I'm mad; do these politicials research what they're signing or is it just one big photo op designed to keep them in office?!?!

Yeah it is pretty pathetic. They create such laws in the name of protecting children, but then want to pass laws eliminating money that would feed and house children. Of course its a photo op so they can stay in office.

Christmas and Easter are religious holidays. Couldn't that law be unconstitutional since it impedes the right to freedom of religion?

These types of laws only are allowed to pass by the inaction of the many, wish the many would wake up.


Buildingupslow

The many are confused, they have no idea what kinds of people are actually on the SO lists. They think everyone is dangerous and a pedofile etc etc. They also have no clue what kind of suffering is involved in being listed, both for the person listed and their entire family.

I think we have to stop suffering in silence. But breaking the silence is hard, and can be dangerous.

I have been wanting to write letters to my representatives for so long, but just haven't been able to do it. Fear, avoidance and my life being filled with a host of other more pressing problems keeps me from doing it. I also am interested in maybe writing an article for a newspaper but, again, same problems. I guess I would have to do it anonymously. Mostly out of fear of losing my job, ridicule (for me, my husband and my kids) and retaliation (the crazy vigilante's worry me).

I have to comment on this, Mom. Just because someone is a pedophile does not mean that person is dangerous. A pedophile is someone who has a sexual attraction to children. There are many pedophiles out there who will never act on their attractions. You wouldn't even know that they were pedophiles because their lives are no different from anyone else's. They have just never "come out."

So, pedophilia in itself is not dangerous. The problem, as I see it, is that there are many dangerous people out there. Its been estimated that up to 4% of the general population are psychopaths, meaning people who do not have a normal conscience. There are people who are extremely narcissistic. There are people who just have rotten personalities who do all manner of rotten things. Some dangerous people are pedophiles. Most are not. They are simply dangerous for whatever reason.

Its dangerous people we should be concerned about keeping away from children. To equate pedophiles with danger is just another one of the false sense of security things. If there were a real public dialogue about it, people would come to realize that the real problem is not pedophiles, it is the unfounded fear of pedophiles.

That's what drives these insane laws you are talking about.

If people really wanted to protect children, they would be much more concerned about the damage they are inflicting on kids from competitive sports. How many kids growing up today will have early onset dementia because they wrecked their brains with multiple low-grade concussions playing "sports"? That scares me a heck of a lot more than the thought that a pedophile may dress up in a Santa suit.

I apologize for making it seem like I was insinuating that pedophile=dangerous or pedophile=deserves this registry.

I did not mean to single out pedophiles, I guess it is hard to articulate what I feel like maybe people who the masses think of as being on the registry. I was refering to what the public assumes everyone on the registry is, which # 1 everyone assumes that everyone on the registry is dangerous # 2 must have done something terribly wrong to be listed on the registry #3 is a pedophile or a rapist. I am not saying that pedophiles are necessarily dangerous, but the public assumes that everyone on the registry is that. I am also not saying that pedophiles deserve to be on the registry, but there are a whole host of crimes which place people on the registry that have nothing to do with being a pedophile. It is a misconception regardless of its value.

Also obviously, as you said in relation to the sports problem, people are confused about what actually is a risk to children and what is not. In terms of, as you say, pedophile vs sociopaths as well as in terms of prevalence. If the protection of children was the most important thing we might start by stopping the world from driving cars because that certainly kills 1000s of times more children than child abduction. The problem is that everyone drives, and would be horribly inconvenienced by not driving so who in their right mind would vote for a politician that would take away all of our cars. But "everyone else" would certainly vote for a politician who will pigeon whole all of the child protection efforts into being tough on SOs. This is easy for the masses to swallow because of all the aforementioned problems as well as the vast majority of people thinking these rules would never apply to them or one of their loved ones. Humanity is great at "othering"- making a group of people seem sub-human, making it ok to abuse the "others" beyond what is normally considered appropriate because the group thinks that the "others" are somehow different, not a part of society, not really human or not deserving of humane treatment. Its the same psychological framework that allows the masses to support war and the killing of innocent people because those people are somehow different from us, they are others. Same idea with prison guards abusing inmates, or treating them and their families like dirt, because they are different- they are criminals. They see "us" as different and so justify their immoral behavior.

