Laws Based on Baseless Assumptions

Lawmakers have long treated sex offenses as different from other crimes, but the recent legislation known as Sex Offender Registration and Notification has drastically changed the way sex offenders are managed in the community upon release from prison. Specifically, these laws require the sex offenders to immediately report to the local police department upon prison release in order to register as a sex offender. This means providing information like name, address, phone number, employment, marital history, criminal history and license plate number, along with a DNA sample and a list of contacts.…

Read More

Man stops online posts about sex offender

As part of a final settlement to the convicted paedophile’s legal action, Joe McCloskey also pledged on Thursday to immediately remove all references to him from online pages under his control. The man, who served a jail sentence for a catalogue of abuse, has now been granted permanent anonymity by a judge overseeing the resolution. Known only as XY, he issued proceedings against Facebook and Mr McCloskey over the contents of a page entitled ‘Keeping our kids safe from predators’. Full Article

Read More

‘Totalitarian Justice:’ Criticisms of Campus Sex Assault Panels Intensify

WASHINGTON / April 24, 2013 – Three articles sharply critical of the handling of sex assault cases by campus disciplinary committees were published this past week. The critiques suggest college administrators may need to re-evaluate whether federally mandated sex assault panels are rendering a disservice to victims, to the accused, and to the principle of justice itself, according to Stop Abusive and Violent Environments. Writing in the Wall Street Journal on April 16, Judith Grossman describes the experience of her son, a student at a New England liberal-arts college (1).…

Read More

Clinician Prejudice Toward Sex Offenders

A couple of weeks ago my colleague Jenner Bishop posted an open letter on the IITAP (International Institute for Trauma and Addiction Professionals) listserv about clinician prejudice toward sex addicts and sex offenders. Jenner had just come from a “suite meeting” for an office she’d recently rented, at which she’d been bombarded with angry questions from the other therapists about how they were supposed to protect their clients from her “unsupervised” sex addicts and offenders. She had explained that she doesn’t work with violent offenders, and that the offending behaviors…

Read More