For over a decade, Sonrise Church’s Light My Way program has been ministering to society’s most downtrodden people. Ex-cons, prostitutes, meth addicts, the impoverished, and the homeless are all welcome at the church’s modern nine-acre campus. The scope of the campus facilities is impressive, and includes a food bank, a community garden, a 90-day shelter for the homeless during winter months, and a food truck designed to bring hot meals to those in need.
What really makes Light My Way’s ministry unusual, though, is its controversial decision to embrace registered sex offenders into its fold. This takes no small amount of open-mindedness (many say foolhardiness) as well as a rather significant amount of logistical wrangling. Indeed, Light My Way’s very existence seems at first blush to fly in the face of the laws that govern those whose names are listed in the national sex offender registry. Full Article
This is the very 1st article that I have seen that is both accurate and concise.
A very well written and informative article.
“To question the efficacy of laws that punish sex offenders is still political suicide.
But! it wouldn’t be detrimental to anyone to insist that the public has a right to updated specifics related to the actual danger based on the year of the offense, likelihood of a re offence and etc as required by law to be implemented diligently as a matter of public safety.
As far as I’m concerned this should be the first issue that RSOL should address.
It’s the law (at least in California), it makes sense and it should be implemented for the common good.
The Sonrise Church in Hillsboro, Oregon, is to be commended for walking the walking as well as talking the talk. Too many churches declare that every one is a child of God and that they believe in redemption but don’t practice it. Sonrise Church does in a big way. I will write a letter of thanks to this church and include with it a financial donation so that they continue their good work. I hope you will consider doing so as well.
“Our current model, with its public registries and ineffective blanket restrictions, offers us something we value even more highly: a bogeyman.”
You know, everyone wants to analyse the worst of the worst and find out what made them do it, it’s some kind of primal need we have. It’s about time we start to fund studies that answer why societies need to create a bogeyman and keep the myth going. It happens over and over again and has lead to the worst civil rights violations wars abuses in history. Maybe the bogeyman myths helped us survive in the caves, when the stranger “not of the clan” was actually dangerous, but it a non adaptive harmful trait in a civilized society.
The article stated, “One woman refused to acknowledge that it was a church at all. “Churches are where Jesus wanted us to go to find goodness, not evil,” she insisted firmly. “If Jesus was alive today, he’d come and throw all of those perverts out of his House.” I am sorry for this woman, if she calls herself a Christian, because she needs to read her Bible. According Jesus in Matthew, Chapter 25, verses 45-46 would of done totally opposite than her and He has this warning for her 45 “Then He will answer them, saying, ‘Assuredly, I say to you, inasmuch as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to Me.’ 46 And these will go away into everlasting punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.” I hope she and others like her understands this and repent, because she has one foot in Hell and don’t even know it.
Like Janice, I will be sending an thank you note and a offering. Here is their address: Sonrise Church 6701 Northeast Campus Way Hillsboro, Oregon 97124
The church is a hospital for sinners, not a sanctuary for saints. Wonder if that judgmental woman can walk on water, or if she’s been a “Christian” so long she has lost the ability to sin… Oh, wait, I think she’s sinned in her judgments and hypocrisy!
The studies cited in this article are precisely what needs to be presented in any legal briefs challenging the registry and related laws. It’s indisputable proof that these laws are ineffective and actually counter productive and do in fact infringe on our liberties and our rights to privacy and is unreasonable arbitrary oppressive official action. It’s indisputable if presented properly to the court.
Churches are cults run by sociopaths with savior complexes at worse and simple greedy charlatans at best. Legal money laundering is all these organizations are good for.
Except the Catholic church which is a great place for actual sex offenders to hide.
The following just jumps out and says use me.
According to a study by Penn State’s Journal of Law and International Affairs from 2013, the kind of crimes we fear most when we hear that a sex offender has moved into our neighborhood—those that involve rape, extreme violence, and murder—“[account] for less than three percent of sexual offenses perpetrated the United States.” And many of those violent offenders are unaffected by Megan’s Law and the Adam Wash Act, because they may never be released from prison.
