Year: 2021

India: ‘My crime is I fell in love’: should India rethink tough laws on underage sex?

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Source: theguardian.com 8/24/21 Laws intended to tackle child abuse are resulting in young men in consensual relationships being imprisoned. Activists argue a more nuanced approach is needed Mani*, 21, began dating Noor*, 17, two years ago. They couldn’t see each other during the Covid lockdowns, but when restrictions began to ease, they would meet on the deserted banks of a canal in a small town in Tamil Nadu. The couple hoped to marry one day, but then Noor fell pregnant, and life turned into a nightmare. Two months ago, Mani…

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W.A.R. Room Online Presentation Aug 24: Is reform a modern day cliche or the beginning of a tidal wave?

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Source: womenagainstregistry.org 8/24/21 My Fellow Warriors, On August 24 at 5:00 PM Pacific Time, we will be celebrating WAR Room #10. It is amazing to witness our  growth. The feedback we have received so far is nothing but uplifting accolades. We owe all of this tremendous success to you and to our guest speakers. Click here to pre-Register (required)  I’ve been looking forward to WAR Room #10 for quite some time. We are privileged to have justice reform activist Rory Fleming as our guest speaker. Rory will be discussing his…

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CT: Committee Considers Sex Offender Registry Changes

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Source: ctnewsjunkie.com 8/24/21 A subcommittee of the state Sentencing Commission is working to create a process to allow certain individuals to be removed from the public sex offender registry. After at least two attempts to reshape the law regarding people who have committed sex offenses, the General Assembly’s Incarceration and Collateral Consequences of Criminal Conviction Subcommittee will hear a presentation Thursday on two narrow proposals to create a path for people to get off the registry. The proposals are in their infancy and likely will be altered several times before…

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Sex Offender Registries TW: Abuse

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Source: youtube.com 8/12/21 Channel: sexplanations Video intro: Someone asked me once how I determined which topics to cover. I answered that I have all these topics in my mind but one at a time they move to my heart and I get really curious and passionate enough to research and teach — to sexplain. This is what happened with the registry. There wasn’t a personal experience or an audience question, it just shifted from my head to my heart and had to come out. At first I used the registry…

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NY: Nicki Minaj’s husband Kenneth Petty sues to have his name removed from New York’s Sex Offender Registry

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Source: the-sun.com 8/19/21 NICKI MINAJ’S husband Kenneth Petty is suing to nix his name off New York’s Sex Offender Registry and reportedly arguing that some imposter signed the documents while he was imprisoned. Petty filed papers against the state’s Criminal Justice Services division to clear his name from the registry because he claims he wasn’t able to plea his case back in October 2004 while he was serving out a prison sentence. The 43-year-old is hoping that he can delete his name off the humiliating and costly registry because he…

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WAR Family Foundation Declares it is Time to Pivot as a Matter of Fundamental Fairness

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Source: womenagainstregistry.org 8/18/21 Pivot from annihilation to reasonable accountability and justice for all ARNOLD, MO, UNITED STATES, August 18, 2021 /EINPresswire.com/ — Families are living at the little ‘red dots’ seen on the map. Each dot represents one of the 917,000 men, women or children adjudicated for any one of a vast number of offenses. Those dots also represent almost three million wives, mothers, sisters, girlfriends, brothers, fathers, grandparents and so on. Our challenge to all who have ever made a mistake they regret deeply is to join us in…

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NH: Federal Bureau Of Prisons’ Misclassification Of Inmate Leads To Compassionate Release

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Source: forbes.com 8/17/21 Joshua Fields (District of New Hampshire, Case No. 14-cr-074-LM) had a troubled life. His substance abuse which started at age 9 was nothing more than a path to mental health issues and brushes with the criminal justice system. After pleading guilty to charges of being a felon in possession of a weapon, and mounting up a few prior criminal offenses, Fields pled guilty and was sentenced to 180 months in prison (later reduced to 120 months under a revised law). When he was sentenced in 2014, it…

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IN: Divided 7th Circuit reverses order to remove sex offender names for ‘right to travel’ violation but remands equal-protection claim

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Source: theindianalawyer.com 8/17/21 A split en banc 7th Circuit Court of Appeals has reversed a decision from an original three-judge panel that ordered the removal of six names from the Indiana sex offender registry, finding that the state’s sex offender registration law doesn’t discriminate based on residency. However, the case was remanded for further consideration of an equal-protection claim. Judge Amy St. Eve — a member of the original panel who dissented from the January ruling — wrote for the en banc majority Monday in Brian Hope, et al. v.…

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Want to find more workers? Make it easier to hire people with criminal records.

