Source: liverpoolecho.co.uk 4/12/22 A man who once complained about living next door to a convicted paedophile has been jailed – for being a paedophile. Darren ____, 53, once complained to his local newspaper that he was furious his housing association didn’t tell him his neighbour was a sex offender. But he is now behind bars for subjecting a child to a series of sordid sexual abuse from the age of seven until she was around 11. The abuse ranged from kissing and touching the child to forcing her to perform…
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Making Headlines: The criminal legal system is massively punitive toward people who commit sex offenses
Source: inquest.org 4/8/22 The death threats started almost immediately. On April 3, 2020, The New York Post published the story of our case under an impossibly salacious headline: “Child rapist ordered released to keep him safe from coronavirus.” The article was no better, describing the underlying crime in vivid detail while underplaying how its subject’s multiple, severe medical issues made him vulnerable to COVID, and that the sentence being served was not actually for the crime itself, but rather for so-called “technical” violations of probation. The Post had apparently noticed…
Read MoreSC: Former deputy, victims advocate arrested, faces registrant embezzlement charges
Source: wpde.com 4/11/22 CLARENDON COUNTY, S.C. (WACH) — On Friday, a former Clarendon County deputy and victims advocate was arrested by South Carolina Law Enforcement Division agents. Sabrina Mellerson, 34, has been arrested and faces charges of misconduct in office and embezzlement. SLED conducted the investigation at the request of Clarendon County Sheriff Tim Baxley. According to reports, Mellerson is accused of taking money from sex offender registrants in her role as a deputy at the Clarendon County Sheriff’s Office. On April 7, Mellerson confessed to SLED Agents that she…
Read MoreTX: Protestors make alarming allegations about statewide sex offender treatment program in Littlefield
Source: everythinglubbock.com 4/11/22 LITTLEFIELD, Texas – Protestors gathered in front of the Civil Commitment Facility in Littlefield on Saturday morning to shine a light on the injustices they said are happening within the barbed-wire fences of the former prison. Texas created the Civil Commitment Program in 1999; like 20 other states, this kind of program allows state agencies to mandate sex offenders, who have already served their time in prison, to partake in treatment programs intended to mitigate possible reoffending in the future. In 2015, Governor Abbott reformed the program…
Read MoreACSOL Leaders to Educate Judges, DA’s and Others in San Diego Conference
Source: ACSOL Several ACSOL leaders will educate judges, district attorneys, public defenders, law enforcement and mental health professionals this week at the annual conference of the Forensic Mental Health Professionals. The conference will be held on April 13 through April 15 in San Diego. ACSOL leaders participating in the conference include Vice President Catherine Carpenter who will make a presentation regarding registrants and the challenges they face. In addition, ACSOL board members Jay Rice and Alex Gittinger will make a formal poster presentation regarding the impact of current laws and…
Read MoreFL: ‘Groomer’ debate inflames GOP fight over Florida law
Source: thehill.com 4/8/22 “Groomer” is the new favorite term being used by far-right commentators and activists to describe opponents of Florida’s Parental Rights in Education law, sparking outrage among LBGTQ advocates who say that it is a smear that feeds into a trope casting members of the community as pedophiles. The Florida bill signed into law by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis week, which opponents have decried as the “Don’t Say Gay” law, prohibits instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity from kindergarten through third grade. “Groomer” started to gain traction as…
Read MoreLGBT People on Sex Offender Registries: Results from a National Survey [5/10/22 Webinar]
Source: williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu May 10, 2022 12:30 PM – 1:30 PM Pacific Time, 3:30 PM – 4:30 PM Eastern Time Sex offense registries have operated in the United States since 1947 but have been challenged since their inception on legal, efficacy, and ethical grounds. Sex offense registries ought to be subject to close examination. LGBT people are more likely than cisgender straight people to be incarcerated due to sex offenses. In this webinar, researchers will describe results from a large national survey of people required to register on sex offender registries…
Read MoreUK: Laughing council worker goes to pub moments after dodging jail for leaking sex offender’s address to paedo hunter mob
Source: thesun.co.uk 4/9/22 A COUNCIL worker headed straight to the pub just moments after dodging jail for leaking a sex offender’s address to a paedophile hunter mob. Customer services assistant Chloe Carr, 23, was seen laughing and joking with two friends after she was fined in Hull Crown Court for sharing the confidential information. Hull City Council Worker Carr told a paedophile hunter Facebook group that the man is “bloody awful” and “disgusting” – but asked them not to reveal that she had passed on the confidential information. The group…
Read MoreRestorative Justice for Sex Offenses? A Conversation About Possibilities [4/13/22 Webinar]
Webinar Topic: Restorative Justice for Sex Offenses? A Conversation About Possibilities Featuring Author Judith Levine & Social Worker Susannah Karlin Sponsored by the St. Francis College Departments of Sociology and Criminal Justice, and Women’s & Gender Studies April 13, 2022 at 9:20 AM PST, 12:20 pm EST You may attend online Zoom Livestream or You may attend in-person at: Maroney Theater St. Francis College 180 Remsen Street Brooklyn, NY 11201 Reception to Follow You must sign up to attend. Click here to sign up and to choose Zoom or in-person. About the…
