just as much treat to the public.
3) If a low level sex offender has been compliant for 5 yrs with no new SEX crimes he should be exempt from registering, not 10 years.
4) All predators and pedophiles should have to register for life.
Please consider making a change. Our Sheriffs office is already having to give up the job of running the jail because they are incompetent. I sincerely hope you will contact me in regards to this. I am working on a program for our community to help offenders as well as victims. I would like the opportunity discuss this further.
Thursday, August 1, 2013
Wednesday, July 31, 2013
Tuesday, July 30, 2013
Motions filed for Ma'Lik Richmond
Attorney argues that sex offender classification is unconstitutional
STEUBENVILLE - An attorney representing Ma'Lik Richmond in his rape case in juvenile court is arguing a sex offender classification is unconstitutional because it subjects Richmond to double jeopardy.
Richmond, 16, of Steubenville in March was found delinquent of a charge of rape in connection with an incident involving an underage girl that happened last August.
Retired Juvenile Judge Tom Lipps sentenced Richmond and Trent Mays, 17, of Bloomingdale to a minimum of one year in a Department of Youth Services facility. Mays also was sentenced to another minimum of one year after he was found delinquent of illegal use of a minor in nudity-oriented material for having a picture of the 16-year-old victim in an outgoing text message on his cell phone.
This was a letter sent to John Walsh....but I thought I should share it with everyone...
To: John Walsh
Have you ever considered that you are punishing innocent/undeserving people with YOUR crusade??? I was a victim from the time I was 5. One of my abusers was a police officer. When I told MY story it was ignored. Why is that???? So over the years I have followed all of these changes. What are the statute of limitations on these kind of crimes and should there even be one if one exists? And are these offenders any more of a threat then someone who murders? Oh, you say there are different levels of the offense? Shouldn't that apply to the sex offender? I understand that sex offenders need to be monitored BUT I see to much misuse of the system and the law enforcers NOT doing their job and punishing the offender following the rules. Where is their JUSTICE? I am looking to change these laws to help keep the focus where it needs to be, THE CHILDREN! I don't believe monitoring a person that has been mislabeled a SEX offender because he tapped a young girl on the shoulder a threat. Monitoring this type of person is taking away from the people we NEED to be watching and monitoring. THE PREDATOR. The law named after son was implemented for just that, THE PREDATOR. Not the person who had consensual sex. I believe too much time and money are wasted on these types of people. And lets not push aside all the problems Megan's Law has caused. What are we solving by publishing these people? I'll tell you....NOTHING. Murders to me are just as dangerous, yet they don't register. Why? The fear and stigma of a SEX OFFENDER should be used for those committing those heinous crimes, not for frivolous and erroneous accusations. I am starting a advocacy for those mislabeled offenders. I watched you on the View and love the new device, but what do you do for the people who can't afford them? I would like help forming this advocacy. I believe it will help everyone. As a women that has experienced all sides of the law, I want to help change this bad misconception of certain sex offenders, and strengthen the laws for those who violate it. I want to be the voice that I should have had.
I am looking for supporters. Anyone willing to lend their voice to my cause?
To: John Walsh
Have you ever considered that you are punishing innocent/undeserving people with YOUR crusade??? I was a victim from the time I was 5. One of my abusers was a police officer. When I told MY story it was ignored. Why is that???? So over the years I have followed all of these changes. What are the statute of limitations on these kind of crimes and should there even be one if one exists? And are these offenders any more of a threat then someone who murders? Oh, you say there are different levels of the offense? Shouldn't that apply to the sex offender? I understand that sex offenders need to be monitored BUT I see to much misuse of the system and the law enforcers NOT doing their job and punishing the offender following the rules. Where is their JUSTICE? I am looking to change these laws to help keep the focus where it needs to be, THE CHILDREN! I don't believe monitoring a person that has been mislabeled a SEX offender because he tapped a young girl on the shoulder a threat. Monitoring this type of person is taking away from the people we NEED to be watching and monitoring. THE PREDATOR. The law named after son was implemented for just that, THE PREDATOR. Not the person who had consensual sex. I believe too much time and money are wasted on these types of people. And lets not push aside all the problems Megan's Law has caused. What are we solving by publishing these people? I'll tell you....NOTHING. Murders to me are just as dangerous, yet they don't register. Why? The fear and stigma of a SEX OFFENDER should be used for those committing those heinous crimes, not for frivolous and erroneous accusations. I am starting a advocacy for those mislabeled offenders. I watched you on the View and love the new device, but what do you do for the people who can't afford them? I would like help forming this advocacy. I believe it will help everyone. As a women that has experienced all sides of the law, I want to help change this bad misconception of certain sex offenders, and strengthen the laws for those who violate it. I want to be the voice that I should have had.
