[10tv.com 5/11/18] COLUMBUS, Ohio A judge on Friday ordered that an ex-Ohio high school football player convicted of rape be removed from the state’s sex offender registry for juveniles, as allowed by law. The ruling by Judge Thomas Lipps came in the case of Ma’Lik Richmond, a former Steubenville High School football player who in 2013 was convicted of raping a 16-year-old West Virginia girl at a party that followed a football scrimmage the previous year. Richmond served a one-year sentence and later rejoined the Steubenville football team. Now 21,…
Read MoreMonth: May 2018
America needs a national terrorist registry to keep us safe
[foxnews.com 5/10/18] Domestic terrorist Herman Bell is a free man, walking the streets. And if a New York judge has his way, fellow terrorist Judith Clarke will be free as well. This raises an increasingly important question: How many more convicted terrorists are already out there? It is impossible to answer accurately. Since the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, more than 500 people have been convicted in the U.S. of terrorist crimes. That number increases when you add in people, who – although investigated for terrorism – were allowed to…
Read MoreUK: Parents should ask their baby’s permission before changing dirty nappy, sexuality expert says
[independent.co.uk 5/11/18] A sexuality expert says parents should ask their child’s permission before changing their nappies – so they can set up a “culture of consent.” Deanne Carson made the suggestion on ABC News during a segment about teaching consent to young children, and many viewers have since expressed their confusion over the idea. According to Carson, who describes herself as a “sexuality educator, speaker, and author” on Twitter, a culture of consent needs to start at birth. To do so, she suggested parents ask their infants questions such as:…
Read MoreVA: Sex Offender Kicked Out of Meeting Sues Stafford County School Board
[nbcwashington.com 5/10/18] A registered sex offender has filed a lawsuit against the school board and a deputy in Stafford, County, Virginia, claiming his First Amendment rights were violated when he was kicked out of a meeting. Melvin Allen was convicted in 2004 of attempting to take indecent liberties with children in an online chat room. He served 30 days in jail. As a registered sex offender, Allen is prohibited from being on a school campus. In 2016, a school in Stafford County asked Allen to pick up his sick grandson…
Read MoreFL: Update: Miami-Dade Encampment
[floridaactioncommittee.org 5/11/18] Registrants are still at the Miami-Dade Encampment. Some, because their GPS monitoring will trigger if they leave the area (probation has them designated to) and they don’t want to violate probation and go back to prison for that. Others, because they realize there’s noplace for them to go and they will be violating the overnight camping ordinance wherever they are, so might as well stay put. News crews are on site, waiting for enforcement action. This NBC6 video is from earlier this AM, where you can still see…
Read MoreUnintended Consequences: Sex Offenders in Motels
[nbcchicago.com 5/7/18] In April of 2014, a 5-year-old girl was playing with her brothers on the grounds of the Econo Lodge in Terre Haute, Indiana, where she was staying with her family, when a man grabbed her, took her into his motel room, hit her, pulled off her clothes, and molested her. Court records show that the man, Timothy Blazier, 50, was a recently paroled, twice-convicted child-molester. He’d been living at the Econo Lodge for three months when he molested the 5-year-old girl. He’s now back in prison, serving a…
Read MoreFL: Central Florida YMCA to screen members for sex offenders
[floridaactioncommittee.org 5/11/18] ORLANDO, Fla. – The YMCA of Central Florida announced to its members that it will begin screening all members and guests to see if they’re registered sex offenders before being let inside their buildings. The announcement came in the form of a letter sent to members signed by Chief Operating Officer Daniel Ickes. Ickes sent an explanation to News 6. “At the YMCA of Central Florida, there is nothing more important to us than the safety and security of our members, staff and volunteers. For that reason, we…
Read MoreLiving with 290: 8 years and how many left?
I decided to write this because I just graduated college. I have been fighting and fighting and fighting some more with this nonsense hanging over my head. I have been denied jobs because of my sex offender status, I have felt like killing myself, and I sometimes just feel hopeless. I was convicted of a 289a1 or Penetration of a foreign object through force or fear. I was 20 at the time and I was at a party. I hooked up with this girl and the lines got blurred between…
Read MoreFL: Homeless sex offenders lose court fight to keep Hialeah tent camp. Where to next?
