A headline at LegalNews.com caught my eye, “High Court Rules Sex Offender Registration Qualifies as Punishment, Dissent Argues Registry is Administrative, Imposes Burden but No Restraint”. The case centered around a Maryland man who had been charged with and pled guilty to human trafficking in 2015. Upon his release from prison, according to the Court of Appeals ruling, the Maryland Sex Offender Registry had “wrongly” added the man’s name to the registry, requiring him to register as a “sex offender”. Under his plea agreement, the charge of trafficking of a…
Read MoreTag: Kat’s Blog
Kat’s Blog: We’re All in This Together, Or Are We?
Several news articles this week about Tampa Catholic Charities setting up a 100- tent homeless shelter called Hillsboro Hope, brought to mind the old biblical line “what so ever you do to the least of my brothers, that you do unto me.” Society has always excluded registrants from most homeless shelters. Even during our country’s worst episodes of floods, earthquakes, triple digit and freezing temperatures, registrants have been left to fend for themselves. So, is it any wonder that once again, registrants are being denied the same basic necessities of…
Read MoreKat’s Blog: Don’t Let Increased Stress Lead to Suicidal Thoughts
In August 2017 I wrote a blog piece for Women Against Registry titled “No More Suicides, Please”. Almost 3 years later I’m still receiving notices of comments on that piece, notices that have prompted me to touch on this subject again. Knowing what we know about the way some registrants and their families have been treated, it’s no wonder some registrants, and even their family members, have considered suicide as their only option, the only way out of “life on the registry.” My previous blog was not written during a…
Read MoreKat’s Blog: Things That Make You Go, Hmmm
Not wanting to fill jails during the coronavirus, LA police have decreased the amount of arrests they make from 300 per day to 60. A sort of “catch and release program”, if you will. If they can do that now, doesn’t that mean they’re usually arresting and putting far too many people in jail? Hmmm. Prisons and jails have begun releasing low-risk inmates early, (with the exception of those with a sex offense), putting them on community supervision, parole and GPS ankle monitoring in an attempt to free up space…
Read MoreKat’s Blog: The Hypocrisy of Society
By now we are all on coronavirus overload. It’s a serious pandemic. We hear about it all day long, watch newscasts of cruise ships that are forbidden from docking, parked out in the ocean, passengers awaiting clearance or confinement. Citizens around the world are wearing face masks and hand sanitizer is selling for $200 a bottle on eBay. There’s a new danger in our communities and society is in panic mode. Daily we are bombarded with scary words that put fear in all of us, infection, isolation, segregation, self-quarantine, containment…
Read MoreKat’s Blog: If Not You, Then Who?
If asked, would you join a lawsuit as a “John Doe”? Recently I was asked that question by a registrant who was in the process of having to consider just that. It seems sort of fickle that we’re at a point where registrants are encouraged to come out of the shadows, to stand up and speak up to get laws changed, but at that same time they’re often anonymous “John Doe’s” in lawsuits fighting against registry rules. From the gist of what I’ve read, modern lawsuits revealing the identity of…
Read MoreKat’s Blog: App. Goes to Disturbing Lengths to Catch Predators
Good Morning America has run two recent segments on a parental control phone monitoring app. called Bark. For a fee, the tech company advertises that it’s app. can monitor your children’s social media online activities for signs of potentially dangerous situations such as cyber-bullying, adult content, sexual predators, drug use, depression, suicidal ideation, threats of violence and other assorted issues. Understandably, the online world can be a dangerous place, so some parents might choose to monitor their children’s computer activities by paying a tech company to act as “big brother”,…
Read MoreKat’s Blog: The Power of Intimidation
It’s a phone message you don’t want. Someone from the registry office calling. “This is Mr. ……, call me back, ASAP”. Your mind goes into overdrive. What did I do? Did I go someplace I wasn’t supposed to? Did I cross some imaginary boundary line that I wasn’t aware of? Did someone file some false complaint against me? Your imagination runs amok. Even though you know that you haven’t done anything wrong, that message has put you into panic mode, you’re scared to death to make the return call. You…
Read MoreKat’s Blog: Maryland Mom’s Petition Misrepresents Registrants
A mother in Maryland has a change.org petition which seeks to overhaul Maryland state guidelines/Bill 320 for “sex offenders” by requiring lifetime supervision. (The full article can be read on the ACSOL website.) The impetus for her zealous petition appears to be a child- abuse situation within her own family, a spouse who allegedly abused one of her children. In reading her petition, she provides an overview of the emotional drama going on within her particular situation, the financial costs of sexual abuse to her family and her request for…
