YAKIMA, Wash. — A Yakima County judge has blocked the release of names and addresses of low-level sex offenders to a Mesa woman who wants to post the information on a website.
Ruling Friday, Superior Court Judge Blaine Gibson permanently blocked Donna Zink’s request for low-level sex-offender registration forms from the Yakima County Sheriff’s Office. The move had been sought by 22 low-level offenders who said releasing the information would subject them to public scorn and threaten their safety. The ruling covered all low-level offenders who comply with state law, such as registering with authorities, and have permanent addresses. …
“The Supreme Court recognizes that the mere declaration that someone is a sex offender is harmful to the person,” Gibson said. “Even if your neighbor next door has been a good neighbor for 10 years, when you learn that they were a sex offender 20 years ago, it affects how you deal with them.” Full Article
This is so very true. We have been shunned by neighbors for the past 7.5 years even though they see us as just another family, just trying to make a better life for ourselves and our children. I am happy to see that they see it is very harmful to the person as well as family members. And just what was she going to gain by posting it on a website…one day it just might happen to her child. So wish that site was never made public. And in CA it doesn’t tell when the offense happened..my husbands was in 1985….nothing since.
The only way any offenders information SHOULD be public is by controlled access through a local sheriff’s department. That way sign-in information from the public can be referenced it someone elects to go into a registrants home and murder all the occupancy (which has happened). Otherwise (as we have it now) it is a tool of harm against citizens that have paid their debt to society having gone through the grinder of probation, therapy and time served. The registry by it’s nature is a Living Death, it is Evil and it is Wrong. The registrant is today’s new whipping boy for votes by anyone wishing to be elected. No other evil mechanism is being use that under it’s umbrella lies the ability to add more and more punitive measure against someone after they have otherwise paid their debt to society. No wonder we have only 5% of the worlds population but hold 50% of it prisoners. Home of the free? Really? Sad thing is we have a church on every corner that preaches grace, forgiveness and compassion. Really? People I can’t hear you because your actions (or lack thereof) is screaming so loud in the opposite direction! TRUTH
I don’t know what she thought she was going to accomplish by doing all this, but I am glad that everything turned out all right. If she was to have published this information onto a website it would have done more harm than good. A lot of low level SO’s are children, or people who committed their offence when they were a child. Most people don’t realize that fact. Some of them aren’t, or weren’t, children at the time of the offence. This doesn’t excuse the crimes they committed. I know a lot of low level Sex offenders and all of them go through every day regretting what they did. They don’t regret getting caught; they regret that they hurt someone they cared about. All of them are getting treatment from a program that will help them make sure they never repeat the offence.
This woman says that “a sex offender is a sex offender” basically saying that a sex offender can never change. The people I know wouldn’t being going to Sex Offender treatment if they didn’t want to change. These people are trying to get better and have taken responsibility for their actions. They want to get better; so she needs to stop trying to make things harder than they need to be.
Its sort of strange that a county level judge can see that the registration is harmful.. wonder if this is going to go upward..
Equal protection would apply to all…that “public scorn and threatened safety” would apply to all registered.