By Sue Loughlin, The Tribune-Star
TERRE HAUTE— Vigo County resident Jackie Kellar has three teenage daughters who use Facebook and other Internet sites.
Similar to parents nationwide, she worries about some of the dangers out there in cyberspace, including sexual predators.
Kellar was glad to hear that Indiana"s attorney general, Steve Carter, and some state legislators are trying to pass a law to protect young people from some of those dangers.
Carter, who visited Terre Haute on Thursday, is pushing legislation to ban convicted sex offenders from using online social networking sites, chat rooms or instant messaging programs that allow minors to participate.
"We don"t have any restriction in Indiana that prevents sex offenders from being on those same social networking sites that our children are on," Carter said. "It"s time for us to pass a law in Indiana that restricts sex offenders" access to our kids via these social networks."
House Bill 1134, authored by Rep. Shelli VanDenburgh, D-Crown Point, incorporates the proposal.
The bill could receive a hearing next week before the judiciary committee, said Staci Schneider, Carter"s press secretary.
A survey by the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children indicates that one in seven young people between the ages of 10 and 17 has received unwanted sexual solicitations online that tried to contact the youth in person, over the telephone or via mail. [Ed: Am I not mistaken but was it not this same Center for Missing & Exploited Children that quoted figures of thousands of children abducted by strangers every year in the '80's? Why does anyone believe anything these people say? Perhaps it's because they WANT to. Hmm...]
The survey also indicated that one in three children has experienced unwanted exposure to sexual material on the Internet.
"The growth of the Internet and the ability to hide an identity is a challenge to parents and law enforcement alike," Carter said. A state law addressing the problem is a step in the right direction.
The proposed legislation would make it a class-D felony (punishable by six months to three years in prison) for a convicted sex offender to use a social networking Web site or instant messaging or chat room program frequented by minors.
The penalty would be increased to a class-C felony (punishable by two to eight years in prison) if the offender uses the program to contact a child or has a prior conviction under the law.
Four states have passed laws regulating a convicted sex offender"s use of and activities on social networking sites, Carter said.
Mark Miller, principal at Sarah Scott Middle School, is aware of some of the problems and dangers that can arise on the social networking sites. "It"s a potentially real dangerous problem," he said.
Miller supports legislation to ban convicted sex offenders from those sites.
Each year, convicted sex offenders in Indiana must register on a sex offender registry list. If the new legislation passed, Carter also would like to collect their e-mail addresses and user names when they register. That information would then be available to law enforcement.
While the new law, if passed, might be difficult to enforce, it still sends a message and tells predators they risk committing a felony if they access those sites, Carter said. [Ed: Oh, here we go, let's "send a message!" just to let everyone know how righteous we are. This is every bit the same as those who pray ostentatiously so that everyone can witness their sanctimony. And I'm convinced that that's what this is all about.]
State Sen. John Waterman, R-Shelburn, who attended Carter"s news conference, said the legislation is needed and that he would support it. [Ed: Ask yourselves, where is this going to end? What's next? Are we to continue giving these dreadful busybodies the benefit of the doubt as to their emotional stability? Why aren't more people questioning the motivation of these obsessive and irrational crusaders? Is it not obvious that it is THEY who suffer from dark and sadistic impulses? Why are so few questioning their priorities which are vastly out of proportion to any real threats?] Full Story
Indiana official wants to ban sex offenders from Web sites
http://www.capecodonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080106/NEWS/801060334/-1/NEWSLETTER100%22
Perilous Web snares children
By George Brennan
STAFF WRITER
January 06, 2008 6:00 AM
Zoie is 11 years old. She's having a tough time at home. Her father doesn't understand her, and her mom doesn't want to hear it. She likes in-line skating, going to the arcade and chatting on her computer.
Tommy says he's 11, too. He has the same interests and he can relate to Zoie's family woes.
Zoie is telling the truth. Tommy is not.
In just a few short encounters online, Tommy gets Zoie to share her phone number and favorite arcade. With the phone number and a Google search, Tommy has her home address in seconds and is ready to pounce.
It's a true story that Shaun Cahill, assistant director for youth programs at the Barnstable County Sheriff's Department, tells over and over in classrooms across the Cape.
It's a wake-up call about the dangers of the Internet, Cahill recently told a group of sixth-graders at Quashnet Elementary School in Mashpee.
These are not your father's perverts. They don't wear trench coats and stalk playgrounds. Instead, they lurk on social networking sites such as MySpace and Friendster waiting for someone to open up, so they can close in.
The problem isn't as dire as an episode of Dateline's "To Catch a Predator" might lead television viewers to believe. And it's not quite the media myth Benjamin Radford, editor of Skeptical Enquirer, makes it out to be.
"The truth is we just don't know," said Parry Aftab, an attorney and expert in Internet safety.
Internet predators have the attention of Congress, which is considering tougher penalties and creating a division in the Justice Department geared specifically toward cyber crime.
In Massachusetts, Attorney General Martha Coakley has made online safety a priority.
"There's an increasing number of children using the Internet and predators who realize the Internet is a great place for them to find victims," said Coakley, who worked on crimes against children as a prosecutor in Middlesex County.
In the past, most sexual assaults against children were by someone the child knows, but the Internet has changed that, Coakley said. "Twenty years ago, you were worried about the guy in the raincoat at the playground or a family member."
Close to home
On Cape Cod, three recent, high-profile cases involving Internet-related allegations were prosecuted by outside law enforcement agencies — one resulting in a conviction.
In 2004, an undercover police officer in New Hampshire, posing as a 14-year-old girl, had intimate chats with then-Sandwich police officer Michael Caico.
After he was indicted on a solicitation charge, Caico quit his job as a school resource officer before being fired. Ultimately, the charges against him were dismissed, mainly because he never set up a meeting with "Tammy." But a New Hampshire judge called Caico's online behavior "reprehensible."
Repeatedly, Caico asked "Tammy" for photographs and engaged in sexually laden conversation that fell just short of solicitation.
Prosecutors believe Caico, because he was a police officer, chose his words carefully online. His chats were cagey and calculated, prosecutors said.
In October 2006, a 17-year-old Bourne teen was lured to the home of a Georgia sheep farmer through an encounter on MySpace. The teen went willingly to Georgia but, once he got there, sent a text message to friends saying he was being kept against his will.
Ted Roy Williams, the Georgia man, was cleared of false imprisonment and aggravated sodomy charges in connection with his contacts with the Bourne teen, but last April pleaded guilty to charges unrelated to the Bourne case. Williams was convicted of one count of attempted child molestation and two counts of possessing explicit photographs of children, Coweta Judicial Circuit District Attorney Pete Skandalakis said. He was sentenced to 15 years in prison, five to be served.
Men aren't the only Internet predators out there, although experts say they make up the vast majority.
In September, a 25-year-old Dennis woman pleaded guilty to charges of fourth-degree sexual assault and using a computer to entice a minor in Connecticut, according to the Hartford Courant.
Sarah Colby was sentenced to 10 years probation after she was convicted of driving to Cromwell, Conn., to meet a 15-year-old boy she'd contacted through MySpace and online chats, the Courant reported. Among the terms of her probation, Colby cannot have contact with children under the age of 16, and she cannot use a computer or the Internet at home.
But the prize in the region catch came across the canal, where a team of law enforcement personnel known as HEAT — High-Tech Evidence Analysis Team — caught a newly elected Plymouth selectman in "Operation Trenchcoat."
In September, former selectman Sean Dodgson, 47, was convicted of six charges, including distributing obscene material to a minor and enticement of a child under 16. He was sentenced to three to five years in state prison.