Read MoreWayne Logan: Card Carrying Sex Offenders
Source: Wayne A. Logan (Florida State University – College of Law) 3/22/22 Americans, it is commonly believed, have never been required to carry and show upon demand personal identification documents; the belief, however, is incorrect. Over time, select sub-populations have in fact been subject to such a requirement, including free-born and emancipated African-Americans until after the Civil War. This article examines the targeting of yet another disfavored sub-population: individuals convicted of sex offenses, who are required to register with government authorities. Today, roughly a dozen states require that registrants obtain…
Read MoreCA: Court Grants Contested Tiered Registry Petition
Source: ACSOL In the first known case involving a contested petition, California Placer County Superior Court granted the petition of a registrant convicted of PC 288(a) who had registered for more than 25 years. The Placer County District Attorney asked the court to deny the petition in order to significantly enhance public safety. In this case, the court ruled that the DA’s office “failed to meet their burden that the community safety would be significantly enhanced by the petitioner’s continued registration.” The court went on to explain that its decision…
Read MoreFL: Pennsylvania tourist to stay on Florida’s sex-offense registry
Source: orlandosentinel.com 4/4/22 TALLAHASSEE — A Leon circuit judge has dismissed a Pennsylvania man’s challenge to a Florida law that kept him on a sexual-offense registry after a 10-day family vacation to Disney World in 2015. Circuit Judge Angela Dempsey dismissed the case last week, in part finding that a statute of limitations had expired. The man, identified in court documents as John Doe, reported to the Orange County Sheriff’s Office when he came to Florida because he was on a Pennsylvania registry at the time as a result of…
Read MoreACSOL April 16, 2022 Meeting
Please join ACSOL Executive Director and civil rights attorney Janice Bellucci as well as ACSOL President and criminal defense attorney Chance Oberstein for our next meeting. The meeting will be held on Saturday, April 16, on Zoom beginning at 10 a.m. Pacific time, 1:00 PM Eastern, and will last at least two hours. You can use the Zoom app or call in using a Zoom phone number. There is no registration needed for this meeting. You can use the Zoom app to see Janice and Chance and choose to show…
Read MoreOR: Oregon to join most states in compensating the wrongfully convicted
Source: oregoncapitalchronicle.com 4/1/22 Wrongfully convicted Oregonians will now be eligible for financial compensation for time of false imprisonment. … The act will pay $65,000 for each year of wrongful conviction and $25,000 per year of parole and supervision and each year an individual was wrongfully put on the sex offender registry. Read the full article
Read MoreStranger Dangers: The Right’s History of Turning Child Abuse Into a Political Weapon
Source: motherjones.com 3/28/22 Josh Hawley’s attacks on Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson are part of a long, sad tradition. At some point between the ’80s and now, leaving children unattended in public became unthinkable. To let children as old as, say, 10 walk by themselves became grounds to investigate parents for neglect. As a child of the late ’90s and early 2000s, I knew latchkey kids existed, but nearly exclusively from the aging 1980s children’s paperbacks in my elementary school’s library. My friends whose parents worked too late to pick them up…
Read MoreCA: Please tell us your experience working with an America’s Job Center of California to gain employment
Source: Friends Outside of Los Angeles County Friends Outside of Los Angeles County would like to talk with persons who have a sex offense and who are working with an America’s Job Center of California (AJCC) to gain employment. The purpose is to gain information about your job-seeking experience through a 60-75 minute phone or zoom interview. All information is confidential and anonymous. Our overall purpose is to conduct research about promising practices for helping registrants obtain employment. You will be given $500 gift card for your time. Contact Arthur…
Read MoreHawley’s cynical attack on nominee may be misguided
Source: ocregister.com 3/28/22 In a 1996 Harvard Law Review article, Ketanji Brown Jackson, then a law school student, noted the “climate of fear, hatred, and revenge” in which policies dealing with sex offenders are formulated. Before Jackson’s Supreme Court confirmation hearing began this week, Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Missouri, objected to that observation, then proceeded to demonstrate its accuracy. Hawley’s misrepresentation of Jackson’s record in this area was typical of the criticism leveled at Supreme Court nominees, which often involves inflammatory, acontextual citations of a candidate’s statements and decisions. But it…
Read MoreChild sexual abuse: Why spend billions on prison, but not prevention?
Source: futurity.org 3/28/22 Download the report The United States government spent an estimated $5.4 billion last year at the state and federal level to incarcerate adults convicted of sex crimes against children under age 18, according to a new study. The study calculated annual spending on incarcerated adults convicted of sex crimes against children under age 18 in US federal and state prisons and sex offender civil commitment facilities. The findings, which appear in the journal Sexual Abuse, highlight the cost of what is considered a preventable public health problem.…
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