Recently I wrote a piece on Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin’s denying and then limiting a father who also happens to be a registrant, access to visit his ill child in the hospital. A father who was doing right by his child, being responsible, being there to comfort his ailing son.
This week I read another article about Cardinal Glennon Children’s Hospital/South St. Louis who is denying a father who also happens to be a registrant, (his offense was in 2004) further visitation with his premature son in NICU. The hospital apparently has a “by hospital escort only” visiting policy for registrants and while the father was fine with that, he needed to go outside to make a phone call and was advised by hospital staff to “just go, you don’t need an escort for that”. Due to staff’s apparent lack of understanding on exactly how this “by hospital escort only” policy is supposed to be applied to registrants, the father went outside but upon his return inside the hospital, security checked the father’s ID, determined “Ahah, here is a registrant “sans” escort”, and his visitation rights were promptly terminated.
Now there’s a father in Raleigh, N. Carolina who has been arrested for “being seen near the Raleigh elementary school that his child attends and also on the grounds of a day care center”. Darious Alphonso Douglas was charged with 2 felony counts of being a registered sex offender on “children’s premises” whatever that is, I wasn’t aware children had “premises”. He was carted off to jail and held under $30,000 bail. According to the warrant, the offenses occurred during the period of Oct. 26, 2017 and March 21, 2018.
The original news article is sketchy and a little disjointed if you ask me. It’s hard to understand “exactly” what the facts are and what the crime is.
Yes, Mr. Douglas was on school grounds. Yes, this is currently, in most places, a registry violation for a registrant.
Sex offender laws give the state and anyone else for that matter a blank check to harass registrants, treat them worse than a dog would be treated and it’s all iced over with the facade of civil regulation for public safety. Despotism in its rawest form.