Dodgson sent photos of an erect penis to what he thought were two 13-year-old girls. He arranged to meet the girls at a fast-food restaurant in Kingston but realized it was a police sting when he arrived. Investigators took note of Dodgson's behavior at the scene, dug further and charged him.
His defense for the sexually explicit chats and the lewd photos was that he was doing undercover work to make sure the police were doing their jobs.
The jury, after hearing the content of his explicit chats, didn't buy it.
In a recently completed sting, Operation Trenchcoat II snagged another six accused predators online, a spokesman for the Plymouth County Sheriff's Department said.
Surfing with care
Aftab and Cahill don't believe sexual predator cases should scare children off the Internet. They preach using the Internet with care.
Parents need to be tuned in to their children's computer use, Aftab said.
Teens need to protect the information they give away online, according to Cahill.
Internet predators are not typically registered sex offenders. They are people who feel insulated by the keyboard, Aftab said. They test the boundaries, and sometimes children bite.
"Kids are communicating online with people they know to be adults, and they think it's cool because they're safe," she said.
Parents worry their children will be abducted, but that's not usually the biggest risk, Aftab said. "Internet predators get your heart, not your house."
That's why giving too much information about favorite movies and music is not a good idea. "It allows the bad guys to find a way into the kid's heart," Aftab said.
The insidious nature of Internet predators is demonstrated in the Zoie-Tommy scenario, Cahill said.
Tommy made the right connections, hit the right buttons.
"When I was younger, parents would always tell us, 'Don't talk to strangers,'" Cahill said. "When you open up the Internet, you are inviting the whole world in."
Social networks such as MySpace allow users to keep their profiles private. But Cahill makes sport out of getting teens to let him view their pages. Before he did an Internet safety program with local high school students, Cahill contacted teens online under an assumed name. They welcomed him, even though none of them knew his identity. "It's easy," he said.
Making up user names and phony cities isn't enough to keep predators at bay, either, Cahill said. He's been able to identify teens by searching the comments and profiles of their online friends. In some cases, he's seen teens exchange telephone numbers online.
There are safeguards that teen and preteen Internet users can take, Cahill said. "If you don't know the person outside of a computer, you don't let them on your buddy list," he said.
To drive home his point that Tommy was not who he said he was, Cahill shows a photograph of a middle-aged man, butt-naked, with rolls of fat covering his private parts, as he sits at a computer screen. There are audible "eeewwwws" from the preteen audience at Quashnet School and one student blurts out, "That is disturbing."
It's the effect Cahill wants. "This is who I want you to envision when you go online," he said.
George Brennan can be reached at gbrennan@capecodonline.com.
Fighting the problem
A bill before the U.S. Senate and passed by the House in November would establish $1 billion in spending over the next eight years to beef up and coordinate prosecution of online crimes against children by creating a Justice Department office specifically for prosecuting cyber criminals. The bill would also fund Internet safety programs for schools. Separate bills, also approved by the House, would make distributing pornography over the Internet an interstate crime and would allow probation officers to better monitor the online activity of convicted sex offenders.
* In his campaign for president, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney has proposed a "One Strike, You're Ours" policy, according to a campaign press release. Romney's policy would have mandatory penalties for first-time offenders who use the Internet to sexually assault children. It also calls for Internet sex offenders to be monitored by GPS. Cape and Islands District Attorney Michael O'Keefe and Barnstable County Sheriff James Cummings both endorse Romney's proposals.
* In December, Attorney General Martha Coakley's office hosted more than 180 middle school teachers, high school teachers and law enforcement officials from across the state at a series of regional Internet safety seminars to teach them how to expose online dangers to parents, teens and young children. Officials from Bourne, Brewster and Provincetown were among those who participated in the seminar, which is part of Coakley's effort to make fighting cyber crime a top law enforcement priority, a spokesman for the AG's office said.
Source: U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz's Web site, presidential candidate Mitt Romney's Web site, Attorney General Martha Coakley's office.
Predator campaign top priority for Fla.
News Press (Florida) Editorial Originally posted on January 05, 2008 THE LAW Here are some features of the state's new Cyber Crimes Against Children law:
• 15-year maximum sentence for contacting a child online and attempting to meet the child for sexual purposes
• Increases from five to 15 years the prison term for possession of more than 10 images of child pornography, and from 15 to 30 years for promotion and distribution of such materials
• New penalties for offenders who misrepresent their ages online
• Requires sex offenders to register all e-mail addresses and instant-message names they use, so social-network sites can block them
The Internet is a marvel for young people, with the potential for vastly enhancing their education and general mental fitness — but it's a jungle out there in cyberspace. Young people online are terribly vulnerable to sexual predators. [Ed: "Cyberspace" is without "space". If one confines oneself to "cyberspace" then one need never worry that a hand (or other body part) will reach through the computer monitor and grab you or your children. The same anonymity which you so greatly fear when enjoyed by a "predator" also affords you a vast physical remove from the physical world, a "moat" which surrounds you and your computer. As long as you don't foolishly divulge important personal information, then your children will be utterly safe. This is the only real knowledge you, or your children, need as protection within "cyberspace". Teach them that, like credit card numbers, personal information, physical address, future locations, etc. are all to be kept confidential. This is your responsibility as a caregiver to your children. It is not society's responsibility to constrain the rights of other children or adults as a means of circumventing all risks or remotely conceivable dangers. Soon, requiring sex offenders to surrender their rights to utilize the internet in their daily lives will seem as ridiculous as forbidding them to use a telephone or take a bus. If those possibilities do not seem absurd to you, then you are on the hysterical side of the divide.]
They must be aggressively educated about the dangers, and monitored by savvy, vigilant parents (and teachers and librarians, too). The other half of the campaign is law enforcement, and in that regard we are happy to see that Florida has torqued up its efforts to catch and punish these villains. At the urging of Attorney General Bill McCollum, the 2007 Legislature increased his cyber-predator unit from six to 56 positions and opened new offices in several cities. It's going to be very important to see that the funding isn't rescinded in the impending state budget crunch. The cyber-pervert campaign is one of those core public safety government functions that has to be shielded from budget-cutting. It has to have top priority. That's because Internet access is becoming a universal part of young people's experience in America, and because tech savvy does not necessarily equal real sophistication. Many young teens are emotionally vulnerable, innocent or foolish. It's one of several downsides to the Internet, including invasion of privacy, identity theft and and child pornography — all of which McCollum is also eager to tackle, to his great credit. The blatant, compulsive nature of sexual predation online makes it crucial to raise the stakes. The new law, for example, provides a 15-year maximum sentence for contacting a child online and attempting to meet the child for sexual purposes. Given the tough penalties and the widespread publicity given to sting operations, one might think predators would be pulling back. One would be very wrong. This is going to be a permanent war over the safety of our children. At last we're starting to fight back hard. [Ed:These people always like to portray themselves as a disadvantaged group having long-suffered at the hands of "liberal" judges and "lenient" laws and exhorting others to join them in "fighting back". The truth, however, is that we now live in the most punitive society of all, with a greater percentage of our citizens incarcerated than any other country on Earth (except possibly for North Korea). As for society being soft on "molesters" we have the most draconian laws with the longest prison sentences of any working democracy. And now we're supposed to "start getting tough?" I think it's time to demand our lost liberties from hysterical fear-mongers like you] Full Story
Death penalty for child rapist goes to Supreme Court
The high court agrees to hear an appeal from a Louisiana man convicted of raping his 8-year-old stepdaughter. He would be the first to be executed for a crime other than murder in more than 40 years.
By David G. Savage, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
WASHINGTON -- The U.S. Supreme Court said today it will decide whether a convicted child rapist can be put to death, thereby reconsidering a more than 40-year trend in the United States in which executions have been limited to murderers.
