The Alliance for Constitutional Sex Offense Laws (ACSOL) is dedicated to protecting the Constitution by restoring the civil rights of registrants and their families. In order to achieve that objective, ACSOL will educate and litigate as well as support or oppose legislation. The ACSOL website and recordings are provided as a service to registrants, registrants’ families, and others for general information only. The information on the website and in the recordings are not designed to provide legal or other advice or to create an attorney-client relationship. You should not take, or refrain from taking, action based on their content. Prior results and case studies do not guarantee a similar outcome in future representations. ACSOL accepts no responsibility for any loss or damages that may result from accessing or reliance on content on the ACSOL website and recordings and disclaim, to the fullest extent permitted by applicable law, any and all liability with respect to acts or omissions made by registrants, registrants’ families and others on the basis of content on the ACSOL website.
Important News / Announcements
General News Feed
SC: 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...
TX: 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...
ACSOL 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...
FL: ‘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...
![LGBT People on Sex Offender Registries: Results from a National Survey [5/10/22 Webinar]](https://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/WI-video-poster-S-test.jpg)
LGBT 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...
UK: 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...
Restorative 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...
Wayne 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...
CA: 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...
FL: 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,...
ACSOL 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...
OR: 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
General Comments Apr 2022
Comments that are not specific to a certain post should go here, for the month of Apr 2022. Contributions should relate to the cause and goals of this organization and please, keep it courteous and civil. This section is not intended for posting links to news articles without additional relevant comment.
Stranger 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...
CA: 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...
Hawley’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...
Child 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...
Emily Horowitz: The hollowness of the child porn smear: Ketanji Brown Jackson has been bold and prescient
Source: nydailynews.com 3/24/22 Soon after her nomination, it was reported that as a law student in 1996, Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote a Harvard Law Review note analyzing the constitutionality of sex offense registries and that during her judicial career she did not always give the maximum sentence in child pornography cases. Unsurprisingly, she was immediately accused by Sen. Josh Hawley of “endangering our...
![FL: [1970’s Teen] convicted in 2000 of molesting Boy Scout ordered to move out of home near family pool in The Villages](https://www.villages-news.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/Rio-Grande-Family-Pool.jpg)
FL: [1970’s Teen] convicted in 2000 of molesting Boy Scout ordered to move out of home near family pool in The Villages
Source: villages-news.com 3/24/22 A [1970's teen] convicted of molesting a[nother] Boy Scout has been ordered to move out of his parents’ home located near a family pool in The Villages. [His alleged victim in the mid 1970s claimed that an older boy had molested him. Siegfried Hepp Jr who was born in 1961 took a plea deal 30 years later as he was obviously...
Experts say sex offender registries don’t work. Can they be fixed?
Source: news.yahoo.com 3/24/22 What’s happening During confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson, Republicans hammered away at her record in cases involving sex offenders. Much of that centered around misleading claims about sentences she handed out to people convicted of possessing child pornography. But GOP senators also repeatedly questioned Jackson on her views on sex offender registries, a topic she wrote about as a law student in the...