PERSONA NON GRATA: Omar Howard's parole officer told him he shouldn't give testimony during church services.
Lori Collins, an ordained minister from Henry County who found religion in prison, is no longer allowed to work with church groups that perform prison outreach.
Andrew Norton of Cobb County has been told he can't sing in his church choir or help set up for church events. Steven Lee Williams of Polk County is forbidden from playing drums at services.
Churches frequently invite College Park's Omar Howard to offer testimony about how God rescued him from a life of violent crime. Eventually, he hopes to join the ministry. For the time being, however, Howard risks a mandatory 10-year term if he so much as performs a Bible reading before a congregation.
This past Thursday, lawyers with the Southern Center for Human Rights argued in federal court that a new law unconstitutionally criminalizes religious practice by making it illegal for people on Georgia's sex offender registry to volunteer at a church. A judge's ruling is expected within weeks.
It was the latest challenge to a controversial law that targets registered sex offenders with wide-ranging restrictions and stiff punishments. Initially authored by state House Majority Leader Jerry Keen, R-St. Simons, and adopted in 2006, the law was overhauled by the Legislature this year after large chunks of it had been thrown out by various courts.
Even so, the chipping away continus. Last month, the state Supreme Court struck down a provision to send homeless sex offenders to prison for being unable to register a valid address with their county sheriff's office. The plaintiff in that suit, William James Santos, had spent a year in a Hall County jail and was facing a life sentence for failing to register his address – even though he didn't have an address.
If you think aspects of the sex offender law seem to defy common sense, welcome to the club.
"My parole officer doesn't understand it," says Howard, the would-be minister. "He told me it's safer just to stay away from church."
Howard, 34, admits he used to be a rough character. He spent 14 years behind bars for voluntary manslaughter, armed robbery and false imprisonment of a minor during a 1993 home invasion. That last charge landed him on the sex offender registry despite not having been convicted of a sex crime.
During his long incarceration, Howard got religion; he led Bible study and became a chaplain's aide. "My goal is to do full-time ministry," he says. "That was the only hope I had that got me through my time."
After entering probation last year, he devoted much of his time talking at churches about his experiences in an effort to warn at-risk young men away from the thug life. He's even spoken at the invitation of the Georgia Department of Corrections and the State Board of Pardons and Paroles.
But as of July 1, when the newest incarnation of the sex offender law went into effect, Howard had to give up most of his church-related activities. The law offers no guidance as to what constitutes volunteering; His parole officer has told him to no longer sing in the choir or take part in revivals, seminars or prayer vigils. Howard still accepts invitations to visit churches, but he's limited to sitting in the congregation. Offering testimony is off-limits.
In a court brief, Howard complains that the law "interferes with my religious freedom and prohibits me from expressing my strongly held religious beliefs." He adds that none of his previous church activities involved being around minors unsupervised.
Also testifying, Andrea Shelton, founder and president of Heartbound Ministries, a prison outreach program, told Judge Clarence Cooper that "religion makes recidivism less likely" for all convicts. Shelton explained that most churches routinely perform background checks on would-be volunteers before giving them positions of responsibility. The chance that a church would give a registered sex offender free access to children is fairly slim, she said.
Permitting Howard, who volunteered at Heartbound in the past, to continue work with churches will allow others to "see that redemption is possible," added Shelton, her voice choking with tears. "Rehabilitation rarely takes place without redemption."
Ironically, Rep. Keen, whose law criminalizes religious volunteerism for sex offenders, is the former head of the Georgia Christian Coalition.
Collins, the Henry County woman, also took the witness stand to explain that, although she's ordained, her parole officer told her she can't even lead an adult prayer group in her home. Said Collins, who served three years in prison for sleeping with an underage boy: "I don't know what I can and cannot do."
That's the problem with the law, argued Southern Center attorney Gerry Weber: It's too vague.
"The law prevents 'volunteering,' but doesn't define what that is," Weber told the judge. "Law enforcement is making up the rules as it goes along."
The result is that enforcement is likely to vary greatly, depending on how each county's sheriff interprets the volunteering provision. In one Georgia county, a sex offender was prosecuted for playing the piano during services, Weber said.
It's no surprise that the revamped law lacks well-articulated guidelines for determining what behavior is illegal. Keen was never much interested in clarity or even enforceability. Back in 2006, he indicated that his goal was to make life so difficult, costly and perilous for sex offenders that they'd be forced to leave Georgia. Speaking at a Senate hearing, he said, "Candidly, senators, they will in many cases have to move to another state."
Certainly, Keen's law has succeeded in harrassing Wendy Whitaker, a Columbia County woman who was the subject of a CL cover story in July 2006 when she was ordered to leave her house because it was within 1,000 feet of a church-based child-care facility. That provision eventually was struck down.
Whitaker, lead plaintiff in the Southern Center constitutional challenge, was back in court last week. trying to keep her home. She'd moved back after the state Supreme Court struck down the law late last year, ruling the restrictions made it practically impossible for sex offenders to remain in their homes.