The justices agreed to hear an appeal from Patrick Kennedy, a Louisiana man who was convicted of the brutal rape of his 8-year-old stepdaughter. His lawyers described him has "the only person in the United States who is on death row for a non-homicide offense."
Rape was commonly prosecuted as a capital offense in the 19th and early 20th Century, particularly for blacks in the South. In May 1964, Missouri executed Ronald Wolfe for rape, the last such as execution in this country for a sexual assault that did not result in death.
In September 1964, Alabama electrocuted James Coburn for robbery, the last execution for "any non-homicide offense," according to the Stanford University Law School professors who appealed on Kennedy's behalf.
Capital punishment was suspended in the late 1960s, but the Supreme Court restored the death penalty as an option for the states in 1976.
Just a year later, however, the justices struck down the death penalty for a rapist from Georgia. "We have the abiding conviction that the death penalty, which is unique in its severity and irrevocability, is an excessive penalty for the rapist who, as such, does not take human life," the high court said in Georgia vs. Coker. Full Story
[Ed: It is worth noting that, in this case, the perpetrator had, indeed, genuinely "raped" a young girl in a way in which we can all agree was non-consensual, violent and forcible. However, the term "child rape" does not always, nor even usually, mean that a sexual act was committed by force or with violence. "Child Rape" is yet another inflammatory term used to obfuscate the facts surrounding any case involving an adult and a juvenile. As with the term "sexual violence" , "child rape" as a specific criminal charge has been redefined nationwide to obscure the real dynamic of age-of-consent violations as a class of offenses. In these cases, terms such as "Rape" or "Sexual Violence" have been redefined by our lawmakers to mean simply that one of the parties was under the age of 18 and the other was over the age of 18 (these ages and conditions vary somewhat by state). The result is that we rarely know or are told by law enforcement or the media if force or violence was actually committed. Instead, the public is left to assume, wrongly as it so often turns out, that the charges brought against individuals are genuinely descriptive of the actiions for which they are being charged. So, in light of that, do we really want to start going down the road of executing "sexually violent" "child rapists"? Beyond that concern for justice, those depraved individuals who, like the Death Row Defendant in Louisiana, are genuinely dangerous to children and need to be removed from society may, because of their depravity, find that it makes some kind of twisted sense to simply KILL their victims rather than face them in a court in which the death penalty is in play.]
Indiana AG Pushes Sex Offender Web Ban
http://www.theindychannel.com/news/14977725/detail.html
Plan Aims To Keep Offenders Off Certain Sites
INDIANAPOLIS -- Convicted sex offenders' access to certain types of Web sites would be regulated under a plan brought forth Friday by Indiana Attorney General Steve Carter.
Legislators and Carter are crafting legislation that would ban sex offenders from using social networking sites, chat rooms or instant messaging programs that also allow minors on their sites.
Proactive enforcement of such a regulation would likely be difficult, given the relative anonymity of the Internet, but if the proposal becomes law, it could be used to mount additional charges against anyone arrested in an Internet-related child sex crime.
"The Internet is a powerful communication tool that is being exploited by convicted sex offenders who have found cyberspace a convenient avenue for hiding their identity from young people," Carter said in a release. "Indiana must be proactive in establishing laws that address this type of deceitful behavior by convicted felons."
The proposal would make it a Class D felony for a convicted sex offender to use social networking sites, chat rooms or instant messaging programs frequented by minors.
The offense would be a Class C felony if the offender contacted a child or was previously convicted.
A survey conducted by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children indicated that as many as one in seven people between the ages of 10 and 17 has gotten unwanted sexual solicitations online in which contact was attempted in person, over the phone or through the mail.
As many as a third of children with Internet access has been exposed to unwanted sexual material on the Web, the survey concluded.
Carter's office said four states already have laws regulating sex offenders' access to social networking sites.
Copyright 2008 by TheIndyChannel.com All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Police try out new powers (in Wales)
Jan 3 2008 by Linda Elias, Cynon Valley Leader
POLICE officers in Rhondda Cynon Taff have become the first in Wales to use new powers to monitor sex offenders.
The new powers, come under the Sexual Offences Act 2003 and are designed to allow them to enter and search the homes of registered sex offenders.
They allow officers to insist on entry into, and to search the premises of, any registered sex offender who does not comply with their registration conditions or refuses to let officers inside on compulsory unannounced visits.
The new entry warrant must be applied for by a police superintendent and issued by a magistrate and can allow officers to enter a property on more than one occasion if they are obstructed by the offender.
This is the first time the new powers have been used in the South Wales Police force area and is believed to be only the third time they have been used in the UK since they became available at the end of August.
Division Superintendent Simon Clarke says the powers will help officers to more strictly manage offenders if they refuse to comply with police requests.
“South Wales police canvassed nationally for additional legislation to give us this power of entry and it will be another valuable tool we can use whenever an offender tries to stop us doing our job,” said Supt Clarke.
“It sends a strong message to offenders and members of the public that we will use all means available to us to manage sex offenders and protect our communities, “ said the police chief. [Ed: what's not quite clear here is whether these S.O.'s have to be on parole or probation first (or their equivalents in the U.K.) in order to be subjected to these "police powers" If not, then it would be a step further down the path of tyranny than what the U.S. laws currently allow. If so, then this is truly an alarming development as it would mean that men who have served their time in prison and have been subsequently released from parole will not have even the most basic of their civil liberties restored ] Source
State fosters homelessness with offender registry law
Daytona News Journal Editorial
Because of its perverse laws against sex offenders -- laws that permanently brand offenders and forbid them to live in many parts of the state -- Florida is actively creating homeless colonies.
At least two have cropped up with the Department of Corrections' help. One is under a bridge below the Julia Tuttle Causeway in Miami. About 20 offenders live there. Another is in the woods off John Young Parkway in Orlando, long frequented by the homeless. Needless to say, neither colony has running water, electricity, sanitation, telephones or security. At least one murder took place at the Orlando camp this year.
Before offenders are released from prison, the Department of Corrections spends up to three months locating a place to stay for them anywhere in the state. When the search proves fruitless, they point to the homeless camps. Some offenders go there. Others disappear, which goes against the state's interest in keeping track of them.
It's easy to say that the offenders get what they deserve. No one forced them to break the law, after all. Now they're paying for it. Not exactly: Paying for it is going to jail, serving out sentences and supervision time. Once they've done that, they're owed the same basic rights as anyone else. Creating colonies of homeless ex-offenders isn't the offenders' doing. It's the doing of state and local laws that wantonly deny ex-offenders their rights, property rights among them.
The system goes out of its way to ensnare former offenders again. Take Gideon Bernhard, a 59-year-old man who lived in Deltona until summer. In 1998, he was convicted in Seminole County and sentenced to probation and community control on charges of sexual acts with a 14-year-old girl. In 2006, he was again on probation. He had not recommitted sexual acts with a minor. Most sex offenders don't recommit. His offense: He'd failed to register as a sex offender. That year, the law changed, requiring offenders to register twice a year instead of once. But why require ex-offenders who have served their time to register at all, especially when it turns into such an easy setup for lawbreaking?
For Bernhard, probation set him up for his next problem. At a July 4 parade he was arrested for disorderly conduct for pointing a laser light at spectators. (He owned an LED laser light business.) The charges were dropped, but not before Bernhard spent 120 days in jail awaiting a hearing. Because of the probation charge, he was ineligible for bail. And because he spent 120 days in jail, he was thrown out of his three-bedroom home in Deltona and his business inventory was seized. He'd been able to live in that Deltona home because his residence there pre-dated the city's draconian ordinance forbidding sex offenders from living within 2,500 feet of where children gather, including bus stops. Without the grandfather clause, Bernhard had to find a place that fit the new restrictions. Aside from swampland on the periphery of the city. Deltona barely has such places.