Read MoreKat’s Blog: The Silent War
There are silent wars going on in thousands of households across this country. They are the quiet, underlying disputes between family members of registrants, those that speak openly about the registrant in their lives and those family members that take the “less said, the better” stance. Both sides may be totally at peace and supportive of the registrant they care about, but a cavernous gap lies between the opposing sides, as gap as wide as the Grand Canyon. For many of us, the more we open up to family, friends…
Read MoreKat’s Blog: Band-Aid Fixes
I’m not sure what’s going on in Tennessee. Lately there seems to be an avalanche of bills proposed challenging the rights of registrants. Most of these bills seem to serve no purpose other than to intimidate and scare the bejeezus out of registrants and then, if passed, make their lives more difficult. Rep. Doggett has the “no registrants sleeping in a home with minor children” bill. Rep. Griffey has his “let’s chemically castrate all registrants on parole” bill. Now, here comes Rep. Patsy Hazlewood with HB1922 that would supposedly make…
Read MoreKat’s Blog: Sext Education
An interesting article a few weeks ago out of the United Kingdom has me wondering who’s responsible when children and teens are caught “sexting”? According to The Guardian, there are children as young as 4 years of age sharing indecent photos of themselves via smartphones, 9 yr. old children posting nude pictures of themselves on Facebook Messenger and Instagram. Between Jan. 2017 and Aug. 2019, in the United Kingdom there were 6,499 cases of underage children sexting, cases investigated by British authorities, cases where some of those children actually ended…
Read MoreKat’s Blog: People Will Try Anything to Get Off the Registry
In Jefferson County, Tennessee this week, 2 people were charged with forging the signature of a mental health counselor in order to get one of them removed from the North Carolina Sex Offender Registry. In December 2018, Tennessee Bureau of Investigation began investigating allegations that a woman, 37 years old, had attempted to assist a man, 36 years old, in getting himself removed from the North Carolina Registry. The woman apparently forged a mental health consultant’s signature on an evaluation document in order to facilitate the man’s removal from the…
Read MoreKat’s Blog: The Side Effects of Law
Less than 2 weeks into the New Year and already 2020 is turning out to be a year that will be fraught with court battles. And the side effects, if we lose these battles, will be increasingly harsh and even barbaric for registrants and their families. In Wisconsin, Gov. Tony Evers is blocking a bill that would have made positive changes in residency restrictions for registrants. The side effect of not passing the bill is hundreds of registrants may be left homeless and may freeze to death during Wisconsin’s harsh…
Read MoreKat’s Blog: Polygraphs and Integrity
Watching one of those forensic tv shows, a police officer was accused of murdering his wife. All the evidence pointed to him as the killer. He took a polygraph and passed. He still went to jail. Later, re-creation of the murder scene and testimony by expert witnesses on the angles of gunshots found the officer not guilty, the murder was instead, a suicide. Passing a polygraph in this case, as in many cases, didn’t really seem to matter. Failing a polygraph is what gets the fingers pointing and tongues wagging,…
Read MoreKat’s Blog: Pardons and Commutations
Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin spent some of his last days in office/2019 issuing pardons and commutations. A fine gift of “peace on earth and good will towards men” if you ask me. But there are grinches among us. Many people were not quite so happy with the Governor’s actions when word got out that some of those pardons and commutations went to those who had been convicted of violent crimes including murder and rape. One of the most contested pardons, the one picked up by the major news stations, was…
Read MoreKat’s Blog: No Excuse for Disrespect
As the family members of registrants, it’s often hard to hear the stories of the disrespect that our loved ones endure on a daily basis. They are often disrespected by the public, media, law enforcement, city, state, government officials and others because of their status. Too often, there’s been little that registrants could do about the way they were treated. As advocates for our family members, at the very least, we want to confront those who disrespect our loved ones by jumping in, making phone calls, sending emails or letters…
Read MoreKat’s Blog: Will Pennsylvania Ruling Begin the Domino Effect We Need?
Pennsylvania’s “Sex Offender” Registry is headed for what some are calling a life-or-death battle in the PA Supreme Court. The registry, in existence for nearly a quarter of a century, enacted as part of Megan’s Law, a law giving the public a false sense of security by allowing them access to know who and where “sex offenders” lived in their communities, is about to be challenged. A challenge that we can only hope will either begin putting the registry to death or at the very least, let it be picked…
Read More