[amp.miamiherald.com 5/10/18] A Miami-Dade judge on Thursday cleared the way for the county to dismantle a tent village of homeless sex offenders outside Hialeah, and a lawyer for some of the residents said the ruling leaves them no choice but to live on a roadside or street somewhere else. “They’ll most likely be relocating to another street corner,” Legal Services lawyer Jeffrey Hearne said after the hearing before Judge Pedro Echarte Jr. in Circuit Court. “New encampments will pop up. And this cycle will continue.” Kendall residents have already been…
Read MoreTX: Father of Texas Teen Doesn’t Want Son Labeled Sex Offender
[floridaactioncommittee.org 5/10/18] Richard Culley, a former Army sergeant plans to fight to prevent his son, Ryan, from being labeled as a “sex offender” for having sex with a 15-year old girl who lied about her age. He was convicted solely based on the age of the girl. In Court, it was stipulated that the sex between Ryan and the girl was consensual and there was no coercion, the girl claimed on Facebook that she was 18 years old, the girl was the one who initiated contact with Ryan. Ryan received…
Read MoreCan Bad Men Change? What It’s Like Inside Sex Offender Therapy
The men file in, a few wearing pressed button-down shirts, others jeans caked in mud from work on a construction site. They meet in the living room of an old taupe bungalow on a leafy street in a small Southern city. Someone has shoved a workout bike into the corner to make room for a circle of overstuffed chairs dug up at the local Goodwill. The men jockey for a coveted recliner and settle in. They are complaining about co-workers and debating the relative merits of various trucks when a…
Read MoreCO: Owner of polygraphy firm would have to quit sex-offender management board or give up $1.9M contract under measure heading to Colorado governor
[denverpost.com 5/9/18] Members of the Colorado board that decides how the state’s sex offenders are managed no longer will be able to profit from multimillion-dollar state contracts related to their work with sex offenders under a law legislators passed Wednesday. House Bill 1427 bars members of the Sex Offender Management Board from having direct financial benefits from the standards and guidelines adopted by that board. The legislation, which passed 27-8 in a final Senate vote, now goes to Gov. John Hickenlooper for consideration. Legislators reacted in part to a report…
Read MoreFighting the Fees That Force Prisoners to Pay for Their Incarceration
[truth-out.org 5/6/18] This past January, prisoners in Florida went on strike to protest what they called modern-day slavery in the state’s prisons. As of March, not only had the Florida Department of Corrections not responded to the demand for paid labor and improved living conditions, it had also placed some of the prisoners who were demanding fair wages into solitary confinement. As Heather Ann Thompson, author of Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy succinctly said on Democracy Now!, “If you do not treat…
Read MoreScam Alert: $2,000 Fine for Moving Without Reporting
[sosen.org 5/9/18] The following is from one of our member families. We had a scare yesterday. Someone called saying they were from (our) County Sheriff’s Department and that my loved one had moved without reporting it within three days. They wanted $2,000 dollars to cover his court fees then directed us to a specific street downtown which is where my loved one’s registration office is located. They indicated he would not be arrested, but would have to show up in court next Friday. They kept him on the phone and…
Read MoreHow do we get better, really? The Achieving Clinical Excellence 2018 Conference in Östersund, Sweden
[sajrt.blogspot.com 5/9/18] The evidence is in, and there’s no doubt. Psychotherapy works for a wide range of conditions and behaviors. People can and do change, often suddenly and unpredictably. Among the most effective mechanisms for change is the most ancient and fundamental approach: the human conversation. Why even mention this? Those working in the fields of violence and trauma (including sexual abuse) too often believe that people who harm others are either unwilling or unable to change, despite decades of evidence. Too many professionals argue over lesser findings or ask…
Read MorePart I: Just another day in the life of a registered sex offender
[narsol.org 5/8/18] By Sandy . . . Each day’s emails and email alerts in my inbox always include at least one especially disturbing situation that threatens the ability of those on the registry to be allowed to resume a normal life, no matter how long ago the offense that caused the registration. The planets must have been in a particularly evil alignment when I started opening today’s offerings. First was a story from several days ago where the art work, highly acclaimed art work, was ordered pulled from a university…
Read MoreIN: 7th Circuit prohibits sex offender from voting at local high school
[theindianalawyer.com 5/8/18] In a decision handed down one day before Indiana’s 2018 primary election, the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals found a rational relationship between an Indiana statute prohibiting sex offenders from entering school property and the state’s interest in protecting children. The court ruled the state does not violate a convicted sex offender’s voting rights by prohibiting him from voting at a polling place located in a high school, and instead requiring him to vote via one of three alternatives. In Brian Valenti v. Connie Lawson, et al., 17-3207,…
Read MoreMedia focus should be on Really Dangerous People
[sosen.org 5/8/18] It seems like Sex cases always go viral. But an extremely high number of children die even more horrible deaths from other non-sex related criminal acts and you never even see a blip on the radar screen, and then something like what happened to Sierra Newbold happens and the radar screens light up like the 4th of July. A friend of mine, let’s call him John for his own safety, related a story to me. He said that he had a vivid memory of an example of just…
Read More