So Gideon Bernhard, who'd been living a relatively productive life, lost it all due to a series of circumstances, none of which should have led to his eviction. Now he's homeless and living in the wretched camp in the woods off John Young Parkway. Bernhard paid his debt for the 1998 sentence. Now he's paying the state's debt for hysterical, indefensible laws.
States and localities, pushed by courts, are beginning to realize that the draconian laws forbidding sex-offender residence are wrong and counterproductive. But it's a slow process. As far as eliminating Florida's homeless colonies is concerned, it shouldn't be. The state created the problem with those draconian laws. The state should assume the responsibility of housing the offenders more decently by providing a shelter or underwriting the costs of the offenders' stay -- anywhere appropriate but in homeless camps. Source
[Ed: Bravo! Journalists do not often criticize the witch hunt and this one is to be commended for exercising both bravery and intellect in taking these wretched laws to task.]
Sexual Predator Driver’s Licenses
WJHG-TV
Since summer, Florida law requires convicted sexual predators and offenders to have a code on their driver’s license that identifies them. Florida is the only state with this requirement. The sheriff who pushed for the law hopes other states follow Florida’s lead.
You have to look closely to see whether a person is a sexual predator or offender by their driver’s license. The identifier is a small number in the lower right hand corner.
Jefferson County Sheriff David Hobbs came up with the idea. It became law in July. He believes it helps officers quickly identify if someone could cause trouble, when computer systems go down, like during a hurricane inside a shelter.
“I think the public needs to be made aware if it, at any costs. That’s a lifestyle that individual chooses. And I personally have no tolerance or patience for an individual that would do anything to a child.”
Sexual predators and offenders already have to register with the state. They also have limits on where they can live. Some parents like Jason Knowles wonder if the law goes too far.
“I don’t know if that’s the best way to identify who sex offenders are, by putting a marking on their driver’s license. But I think it is important to identify who the sex predators or potential child molesters are.”
The Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles says there are no known issues with the requirement.
Because kids often can’t protect themselves, the sheriff behind the law hopes other states adopt similar measures.
“If you stop a car on the interstate and there’s a small child in there with this individual. Do you know if it’s his child, do you?”
A sexual predator or offender who fails to register with DHSMV could face up to five years in prison. Full Story
Sex offenders struggle to follow Jessica's Law: When transience is the best option
SAN PABLO -- S.T. is a registered sex offender with a wife, three children and a cozy apartment near Hilltop mall. But every night he roams the dark streets in a pea coat, a wool cap and a Global Positioning System tracker strapped to his left ankle.
He would rather stay home. But that could mean running afoul of Jessica's Law -- and a return trip to prison.
So at 10 p.m. he slips on the soft prison shoes he wore out of San Quentin State Prison last month and walks to his favorite bus stop shelter. He sits and chats with the drivers. He circles the mall. Then he treks down near the Richmond BART station to watch the hookers and drug dealers and to lie on a sheet of cardboard plucked from behind a KFC restaurant.
When light breaks, he shakes off the chill and heads home -- but never before 7 a.m., because that is when his parole officer says it is OK, said S.T., who asked to remain anonymous, saying he fears upsetting his parole agent.
"My hands get so cold they turn actually red and get numb," he said on a recent night out. "Mentally and psychologically, I'm fighting."
S.T. lives under a kind of reverse-curfew that owes to the state's enforcement of Proposition 83, the 2006 ballot measure that bans newly released sex offenders from living within 2,000 feet of a school or park.
He is not alone. State corrections figures show a big increase in parolee sex offenders who, like him, are registering as transient -- homeless or bouncing from bed to bed, doing anything to comply with the 2,000-foot rule.
The surge started in August, when parole agents began to enforce a law that was billed as a way to ease safety fears over children. Yet concern is mounting among state officials, parole agents, victims' advocates and even the law's author, that this is not the way.
Of the 3,952 parolees who now fall under the ban, nearly one in five were registered as transient last week, up from very few before the law, officials said. In the parole region that runs along the coast from Ventura north to the Oregon border and includes the Bay Area, more than a third of the 859 sex offender parolees who fall under Jessica's Law are officially transient.
The situation is most acute in urban areas, where the 2,000-foot rule leaves few places for newly released offenders to live.
Prop. 83, or Jessica's Law, added several get-tough measures against sex offenders. The most controversial is the ban on newly released sex offenders from living within 2,000 feet -- about four-tenths of a mile -- of a school or park where children "regularly gather."
As judges and policymakers sort out the legal and practical implications, what has emerged is a makeshift -- some say slipshod -- system of enforcement.
Parole agents measure off the 2,000 feet "as the crow flies," under state policy. But they have leeway over what it means to live somewhere. For S.T. and others, it is where they spend the night.
The rise in transients is a concern, said Gareth Lacy, spokesman for state Attorney General Jerry Brown, whose office keeps the state sex offender registry.
"It's much harder to track and manage offenders who are moving around and not in one location," he said.
Most of the transients are fitted with GPS anklets. They also must report daily to their parole agents, instead of weekly. But the tracking is no cure-all, said Mark McCarthy, a parole agent who oversees sex offenders.
"The big fallacy with GPS is that it's going to curtail crimes. It isn't going to make them not molest kids or rape women. We'll just know if they did it or not," he said. "For public safety purposes, I'd rather know where a guy's at -- at home -- than have him transient, out in the streets somewhere."
A state corrections official denied there is any policy for parole agents to tell people such as S.T. to go transient. Some agents, though, say it is written between the lines of an Aug. 17 memo detailing the agency's policy on the law.
The choices are few in some counties. In San Francisco, where state maps show virtually no compliant housing, 31 of the city's 97 Jessica's Law parolees are now registered transient.
"We had an obligation to make sure parolees knew their options under the law," state corrections spokesman Bill Sessa said. "We weren't directing them. We were simply saying, you either have to find a compliant address or register as transient."
A third option: a parole violation and possible return to prison.
As many as 700 sex offenders are paroled each month. They all fall under the 2,000-foot rule for life unless a court rules otherwise. The state Supreme Court is expected to rule in the spring on a challenge to the restriction.
"The continuing issue is there have to be places for people to live," Sessa said. "The number of sex offenders covered by the law will be constantly expanding."
Transients cannot set up anywhere, Sessa said. They cannot sleep, for instance, under a bridge for several nights if it is too close to a school or park, he said. However, parole agents have discretion.
"There's a common-sense perspective of what it means to live somewhere," he said. "There is a balancing act here, because all the research shows that having a stable environment is the biggest key to rehabilitation, and so agents are always trying to strike a balance." ...
His wife often joins him early on his nightly journey. They hold hands and circle the mall. Then he walks her home, across from a church school.
"This is for me to feel what he's going through," she said as they walk. "He has a place to come to. He has a family. We have children. It is so weird. He just can't be home."
S.T. said that his parole officer told him: "Wherever you go, just keep it moving." That usually is what he does, if only to keep warm.
"I'm really -- how would you say? -- traumatized," he said. "Being in the cold, being tired, walking in the rain. ... What if I have to use the bathroom? It is very degrading."
The author of Jessica's Law now says that the state is misguided in its early enforcement of the law and that policymakers need to be more "creative."
Sen. George Runner, R-Lancaster, described S.T.'s case as "a very tortured interpretation, obviously. Somebody in corrections has decided it was easier to go let somebody be transient than to insist that they follow the law."
Still, Runner said that he never meant the law for people such as S.T. who fall under Jessica's Law only because of nonsex convictions. That borders on being retroactive, he said. [Ed: What disingenuous nonsense! Apparently, Runner feels that he can write any piece of crap law and those obligated to enforce it are supposed to know (and have the authority to CHOOSE) which elements to enforce and when and with whom. In other words, they are supposed to realize that they are to enforce it capriciously! George Runner and his Legislator wife should be chased out of office and, what the hell, maybe their home, too!]
