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 MoreMore News
We 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 MoreCO: Englewood to appeal sexual offender decision
ENGLEWOOD – The City of Englewood announced on Tuesday that they plan to appeal the recent federal court decision to allow sexual offenders to be housed near schools, parks, pools and daycare centers. What started the court decision was when a registered sex offender fought the law and won after being told he couldn’t live anywhere in the City of Englewood. The ruling has potential to undermine laws in five other Colorado cities that place distance restrictions on how close some sex offenders can live to certain locations. Full Article…
Read MoreShould Child Molesters Be Castrated?
The Doctors (TV Show) discuss legislation recently filed in the state of Alabama that would require surgical castration for any child molester over the age of 21 whose victim was 12 years old or younger. Video
Read MoreCanada: Father killed with one punch after being mistaken for a pedophile
MONTREAL – The Crown wants a six-year prison sentence for a 21-year-old man who killed a Montreal father with a single punch. The victim, Iqbal Ahmed, was simply trying to bring his wayward teen daughter home but other teens attacked him, thinking he was a pedophile. A judge will decide Francis Belanger’s fate in December following sentencing hearings that ended this week. Full Article
Read MoreVA: Sex Offender Fears Force Church to Close Homeless Shelter
A Virginia church will close its homeless shelter this fall due to fears that the site was housing sex offenders. “This was a rough decision for us because we looked at the overflow shelters as an extension of our ministry,” Reverend Tyrone Nelson, who pastors Sixth Mount Zion Baptist Church, told WTVR News. Nelson added that it appeared that sex offenders were not only spending the night at the church but that they were “actually using our address. They were using the shelter and probably had been using the shelter on…
Read MoreMI: ACLU – Day care bills place ‘nearly impossible burden’ on sex offenders, police
LANSING, MI — Senate-approved legislation that would prohibit registered sex offenders from loitering near day care centers in Michigan appears to have hit a speed bump on the House side. Shelly Weisberg with the ACLU of Michigan, testifying before the House Criminal Justice Committee on Wednesday, warned that Senate Bills 76 and 77 would create “a nearly impossible burden on listed offenders and on law enforcement.” Full Article
Read MoreNew law targets sex offenders who disarm tracking devices
SACRAMENTO — Gov. Jerry Brown cracked down on sex offenders who disarm their electronic trackers while on parole, signing legislation Saturday requiring that they stay in jail once they are caught. Some counties with severely crowded jails have freed such offenders almost immediately after detaining them for tampering with the GPS devices, a Times investigation found this year. The bill Brown approved requires that the offenders be sentenced to 180 days and serve their entire parole revocation in jail. Full Article
Read MoreLouisiana is the world’s prison capital
Louisiana is the world’s prison capital. The state imprisons more of its people, per head, than any of its U.S. counterparts. First among Americans means first in the world. Louisiana’s incarceration rate is nearly five times Iran’s, 13 times China’s and 20 times Germany’s. Full Article
Read MoreCA RSOL Meeting on November 16 – Los Angeles
California RSOL will hold its next monthly meeting on Saturday November 16 at the usual location, the ACLU building at 1313 W. 8th Street in Los Angeles. The meeting will start at 10 am and cover general topics of interest, as well as specific issues pertinent at meeting time, in addition to offering invaluable opportunities to network with others affected by this issue, as well as activists and professionals. One topic already on the agenda is the expected decision on the “Godinez” case, which prohibits 290 Registrants from entering Orange County…
Read MorePavley Bill Hiking Penalties for Kiddie Porn is Law
Gov. Jerry Brown signed Senate Bill 145 by Sen. Fran Pavley on Saturday, raising the maximum penalty for the most serious child pornography offenses.The bill was sponsored by Ventura County District Attorney Greg Totten and strongly supported by the California District Attorneys Association. SB 145 received the unanimous support of both the Assembly and the Senate because it addresses problems with existing California law. Full Article
Read MoreAL: Lawmaker lobs bill to castrate sex offenders
MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) – An Alabama lawmaker is proposing a bill for the 2014 legislative session to further punish convicted child predators before they’re released from prison. The Florence Times Daily (http://bit.ly/1fuBdgI) reports Republican Rep. Steve Hurst of Munford is trying again to pass a bill requiring sex offenders over the age of 21 whose victims were 12 or younger to be surgically castrated before being released from prison. Under Hurst’s bill, the castration would be financed by the sex offender. A version of the same bill Hurst tried passing last…
Read MoreBrown vetoes bill giving sex abuse victims more time to file lawsuits
SACRAMENTO — Gov. Jerry Brown vetoed a bill that would have given some childhood sex abuse victims more time to file lawsuits, after a heated opposition campaign led by the Catholic Church that stretched from Capitol hallways to Los Angeles church pews. In an unusually detailed three-page veto message released Saturday, the Democratic governor, a former Jesuit seminarian, said the bill raised questions of equal treatment of public and private employers. Pointing to a centuries-long tradition of limiting the period when legal claims can be filed, Brown said institutions should…
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 MorePaedophiles Driven Out By ‘Pocket Parks’
Communities in the US who say their neighbourhoods have been blighted by high concentrations of registered sex offenders have found an unusual way of driving them away. The phenomenon of ‘pocket parks’, which are built on patches of waste land, is spreading across the country and forcing sex offenders to move out. Under Jessica’s Law, which is named in honour of nine-year-old Jessica Lunsford who was abducted and murdered by a convicted sex offender, anyone on the register cannot live within 2,000 feet of a park or school. Because of that,…
Read MoreOK: Sex offenders removed from registry
TAHLEQUAH — Several convicted sex offenders residing in Cherokee County have been removed from the state’s sex offender registry following a ruling from the Oklahoma Supreme Court last June. Cherokee County Sheriff’s Investigator James Brown has received letters from the state indicating two offenders of the 100-plus living here have been removed from the Department of Corrections registry, so far. Full Article
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 More