I am looking for supporters. Anyone willing to lend their voice to my cause?
Monday, July 29, 2013
Friday, July 26, 2013
Changes to Sex Offender Laws – Moving in the Right Direction?
The root of the ineffectiveness of the current laws is the tendency to base policies on our cultural disgust and fear of sex offenders rather than on a rational analysis of the best way to protect society. Empirical studies from Colorado and Minnesota show that residency restrictions have no correlation to lower re-offense rates, law enforcement agencies complain that bloated registries drain resources and hamper effective monitoring of more dangerous sex offenders, and countless examples exist of non-dangerous minor offenders whose lives have been deeply impacted or ruined by overly broad classification of sex offenders. However, the political will of the legislature is still being driven by public misconceptions, as several states consider imposing stricter requirements on sex offenders.
Oklahoma recently passed a law that bans convicted sex offenders from living with children. It sounds sensible—sex offenders were already restricted from living near schools—yet Oklahoma requires registration of those who commit indecent exposure (excluding public urination) or who crimes involving producing or distributing “obscene material,” which can include pornography depicting only adults. Pending legislation HB1193 would require an law enforcement agencies to notify the local newspaper of sex offenders designated as “habitual” or “aggravated.”
New York, which currently imposes no residency restrictions on sex offenders, is considering banning sex offenders from living within 1000 feet of a school, daycare or park. Even though 1000 feet is on the lower end of residency restrictions, this could be a difficult requirement in the New York City metropolitan area, especially for homeless offenders. Another proposal, S06073, could also have a disparate impact on homeless or transient offenders by requiring Electronic Home Monitoring (ankle bracelets) on offenders who fail to register two or more times. Homeless offenders are much more likely to have registration issues since they have no address to register, and often have mental health issues or other problems that limit their ability to comply.
A bill in Iowa would require nursing homes and assisted living facilities to conduct a sex offender registry check prior to the admission of any new tenants or patients, and then to notify all residents, the emergency contact of all residents, the facilities’ staff, and all visitors to the facility. While it makes sense to want to protect these more vulnerable populations, the nursing facilities covered by the bill have argued that this will impose an onerous burden on their time and resources.
Louisiana leads the charge in the current race to get tough on sex offenders, as Governor Bobby Jindal has made it one of the top priorities of his administration. He has already having signed legislation mandating longer prison sentences for sex offenders and authorizing chemical castration for rapists, in which hormone-limiting drugs are used to reduce libido and capacity for arousal. Although seemingly effective, chemical castration raises serious ethical questions when not undertaken voluntarily (it is reversible, unlike physical castration, but can pose serious health risks in some cases). And Louisiana isn't done—SB428 prohibits sex offenders from living within three miles of their victims and prohibits any form of communication with the victims or family members without their prior written consent. The goal of preventing traumatizing the victims is a noble one, but a three mile restriction in addition to the restrictions around schools and parks is going to create even more limited options, and in smaller towns could effectively result in banishment. Another popular proposal, SB442 seeks to ban sex offenders convicted of certain crimes (mostly involving minors) from social networking sites including Facebook. A legal challenge to a similar ban in Indiana has made the argument that this infringes on First Amendment rights by also preventing offenders from engaging in political, religious, or business-oriented activity on these sites, and a ruling is expected within a month.
The ideas behind these proposals are well-intented, and some could actually be good ideas within a more sensible overall regime. Yet as long as the registries remain bloated with low-risk offenders and our policies remain focused on punishment and stigmatization rather than prevention and rehabilitation, sex offender laws will continue to do more harm than good.