He also disagrees with how the state strictly measures 2,000 feet, when in some cases freeways split a home from a school or park. He said he thinks cities can better define parks. Should all of Golden Gate Park count, or only areas that children frequent?
"We're always concerned if there are issues that make something impossible to implement," he said. "We believe there's a big difference between impossible and hard. The bottom line is it's going to work."
Critics blame Runner for writing a vaguely worded law that was ripe for trouble. Corrections officials say they merely are enforcing the letter of a law that 70 percent of voters passed.
The California Sex Offender Management Board, formed under Jessica's Law, is studying the fallout and possible repairs, including the idea of "cluster housing" for sex offenders
"It's really about keeping sex offenders from living in a place where they have easy access to children," said Nancy O'Malley, chief assistant district attorney in Alameda County.
She could not grasp the purpose of S.T. wandering the streets at night.
"That's not good," she said. "What does that do?" Full Story
Reach John Simerman at 925-943-8072 or jsimerman@bayareanewsgroup.com.
Michigan Lawmaker, A Convicted Drunk-Driver, Wants To Escalate Sex Offender Registration
[Editor: In 2005, a total of 414 fatalities among children age 14 and younger occurred in crashes involving alcohol. (source: stopthemaddness.org). Now, a Michigan State Legislator, David Law, also convicted in 2005 of drunk driving, wants to expand Michigan's Sex Offender Registry to include those convicted of sex crimes before 1995 in the interest of "child safety". Apparently, he accords greater danger to those (now adult) men who, when 18 years old, were convicted of having sex with 17 year olds sometime before 1995, than he does to himself.
However, statistics are clearly not on his side. Fewer than 40 children are murdered by a sex offender every year (source: U.S. Department of Justice) while, as cited above, many hundreds of children are killed every year by drunk drivers. If David Law wanted to make a contribution to reducing childhood victims of violent crime, then perhaps he should try implementing a public registry of drunk drivers or (to be more commensurate with sanctions taken against sex offenders) have their driver's licenses revoked for life. At a minimum, assign them orange license plates with the words "DRUNK DRIVER" appearing in place of "GREAT LAKES" ]
___________________________________________________________________________
Lansing State Journal
One state legislator is trying to debunk the theory that Michigan's sex offender registry is a comprehensive list of dangerous predators.
Offenders convicted before 1995 aren't required to register.
State Rep. David Law, R-Commerce Township, wants to change that.
He said sex crimes against minors left an imprint on him during his time working at the Oakland County prosecutor's office.
Law's bill would require some individuals convicted on or before Oct. 1, 1995 to register. It would cover offenders who were 17 or older when they sexually assaulted a child under 13.
"This bill is not about further punishing sex offenders - this is a matter of public safety," Law said. "The recidivism statistics of the most heinous sex offenders pose a significant threat to public safety and our children."
According to the Michigan State Police, the intent of the registry is "to better assist the public in preventing and protecting against the commission of future criminal sexual acts by convicted sex offenders."
Offenders are required to register if they reside, work or live in the state and have been convicted of specific sex crimes. The registry is a public record and includes the individual's name, photo, crime, physical description, last known address and aliases.
Elizabeth Arnovits, executive director of the Michigan Council on Crime and Delinquency, said sex offender reporting laws may make people feel more secure, but accomplish little and make people less vigilant because they're lulled into a false sense of security.
Arnovits predicts the bill will pass.
Patricia Caruso, director of the Department of Corrections, said the recidivism rates for sex offenders are extremely low, but because sexual assault is such an emotional issue, the facts often are ignored.
According to Caruso, laws that require offenders to stay a minimum distance from playgrounds and other areas with children are "meaningless and ineffective" because less than 1 percent of sex crimes against minors are committed by strangers."
_______________________________________________
Previous Reports On David Law's Drunk Driving:
Gregory Herbert is a writer with the Capitol News Service.
Michigan state representative gets fine, probation for drunken driving
October 28, 2005, 7:58 AM
BERKLEY, Mich. (AP) -- The trip home after Major League Baseball's All-Star game in Detroit will cost a state lawmaker and former prosecutor $986 and six months of probation.
Rep. David Law was sentenced Thursday in Berkley District Court after pleading guilty to a reduced charge of operating a motor vehicle while visibly impaired.
Law was charged July 13 with drunken driving after Berkley police stopped him for speeding on Woodward Avenue. Police measured his blood-alcohol level at 0.13 percent, above the legal limit of 0.08 percent.
The Republican from Oakland County's Commerce Township told Judge William Sauer that he was embarrassed to be standing in the courtroom and that such an offense would never happen again.
Sauer also assessed fines and fees, prohibited Law from buying or possessing alcohol and ordered him to enter an intervention program.
------
Information from: The Oakland Press, http://www.theoaklandpress.com
http://stopthemaddness.org/cached1/20050285.html
Michigan state representative gets fine, probation for drunken driving
BERKLEY, Mich. The trip home after Major League Baseball's All-Star game in Detroit is costing a state lawmaker and former prosecutor 986 dollars and six months of probation.
Representative David Law -- a Republican from Oakland County's Commerce Township -- was sentenced yesterday in Berkley District Court. He pleaded guilty to a reduced charge of operating a motor vehicle while visibly impaired.
Law told the court that he was embarrassed to be standing in the courtroom and that such an offense would never happen again.
Law was charged July 13th with drunken driving after Berkley police stopped him for speeding on Woodward Avenue.
Copyright 2005 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
http://www.lsj.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071229/NEWS04/712290334/1005/news
Published December 29, 2007
More registers
• The bill proposed by state Rep. David Law, R-Commerce Township, would require some individuals convicted of sex offenses on or before Oct. 1, 1995 to register with authorities. It would cover offenders who were 17 or older when they sexually assaulted a child under 13.
• Right now, sex offenders convicted before 1995 aren't required to register.
• The bill is pending in the House Judiciary Committee.
More sex offenders required to register under bill
Gregory Herbert
Special to the State Journal
Sex Offender Won't Pay School Tax
Hernando Today, KYLE MARTIN
SPRING HILL - When Stephen St. Laurent went to re-register as a sex offender Thursday, an informal chat at the sheriff's office set his mind to thinking.First he mulled over the growing restrictions against his kind: the limited jobs he can take, the bi-annual registration, the new stamp he'll get on his driver's license in February.The penalty for breaking some of the conditions means immediate imprisonment.Then it dawned on him. For the past nine years, almost half of his property tax bill has been dedicated towards the county's schools. If he can't have anything to do with children, does this violate state statute?
"They're trying every way they can to entrap a sex offender," St. Laurent said Friday.The answer was clear to him.When he sent in his $1,100 tax bill this week, it was $400 short. A clerk at the tax collector's office was quick to respond and phoned to say the check would be returned if he didn't pay the school tax.St. Laurent, 65, expects that. When the check shows up in the mail, he will march down to the courthouse and file a lawsuit against the county and state for fraud and discrimination.
He's prepared to take his fight to the U.S. Supreme Court.Tax Collector Juanita Sikes said roughly 5,000 people out of the 112,000 property owners in the county refuse to pay their taxes each year."It's a small percentage," she said.A lien is placed on the property if taxes aren't paid by the deadline, but citizens have about a two-year window to pony up.If the accrued interest and past taxes aren't paid in that time, the house is put on the auction block.St. Laurent has been a faithful taxpayer up until this point, Sikes noted.Occasionally, people will gripe about the school tax because they don't have any children attending classes.
