On Halloween night, Andrew will celebrate the holiday the way most married fathers do: He and his wife will go trick-or-treating with their two kids, who are nine and 12; maybe afterward, they’ll head to their church to finish off the night with games and snacks.
But Andrew’s family isn’t like other families, because Andrew is a registered sex offender. …
“Just because you’re on the registry doesn’t mean the Constitution doesn’t apply,” said Janice Bellucci, an attorney and president of California Reform Sex Offender Laws. Full Article
It seems that the law makers who pass these laws do not let facts get in the way of their opinions or decision making.
As the article starts out, there was never an upsurge of sexual assualts on children, around Halloween, to support the rational for these laws.
It’s like when the Orange County, CA D.A. was tryong to pass his ordinance banning registered sex offenders (RSOs) from county parks. Then he went to the various cities in the county to try and get them to do the same and they did. But it was all based on a Chicken Little like fear.
I followed this when it was happening and the attitude of the city councils seemed to be, “we have to do SOMETHING”, but no one really could come up with a reason as to WHY they had to do it?
By that I mean, as law enforcement officials testified before their respective cities, not one of them said that they had any particular problem with RSO reoffoend in their city parks in the last 10 years.
It finally got to the point that when it came time for the Irvine city council to pass some sort of ordinance, based on the county one, one councilwoman saide the the ordinance seemed to be A SOLUTION LOOKING FOR A PROBLEM.
But, because they to had to “do something”,or be told they don’t care about protecting the children, they came up with their own ordinance that at least pretended to do what the mantra had been from the DAs office to “protect the children” They came up with one aimed not at ALL RSOs, but only those whose sexual misconduct actually involved children.
And so, after the DA spent hundreds of thousands of dollars of staff time developing his ordinance AND sending people around to convince city councils to pass it, as well as making some personal appearance to do so,AND part of the pitch being that he swore up and down that the ordinance was bullet proof in the courts, what happen?
The courts struck it down. Hhundreds of thousands of dollars was wasted on a non-threat, a problem that wasn’t. And it has since cost several cities thousand of dollars in legal fees. Not to mention the humiliation in having to repeal the ordinance OR revise it so it copied what was already state law. So what was the point?
All of which could have been avoided if RSO were dealt with in light of the FACTS, as outlined in an article like this, instead of trying to make political hay out of people ingnorant fears.
But the important thing was that the king did, indeed, receive word that the sky was falling.
And do you remember what the king did? Same as was done here.
Firstly, persecution is always unfair, secondly, the persecution goes on 365 days a year for people who land on the registry, for them and their families. One night I could deal with if tomorrow were better.
Today is Sunday Nov. 2nd. In the aftermath of Halloween, I have seen zero news stories about problems with sex offenders. Frankly, if sex offenders had been out causing problems on Halloween, I have the feeling that would have been trumpeted by the news media. As I see it, once again the whole panic about sex and Halloween has once again been proven to be nonsense.
But those who systematically purvey the nonsense will do it again next year, the facts be damned.