How Sex Offender Laws Fail to Protect the Public
Information Problems
Sex offender registries are perhaps the best-known aspect of sex offender regimes. Since the passage of the Jacob Wetterling Act in 1994, every state has been required by federal law to maintain a sex offender registry. By making the names and addresses of sex offenders readily available to the public, often with interactive maps, the goal is to empower people with information so they can take appropriate steps to protect themselves and their families.
However, this information does not really prove useful for enhancing safety. If there is a sex offender in your neighborhood, you can tell your kids to stay away from the creepy guy’s house, but that’s about it. Most sex offenders are not under house arrest, so unless you memorize every face pictured in the directory, you’re in the dark when you go to a public place. Furthermore, since most sex offenses are committed by first-time offenders who know their victims, not strangers who have previously been convicted, the registry could not have provided useful information for prevention in the majority of cases. However, this information is useful for community members who wish to engage in violent vigilantism or harassment of sex offenders. While most people don’t have much sympathy for sex offenders subject to harassment, innocent people have also been hurt due to mistakes or misunderstandings of the registry, such as this 78 year-old man who was beaten to death with a baseball bat because his name was similar to a convicted sex offender’s.
Another problem with some states’ registries lies in the overly broad classification of crimes as sex offenses. In at least ten states, you can earn the sex offender designation from fairly innocuous forms of public indecency like streaking, mooning, or urinating in public. None of the registries provide any factual details of the offenses, just the names of the crimes (and sometimes not even that). So if a registry lists the offense of indecent exposure, for example, the public has no way of distinguishing a high school prankster who streaks a football game from a creep who purposely goes to a playground and waves his member at children to achieve sexual gratification. Many registries also contain numerous purely statutory offenders who are often also minors at the time of the offense, such as a 17 year-old who engages in consensual sexual activity with his 15 year-old girlfriend. In many jurisdictions, this would be labeled “sexual assault against a minor,” which makes this person look like a greater threat than the circumstances suggest. By effectively diluting the sex offender registry with people who pose little threat to public safety, it is more difficult to identify and keep track of the high-risk offenders. California, as an extreme example, has the largest registry in the country with over one hundred thousand registered sex offenders. This is an overwhelming amount of information to sift through, and can make it appear a sex offender is lurking around every corner – just look at the map of Los Angles county. Rather than providing useful information, it just scares and furthers the misconception that the risk of sex offenses is increasing at an alarming rate.
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Sunday, July 21, 2013
Changing the sex offender laws again?
Sex offender registries were created as a response to several heinous crimes where the victim was attacked by an offender who had served time in prison and been released without the public's knowledge. The theory behind registries is that when people know where a convicted offender lives, they can take precautions to keep themselves and their families safe. These laws are suppose to be there to protect the children. Unfortunately these laws aren't really making that big of a difference.
I see a lot of flaws in the registry program. Starting with the prosecutors wrongfully charging an individual for sex crime. This classification of crime should be used for serious sexual offenses. Not pissing on the sidewalk. The State and local law enforcement that fails to do their job and the wrong people pay the price.
What happens when a child lies and a persons life is now ruined forever? Especially when there is no hardcore evidence and the attorney for the accused fails to look into the charge. How many falsely accused sex offenders are there? Yes, I know people are falsely accused of crimes all the time. But it doesn't carry the stigma of a sex offender.
Why in the world do we put people that commit certain sex crimes in the sames category as a child molester and predators?
Certain things we did years ago that were considered innocent and harmless, (such as having teenage sex). How many people have had sex in their car and got caught? This is now considered a SEX crime?! If convicted you are subjected to the same basic rules as a predator. Your face is on a sex registry, you must tell the sheriffs office of your whereabouts or face prison, and all because you had sex with your then boyfriend or girlfriend? And lets not forget the falsely accused. They do exist as well. So now we have these people carrying a serious, life ruining label, who do not pose threat to anyone, living in shame, Why is this?
Why are we wasting our time with these lower level offenders? People charge with sex crimes, that when truly evaluated, weren't sexual in nature at all. Each case should be evaluated when it comes to SEX CRIMES, if this was done, we would find the registry system a lot less crowded, our tax dollars would go further, and you would be viewing the faces of the people we really SHOULD fear?