St. Laurent said that's not the point.Those people can still visit the schools and see their taxpayer dollars at work. St. Laurent can't.The school district's safety and security director, Barry Crowley, confirms as much.Any sex offender who steps on a campus is trespassing. Parents who are sex offenders are given limited access to their children. For example, they can pick up their kids after school and attend parent/teacher conferences.
But even that access is closely guarded and if the parent's offense was a sexually violent crime against a child, permission to step onto school grounds is denied.St. Laurent was convicted of committing a lewd act in front of children when a pair of teenagers looked through his window and saw him masturbating. Like other sex offenders without children in school, St. Laurent is explicitly banned."There are no special allowances," Crowley said.The school tax portion of the bill is applied towards debt, the general fund and capital outlay. That includes operating costs, teacher's salaries, construction projects and textbooks.
St. Laurent has authored an autobiography about the isolation and treatment he has received with the label of sex offender. He sees the growing restrictions on sex offenders as a violation of the Eighth Amendment, which protects citizens against cruel and unusual punishment.The knee-jerk legislation and rules "have got to come to an end and maybe this is the way to do it," St. Laurent said of his protest. Full Story
Constitutionality of Sex Offender Law Challenged
TROY, OH, Dayton Daily News — Ohio's new Adam Walsh Act was challenged Friday in a Miami County court by lawyers arguing the law's reclassification of previously convicted sex offenders and new registration requirements for those offenders are unconstitutional.
Troy lawyer Jose Lopez filed injunction requests on behalf of six people in county Common Pleas Court and said he plans to file similar complaints for others Monday in Shelby and Auglaize counties.
The challenges are believed to be the first in Ohio against the law passed this summer by the Ohio General Assembly. ...
Previously, judges determined classification — sexually oriented offender, predator, etc. — after looking at a number of factors.
Lopez said he sees two "chief problems" with the new law. He said making the law retroactive changes the penalty for crimes that occurred years ago. Full Story
California Prison Budget Up By 79 Percent
Vittorio Hernandez - AHN News Writer
Sacramento, CA (AHN) - California's budget for prison maintenance is expected to go beyond $10 billion in 2008. The 79 percent hike compared to 2003's $8.5 billion allocation, is caused by an 8 percent rise in prison population, now more than 173,000.
Prison spending tops the state's budget allocation for any other major program, except public schools and healthcare for the poor. The budget hike for the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation is not expected to slow down. According to the Legislative analyst's office, California will have to adjust upward its prison spending by 6 percent per annum for the next 5 years due to the construction of new prisons. ...
New state law, such as the Jessica's law, which restricts residential choice of released sex offenders and requires tracking by satellite for life, also contribute to the higher spending on prisons. ...
California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has proposed releasing over 200,000 non-sex offenders who are on their last months of serving sentence to reduce the state budget deficit.
Full Story
Children's rape case puzzling
'A problem most don't know about'
CHRISTIAN BOONE, Atlanta Journal Constitution
After announcing the rape charges leveled against three boys, ages 8 and 9, Acworth Police Capt. Wayne Dennard said he had "never seen anything like this."
And he's a seasoned cop.
The details are shocking enough. So are the potential repercussions, for the alleged victim — an 11-year-old playmate of the boys — and the accused.
Most startling of all: Sexual assaults committed by children, against children, are not as uncommon as parents want to believe, though some experts question whether boys as young as 8 are capable of rape.
"In my counseling center, we see lots of sexually aggressive children" said Dr. Julie Medlin, director of the Medlin Treatment Center, which treats both the victims and perpetrators of sexual abuse of all ages. "I can't tell you how common it is."
"This is a problem most people don't know about."
Sally Thigpen, statewide coordinator for Stop It Now! Georgia, a public health campaign targeting child sexual abuse, agrees the problem is a growing one. There's no single cause, she said. Some children may be repeating behavior they've experienced. Others may be influenced by repeated exposure to pornography. [Ed: This is a "boiler plate" explanation from abuse industry experts who've invested so much into the idea that children are asexual unless they have been "sexualized" by abuse or pornography, in defiance of both scientific evidence and common sense. They prefer to redefine childhood by enforcing their bizarre mass-amnesia on anyone who was once a normal child]. ...
A 1989 study in the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry found rates of false allegations made by children range between 2 percent and 8 percent. ...
Regardless of whether the accusations in the Acworth case are valid, Medlin said the problem of child-on-child sexual abuse is only getting worse.
"Porn is becoming more and more accessible, and children are like clay," she said. "At that young age, if they hadn't seen it, they may have never thought about it." [Ed: Of course! Being asexual and all...]
Intervention is key
[Ed: I would argue that intervention is, more often than not, DISASTER!]
"When you see this happening, you need to do something," Medlin said. "It's much, much easier to treat a younger child than a teenager or adult." [Ed: It's also much easier to screw them up permanently, a talent for which you therapists are most accomplished]. Full Story
Sex offenders getting younger, more violent
Kim Curtis, Associated Press
STOCKTON -- Courts have seen the number of sex offense cases involving juvenile offenders rise dramatically in recent years, an Associated Press review of national statistics found, and treatment professionals say the offenders are getting younger and the crimes more violent. ...
Robert Prentky, a psychologist and nationally renowned expert on sex offenders in Bridgewater, Mass., thinks the statistics are misleading.
"There aren't more kids, there are more laws," he said. "We now have fairly draconian laws with very harsh sanctions that apply to juveniles." ... Full Article
Jessica's Flaw
Daily Breeze
There are, as of last count, about 660 convicted sex offenders wandering free around California, not wearing the monitoring devices that Jessica's Law requires. And state officials say there's nothing they can do about it.
That ought to come as a shock to California voters, who overwhelmingly approved Jessica's Law at the polls last year - under the promise that the state would finally get tough on child predators.
Turns out we were had, again. Full Story
Ohio Gets More Draconian, Must Disclose Email Address
Register-Herald
Beginning Jan. 1, 2008, Ohio's sex offender law will be changed to comply with the federal Adam Walsh Act.Tier 3 offenses include:
•Rape
•Sexual battery
•Aggravated murder with sexual motivation
•Murder with sexual motivation
•Unlawful death or termination of pregnancy as a result of committing or attempt to commit a felony with sexual motivation
•Kidnapping of minor, not by parent
•New section of Gross Sexual Imposition
•Felonious assault with sexual motivation
•Pre-AWA predators unless reclassified after hearing under ORC
•Any sexual offense that occurs after the offender is classified as Tier 2 or 3
•Automatic classification after SVP specification
•Includes an attempt, complicity or conspiracy to commit any of these offenses.
"Where we used to have sexually oriented offenders and sexual predators, they are now going into three groups. These tiers will be based on what they are convicted or found guilty of," Preble County Sheriff Mike Simpson said.
Tier 3, which is the most serious offenders, are required to check in every 90 days for the rest of their life.
Tier 2 offenders must check in every 180 days for 25 years.
Tier 1 offenders are required to check in once per year.
"Tier 3 is the one subject to area notification. We have to notify everybody within 1,000 feet of where they are living," Simpson said.
According to Simpson, there are a total of 54 sex offenders in Preble County and beginning the first of the year, 22 people in the county will be classified in the most serious category. That number is up 12 from the old law.
"We've got some people based on what they are convicted of that are going from oriented offenders with no community notification and were probably going to drop off (the list) in 10 years, to Tier 3, every 90 days for life," Simpson said.
Simpson said there are going to be 21 people in the Tier 2 category and 11 who fall into Tier 1.
According to Simpson, what used to take his office about 40 mintues to register a sex offended will now take closer to an hour.
"It will definitely increase our workload a little bit," Simpson said. "But, if all these offenders register like they're supposed to, it will increase our ability to keep track of them. It's going to create (workload) more so if they don't, because you don't know where that sex offender is, which isn't good."
