Although many of our constituents would love to see some sort of silver bullet to end public sex offender registries once and for all, realistically, this is a long-term war. It will take many more battles across many different fronts to win. Those fronts include our legal system, our legislatures, and the general public. It also includes… ourselves! EVERY battlefront is important, and EVERY soldier is needed The Legal Front We have many legal “soldiers” out there challenging various aspects of public registration, sometimes for individuals, sometimes for entire groups.…
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Senate passes amendment closing military sex offender loophole
WASHINGTON, D.C. – The U.S. Senate voted Wednesday to close a legal loophole that enables military sex offenders to evade registering with civilian law enforcement. On a 98-0 vote, Senators adopted the Military Sex Offender Reporting Act as an amendment to the Justice for Victims of Trafficking Act, which the Senate passed later Wednesday afternoon. Full Article
Read MoreLA: AL sex offender files suit challenging LA registry laws in federal court
A New Orleans man convicted in Alabama of transmitting obscene material to a minor is challenging the constitutionality of recent Louisiana sex offender registration statutes in federal court. … The suit claims two state laws illegally intend to dissuade convicted sex offenders in other states from moving to Louisiana. Full Article
Read MoreWomen Against Registry (W.A.R) Lawsuit
The WAR (Women Against Registry) Admin Team AND our Class Action Core Team are proud to announce that we will begin work this week on two law suits to be filed at the federal level this fall. That’s right – two of them! The first is on behalf of registered sex offenders and the second on behalf of families and friends of registered sex offenders. The challenges will be against SORNA and the impact to the registrant families, which has been verified and documented by researchers. Also, the public impact…
Read MoreOne Survivor’s Crusade Reveals a Plague of Errors in Nation’s Sex Offender Registries
Estimates of the number of entries with crucial mistakes run into the tens of thousands. One man—and pretty much only one man—is trying to fix them. Full Article
Read MoreSex offenders registry may put man back in prison for offence committed as child
Josh Gravens is trying to figure out how he’s going to tell his five children that he might be going to prison for a very long time. Gravens, 28, is a one-time convicted juvenile sex offender facing a possible 25 years to life sentence for a felony related to a crime he committed in his childhood, and for which he has been to prison already. The current charge is not a repeat sex offence; he just failed to correctly update his personal information with his local police department in Texas.…
Read MoreDatabase Infamia: Exit from the Sex Offender Registries
Since originating in the early-mid 1990s, sex offender registration and community notification laws have swept the country, now affecting the lives of hundreds of thousands of individuals. The laws require that individuals provide, update and at least annually verify personal identifying information, which governments make publicly available via the Internet and other means. Typically retrospective in their reach, and sweeping in their breadth, the laws can target individuals for their lifetimes, imposing multiple hardships. This symposium contribution surveys the extent to which states now afford registrants an opportunity to secure…
Read MoreChris Hansen using crowd funding to get back to catching predators
Chris Hansen is going back into the predator-catching business, but this time he’s asking his fans to help him. The veteran network news correspondent, known for the “Dateline NBC” investigative series “To Catch a Predator,” is turning to crowd funding to support a new hidden-camera operation to capture men who use the Internet to find underage sex partners. The results will become the basis for a new series, “Hansen vs. Predator.” Full Article
Read MorePunitive Effect of Retroactive Application of Sex Offender Registration Requirements
Typically, the courts find that the retroactive application of sex offender registration statutes does not violate the Ex Post Facto Clause, because such statutes are found to be nonpunitive. See, e.g., Smith v. Doe, 538 U.S. 84 (2003). Recently, however, the Supreme Judicial Court of Maine held that particular amended provisions of the Maine Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act (“SORNA”), as applied to Doe, the registrant in the case before it, Doe v. Anderson, 2015 ME 3, 2015 WL 149030 (not yet released for publication), were punitive and that…
Read MoreAnother (incredibly trivialized) attack on Social Security
The National Journal, an elite newsmagazine that claims to be “regarded as the most influential publication in Washington,” is trumpeting a big scoop about Social Security on its homepage. “Social Security Doles Out More Than $500,000 to Sexual Predators,” the Journal reports. Since the National Journal also claims to be “fiercely honest and scrupulously non-partisan,” this sounds like something worth looking into. Full Article Related http://oig.ssa.gov/sites/default/files/audit/full/pdf/A-06-14-14087.pdf Social Security Doles Out More Than $500,000 to Sexual Predators
Read MoreGenetics can make people more likely to commit sex offenses, study says (UK)
London (CNN) A new study has concluded that genetics as well as environment can influence the likelihood that a person will become a sexual offender. Full Article | Study [html] [pdf]
Read MoreGovernment Officials Damaging a Person’s Reputation Overseas
This is happening more and more; U.S. government officials are attacking registered citizens who live overseas or who are going on vacations overseas. They are doing this by notifying the other countries to the fact that registrants are in or traveling to their country and that our government is implying, that because a person is a registered citizen, that they are coming into or are living in the other country for the expressed purpose of committing additional criminal acts. So the question arises, do they notify other countries every time…
Read MoreGeneral Comments April 2015
Comments that are not specific to a certain post should go here, for the month of April 2015. Contributions should relate to the cause and goals of this organization and please, keep it courteous and civil.
Read MoreSex Offender Brunch!
When ____ ____ was 12, he was locked up for three and a half years for touching his sister’s vagina. Upon his release, ____ was added to the Texas Sex Offender Registry, a publicly searchable database that identifies him as the perpetrator of a sex crime and tracks where he lives. He was ostracized in high school, nearly chased out of college, and as an adult, has found it difficult to find work or lead a normal life. Full Article Related Lox, bagels, juice and sex offenders: Why I invited…
Read MoreHigh court orders review of sex offender GPS monitoring
WASHINGTON — State programs that use GPS systems to monitor sex offenders could eventually be jeopardized based on a preliminary Supreme Court ruling Monday. The justices gave a North Carolina sex offender another chance to prove in state court that being forced to wear a GPS monitoring bracelet for life could be unconstitutional. Full Article Related Los Angeles Times
Read MoreStop the sex-offender registry panic: “A lot of those dots on the map would never hurt your kids”
Lenore Skenazy came to fame for letting her 9-year-old son ride the New York subway home by himself. Or rather, she came to fame by letting him ride the subway home alone and then writing about it for the New York Sun. Recently, Skenazy has taken on a new, albeit related, cause: reform of the sex offender registry. Clearly, this lady is not afraid of controversy. On Sunday, she held a “Sex Offender Brunch” at her house to introduce “her friends in the press to her friends on the Registry.”…
Read MoreLox, bagels, juice and sex offenders: Why I invited two pariahs into my home
Sunday morning at 10 found me slicing the tomatoes and arranging the cheese platter. My husband was setting up the chairs. At 11, the doorbell rang. And so began my very first sex offender brunch. Full Article Lenore Skenazy is the author of the web blog Free-Range Kids. She was a speaker at the 2014 RSOL Conference in Dallas. My Interview in Salon about Sex Offenders & Child Safety on her blog.
Read MoreFrom Sexting to Sex Offender
Florida A&M University – This article explores the cultural phenomenon of sexting; the taking and sending of nude, digital pictures generally through the use of a cellphone; among teenagers and the possible legal consequences. It provides a history of the art of sexting, the origin of the Federal and Florida sex offenders registries and a case study of two Florida teenagers charged with creating and intent to distribute child pornography. Finally, it reviews previous amendments to child pornography laws in regards to teenage sexting and recommends a way forward for…
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