This time, Cooper ruled her lawyers failed to establish that the restrictions barring her from occupying her home rose to the level of banishment from the county. The judge appeared to be swayed by the argument that other sex offenders had managed to find some form of housing in Columbia County.
On the witness stand, Whitaker indicated that if she and her husband are forced to rent a place to live, in addition to paying their home mortgage, they'll likely face foreclosure. "It will be bad for us," she said.
Andrew Norton grew up in a brutish household. His stepfather beat him and his brothers and made them watch pornography with him. Norton was forced to sleep at the foot of the bed while his mother and stepfather had sexual relations. After the state eventually intervened and terminated parental rights, Norton was placed in a foster family when he was 13.
Norton, now a married man with two children of his own, has since found solace in his family and his church, where he has been an active volunteer. But the state of Georgia that was once his protector has become his persecutor. After driving him out of four homes in the past four years, state officials now want to drive him out of his church as well.
Back when he was 12 or 13, police allege, Norton committed a sex offense against his half brother (the case is still in dispute in court, roughly a dozen years later). Unless that case is resolved in his favor, Norton will be on the state’s sex offender registry for life. And that means that Norton has no life.
The General Assembly has decreed that anyone who commits a sex offense —- even a minor one —- can’t live near schools, churches, swimming pools, school bus stops, day-care centers, parks, rec centers or skating rinks, or work around schools, churches or day-care centers.
In 2005, Norton and his family were ordered to leave his in-laws’ house because a school was nearby. They moved to a trailer park where they spent $1,500 to render the mobile home safe for their young children, only to be required to move again because there was a swing set within 1,000 feet.
The Nortons then found a home in Austell, where they lived for 10 months before being told to leave because it was too close to a school bus stop. When they couldn’t find another home, the family was forced to split. Norton went to a motel, while his wife and children returned to her parents’ house. Then Norton had to uproot himself again when a church was built near the motel. The reunited family has since found a rental home that complies with all the prohibitions. But officials now want to boot Norton from his church, citing a ban in state law on sex offenders serving as church volunteers.
“During these difficult times, my church community created one of the few steady environments in my life,” Norton stated in his court declaration. “Does it mean that I cannot volunteer to participate in Bible study? Does it mean that I cannot read scripture aloud at church services?”
Norton shared his saga to bolster a legal challenge to the state’s sex-offender law filed by the Southern Center for Human Rights, which contends the law criminalizes religious practice. The case will be heard Nov. 13 in U.S. District Court. The state has already lost several other legal challenges to the overarching law. Just this week, the state Supreme Court threw out a provision of the law that made it a felony for a sex offender to be homeless. Under the law, if a sex offender could not list a specific home address at a local sheriff’s office, he or she could be imprisoned for life.
Under that same law, homeowners on the sex offender list could be forced to sell their homes and move if a day-care center or church moved in near them. The state Supreme Court struck down that provision last year as a violation of property rights protected by the Fifth Amendment. In its legal challenge of the law, the Southern Center intends to argue that renters deserve the same protection.
In another inequity, the law makes no distinction between serious sexual predators and far less egregious sex-related crimes. For example, a 17-year-old who engages in consensual sex with a 15-year-old is subjected to the same severe and lifelong restrictions as a repeat child molester.
The most notable victim of that inequity was Douglas County teen Genarlow Wilson, who was sentenced to 10 years for having oral sex with a 15-year-old when he was 17.
A year ago this week, the state Supreme Court overturned Wilson’s conviction, freeing him after three years in jail. Today, he attends Morehouse College, where he hopes to play football next year. In its zeal to appear punitive, the Legislature has continued to enact hollow laws that do nothing to protect children from sex offenders. In 90 percent of such cases, the perpetrator is not a stranger who lives nearby, but a family member or family friend of the victim.
Federal law does require states to maintain registries of offenders convicted of sex crimes or offenses against children. That law also requires notification of schools, day-care centers and parents when sex offenders move into a community. However, Georgia lawmakers have carried their crusade far beyond what federal law and common sense dictate, passing the most drastic limits in the country on where offenders can live or work.
Perhaps the greatest flaw in Georgia’s approach is its stubborn refusal to acknowledge gradations in the dangers posed by sex offenders. State lawmakers did establish a board of experts to evaluate sex offenders and rank them on the risks they pose to others, but in practice the state ignores those rankings altogether.
Of offenders evaluated thus far by the Georgia Sex Offender Registration Review Board, 65 percent qualify as Level One, which means they pose little threat, says therapist Susan Strickland, who chairs the board. The board opposes any residency or work restrictions for Level One offenders.
The board has categorized 30 percent of the offenders as Level Two, a category in which residency and work requirements are justified, according to Strickland. The remaining 5 percent of offenders are truly dangerous and should be subject to all restrictions as well as lifetime monitoring, she says.
A change in the law would allow police officers to concentrate their time and resources on tracking truly dangerous predators, some of whom have gone underground rather than comply with onerous registration rules. Instead, police find themselves hounding people such as Andrew Norton, who is trying to overcome his own heinous childhood and provide his children a better one.
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