I don't think anyone deserves what so many of us have gone through. And I think our society and criminal justice system are all to quick to decide that someone is dangerous. People live on the hype surrounding a few terrible crimes that strike fear into the hearts of all of us, and apply that logic and emotion to so many situations that really have no relation. I mean abductions, murder, serial rape etc. These things make the news, and out of this fear people think that these laws are a good idea.

Yes, both Christmas and Easter (especially Easter) are religious holidays, and yes, the 1st Amendment prohibits Congress passing any law that abridges the right to practice ones religious beliefs. However, when proclaiming "to protect the kids" government can pretty well do whatever it wants when enacting laws to deprive sex offenders their constitutional rights and liberties.

I do not necessarily believe that society is obvious to the problems here, but that (1) it is unpopular speech to advocate for a sex offender and (2) hating sex offenders is not only condoned but also encouraged. So it is very easy for society to turn blind eyes to the constitutional violations going on and even more so when you have judges that go with the flow and abolish the Constitution for this class.

Seems every generation needs someone to hate and as long as the many hate the few then it's okay to hate, moreover, it becomes okay to act on that hate in one way or another. And government officials are all too willing to fuel that hate in order to retain their publicly elected office year after year so it really is the natural course of evolution that they will target Christmas and Easter because Halloween is yesterday's news.

I suspect that when they are talking about Christmas and Easter, they are talking about Santa Claus and Easter Egg hunts, and not necessarily the church services. So, one could argue that those aspects are not "religious".

Well, I am not so sure. There are several ways laws are interpreted, i.e.

1. The plain and ordinary meaning of the language used in the law;

2. The clear statement rule, e.g. if it is not specifically written in the law then it does not exist;

3. The spirit of the law, e.g. the liberal application of the language and intent of the law; and

4. The legislative intent of the law, e.g. what the lawmakers intended for the law to do.

The Illinois law "[P]rovides that it is Class 4 felony for a child sex offender to participate in a holiday event involving children under 18 years of age, such as distributing candy or other items to children on Halloween, wearing a Santa Claus costume on or preceding Christmas, being employed as a department store Santa Claus, or wearing an Easter Bunny costume on or preceding Easter."

The immediate problem is that the statutory language is not inclusive. In other words, because the law holds ". . . such as . . ." it leaves the door wide open for the RSO to be arrested, charged, and convicted for participating in events other than what is listed in the law.

This is also the case because the law holds ". . . wearing a Santa Claus costume on or preceding Christmas. . . " and ". . .Easter Bunny costume on or preceding Easter. . . " which is to say it involves activities outside of the church just as it involves activities inside the church.

Now, if we interpret the law under #1 and # 2, then you are right Deenamom that it does not include church services, yet, under # 3 and # 4, it might also include church services (depending on what a judge decides in the pleading stage and the outcome of trial if a trial occurs).

Many churches do Easter egg hunts before or after services so clearly under the Illinois law the RSO will not be able to attend the event itself, but it might also be argued that if the event is held after services are done, then the service itself was apart of the event and thereby prevented the RSO from attending the services.

Remember, sex offender laws are typically interpreted in a narrow way to favor the state, the public, and children and that is where RSO's in Illinois are at the greatest risk of being convicted under this law, or if nothing else, arrested, charged, and jailed for any length of time until the matter is settled in a court of law.

The Illinois law certainly presents landmines for RSO's that, frankly, should not exist. And insofar as the Tulsa, Oklahoma law - that we will have to wait and see what language is used in the law to know if it will or might include church services.

I should also add that the loop hole an RSO can argue, and likely successfully, is under #2 (clear statement rule) whereby so long as the RSO does not wear a Santa or Easter Bunny costume then the RSO can attend the event itself, whether or not it is held outside or inside the church.

However, the counter argument of the state will be under #3 and #4 so that a liberal interpretation is applied to the law to include attending the event itself because of the words ". . . . such as. . . ." in the law so as to say that what is written is not inclusive to only the activities / behaviors named in the statutory language.

I can't argue over the Santa one. Honestly, I don't agree with the registries but a background check that pertains to the job, I'm not against. That would include Taxi/Bus drivers w/ DUIs on their records.
I realize that it won't get the people who've never been caught but really if you're a sex offender why would you put yourself into a position where you could easily be falsely accused?

