Tag: Opinion

The debate around the Senate’s possible confirmation of Betsy DeVos, President-elect Trump’s nominee for Education Secretary, should kick start a national discussion on how colleges and universities handle sexual assault. Recently, much of that conversation has revolved around “restorative justice,” programs that aim to respond to misconduct or crime by redressing the harm inflicted on victims and the community, rather than simply punishing offenders. As a victim of childhood sexual abuse myself and an attorney who now represents sexual assault survivors every day, I can say without doubt that restorative…

Ten years ago, ____ ____ shared a bottle of vodka and played video games with a fourteen-year-old girl in his basement. The two engaged in sexual activity. When her father’s concern for her whereabouts led him to the home, she told him and the police she had no memory of the incident. ____ was sixteen. He was sentenced to five years, most suspended, and put on probation and the sex offender registry for ten years. Full Article

Twenty-five years ago, with activist Patty Wetterling by his side, Minnesota governor Arne Carlson signed America’s first law establishing a public registry system for sex offenders. The law, which Wetterling helped to write, aimed to give police a starting point for tracking down sexual predators like Danny Heinrich, the man who had kidnapped, molested and murdered Patty’s son, Jacob Wetterling. Full Article

Last month, a new chapter was written in one of America’s oldest real-life murder mysteries. The body of 11-year-old Jacob Wetterling was finally found, 27 years after his abduction. Jacob’s gun-point abduction shocked the nation and spawned a network of state sex-offender registries, South Carolina’s among them. But extensive research since then has raised serious questions about the effectiveness of such measures. Full Opinion Piece

I’m not hopping on the bandwagon circling the Santa Clara County, California, courthouse. Don’t add my name to the million-plus names of those calling for the scalp of Superior Court Judge Aaron Persky. Far from a goat, Judge Persky is a hero. Full Op-Ed Piece

In response to “Sex offenders need harsher sentences,” of June 1: This letter is filled with emotion and righteous indignation but sadly lacking in facts or, in some instances, the truth. You cannot equate the offense of child molestation with that of failure to register. Child molestation is inexcusable and causes harm. Failure to register is a newly invented crime that very, very seldom puts anyone at risk. Full Article In Response to Sex offenders need harsher sentences

On April 21, Danny Jones, mayor of Charleston, in his daily talk show on WCHS radio, discussed my op-ed “How can a sex offender be rehabilitated if following the rules does not count?” on air. Brenda Jones, the execturive director for the organization National Reform Sex Offender Laws, Inc. was his on-air guest. Full Article

I was recently on one of the city Facebook pages and noticed a posting that someone had discovered they have a registered sex offender in their neighborhood. What I found disturbing is that the poster made a generalized statement with no details on the registrant other than that they are “Tier 3 most dangerous and most likely to offend.” Nothing was stated as to what the crime was, how long ago, or the registrant’s age at the time the crime was committed. I doubt they ever looked at or considered…

Recently the New Yorker published a major article about juvenile “sex offenders.” The story, by staff writer Sarah Stillman, is far ranging, moving and important. Stillman writes about many young people who were caught doing anything from playing doctor to sexually coercing another person (usually another child). Convicted for sex crimes, some of these youth are incarcerated and subject to lifelong sex offender registration—a kind of social death sentence. Full Opinion Piece