The following is a true story, but it has been edited so the author can remain anonymous.

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MARRIED TO A REGISTERED CITIZEN

How the public registry and residency restrictions affect
innocent family members of former sex offenders.

Written by a person who shall remain anonymous for safety reasons.

4/01/15

I met my husband in 2004 we've been together ever since then. We were married in 2006 and have two sons, both under ten years of age.

A few years before I met him, my husband was convicted of a sex offense. I have spoken with many people who were involved with the case and they all say he didn't do it. However, he was railroaded, mainly due to serious corruption in the justice system of that particular county.

During our entire marriage, the registration and residency requirements have always caused us severe hardship, especially when searching for housing or jobs.

We tried moving out of our home state in July 2014, but have faced many challenges since then. Shortly after we moved into our home in the new state, we were forced to move, due to the residency restrictions. In that state, an individual with a sex offence conviction is not allowed to live within 1000 feet of any facility that houses or educates children. We thought our home was in a compliant location. However, we were told that a tennis court on the grounds of a local church made it a qualifying facility. The tennis court was located 996 feet from the house we had arranged to acquire from a family member by taking over the mortgage payments.

After being forced out of that state, we went to a third state. We chose that state, because one of my husband’s military buddies, who knew about his previous conviction, had asked his employer to hire my husband. The company said they would help my husband get the needed training, so he could be employed there.

However, after we arrived there, the company retracted their statement. We had been living in hotels and in an old RV. This was around the beginning of August 2014. We stayed at campsites and some hotels, living on my husband’s VA disability check, which was about $700/month. We also utilized some credit cards we had gotten for the move.

When we moved to the second campsite, my husband got very sick with kidney stones. He was so sick he was not motivated to go to the police department to fulfill his registration requirements. However, after much prodding, I finally convinced him to go. He did so on the second day after we had arrived, even though he was very sick.

When he got to the police department, he was having severe chest pains and shortness of breath, so the officers called 911. The EMTs dragged him out and took him away, before he could finish his registration. He had been instructed that registration must be done before 5:00 p.m. However, when I picked him up from the VA hospital, it was after 5:00 pm. So, I told him I would drive him back to the police department the following morning, in order to finish the paperwork.

Apparently that wasn't soon enough for local law enforcement. Not even an hour after arriving back at our campsite, the police arrived and arrested him for failure to register.

We had paid up front for two weeks at the campsite. However, we were unable to stay there, due to the fact that there was a playground on the property, even though the playground was more than 1000 feet from our camping spot. The police told us that the entire property was off-limits, because it included a play structure for children. This is an example of how state law can override federal law.

The police took my husband away and he spent two days in jail, before being released. His public defender pulled the security footage from the police station and it clearly showed that my husband was in the building, with every intent to register, but was escorted out by EMTs.

During the following two days, a social worker came to visit me and told me there was an investigation taking place, based on accusations made by a male teen that had previously babysat for us. The teen made his accusation after we had moved away from the state. He claimed that, during 2012, my husband had sexually abused him. The social worker stated she needed to interview our two young children to see if my husband had abused them.

At first, I refused to allow the interview, because the social worker insisted she needed to interview them ALONE, without me being present. After a short time, however, I allowed her to have 10 minutes alone with my children. During that time, my children had nothing bad to say about their dad. However, due to her prodding, my children stated they had been hurt by the same teen that had made accusations against my husband. I was angry and shocked.

After my husband was released from custody, we decided right away that we needed to pack up and head back to the first state, in order to face these false accusations.

This was a Thursday night. My husband went in Friday to finish registration, as required, and to meet with the accusing detective, who incidentally had been royally embarrassed in court the day before, thanks to the security footage presented by the public defender.

Prior to signing the registration paperwork, my husband asked for clarification of what it contained. He asked the officers to explain it to him, but they said they were in a hurry and refused to spend the time to help him understand it. They listed him as an active violent sex offender and put him on the state’s nationwide registry site even though, in the original state, he wasn't required to be on any public registry and wasn’t given any rating at all, violent or otherwise.

On Saturday, we picked up our RV from the campsite, intending to leave Sunday morning. We stayed in a hotel, while preparing to leave. When we got back to the hotel around 10:00 pm Saturday night, I walked in with our groceries and the kids. I saw an officer in the lobby and assumed he was there for my husband.

The officer told he was just there to verify the address and confirm that my husband was staying there. However, the officer was lying to me. I stated to the officer, “Yeah, he's here. He’s out in the parking lot, locking up our RV.” At this point, three other officers showed up out of no where. They told me they were arresting my husband for a warrant issued out of the original state.