I don't agree with the way prosecutors go about charging someone with a sex crime when the evidence is not supporting such a charge.
I believe the State of Florida uses the sex crime statute way too much. They don't investigate the crimes properly and if the accused is represented by the public defenders office, chances are the will not be dealt with fairly.
PLEASE, PLEASE remember, not all sex offenders have cases involving children. I don't believe that every time a heinous crime against a child happens and we change the laws that it should apply to ALL sex offenders.
So, today I sit and watch the news and read articles where we now are charging the same children the sex offender laws were put in place to protect, and making them sex offenders?!!! REALLY!!!!! Now how are people going to view these sex offenders...... There are serious changes to be made. Let
Tired of the injustice?.....Help us to change these laws.
Friday, July 19, 2013
Louisiana removes sex-offender label from those who shouldn't have had it
Thursday, July 18, 2013
7-18-2013 Louisiana:Michael A. Dodele, whose crimes had earned him a place on California's sex-offenders registry, was murdered by neighbor Ivan Garcia Oliver in November 2007, 35 days after Dodele moved into a mobile home in California's Lake County. Oliver, who was convicted of first-degree murder in 2012, never denied killing the man.
Instead, in a jailhouse interview with the Los Angeles Times, Oliver gave what amounted to a manifesto. His son had already been molested, Oliver explained. Then Dodele, whose name was on the registry, moved into the neighborhood. "Society may see the action I took as unacceptable in the eyes of 'normal' people. I felt that by not taking evasive action as a father in the right direction, I might as well have taken my child to some swamp filled with alligators and had them tear him to pieces. It's no different."
California listed Dodele's crimes as "rape by force" and "oral copulation with a person under 14 or by force." As for the oral copulation, it was the "by force" part that applied to Dodele.
"He was convicted of other bad things," a Lake County prosecutor told the Los Angeles Times, "but nothing involving a minor." Oliver leaped to the wrong conclusion. He isn't much different in that regard from most of us. We tend to assume that people on a sex-offenders list have hurt children.
I imagine that's why "Louise" was so quick to tell me what she hadn't done when we spoke in October 2011. "I've never molested a child," she said. Even so, "I can't even celebrate Halloween or go trick-or-treating with my kids." Louisiana's registration laws didn't distinguish between predators who had raped or otherwise exploited minors and desperate drug addicts who, like Louise had, peddled oral sex on the streets.
Nope. In Louisiana a sex offender was a sex offender was a sex offender. And all of them with the label were instructed to register their addresses and keep their distance from children.
That's why it was such a big deal last week when U.S. District Judge Martin Feldman approved a settlement that removes hundreds of names from the state's sex-offender registry. It was wrong in and of itself for the law to label prostitutes as if they were predators. But not everybody selling sexual gratification got the label. Only those who sold oral or anal sex. Those selling intercourse could get convicted repeatedly and never be labeled a sex offender.
In 2011, the Louisiana Legislature changed the law so that those convicted of soliciting oral and anal sex wouldn't have to register, but that didn't help people whose names were already on the list. Thanks to a settlement between the Center for Constitutional Rights and the Louisiana attorney general's office, those names will be removed.
Attorney General James "Buddy" Caldwell should have removed the names sooner, but as the Legislature was debating changing the law, an attorney from Caldwell's office said the state couldn't afford the $37,000 a year it might take to go back and remove the names of people like Louise, people who hadn't ever preyed on anybody. Caldwell continued his foot-dragging even after Feldman ruled last year that the state had no "rational basis" for putting people like Louise on its registry. In a December hearing, Feldman said, "I am incredulous and very concerned about why this process has been dragged out against the backdrop of politics for so long."
Louise had cleaned herself up from drugs and was a full-time college student when we spoke. But she was weary of all the obstacles she routinely encountered as a labeled sex offender. She had an upcoming court date after being charged with not registering as she should have. She later pleaded guilty to avoid going to jail.
But the label itself was its own kind of prison, not to mention an invitation for scorn and ridicule. Some people think they can do anything to convicted sex offenders, that people with that label can't be mistreated. They're wrong, of course. And Louisiana itself was wrong for ever burdening non-predators with that label. ..Source.. by Jarvis DeBerry
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