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Source: washingtonpost.com 8/17/21 The U.S. economy seems poised for revival, but “help wanted” signs that keep popping up in windows across the country tell a different story. With millions of positions going unfilled each month, it’s clear that our recovery won’t work unless it works for everyone. And yet for decades, an entire population of our labor force has been overlooked and undermined: the 77 million Americans with a criminal record. Because of stigma and misguided laws from the “tough-on-crime” era, job seekers with criminal records — no matter how old the…

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ACLU Attorney Miriam Aukerman to Speak at ACSOL Conference on September 17

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ACLU attorney Miriam Aukerman will discuss her many successes challenging sex offender laws in Michigan at the ACSOL conference on Friday, September 17, at 12:30 p.m. (Pacific).  After her presentation, attorney Aukerman will be available for questions from conference attendees. Sign up today! “Attorney Aukerman has done what many other attorneys have been unable to do,” stated ACSOL Executive Director Janice Bellucci.  “That is, she has persuaded courts that the requirement to register is punishment and therefore new sex offender laws cannot be applied retroactively.” Litigation in one case, Does…

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FL: Police Arrest Teen Accused of Helping GOP Strategist’s Underage Sex Trafficking

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Source: thedailybeast.com 8/14/21 Shortly after arresting GOP strategist Anton Lazzaro for underage sex trafficking, police say they’ve caught up with his 19-year-old associate, who now faces the same charges. Jose Pagliery Political Investigations Reporter Law enforcement in Florida has arrested Gisela Castro Medina, a 19-year-old accused of helping a wealthy, young Republican strategist in Minnesota prey on girls and recruit them for paid sex. She faces the same criminal charges as her alleged pal, GOP operative Anton Lazzaro: sex trafficking of a minor, attempt to commit sex trafficking, and obstruction…

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CO: Colorado Ped Patrol chases internet child predators along the Front Range as an audience watches online

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Source: denverpost.com 8/11/21 Local police discourage the vigilante stings as they worry about public safety Andy Cross, The Denver Post By Noelle Phillips | [email protected] | The Denver Post PUBLISHED: August 11, 2021 at 6:00 a.m. | UPDATED: August 11, 2021 at 9:09 a.m. Tommy Fellows hands shook as he looked at the text message from a man who said he wanted to meet a teenage girl for sex. “What are u going to wear for daddy when I pick u up?” the message said. Fellows handed the phone back…

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The New “Crime Wave” Panic and the Long Shadow of John Walsh

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Source: newrepublic.com 8/13/21 We are still living in the world that Walsh, and “America’s Most Wanted,” helped build: a paranoid populace that believes crime is everywhere and can only be solved through relentless policing. Neilson Barnard/Getty Images John and Revé Walsh’s lives changed on July 27, 1981, when Revé took her six-year-old son, Adam, to the Sears department store in a mall in Hollywood, Florida. Adam had asked to visit the toy department while his mother browsed the lighting and home furnishings section just a few aisles away. As Revé…

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TX: Former Staffers Condemn Cruel Treatment of Inmates at a Texan Prison for Sex Offenders

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Source: reason.com 8/12/21 The men must keep masturbation diaries, wear ankle monitors, and even use penile circumference gauges. Lenore Skenazy For many men serving time for committing sex offenses in Texas, their prison term never really ends—even if they complete their sentence. That’s because they’re required to enter a live-in mental health facility before returning to society. That facility—in Littlefield, Texas—is actually a former maximum security prison in the middle of a dirt field. “It comes as a surprise,” says Mary Sue Molnar, founder of Texas Voices for Reason and…

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Andrew Cuomo and the Myth of the Evil Perpetrator: Governor Cuomo’s recent scandal illustrates a myth about sexual abuse

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Source: psychologytoday.com 8/11/21 Key points Prior to the reports of sexual abuse, Governor Cuomo was a popular and trusted public figure. The Myth of the Evil Perpetrator suggests that we are psychologically biased to think of sexual abusers as only archetypes of evil. In reality, even trusted figures are capable of sexual abuse (and often abuse from these individuals is even more prolific). We must be cognizant of our bias against finding “good” people culpable for sexual abuse, and understand how this bias can affect victims. “To cheapen or ridicule…

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Fear in the Heartland

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Source: slate.com 8/9/21 How the case of the kidnapped paperboys accelerated the “stranger danger” panic of the 1980s. By Paul M. Renfro In the early morning hours of Sunday, Sept. 5, 1982, 12-year-old Johnny Gosch vanished while delivering copies of the Des Moines Register. Two years later, 13-year-old paperboy Eugene Wade Martin disappeared under virtually identical circumstances on the south side of Des Moines. These cases terrified residents of Des Moines and Iowa, many of whom believed that the Midwest—a “safe,” and implicitly white, place—ought to be immune from “this…

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New Bureau of Justice Statistics Study: 9:10 sexual assault victimizations were committed by someone the victim knew

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Sources: Floridaactioncommittee.org 8/10/21 bjs.ojp.gov A new study put out by the Federal Bureau of Justice Statistics, the United States’ primary source for criminal justice statistics, supports that notion that more than 9 out of 10 sexual assaults are committed by someone known to the victim. The study aggregates data from law enforcement in 20 states, as reported to the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) in 2019. Contrary to “stranger danger”, the myth that is the basis for most sex offender registration schemes, the study finds that the overwhelming majority of…

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TX: Family of Texas teacher suing police after sting operation

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Source: floridaactioncommittee.org 8/10/21 The family of a Texas teacher are suing a local police department, claiming that a detective drove him to suicide by unjustly arresting him as part of a sting operation. A 39-year-old junior high school teacher from Conroe, Texas, poisoned himself to death with carbon monoxide just days after being released from the Montgomery County jail in August 2019. At the time of his death, Peterson was facing a charge of online solicitation of a minor, which is a felony punishable by up to 20 years in…

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