Did you mean to put 17?

It's obvious he meant 17!

I was going to say bad example but then realized he meant 17. Attitudes about anything can change very quickly when all of a sudden it happens within your own family and/or friends. Look at Dick Cheney and his crusade against gays and then all of a sudden his own daughter comes out and it's back peddle, back peddle, back peddle. With the amount of people on the registry approaching 1 million and thousands more that have gotten off the odds are pretty good that someone knows someone who's been there done that, approx 1 in 29.

This is my son's story:

http://tinyurl.com/p2rjcn6

And our blog

www.Sugarforsalt.com

Eventually there will be so many people on the registry that someone will have a friend of family on it. I don't know if that will change things.. If the majority are poor, which this 'crime' does to these families, then it's a poor man's crime to deal with. I'm hopeful.. I have to be.

In 2010 the Department of Justice issued a report indicating that they had specific knowledge of over 20,000,000 IP addresses that contained child pornography. Why won't law enforcement arrest these twenty million "unregistered" sex offenders? They cannot because the scale of the problem is too large. It turns out that 13-16 year old girls are the biggest producers of child porn by far! No one is advocating in favor of child abuse, but really the child porn laws are all based on irrational fear and moral outrage. 20,000,000 people in this country have child pornography on their computer. Think about that.

The 2010 DOJ report is titled "The National Strategy For Child Exploitation Prevention And Interdiction". A Google search will find it. Please refer to bottom of page 12.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights says....

Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.

No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.

Everyone has the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law.

All are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimination to equal protection of the law. All are entitled to equal protection against any discrimination in violation of this Declaration and against any incitement to such discrimination.

No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile.

No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.

The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State.

No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his property.

Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.

Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.

Everyone has the right of equal access to public service in his country.

Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment.

Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.

Nothing in this Declaration may be interpreted as implying for any State, group or person any right to engage in any activity or to perform any act aimed at the destruction of any of the rights and freedoms set forth herein.

I went through a large battery of tests at my own expense prior to sentencing. All showed that I had no potential to recidivate and that I had no paraphilia of any note. Especially that I was not pedophilic. All were presented at sentencing and made no difference.
When I was given them, the psychologist asked me if I had any prior experience with them. When I told him I had a degree in Psychology and had taken a couple courses in metrics, he said that it was a positive. I would not be intimidated by the tests which can give false results.

Oh I completely agree with you coolrich, tests are not taken seriously by politicians, the media and the public. They are only taken seriously if the results are negative against the offender. There is nothing positive to come from it. Just like the polygraph tests, they are not "reliable" or "scientific" enough to prove that an offender is offense free, but they sure are reliable when they show what the prosecutor or police believe.

The point is we need to push for a tier system that uses actuarial evidence, and statistics to show the potential for recidivism. Undoubtedly these tests will favor lower level sex offenders because they really do not have much of a risk of recidivism. On the same hand it will protect society from some of the monsters that Rew was talking about.

Our message should be let's continue to protect society, but do it in a way that saves money and saves human dignity. We do that by separating the wheat from the chaff, the lower offenders from the most dangerous ones.

I think the idea of attacking the registry from the viewpoint of the family members needs to be explored more fully. We all know the registry affects far more people than just the registrant but as far as I know nobody has made a serious attempt at demonstrating how it impacts the Constitutional rights of family members. It's a given that the rights of any felon are abridged but the registry and restrictions placed on registrants affect family members in ways never intended.

Just as an example let's say woman chooses to stay married to someone who is now a registered citizen. Because she does so her rights are abridged just as much as his. If she owns a home within 1000 feet of a school she has a choice to make. Separate from her husband or be deprived of the fair use of her property completely absent due process.

In Missouri on Halloween, a registrant must be home, remain indoors for certain hours, must post a sign stating no candy or treats at this residence and must not have any outside lights on. Bad enough for the registrant that owns or rents the residence but what about the registrants that don't own a home or can't afford to pay rent and have to share a home with others? The sign is forcibly compelled speech for anyone else in the residence regardless of who it actually belongs to. No exterior lighting raises viable safety concerns for those that are supposedly free to come and go during the restricted hours and freedom of expression is also abridged for anyone else living in the home and all done absent due process.

