Nearly two decades have passed since Josh Gravens, then 12 years old, was playing with his 8-year-old sister and touched her body in an inappropriate way, landing himself on a sex offender registry. His sister forgave him long ago but Gravens still worries that the incident could force him out of his Dallas home. Concerns about sexual predators have led communities in 30 U.S. states to adopt laws limiting where registered sex offenders can live, typically keeping them away from schools, parks or other places where children congregate. Full Article…
Read MoreTag: Josh Gravens
Campaign: Keep CCA out of Dallas
Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) is trying to move into Dallas. Let’s say no! Corrections Corporation of America, or CCA, makes a huge profit off of locking up people and even entire immigrant families. Now, this deplorable company with a history of inhumane treatment and a plethora of human rights violations has set its sights on winning an 80 YEAR contract with Dallas County. Several years ago, CCA was kicked out of Dallas after repeated violence and ignorance of human suffering occurred at Dawson State Jail (nicknamed Texas’ Worst Jail).…
Read MorePeople 2015: Josh Gravens, Advocate for Outcasts
In this week’s Dallas Observer we profile 20 of the metro area’s most interesting characters, with new portraits of each from local photographer Can Turkyilmaz. As a rule, convicted sex offenders don’t get much empathy, and usually for good reason. Often, cities don’t think twice about creating laws that restrict sex offenders’ lives to the point that they become unlivable. Full Article
Read MoreIn defense of Josh Duggar’s parents (Opinion)
When I learned that, more than a decade ago, reality-TV star Josh Duggar avoided jail after his parents dealt with molestation charges via church and family contacts, it made me think about the men I interviewed for my book about our draconian sex-offender laws. Full Opinion Piece Related Tyrant’s Foe: Josh Gravens Fights Criminal Justice Policies that Hurt Children Sex offenders registry may put man back in prison for offence committed as child TX: Life On the List
Read MoreTX: North Dallas Mom Invites Sex Offenders To Tea
DALLAS (CBS 11 NEWS) – Sex offenders may be the last people you’d invite into your home. However, a North Dallas woman hosted a sex offender tea for three men on the sex offender registry. “We have to talk about this in polite society, and what’s more polite than tea?” asks Judy Safern. She also invited friends and neighbors over for the gathering and had plenty of them RSVP with an adamant NO! 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 MoreMan who went to prison as a juvenile sex offender: Lena Dunham is lucky
As so many have done recently, Josh Gravens wrote an open letter to Lena Dunham. It read, “Many children around the country did the same thing you did.” But this was not just another defense of Dunham’s childhood behavior as innocent exploration. The letter continued, “A 9-year-old in South Carolina is now on the sex offender registry for life, and he also must wear a GPS monitor everywhere he goes. In fact, many states have no minimum age to be placed on the sex offender registry,” he wrote. “I myself…
Read MoreTyrant’s Foe: Josh Gravens Fights Criminal Justice Policies that Hurt Children
When I met Josh Gravens, he was 25 years old, unemployed and living with his older sister in Dallas. He’d most recently worked at a stand that sold Christmas trees and firewood, but his paychecks often bounced, and since then he’d applied for hundreds of jobs. That was March of 2012, when Gravens and his wife and four children were getting by one day at a time. Full Article
Read MoreOp-Ed: Harsher Sex Offender Restrictions Won’t Make Anyone Safer
Steve Blow and Josh Gravens are two of my new heroes. I met them both when I went to Dallas three weeks ago to speak at the Reform Sex Offender Laws convention. Gravens is a sex offender who also spoke at the convention. I went with him to see what it’s like to register and that became a story in itself. Full Opinion Piece
Read MoreTX: Research won’t support Dallas proposal that amounts to housing ban for sex offenders
In saner times, what Josh Gravens did would be called “playing doctor” or “adolescent curiosity.” General embarrassment and a stern talking-to would have followed. And that would have been the end of it. But in this age of hysteria, the childhood misdeed will never end for Josh. And now the city of Dallas considers making it worse by declaring a great majority of the city off limits for him to live. By extension, that would mean his wife and five children, too. Full Opinion Piece From the same author: Kids are…
Read MoreI Saw a Man Get Arrested For a Sex Crime Because He Made a Scheduling Error
When I agreed to keynote the Reform Sex Offender Laws conference this week in Dallas, Texas, I didn’t expect it to hit quite so close to home. But before I arrived, I got a phone call from a soft-spoken, super-articulate young man, Joshua Gravens, who is a Soros Justice Scholar based in Dallas. His specialty is the injustice of the sex offender registry and the fact that it isn’t making kids any safer (see this study and this article). He is also a registered sex offender and invited me to…
Read MoreReport: Registry does more harm than good for teen sex offenders
(CNN) — Joshua Gravens can’t do a lot of the normal things parents do, like drop his son off at school, attend parent-teacher conferences, or take his daughter to the park, a library or anywhere else children gather. For the offense of inappropriately touching his 8-year-old sister when he was 12, Gravens, 26, has spent almost half his life as a registered sex offender. The designation subjects him to residency and zoning restrictions that dictate where he can live and spend time. It has also made him the target of harassment,…
Read MoreTX: Life On the List
A single mistake when he was 12 landed Josh Gravens on Texas’ sex offender list. He’s been paying for it ever since. When Josh Gravens was 12 years old, he made a terrible mistake. He and his sister, who was 8, had sexual contact, twice. “Like, where my body part touched her body part,” he says. “It was never penetrative. Obviously, it couldn’t have been what they call consensual, but it was playing.” Josh’s sister told their mother, who was alarmed. She wanted to ensure that, even if Josh’s intentions…
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