Families of SOs Community Group
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Why does no one care?
The registry is unfair, there is no question about it. It is supposedly a civil regulatory scheme to protect the public. To those of us who live or have lived it know in reality it is actually additional punishment, ostracizing us even further from society that we wish would embrace us again. To allow us to return to our lives--we know we made horrendous choices that impacted our victims, our families and ourselves but when will it ever be enough? What if the thing you hated most about yourself was constantly being brought up to you? What if the government and other people made it your identity? An identity that you could never escape, a punishment that never ended, punishing not only you but also everyone else who cares about you?
Why does no one care?
Why does the Supreme Court of the United States not step in and shut down these ex post facto punishments?
Why do politicians keep on enacting more and more draconian laws?
Why do people look at us like monsters?
You have to understand, that in comparison to the plight victims have our plight looks negligible. We look silly for complaining about what is happening to us when 1 in 4 girls is being abused by the time they are 18. Whether the punishment is fair or not, we still committed the crime. When they compare us against victims we will lose every single time! Even though two wrongs do not make a right, one wrong was unquestionably worse and that was our own wrong, whatever crime that landed us on the registry in the first place.
What position could we possibly take to change the public perception about us?
Now I am not saying this will be easy, or will happen any time in the next 30 years, but we must do this. We must be willing to care more about others well being than our own if we are ever to have any hope of fixing this mess. Our message to the public cannot be that the registry is unfair, no one wants to hear about our hardships. No one cares. Let me say that again, no one cares.
Our message must be that the registry actually creates more victims. People must know that our policy as a society does not allow or makes it very difficult for RSOs to reintegrate back into society. Research shows that reintegration is a key factor in keeping RSOs from reoffending.
So why does no one care? Because by saying how bad it is for sex offenders it allows everyone else to compare how bad it is for sexual abuse victims and we lose every time. Our mantra cannot be poor sex offenders, our mantra must be NO MORE VICTIMS! Only by placing others above ourselves will we ever have any hope of intelligence winning out over emotion.
The registry is unfair, there is no question about it. It is supposedly a civil regulatory scheme to protect the public. To those of us who live or have lived it know in reality it is actually additional punishment, ostracizing us even further from society that we wish would embrace us again. To allow us to return to our lives--we know we made horrendous choices that impacted our victims, our families and ourselves but when will it ever be enough? What if the thing you hated most about yourself was constantly being brought up to you? What if the government and other people made it your identity? An identity that you could never escape, a punishment that never ended, punishing not only you but also everyone else who cares about you?
Why does no one care?
Why does the Supreme Court of the United States not step in and shut down these ex post facto punishments?
Why do politicians keep on enacting more and more draconian laws?
Why do people look at us like monsters?
You have to understand, that in comparison to the plight victims have our plight looks negligible. We look silly for complaining about what is happening to us when 1 in 4 girls is being abused by the time they are 18. Whether the punishment is fair or not, we still committed the crime. When they compare us against victims we will lose every single time! Even though two wrongs do not make a right, one wrong was unquestionably worse and that was our own wrong, whatever crime that landed us on the registry in the first place.
What position could we possibly take to change the public perception about us?
Now I am not saying this will be easy, or will happen any time in the next 30 years, but we must do this. We must be willing to care more about others well being than our own if we are ever to have any hope of fixing this mess. Our message to the public cannot be that the registry is unfair, no one wants to hear about our hardships. No one cares. Let me say that again, no one cares.
Our message must be that the registry actually creates more victims. People must know that our policy as a society does not allow or makes it very difficult for RSOs to reintegrate back into society. Research shows that reintegration is a key factor in keeping RSOs from reoffending.
So why does no one care? Because by saying how bad it is for sex offenders it allows everyone else to compare how bad it is for sexual abuse victims and we lose every time. Our mantra cannot be poor sex offenders, our mantra must be NO MORE VICTIMS! Only by placing others above ourselves will we ever have any hope of intelligence winning out over emotion.
Not many victims voice their concern that the registries create more victims.
People are selfish and don't care. As long as they, the victim feel they have had something served to themselves, then no one else matters.
The registry has been promoted as a savior to children and others, when we all know that is not true
We are a country based on prison, punishment and ostracizing those who made a mistake, no matter what it was.
We need to have a base of people, from every side that show that this is counter productive and not helping, only harming.
I am a victim and I have tried to tell others the registry doesn't help, only harms. I have been screamed at and told I deserved what happened to me.
No one deserves what i went through, but I'm also not stupid enough to think that the registry is preventing this from happening to others.
Let's put some fear in their hearts. "This could happen to you", we should say. You could be falsely accused. You could have a moment of terrible weakness where alcohol uninhabited you beyond what you believed could happen. You could accidentally urinate in a public place because you had to. The fact is, the registry isn't just harmful to those who have been convicted, their families, the children effected but it is harmful to the country at large. It threatens everyone's liberties.