The other stuff is just stupid

In my research it really seems that Illinois is among the states with the most restrictions:

No participation in these specific holiday traditions

Not allowed at any schools or daycares (so you cannot pick up or drop off your kids, cannot attend their performances etc).

No allowed at children's park or any state park for that matter (including any city or state owned property ie the lake front in chicago, any bike paths, state parks ie starved rock essentially any publicly maintained property). These restrictions basically make any public space illegal. Even park districts count.

Recently they passed a new law that now restricts a RSO from being at any privately owned places deemed specifically for kids (this is the new Mcdonalds playplace restriction) which also seems to include since it is now private and public any museum aimed specifically for children, likely the zoo I mean basically these could be interpreted to be almost anywhere. Now when I think about any place we might like to take our children as a family basically we cannot here.

In Illinois, before I believe last year, you could go to these places if you were with your own child but now the newer rule on the books says that you cannot ever go weather you are accompanying your own children or not.

500 ft residency restriction ( I know this is lower than some states). In Illinois if a new daycare relocates within 500 feet of you they give you 30 days to move even if you have been there for a long time, and even if you own it. They told us if we had bought our house before 2003 I think, maybe it was 2001, that then we could stay. Not the case for us. So anyone who has bought their house after this time can be made to move at any time.


Parole restrictions are terrible, as they are in many states, no contact with anyone under 18, including your own children. Mandated, ridiculous SO treatment with polygraphs ($300 each) etc. I know this is pretty common, but not all states have this. Basically 24/7 house arrest, GPS monitoring. There is no separation or classification either. Everyone is given the same terms. It also applies to every time you are on parole even if you went to prison for an unrelated offense. Driving in my husbands case.

Yearly registry, $100 fee. They were arresting and prosecuting homeless people recently for failure to register because they refused to register them if they could not pay the fee.

I seriously hate this place, I want to move. I think this is all just a set up to fail. And obviously as has been said, making life worse and worse for RSO is an encouraged phenomena. It gets politicians votes and many people stupidly support it with having no real understanding.

People stupidly supporting; it's the politians supporting them that's the problem. All it takes to get them to sign is a camera, IMO.

I know all these laws are a terrible burden and I hate to be a devil's advocate, but there is one possible good thing that might come out of all this: at some point, the courts will have to rule that the registry has morphed from a civil scheme to a punitive one.

Once some of these regulations have been ruled punitive in nature the ex post facto portion of the constitution will kick in and they will no longer be retroactive. As long as they were deemed a civil regulatory scheme the ex post facto did not apply.

I KNOW this can happen, as it did in Oklahoma. For years the legislators had a field day, enacting every law they could think of regarding sex offenders. We had residency restrictions, a 300 foot zone around schools, work restrictions, anti-clustering legislation, and even the words "sex offender" in several places on the face of the driver's license.

Then in 2007, the legislature passed a modified form of SORNA which introduced tier levels. The classification was based only on the crime for which the registrant was convicted; there were no clinical or psychological test to determine what tier level a registrant would be on---- the crime for which he was convicted and that was the only criteria. The vast majority ended up on tier 3, which increased their registration period from the original 10 years to lifetime and the frequency period from every year to every 90 days.

Then a gentleman name Starkey appealed this to the courts, alleging that by changing the registry requirements from the original requirements to the enhanced requirements that came with being a tier 3 registrant to all offenders, even those whose crime was committed before 2007, that it was a violation of the ex post facto clause of the STATE constitution. The DOC kept losing and appealing it to the higher courts and in June of this year the Oklahoma Supreme Court ruled the extra regulations over the years had changed the SORNA portion to a punitive law instead of a civil law, and then ex post facto applied. As a result, the Oklahoma DOC had to go back and for the offenders convicted before 2007, they had to change their registry requirements back to the original ten year, once a year scheme from the lifetime, once every 90 day scheme.

This forced Oklahoma to drop hundreds and hundreds----maybe even a thousand or more---registrants from the registry.

You can read the opinion here, but it is interesting.

http://tinyurl.com/p2et7ul

If you read the opinion, you can read between the lines and see how aggravated the justices were with the politicians continually---year after year---adding more burdensome legislation to those on the registry. The law that place the words "sex offender" on the license really upset the justices.

So If they just keep adding and adding more restrictions, it may be beneficial to us in the long run.

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