The past several weeks I have been researching the sex offender laws applicable for sex offenders living in Rhode Island and in South Carolina. While not surprising, the laws are anything but rational and they are certainly not empirically based. This goes across the board, not merely in Rhode Island or South Carolina but at both the state and federal levels. The Adam Walsh Act of 2006 requires sex offenders to be classified in one of three tiers of supervision. Tier 1 sex offenders have lighter restrictions placed upon them…
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Transmitting Child Porn Case Overturned
Every era in human history has its version of a witch hunt. In the late 1600’s, colonial Massachusetts put many people to death via hanging, or burning at the stake, because these folks “confessed” to being witches. In my view, part of what qualifies any government activity as a “witch hunt” involves examining the large gap between the punishment and the crime. Burning at the stake for being a witch is but one example. Twenty years in prison for possessing child pornography, that’s today’s example. Yes, our government would probably…
Read More10-Year-Old Boy Required to Register as a Sex Offender
Two years ago, the U.S. Department of justice prosecuted a 10-year-old boy for aggravated sexual assault on five boys, ages 5-7. The assaults happened on an Army base in Arizona, which is why the DOJ was involved. After winning a delinquency judgment (the equivalent of guilty in juvenile court), the boy was sentenced to five years probation and required to participate in mandatory psychological treatment. He must also register as a sex offender for the rest of his life. Full Article
Read MoreCA RSOL Meeting in Fresno – November 9
On November 9, 2013, Attorney Janice Bellucci with California Reform Sex Offender Laws (www.californiarsol.org) will be in Fresno to talk about her role in helping offenders who must register, to understand they have a civil rights attorney to help them. Janice has filed lawsuits against California Cities, that restrict sex offenders from going into public buildings or other public areas. She has successfully sued and won to have these ordinances repealed. Another guest is Clare Ann Ruth Heffelbower from Fresno Pacific University. She is the Director of the COSA program…
Read MoreManufacturing Fear: Halloween Laws for Sex Offenders
In North Carolina, a sheriff tells parents to check the online sex offender registry before allowing children to trick-or-treat. In Montana, a town offers a “trunk-or-treat” event where kids can get Halloween candy from trunks of cars in a parking lot to avoid potential danger. In New York, “Operation Halloween: Zero Tolerance” prohibits sex offenders from wearing masks or costumes or answering their doors on Halloween, and, as a parole source says, “There is certainly nothing more frightening than the thought of one of these men opening their door to…
Read MoreWe Register Cars, Don’t We?
When you get a new appliance, do you take time to fill out the little card and register your toaster, coffee maker or iron? Of course you do, if you want the company to keep track of it and fix it in the event of a breakdown. We’re pretty good in America about registering things. We register our preferences for baby shower or wedding gifts to avoid duplications. Voting registries make sure only those eligible can cast a ballot. We register our motorcycles, boats and cars so we — and…
Read MoreHow Many More Children Will Die?
PRESS RELEASE: Women Against Registry (W.A.R.), a group of mothers, sisters, wives and other loved ones of those on the sex offender registry, are asking how many, how many more of our young have to feel so distraught and view their future as so hopeless that they take their lives? Will it take your son or daughter getting ensnared before you demand change before legislators and the Justice Department are made to understand this is too much? On October 2, 2013 Christian Adamek, a 15-year-old from Huntsville, AL, committed suicide after…
Read MoreProsecution Is Not the Way to Save a 10-Year-Old Child
When children under 12 engage in exploitative sexual behavior, it is often a result of abuse or exposure to sex acts that they themselves have experienced. These children need mental health treatment and family interventions, not probation and blacklists. Why then is the U.S. government prosecuting a young boy in federal court for behavior he engaged in when he was just 10 years old? The child, one of the youngest defendants ever pursued by the U.S. Department of Justice, is accused of engaging in sex acts with other young boys on a U.S.…
Read MorePayment Providers And Google Will Kill The Mug-Shot Extortion Industry Faster Than Lawmakers Can
‘A picture lasts forever’ is likely not the thought going through a person’s head when he or she is being booked at the clink (well, unless that person is Lindsay Lohan). Yet mugshots have over the last few years taken on an Internet permanence thanks to a host of sites that use liberal public records laws to get their hands on mugshots and make them part of people’s Google footprints. The industry first started getting scrutiny two years ago when Wired highlighted a Florida mugshot site that made its money…
Read More2007: How Can You Distinguish a Budding Pedophile From a Kid With Real Boundary Problems?
