Category: General News

By Norm Pattis – I’ve been practicing law just long enough to know that I will never make sense of it all. It’s not that I am stupid, although my shortcomings are certainly an issue. The larger truth is that the law is irrational. It bumps, grinds and gyrates in ways that simply make no sense. This is especially true in criminal cases alleging sexual misconduct. Suppose a man is accused of rape. He is, of course, presumed innocent, but the details of his arrest are made public. In the eyes of…

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The technological phenomenon of “sexting” has seen such a dramatic increase in popularity that it is now defined in the Merriam Webster Dictionary: “the sending of sexually explicit messages or images by cell phone.”  Moreover, if you ask a high school student to describe sexting, you may be surprised to hear it is a social norm.  In a 2009 survey conducted by the National Campaign to Prevent Teen & Unplanned Pregnancy, twenty percent of teens said they had sexted.  That number has since increased to over twenty-five percent.  What these students and many others do…

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Guest Columnist Jill Levenson of Lynn University criticizes the reliance of the Supreme Court and others on inaccurate sex offender data…    In the US Supreme Court’s recent decision upholding sex offender registration requirements (SORNA) under the Adam Walsh Act [PDF], the Court’s opinion [PDF] included the following statement: “SORNA’s general changes were designed to make more uniform what had remained “a patchwork of federal and 50 individual state registration systems … with loopholes and deficiencies” that had resulted in an estimated 100,000 sex offenders essentially disappearing off law enforcement’s radar. Full Article  

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Progressives in America are rightly concerned about increasing signs of fascism in this country, such as a so-called war on terrorism thatallows massive invasion of privacy and wholesale imprisonment without charge; such as state manufacture of propaganda for its ownpeople; such as the assertion that anyone who challenges government policies on these matters is a traitor; such as a “great leader” who puts himself clearly above and outside the law. They ought to be concerned also about another sign of the demise of American justice and human decency: scapegoating. One…

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WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court says prosecutors can use a person’s silence against them if it comes before he’s told of his right to remain silent. The 5-4 ruling comes in the case of ____ ____, who was convicted of a 1992 murder. During police questioning, and before he was arrested or read his Miranda rights, Salinas answered some questions but did not answer when asked if a shotgun he had access to would match up with the murder weapon. Full Article

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“As a crime of omission, each failure to report ordinary life events is an opportunity for registrants to commit a new felony.” Over the last two decades, registration for sexual offenders in the US has become the law of the land. It seems intuitive that tracking known sexual offenders should reduce sexual abuse, but with data indicating that sexual offense recidivism is much lower than widely believed and as many as 95% of arrests for sexual abuse are first time offenders, there are legitimate controversies about the sex offender registry,…

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At least 300,000 cases of child sex abuse are reported in the U.S. each year — and the real number of children who are molested is likely far higher. But while laws get tougher all the time, very little is known about how to treat sex offenders in order to prevent these crimes. Dr. Renee Sorrentino is medical director of the Institute for Sexual Wellness in Massachusetts and a clinical instructor in psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. TIME spoke with her about the research on sex-offender treatment and her work…

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When Amanda Moore concluded that her daughter’s killer was a drug addict wrongly paroled and wrongly allowed to remain free, she did like many parents before her: she proposed legislation to spare others the same fate. She named it for her child: Amelia’s Law. For the past two decades, parents who’ve lost children in horrible ways have tried to memorialize them in law, and Americans usually have honored their wishes. Dozens of state and federal statutes are named for children who died too soon: Megan’s Law and Jessica’s Law, the…

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“So, how are the pedophiles doing?” As a group psychotherapist for convicted sex offenders on parole and probation who also operates a private practice for queer people, I am bombarded with comments and questions from friends and family: “Aren’t you scared?” “I could never do that.” “What’s it like to talk to all those child molesters?” At first I was surprised to hear some of my most educated, liberal friends ask questions that were, to me, biased and misinformed. I had assumed that, as queers and allies, my friends would have a…

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The sexual victimization of children is a subject so horrifying that it’s difficult even to address. As a society, we approach it from two extremes. Most of the time we avoid it. When forced to confront it, we run to the opposite extreme, flying into a rage, voices full of fury. The sexual victimization of children is a subject so horrifying that it’s difficult even to address. As a society, we approach it from two extremes. Most of the time we avoid it. When forced to confront it, we run…

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