These are the kinds of issues that need to be raised. The rights of the registrant are negligible but the rights of those never convicted do still carry weight.

The general public will never care about the individual registrants. As far as they are concerned, the registry is fine, the registrant committed the crime, and now he must deal with the circumstances.

But as I have said many times and I agree with Aladdin---and the others who have posted---we need to concentrate on the negative effect the registry has on the family members and especially the children. After all, they did nothing to deserve the negative effects of the registrant.

If politicians are so gung ho as to holler "think of the children" whenever they want another restriction passed, then they should be just as eager to think of the children of the registrants.

Do the innocent children of the registrants who have done nothing wrong not count? We want to protect the children, but are we willing to throw away the children of the registrants?

And yes, there should definitely be a way for registrants to be able to get off the registry at some point in time. It becomes a deplorable situation when a registrant can never see the light at the end of the tunnel or holds no hope of his situation getting any better.

rewdiazepam

I am glad we are still talking about this topic. I had mentioned before that we need to somehow bring up the effect of the registry on innocent family members and children. We have to keep focusing on that, and I had said before that we may not be able to file a class action suit, as we are not considered a protected class, but we can file a Mass Action Suit. Also, I think the letter written to the journalist was a good idea. Not to minimize the crime of a serious sex offense but to look into the registry further, just to see how massive it has become. It is adding those crimes like urinating in public or Romeo and Juliet "offenses" and states like California with their lifetime registration will have a bursting out of the seams registry since nobody gets off but many are added each day. One lady on here presented us this great video that she wanted to show in her school, and I hope she does. These little steps are important. I wrote a letter to the Governor, explaining how this List is harmful to not only the registrant but their families. Not sure if it was read, but if we all write, something has to stick. Again, we need to speak up wherever and whenever we can.

I don't disagree that the path to getting a tier down system is the restrictions it places on innocent family members. What I'm saying is we need to start with a middle ground. I'm not sure how many people are into politics, I find it fascinating. When the republicans vowed to destroy Obama care, smarter republicans said, we are going to remove it BUT replace it with something better. That's what we need to do here, remove the registry the way it is now for a tier down and tier out system. If we don't give any viable options people will never get from sex offenders are dangerous throw away the lock and key to anywhere else. We cannot say let's just abolish the registry, because even though recidivism is low public's belief of recidivism is high. We need an intermediary step between abolishing the public registry and where we are at.

Yes I meant 17, not 7. I missed a keystroke when I posted.

"The point is we need to push for a tier system that uses actuarial evidence, and statistics to show the potential for recidivism."

I disagree because even our best actuarial tests give a percentage less accurate than a coin flip.

The problem with the tier system is that we err on the side of caution, and the tier system was further corroded with the AWA.

My mission is simple-- the utter abolishment of the registry. Nothing less will do. The registry is a hydra. So long as a single head remains, the other heads can respawn. It only takes one bad rare tragedy to revive the hydra completely. The Wetterling Act was an LE only list for serious, repeat offenders and was only a 10 year registration. Then Megan Kanka's case changed that in two short years. Now we have the AWA (well, some of us).

When California RSOL advocates a Tier system they are VALIDATING the registry. That's why I completely disagree with them. We are willing to concede to slavery just to save a few people from lifelong effects of the registry. No, we've done enough conceding. The "middle ground" approach is never going to work.

I also think that if all of this crap (or they way it is now) is based somewhat on the AWA which is federal then all the states should have to have the same SO laws. And the practice of allowing counties and cities to have a separate set of ordinances that govern SOs is crap! It has got to stop! I was appalled when I read the AWA and it said that my sons crime her should be on the registry for 10 years (or could ask to be removed on the Tier system) and then read that Florida was one of the 1st states considered compliant with AWA - so I wrote a letter asking why FL was considered compliant event though they keep people on the registry for life (even dead folks) - the answer was the state has to have the minimum requirements but they are allowed to exceed the requirements!!! What???? So basically being in line with AWA means have at it boys!! Do what you will!

I agree with Once about the tier system - while I would love for my son to see light at the end of the tunnel (and myself) the tier system still focuses on the registry and validates its use.