FL: Lauren Book, Running Unopposed, Raises $1.3 Million Despite Criticisms

Plantation resident Lauren Book, 31, has raised about $1.3 million for her state senate campaign, though she’s running unopposed. Her charity was also awarded a million dollars by the state legislature this session. Book is the daughter of powerful Florida lobbyist Ron Book, and after suffering horrific abuse by a nanny in her teen years, she founded Lauren’s Kids, which raises awareness about childhood sexual abuse and advocates for legislation affecting sex offenders. Full Article

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TX: Dallas PD shuts down sex offender unit

DALLAS — ____ ____ maintained a Facebook page presenting himself as a teenage girl. The convicted sex offender was caught with 100,000 child pornography images last year. He was recently sentenced to 13 years in federal prison. ____ ____ was arrested for failing to register as a sex offender until police could get enough evidence to charge him with raping a woman inside a Baylor University Medical Center parking garage. He’s still in jail. What do these two men have in common? They were captured through the efforts of the Sex Offender Apprehension Program,…

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Law Creating Passport Mark for Sex Offenders Faces First Challenge

A new federal law requiring the State Department to mark the passports of certain convicted sex offenders is expected to face its first test in federal court on Wednesday. A group of convicted sex offenders has asked a federal judge in Oakland, Calif., to block the measure pending the outcome of a February lawsuit they filed that challenges the law’s constitutionality. The law, International Megan’s Law to Prevent Demand for Child Sex Trafficking, mandates the State Department to add a “unique identifier” to passports of Americans convicted of sex crimes…

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Closer look: Finding statistics to fit a narrative

Licensed Professional Counselor Robert Longo has been vocally opposed to public registries for convicted sexual offenders for years. “I actually met with a group of people in New Jersey and sat across from Megan Kanka’s grandfather,” Longo said. The 1994 murder of 7-year-old Kanka gave rise to the public disclosure of sexual offender registries through what are commonly known as Megan’s laws. “I told the grandfather of the young girl, Megan Kanka, who was raped and murdered, that I appreciate what happened to his granddaughter but this law is not…

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PROFS SAY FEDS’ SEX-ASSAULT POLICY RAPES CONSTITUTION

An association of professors is charging that the Washington bureaucracy is giving universities a choice: Follow the U.S. Constitution or keep the federal subsidies coming onto campuses. The report from the American Association of University Professors warned that the federal government’s expanding definitions of sexual harassment under Title IX, the Department of Education’s statute barring discrimination on the basis of gender, threaten free speech. Full Article

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Ex-felons are winning back their voting rights

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Baltimore community organizer ____ ____, 55, is looking forward to stepping into a voting booth for the first time in his life this election season. ____ lost his never-exercised right to vote when he was convicted for drug and other offenses. He gained it back last month when Maryland joined a growing list of U.S. states making it easier for ex-convicts to vote. “To have the right to vote now is empowering. I’m stoked,” said ____, who spent a total of 19 years in prison for non-violent…

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