The embarrassed detective had gotten busy behind the scenes and convinced the original state to do a secret indictment, in order to get my husband re-arrested more quickly. The police told us the original state had two weeks to come and pick him up. We were hoping that they wouldn't come. However, on the 13th day, the local police extended his hold one more day saying the original state was sending officers to pick him up.

During that two-week wait, we lost help from the VA, because the veteran was no longer in the household. I had to borrow money from family to get a hotel for two more weeks. I ended up selling most of everything we had, including the RV.

I shoved what I could into a UHaul moving pod and paid UHaul $1700 to move it to the original state. A family member paid $1000 for three plane tickets to get me and my boys back to the original state and our car ended up in a scrap yard. We had been storing the car at a friend’s home. However, the family decided to get rid of it right away, even though they had promised they would hold onto it for a week, while I looked for a seller via Craigslist.

Currently, we are homeless and couch surfing in a major city in the original state. My husband FINALLY has trial starting next week. It's been 6 months and I've barely held together without him, due to my own mental and physical illnesses.

I am receiving public assistance payments of about $500/month and food stamps. I have no car and no home. Every thing we own is located in a 10’ x 10’ public storage unit. We ended up having to pay UHaul another $1700, because the site in the second state claims I never paid for shipping. I did pay…in CASH and I HAD a receipt! Nevertheless, they still argued that I hadn’t paid. I couldn't afford an attorney, so using all of my tax refund, I paid another $1700.

The original state was able to get the indictment, because our former church pastor, who now has custody of the teen in question, stated that my husband had confessed to the abuse three days before we had left the state.

The pastor’s statements have since been removed from record, as he has changed his story four times. So now it's just the teen’s word against my husband’s. If my husband takes the stand, the prosecutor can bring up his previous conviction. However, if he doesn't take the stand, they can't bring it into play.

Two weeks after the start of the investigation, in August 2014, the teen’s mother fled with her 20-something son and two younger children. The teen’s mother and father are getting divorced now, apparently due to the dad’s porn addiction.

The state isn't willing to investigate the teen for abusing our boys, even though in the police statement, he admitted to sexually abusing his own sister. At the last court hearing to remove testimony, the teen was waving and smiling at my husband like they were best buds. Creepy!

That's the gist of what's going on right now. I’m just really depressed and worried. He's been falsely convicted once already and is scheduled to appear in court again in a few days.

The only reason we had been able to rent the apartment we had was because I had originally rented it by myself. At the time, my husband was in a VA mental hospital, due to anxiety resulting from being attacked. The person who assaulted him was dating one of the police officers in that town. As a result of that bias, the officer involved believed that my husband was the one to start the fight.

We had done our research into local laws and had learned that my husband didn't have to register there, but of course, when we wanted to file assault charges, they turned on my husband, brought up the fact that he was an offender, and hadn't registered. They let me sit in when they went over his info and filled out the paperwork. I saw that there was NO victim listed, no age, nothing. There was not even a rating listed. On the scale from 1-3 he's a 0.

To give some background, the church pastor was the one who practically forced us to use the teen as our babysitter, even though I had repeatedly said, “No!” We knew the teen’s home life was very bad. We only ever left him with the boys for an hour or two at the most, while we picked up a few groceries or went out to dinner as a couple.

We paid the teen for his service, even though most of the time he would just sit playing computer games. He was an inept sitter. I'm sad I didn't see it sooner. There were many times that we came home and found that the boys had drawn all over the walls or that their diapers were nasty.

In response to my doctor’s instructions, I've applied for SSI/SSD benefits. I'm only 31 years old and have already developed diabetic neuropathy, even though I was only diagnosed with diabetes a year ago.

I want to share my story as long as we are able to remain anonymous. It's bad enough to read what internet trolls are saying in comments below the news reports about how my husband should be killed, that I must have known what was going on in my house, and that I should die, too, for being so stupid. It’s very hard to ignore that and get it out of my mind, especially with my mental illness. I’ve been diagnosed as bipolar type 2, with a major depressive disorder, dysthma, ADHD, and suicidal ideation.

I am very happy to support Women Against Registry (W.A.R.). They have a Facebook site, which is very good, because they help people understand how the registry affects innocent family members and how it doesn't change abuse patterns. If someone’s going to abuse, the public registry isn't going to change that. I think it's just a way to ostracize and chase innocent family members out of their home communities. The public registry maps encourage communities to discriminate against former sex offenders, as if they are all predators, which they are definitely not. They also enable dangerous and deadly acts by vigilantes who take the law into their own hands.