And, if the offender works in another county, that individual will have to register in that county as well, according to Simpson.
Simpson said the offender is required to give all his/her information to his office, which includes physical description, tattoos, birthmarks, vehicles, address, e-mail addresses, phone numbers, if they volunteer anywhere.
"If they have an e-mail address, a MySpace account, anything they are supposed to tell us," Simpson said. "Because, if they fail to tell us, that's considered failure to register because they left out information."
Simpson said all the sex offenders received letters from the Attorney General's office notifying them of the change in the law and what their new classification will be beginning Jan. 1.
"If they live in Preble (County) and also work in Montgomery, they also have to register there to let that sheriff know they are working in that county," Simpson said."They have an obligation and a duty to notify the sheriff where they work."
According to Simpson, each of the offenders who have had his/her classification changed will have the right to challenge the new classification.
"They had 60 days after they received this letter to file a petition in Common Pleas Court in the county where they reside," Simpson said. "It's a civil action, meaning they are not entitled to an attorney. They have to hire their own attorney, they have to pay the fee to file the petition in the clerk's office. And if they don't file within that 60-day period, they waive their right to contest."
Simpson noted Ohio is one of the few states in the county to adopt this new law.
"Ohio's on the front end of it. Really, Ohio's system of eSORN, the e-mail notification, we are way ahead of the game in Ohio as opposed to other states," Simpson said.
Simpson said he encourages people to vist his website and register for an e-mail. The site address is preblecountysheriff.org.
"If a sex offender moves within a mile of your house, you are going to get an automatic notification," he said.
Simpson said people can register multiple addresses, such as other relatives' homes or child day cares, for example.
Facts about the Adam Walsh Act
•The Adam Walsh Act was signed into law on July 27, 2006. At the time of passage, at least 100,000 of more than a half million sex offenders in the United States and the District of Columbia were "missing" and unregistered.
•The act was signed on the 25th anniversary of the abduction of Adam Walsh from a shopping mall in Florida. Walsh was found murdered 16 days after his abduction and the perpetrator of the crime has yet to be found.
•Expands the National Sex Offender Registry.
•Strengthens Federal Penalties for Crimes Against Children.
•Makes it harder for sex predators to reach children on the Internet.
About eSORN
According to Ohio Attorney General Marc Dann, eSORN is one of the most important programs in the Attorney General's office. The database is connected to all 88 counties in Ohio.
The eSORN is a state-of-the-art electronic sex offender registration and notification website to help Ohioans protect their families and communities. This website marks the first time the public and law enforcement have electronic access to a list of all registered sex offenders in the state in one location.
Providing easy access to this website gives more information to the public and helps make our communities safer. The enhanced database provides a secure link for the exclusive use of law enforcement.
Users will find the name, address, type of offense and photo of each convicted sex offender the Attorney General's Office is permitted by law to include. The website is searchable by offender name, county, ZIP code and school district. It also provides links to county sheriffs offices' websites. By law, the eSORN public website may only contain information on offenders who have been convicted in adult criminal court.
State law requires county sheriffs to provide information for the eSORN database. Many, but not all county sheriffs, have a local convicted sex offender database. The website and enhanced database supplies a critical link between local and state databases to share information.
The Attorney General's Office furnishes technical assistance to sheriffs' offices interested in creating their own sex offender website.
In addition to the public website, there is secure access, for law enforcement agencies and prosecutors, to more detailed information on all convicted sex offenders, including victim preference, release date and fingerprints.
The Bureau of Criminal Identification and Investigation updates the database with relevant information pursuant to Ohio's SORN law. This section of the database is designed to increase communication among law enforcement agencies. A new mapping function is now operational, allowing both the public and law enforcement agencies to determine if sex offenders live within a certain radius of his or her residence.
With few alternatives, sex offenders sent to live in homeless camp
By SARA KIESLER
Staff Writer
ORLANDO -- Walk along the snaking trail past abandoned tires, the huddled tents and old yellow strands of police crime tape, and you'll find a small group of homeless sex offenders awaiting the end of their probation.
They don't want to be in the woods off John Young Parkway and W.D. Judge Road. There's no running water. No sanitation. No electricity.
They found out about the camp from officials of the state Department of Corrections, who say they have nowhere else to send them. Full Story
The Sex Offender as Scapegoat: Vigilante Violence and a Faith Community Response
Hugh Kirkegaard & Wayne Northey, Emory University
Excerpt: "René Girard argues that the founding moment of culture is in fact violence, which then scapegoats in order to bring social cohesion. A "scapegoat mechanism" as described earlier arises to siphon the violence away from the community, thereby creating peace for a time within the society. In religious cultures, this kind of violence invariably took the form of myths, rituals, and prohibitions legitimizing the violence against the victim or victims. In the secular West, the ultimate non-religious instance of the same dynamic is the Holocaust."
The Sex Offender as Scapegoat: Vigilante Violence and a Faith Community Response
The Politics Of A Paedophile Panic
By Mick Hume, "Spiked" (U.K.)
It used to be said that patriotism was the last refuge of a scoundrel. In politics today, their last resort is more likely to be a paedophile panic. ...
The numbers of child murders in Britain remain as low as ever, and there is no evidence that any number of new anti-paedophile laws or PR campaigns reduces the minimal risk to children. But then, the current furore is not really about paedophiles. It is about politics. ...
It is against this background that Reid has seized upon the paedophile issue in a desperate attempt to ‘connect’ with a constituency, to show that New Labour shares the public’s concerns on one issue where everybody agrees there is a clear line between Good and Evil. Playing the populist card against an imaginary army of sex offenders at the school gates is a rare opportunity for a politician like Reid to pose as a man of the people, and have a swipe at the bewigged judges while he is at it. ...
It is not often we on spiked find ourselves agreeing with much that a chief police constable has to say. But Chief Constable Terry Grange of Dyfed-Powys, the child protection spokesman for the Association of Chief Police Officers, had a point when he suggested this week that the government had ‘surrendered’ policy on child sex offenders to tabloid newspapers. ‘It is impossible to work consistently, coherently when every month or every six months there is a policy change or reaction brought about by pressure from the media…. The only people with any real strategic intent and understanding of where they want to go and the will to be ruthless in getting there is the News of the World.’ ...
In the process these legal gestures also risk sweeping away important principles of criminal justice, such as the notion that people are punished for what they do, not what they might do or even fantasise about doing in the future; or that criminals who have served their time are considered to have, in the traditional phrase, ‘paid their debt to society’. If these principles are no longer to apply to those convicted of sex offences, what about others? Why not a public register of convicted murderers, drug dealers, drunk drivers or wife beaters in our communities?
As I have argued before on spiked, after the conviction of Sarah Payne’s murderer in 2001 put the campaign in the headlines, ‘Sarah’s Law can’t protect us from fear’. Nor could a law protect us from politicians and others prepared to stoop so low to exploit our most basic concerns....
There will be no winners from this messy, tired panic. Every time the government introduces a new crackdown on child sex offenders, it will only give rise to demands for yet more, fronted by a haunted victim’s mother. Yet there are likely to be plenty of losers. Paedophile panics risk damaging everything they touch, from the criminal justice system to public trust and intelligent debate. Nor do they offer any respite to the relatively small numbers of real victims, whose ordeal can only be made worse by endless public scrutiny and pronouncements that their lives have been ruined. As for the millions of children who will never experience this sort of abuse, the current climate risks sentencing them all to a life of mistrust and insecurity.
We are witnessing the politics of the jailhouse, where everybody seeks to demonstrate that, whatever else they might have done, they are on the side of Good against the threat posed by Evil perverts. Some of us have argued since the morbid obsession with child abuse escalated almost 20 years ago that fear itself is the greatest threat to our children’s future in a free society. This is no time to be put off that argument by the emotive words of a young victim’s mother, or those who would use her as a human shield.
