This is an excellent article. Thanks for sharing.

More and more people are realizing that this has gotten out of hand. The registry was never intended to become what it has become. It is time for an overhaul.

Did you see who commented on this article? Wow. How sad that that moran has to throw knives and grenades at people in pain to make herself feel better. AKA. Classic Penguin

It is good - and you know what I think Peek - that person is starting to see the winds of change - I notice that more and more on these articles she is lashing out like a rabid dog (more than normal) - and more an more people are posting sensible questions or comments. That person is becoming afraid - afraid of the inevitable - changes are coming to this insane hell and then what will she obsess about? LOL

About Val:

I'm not sure how you calculate more hatred and more ranting without facts to back up her extreme irrationality. This is exactly what happens when you have too narrow of a focus on a subject. She only looks at the negative press and since we have a media that is all too happy placate people like her she finds exactly what she searches out to find (observation bias). She doesn't look at the big picture, she cannot see it. She thinks that all recidivism studies are "cooking the books" to get the low recidivism because she only sees the negative so how can there be only this little amount of recidivism? The government must be making the numbers look better to make themselves look better. With this paranoid reasoning or unreasoning she can gleefully dance around any actual research and just cherry pick the studies that support her point of view which she doesn't do often. She also claims that no one would believe her studies so why bother posting them? These are defense mechanisms to protect her ideas on sex offenders from any cognitive disonance of actual studies and actual research. God forbid anything like that get into her mind, she couldn't believe what she wants to believe!

I will say this, that she does have a quick wit and I find myself laughing at some of her retorts to some. I thought there was an intelligence behind this quick wit, I thought she must have some studies and a logical reason for all of us this that she isn't sharing. When we got in our debate this year I quickly just got more of the same from her, no research, no studies, just more of the same. Something must have hurt her something fierce for her to be like this, or she must've have done something terrible and is trying to make up for it with her delusional fact less rants.

So I don't know how you calculate more vitriol and vinegar from her lol, but I have seen her branch out more to more newspapers comment sections. She really has nothing to do in life.

This interview:

This was an awesome read, just wish there was more time to hear Jill vs victor with the differences in their research. That was very interesting to me and they skipper over it a little bit.

One thing I have always had in my life is a gift of assessing people and their reactions to things. I am not an expert but I do seem to be spot on in most cases - I stand by my assessment - I have reading her vile posts and comments for about 5 and half years now ...

I never find anything she says amusing. She is filled with hate for thousands of people she does not even know based solely on a government inflicted label. Someone like that is not funny at all.

I'm not saying she is funny, hate isn't funny. Some of her barbs and the ridiculousness of them make me laugh. She is very good at getting people's goat, and when I see that happening I also find it funny because people know who she is and what she is going to say. You cannot intelligently debate any of her ideas with her. I tried and it's just more of the same from her. No statistics, no research, just hate stemming from watching the news and reading the paper with no idea of the big picture. I thought there was an intelligence behind her barbs and wit, if there is, she is too afraid to show it. Maybe for fear of being outmatched?

Again hate isn't funny, but her becoming a caricature of herself, her absolute ridiculousness makes me laugh sometimes. Maybe I'm strange.

I think as Joehillsghost posted elsewhere I think people are more inherent to being nice, understanding and empathetic. Those that aren't like Val have the keyboard to hide behind. And those like my ex friend who continue to make false accusations have karma to contend with. I also think that those filled with so much hatred have been traumatized by something earlier in life or have some sort of inferiority problem much like a bully.

I have found that out of the roughly 25-30 people I have told of my situation only 5 went off the deep end with only two of those still causing trouble. 14 have been fully supportive of my wife and I and roughly 6-7 are indifferent.

Victor Vieth was one of the people who was in the conversation. This guy had a child's advocate center called the Gundersen National Child Protection Training Center. He also goes around making speeches on the behalf of victims and I am sure he is paid a nice fee.

Worse yet, he is a former prosecutor and cannot be expected to have an unbiased view of the registry or any area, which might benefit an offender. Most of these prosecutors are nothing but "hired guns" who attempt to extract the last ounce of flesh from a defendant regardless of the seriousness of the crime----or even if they are stone cold innocent.