There have been many studies over the past two decades that look at the effect of Megan’s Law and the Adam Walsh Act and how they affect both offender recidivism and community safety, including the study by Penn State noted above, as well as studies by the University of Chicago Journal of Law and Economics, the Yale Law Journal, and the federal government’s National Criminal Justice Reference Service. All of these studies reached the same conclusions: Our current laws have no demonstrable effect on reducing the number of sex crimes, the number of sex crime victims, or offender recidivism. If anything, say the studies, our current laws might actually be making our communities less safe.
These paragraphs references and studies along with the CAsomb own report that the registry is useless and counter productive in its present form is indisputable facts that can’t be ignored by the courts if presented properly.
Man I love this entire article. It’s so well written and precise.
As I continue to stay abreast of current news around the country, I am pleased to find so many articles being written about the plight of registered citizens and a debate about the need to change these laws which are not only unconstitutionally punitive, but useless in protecting children. Although many who post comments are airing their frustrations, which is most certainy understood, all should remember that progress sometimes comes in little steps, and although it may not directly affect us in a positive (selfish) way, any discussion which addresses our plight…is to be commended. I too would like more changes to come tomorrow but alas, I am an idealist which is somewhere between and eternal optimist and a realist. Mostly, I am grateful that we have our CRSOL website in California (thank you Janice and everyone!), where I can visit, learn, be heard, and find hope that relief may be on the way some day. Try and stay positive because the baggage we carry can impede on our ability to find any sense of happiness in our lives.
A wonderful article. I will have to send a donation as well.
What the disillusioned and mislead populace have been conditioned to seek is predictability. Predictability=Safety in their minds. It’s not just actuarial tables for insurance or the statistical modeling for the Static-99R and other assessments. Everything (marketing, advertising, education, life choices, insurance, purchasing, reproduction, etc) we do is being guided by a form of statistical analysis at some level. We are so used to the predictability that it has become the cornerstone of our lives.
The people that push the registries are aware of the truth but must categorically deny the truth, because it is political suicide and their power is based on a house of cards. The public believes because they have been indoctrinated all of their lives.
I state Predictability=Safety because if everything can be predicted (beyond the 80/20 rule) to exceed the 95 percentile, then the environment is safe. Predictability requires almost perfect knowledge. Perfect knowledge requires as much information as possible to develop and live the model. Perfect information comes from registries of all sorts, collected data across all aspects of life, etc. Ergo, if everything is known, then there is perfect safety as there isn’t significant variability/error.
If everything is known, then my children are safe, my wife is safe, my home is safe.
Such predictability breeds contempt, entitlement and ultimately stagnation and death.
Ideas are not challenged, feelings are more important than facts, and critical thinking is replaced by group think.
disgusted in VA writes “I state Predictability=Safety because if everything can be predicted (beyond the 80/20 rule) to exceed the 95 percentile, then the environment is safe. Predictability requires almost ”
I think the tough on crime movement is reaching new lows with some that are claiming perfect knowledge and smokescreening for their political careers and now other lucrative ends like building stadiums in Carson, California when the site is a former toxic waste dump, where I have noticed the media usually doesn’t use the term ‘toxic waste dump’ when describing the site of the proposed Carson stadium and instead describes it as a former garbage dump or a former landfill, no mention of toxic oil industry waste at all. Possibly some other developments were built on former waste dumps in Carson, and thats some of the Carson City councils reasoning that its fine to build a stadium on a former toxic waste site. Carson City Councilman Al Robles buys into the slippery slope that because of the EPA allowed some homes to be built over a landfill in Carson that its ok to build a stadium on the toxic waste site. But, there is a specific stench on the site of the proposed stadium, which Robles is trying to pawn off on some plant nursery nearby. I don’t know if there is also a stench at the homes built on the landfill. Robles attitude seems to be that at this point they don’t need any more EPA studies or involvement since the locals like him know how best to deal with deciding where to build NFL Football stadiums, on former toxic oil-waste dumpsites in this case.
By completely disregarding the actual statistics on re-offense, 1.8%, and using the reasoning that they want these draconian laws because its just common sense they are needed, then their “perfect knowledge” is more like disinformation.
anonymously – you are correct. I was incomplete in my posting. In the final analysis, the politicians use disinformation to dupe the masses.