Now, I agree that the perspective least cared about is that of our family members themselves. And I agree registrants need to take responsibility for the pain and lifelong sorrow that they may have caused another. But I don't agree that their perspectives on how life is treating them are useless once they commit an act. Should victims have their dignity restored? Absolutely and should we be as concerned with sexual abuse and future sexual abuse as we are about the registry? Absolutely. But the registry doesn't restore a victim's dignity, it's not even designed with that in mind. And it's not about a competition of suffering between offenders and their victims. It's about what's best for the common good.
Couldn't agree with you more!!!
Depends on the offense. Downloading CP? I think the hardship is as great for the registrant. Urinating in public? Much greater for the registrant than the grass. But offenses that are violent, coercive or involve offenses over a long period of time? I agree with you. But be careful to make blanket statements. I do sometimes think, depending on the offense, some registrants have it worse than their victims.
Of course I agree with this 100% as well. We all know that 93% of victims of child sexual abuse know their perpetrator. Stranger danger is a horrible myth that causes so much destruction. Our ideas are definitely not mutually exclusive.
What I am saying is it does not matter what we say if we are perceived to be saying for our own benefit. If we complain about the registry people see a dichotomy of either support sex offenders or support victims. We MUST change that paradigm before anything can be accomplished. We must make it our goal to do whatever we can do to stop sexual abuse, hence the mantra, "no more victims."
I agree with you about CP, I am talking about contact crimes here. How many people are actually on the registry for urinating in public? Most of the time it's serial flashers who claim they are peeing but we know what is really going on. It's a red herring to even mention it because of how few people are on the registry for it.
Again, I agree with your overall point, Independent. I do think we need to make "no more victims" the mantra.
Couldn't disagree more. The strongest argument is that it actually causes more sexual abuse to happen. The registry not only fails to do what it sets out to do, it actually causes more victimization by not allowing offenders to reintegrate back into society. This builds into our legal arguments as well. In order to regulate a group of people like the registry does the state must show a compelling state interest. The state cannot have a compelling state interest in creating more victims, that's ludicrous.
They already know what they want to believe and there is nothing you can tell them or show them that will change their minds. These people are resistant to learning or common sense.
As soon as they hear or read the words "sex offender" or even worse, the dreaded words such as pedophile, predator, or pervert----the equivalent to some kind of evil trinity---the nerve impulses to their brain completely stops.
This Willful Ignorance is seen with other issues facing this country, but it is especially prevalent when dealing with emotional issues such as sex, children, and the registry.
rewdiazepam
Because If 'victims' aren't forever damaged (harmed maybe but not forever destroyed) and never allowed to recover, develop new strengths and get on with their ,lives, then how can the 'heroic saviors of children' justify their own insistence that because the victim is forever damaged hero's are always needed to forever punish the 'offender' (once a monster always a monster in need to destroying) forever deserving of of ' the forever hero's" punishment,?
'The "saviors of children" (like john Walsh) require both a forever victim and a forever bad guy as supporting 'actors' in their morality play in which they are forever the hero. That way haters justify their own poisons role and excuse their own poisonous desire for revenge which otherwise (since they themselves refuse to grow past their own need to exact revenge) will eventually eat them alive.
If victims recover and offenders learn better how then would John Walsh justify his spiteful thirst for vengeance all these years later ( and call it saving children?) .
I'm not saying the it is okay to cause harm to adults or to children but life isn't 'fixed' It is not a morality play with the roles fixed forever. Humans recover, grow past harms done, lean to do better. All concerned should be allowed to go on, get better, become trustworthy individuals. We are not just stick figures stuck in a morality play orchestrated for the benefit of the "heroes" who benefit from their own 'heroics'
And we do not have to wait for their permission to abandon these fixed roles.
Unless we accept and begin to believe their definitions of who we are. We do not have to be either the forever emotionally harmed victim or or the forever unforgivable villain who will inevitably do harm. 'Victim' or 'offender' no one can forever forbid us from making something of ourselves and make something better out of our experience.
If we unhook from their fixed ideas/ script then, whether 'they' ever change their minds, we (victim and 'offender') can find ways to recover, come to respect our own resilience in recovering from bad times, be glad to find we had courage in the the face of adversity and move beyond who we used to be. In so doing we leave the haters and their fixed 'heroics' behind and become our own persons, whether 'they' ever listen or care or feel sorry for the harm their prejudices inflicted on our lives. We (victim and offender) are free to become better persons, abandon the fixed roles and live life. no need to wait, with or without their permission . Just my opinion. JanetM
The "no more victims" mantra would probably strike a cord with the general public it is true but just how would a sex offender go about promoting that? By saying "I promise I will be good?" That would not work because it is not the already registered citizens that are committing the crimes.