In the big picture, the overall damage that DAs cause society in the long run is much worse than most of the offenders they prosecute. They are some of the most despicable people God ever created.

@Frogpond, people are so damn self-righteous as if they have never had a serious lapse of judgment leading to a bad decision. They all love the registry and want to be "tough on crime" until something happens to their loved one; then they see what a mess this is.

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I listened to this show a while back. I thought it was great.

I loved how the former DA victor was trying to put it I the defense attorneys when he said that they are placing the burden on the victim. The burden is never on the victim not the accused, but the burden is on the state to show a finding of guilty beyond a reasonable to doubt! They are so lazy and want to make their jobs easier so they have politicians pass laws that "take the burden off of the victim" but it really doesn't place it where it needs to be. If we are to have a system where there is a presumption of innocence for the accused, unfortunately that means that some guilty people will go free. That is far better than convicting an innocent person though. Where in our bloodlust for justice have we forgotten this ideal?

Independent,

You asked, "Where in our bloodlust for justice have we forgotten this ideal?"

It started in full force when DAs realized that more convictions and longer sentences---even to those innocent----were the ticket to re-election. That is not the only factor, but it is one of the major reasons that DAs only care about the number of convictions without any regard for justice.

I have often advocated that we need to take the DA out of the political process and change the system where DAs are not elected officials, but appointed officials. I believe that might help somewhat, but it could possibly open another can of worms as the people designated to appoint the DAs may play politics also.

But anything, I think, would be better than having the DA elected by the public. Some judges are appointed, so why cannot DAs be appointed in some manner?

If we ever hope to stop some of the injustices in American, against not only the innocent people convicted, but the guilty ones who receive draconian and outrageous sentences, we will have to get the DA out of the political process.

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That's part of the problem, but the way I see it with plea bargaining DA's could be a whole lot worse than they are. Most registrants take some sort of a plea deal because if they did not they would be in prison for 30+ years. If DA's said no plea deals for sex crimes, things could get much worse than they are now.

As much as I hate DA's and I think they are largely to blame for where we are at today I also think the system is unbalanced. I expect DA's to be bloodthirsty for justice that's their job. The problem is they have legislated out anyway to have an equal oppositional force. My law professor also told me that what sets our legal system apart from others is the adversarial process. Coastie cover your ears, she was talking down to some conservative students who said that defense attorneys were the scum of the earth. As a former prosecutor she just smiled at that comment but she said that those kids were missing the point. That in order for it to be truly an adversarial process you need a strong defense otherwise you don't have anything close to what the founders intended.

I'm not sure making them a non-voted position will do a whole lot to shift the power they enjoy but it would be a start.

Independent, you said, " That's part of the problem, but the way I see it with plea bargaining DA's could be a whole lot worse than they are. Most registrants take some sort of a plea deal because if they did not they would be in prison for 30+ years. If DA's said no plea deals for sex crimes, things could get much worse than they are now."

That is true in some instances, but some of the mothers I help have sons whose plea offers were 25 or 30 years----take it or leave it, or go to trial and possibly receive a hundred years-----AFTER the DA stacks the charges, files as many counts as possible, convinces the jury the guy is guilty, and then asks the judge to run the charges consecutively.

With such a poor plea deal, two sons I know rolled the dice and went to trial----one received somewhere in the range of 75 years and the other received almost 100 years.

Using the "judicial blackmail" they use, the DA knows that guy will not dare go to trial, so they offer a horribly unfair plea of 25 or 30 years, which usually requires the defendant to serve at least 85% of his sentence before even being considered for release. This does not happen in all cases, I agree, but it does in many cases.

You said, " I expect DA's to be bloodthirsty for justice that's their job."

True, their job is to see that justice is meted out, but some of the sentences I have seen lately are anything but justice; in fact, they border draconian. The DAs are not looking for justice in these cases, so no, they are not doing their job.

The DAs will say that it is out of their hands if the defendant goes to trial, but it really is not. If a guy has the gall to exercise his Constitutional right to go to trial, the DA makes sure he is charged to the max so he will spend many years in prison. The DA is partly responsible for the length of the sentence even when there is a trial.

I don't think the DAs do very many defendants any favors.

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