From 2007: In the early 1980s, a therapist named Robert Longo was treating adolescent boys who had committed sex offenses. Their offenses ranged from fondling girls a few years younger than they were to outright rape of young children. As part of their treatment, the boys had to keep journals — which Longo read — in which they detailed their sexual fantasies and logged how frequently they masturbated to those fantasies. They created “relapse-prevention plans,” based on the idea that sex-offending is like an addiction and that teenagers need to…
Read MoreFederal Youth Case on Trial
Two years ago federal prosecutors won a delinquency finding against a boy accused of engaging in sex acts when he was 10 years old with other young boys on an Army base in Arizona—one of the youngest defendants ever pursued by the U.S. Justice Department. The case, now being reviewed by the Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals, could open a new front in a long-running debate about how to handle juvenile sex offenders, whose cases generally have been tried in state, not federal, courts. The records are sealed because…
Read MoreThe Justice Department Prosecuted A 10-Year-Old As A ‘Sex Offender’
A federal appeals court is getting ready to hear the case of a boy who was prosecuted for engaging in sex acts with other boys when he was just 10 years old, The Wall Street Journal reports. Lawyers for the unnamed boy are appealing a court’s ruling that found him “delinquent” — the juvenile equivalent of guilty — for having sex with other young boys on an Arizona Army base. Full Article
Read MoreSex offenders congregate to reform laws they consider too harsh
American Bar Association Journal – More than 700,000 people are now registered sex offenders, and some among that group are fighting to change or overturn laws that they consider too harsh. More than 100 people attended a conference held in Los Angeles a few weeks ago to advocate for reform, the New York Times reports. Those attending the meeting—and other conferences like it—claim the sex offender laws are unconstitutional and ineffective. In California, for example, sex offenders can’t live within 2,000 feet of a school, park or playground. In the state’s Orange…
Read MoreSexual assault not rare among teens. Neither is feeling responsible.
Nearly 1 in 10 young Americans between ages 14 and 21 acknowledges having perpetrated an act of sexual violence at least once, and 4% of a nationally representative sample of American kids reported attempting or completing rape, a new study finds. While those most likely to report initiating unwanted sexual contact in their early to mid-teens were boys, girls were among the perpetrators as the age of respondents increased. Latino and African American youths, and those from low-income families, were less likely to have coerced another person to engage in…
Read MoreMugged by a Mug Shot Online
In March last year, a college freshman named ____ ____ was riding in a van filled with friends from Austin, Tex., to a spring-break rental house in Gulf Shores, Ala. As they neared their destination, the police pulled the van over, citing a faulty taillight. When an officer asked if he could search the vehicle, the driver — a fraternity brother of Mr. ____ who quickly regretted his decision — said yes. Six Ecstasy pills were found in Mr. ____’s knapsack, and he was handcuffed and placed under arrest. Mr. ____ later agreed…
Read MoreNY: Penile stimulation test unnecessary [UPDATED with decision]
NEW YORK (AP) — Subjecting a sex offender who is no longer imprisoned to “extraordinarily invasive” penile stimulation testing risks violating the premise that even convicts retain their humanity, a federal appeals court said Thursday. The ruling by the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan frees ____ ____ of a requirement that he submit to penile plethysmography, a test in which a man’s erectile responses are measured as he is shown sexually stimulating images. Full Article Also: http://www.therepublic.com/view/story/35a2e4f39f9147dfa18316e29264e7af/US–Sex-Offender-Stimulation-Test Court Decision (US Court of Appeals – Second Circuit) Commentary
Read MoreNo More Victims
Pennie Farrell, L.C.S.W., Ph.D., says, “80% of sex offenders who successfully complete a certified treatment program never commit another sex crime.” In this video, Dr. Farrell shares insights from her 21 plus years experience treating sex offenders. She explains what she is trying to accomplish with her website,http://www.SexOffenderInformationStat…, and she compares recidivism rates between treated sex offenders and other non-sex crime offenders. Other questions she explores are, Why are some sex offenders not treatable? Why do some fail while others succeed? What are the changes sex offenders go through in…
Read MoreIs It ‘Very Offensive’ for Sex Offenders to Demand Just and Sensible Laws?
The New York Times notes a recent conference in Los Angeles aimed at calling attention to the excesses and injustices of laws aimed at sex offenders. The Times reports that the 100 or so attendees—sex offenders plus their girlfriends, wives, and mothers—”hope to convince judges, lawmakers and the public that indiscriminate laws aimed at all sex offenders are unconstitutional and ineffective.” Illustrating the mentality they are fighting, Nina Salarno-Ashford, a lawyer with Crime Victims United, tells the Times. [quote cite=”Nina Salarno-Ashford”]I find it very offensive that registered sex offenders are trying to defeat…
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