Civil Commitment Upheld, Allegedly Stared at Young Boys
Bismarck Tribune
North Dakota’s Supreme Court upheld a Grand Forks man's commitment to the state mental hospital for treatment as a sexual predator.
The court's decision Thursday was split. Justice Carol Ronning Kapsner says there isn’t enough evidence to conclude Christopher Midgett was a predator.
When psychologists decided to put Midgett into the hospital, they cited two instances where Midgett allegedly stared at young boys. Kapsner says that isn’t enough evidence to lock someone up indefinitely for treatment.
Midgett was confined as a juvenile in Texas for molesting a 5-year-old girl and an 8-year-old boy. Court records say he was 13 when he was confined. He’s now 25 years old.
Midgett’s attorney says he should have been allowed to question the witnesses who accused him of staring at boys. The Supreme Court’s justices agree that Midgett’s right to confront his accusers doesn’t apply during civil commitment proceedings. [Ed: This is reminiscent of the so-called "rape stare" allegation Atascadero (CA) female staff employ to sabotage patient's records. The scary thing is, there is nothing surprising or out of the ordinary in a man being civilly committed for life on the basis of "staring" in our country today. Indeed, it is now commonplace. The other important point here is that, despite the fact that the defendant is in the process of losing his freedom completely, civil commitment procedures accord the defendant far fewer rights than they would have in a criminal proceeding. This is all predicated on the conceit that he is "not being punished" by being civilly confined but rather he is "undergoing treatment" and "society is being safeguarded". Please, dear Lord, save us from our protectors!]
Lakeport murder brings national attention
By Elizabeth Wilson--Record-Bee staff
LAKEPORT -- Michael A. Dodele, 67, was murdered last month, just two months after he was released from 20 years in prison for sexual assault of a 37-year-old Santa Rosa woman.
The story is unfolding as one with nation-wide interest as Dr. Phil and National Public Radio, among others, peer into the county in hopes of finding out what, exactly, led to Dodele's death just 20 days after he moved to a lake-side mobile home park.
Dodele was likely sought out by the killer due to a confusing list of his sex offenses on Megan's Law a Web registry for sex offenders that led people to believe he was a child molester, although his convictions were for sexual assault on adult women.
The suspect in Dodele's murder is 29-year-old Ivan Garcia Oliver, construction worker and father of a young boy. The child's mother, Oliver, and their son lived together at the mobile home park for about three months. Dodele had moved into the park on Nov. 1, just across the driveway from Oliver's home, about 75 feet away.
According to witnesses and resident manager of the Western Hills Mobile Home Park, Lacey Kou, Oliver had been concerned for the safety of his son the week before the Nov. 20 murder. His son had been molested in the past, he told the L.A. Times during a jail-house interview last week.
According to Kou, incidents leading up to the Tuesday murder of Dodele unfolded the Friday and weekend prior. Like the movie, "Sliding Doors," if even one of the chinks in the chain of unfortunate events had happened differently, Dodele might not be dead.
Oliver's son was playing in the mobile home park by the side of the road, Kou said. Oliver went out to get him, and a suspicious-looking car that was parked on the side of the road sped off. Oliver went to speak to Kou about the incident on Friday, Nov. 16.
"He said, anyone could drive in here and hurt a child,' and I agreed with him I'm a pre-school teacher and so I know about Megan's Law. I worked at a pre-school that Ivan's son went to. I know that you can go online and it shows little red dots on the map around the lake where sex offenders live," said Kou.
She said she mentioned to Oliver that she had heard there were some sex offender registrants living in the area. Together, they looked up the area on the Web site on Kou's computer. She said they weren't searching for anyone living in the park, but when Dodele's listing popped up, they recognized his photo.
She said the address was incorrect on the Web site, listing it as "3535" instead of the correct address of 3555 Lakeshore Blvd, Lakeport, CA.
A representative with the California Department of Justice, Gareth Lacy, said that in Dodele's case, his Megan's Law listing was removed on the day of his murder because he was deceased.
"That is one of several reasons; others being that the person is deported or is no longer required to register. In this case, yes, the individual is deceased so their record is no longer on the Web site," Lacy said.
Megan's Law listed Dodele's offenses as "rape by force" and "oral copulation with a person under 14 or by force." Because of that wording, it appeared to Oliver and others that Dodele was a child molester. The second conviction blends two distinctions, and Dodele's conviction was for the "or by force" part of the state criminal code. None of his crimes were against a person under 14, according to Chief Deputy District Attorney Richard Hinchcliff, who is prosecuting the case.
Oliver's immediate reaction upon seeing Dodele's convictions was very strong, Kou said. "I felt something might have happened to him in the past because of his reaction," Kou said. "He said something has to be done,' and that he didn't think he (Dodele) should be allowed to be there. I didn't know exactly what had happened with what he'd been charged with. It was kind of creepy. We were really shocked because that man just moved in." Kou asked her mother for advice, because she wasn't sure if legally Dodele should be allowed to live at the park. They called the Lake County Sheriff's Department (LCSD) as Oliver stood by. "My mom said, we should call and ask the Sheriff what your responsibility is to the residents of the park, as well as to protect Dodele.'"
A message was left that Friday afternoon with LCSD Detective Mike Curran. But the phone call was not returned. Kou and her mother still want to know why, saying it may have prevented the murder. "I think the fact that there was no phone call back frustrated him. He kept saying, something needs to be done,'" Kou's mother said.
Lake County Sheriff Rodney Mitchell told the Record-Bee yesterday afternoon that Det. Curran received the message when he returned to work on Monday, Nov. 19. "He added it to his lengthy task list for the week. Mr. Dodele was murdered the following morning," Mitchell said.
That Friday, Oliver went around the mobile home park showing residents the photo print-out of Dodele's Megan's Law registration, vocally expressing his disdain now a known-misunderstanding that Dodele was a child molester.
Kou said she told Oliver to "hold back and we'll do this the right way."
"I really thought he might confront him, but I didn't think he'd go that far," Kou said. She contacted the owners of the mobile home park, Barry and Sharon McKeehan of Redwood Valley, who made plans to meet with Dodele on Tuesday evening to talk to him about his convictions and their concerns.
"They were going to come down and speak with him and let him know that they felt all the other tenants should know, and also to find out what happened exactly. He was a convicted rapist and we have some single women living in the park, which was a concern...They were going to tell him if he wanted to relocate they would give him his [prior rent] money back," Kou said.
Oliver is being held without bail at the Lake County jail on murder, burglary and elder abuse charges. He is also under federal indictment in San Diego County for allegedly dumping five 55-gallon drums of paint containing the toxic chemical Toluene into Slaughterhouse Canyon Creek in El Cajon in March 2005. He was indicted a week after his arrest in connection to Dodele's death. Oliver's next court date in Lake County is Jan. 7, 2008, when a preliminary hearing is expected to be scheduled. Kou's mother, who had breakfast the morning of the murder in Kou's residence, said they heard no fighting or arguments, and as she was about to leave, they saw a Sheriff's car and ambulance.
"I knew instantly something had happened, then someone said he was dead .I had told Ivan on the phone that Friday to sit tight, and we'd find out what the legalities are, but there was no call back. If it had been straightened out beforehand, this might not have happened This is going to push Megan's Law to be more clear, and it should," said Kou's mother via phone on Wednesday, who wished to remain anonymous.
Kou said, "I told them [LCSD] when they took my statement, we tried to tell you about this ahead of time,' but I'm sure that statement's tossed out. Maybe I should have pushed harder [to contact authorities] I can't believe it happened. It's horrible."
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