COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. - Disgraced evangelical leader Ted Haggard says in a new documentary that he still struggles with his sexuality yet is committed to his marriage for the sake of his children. Haggard, 52, resigned as president of the National Association of Evangelicals and was fired as senior pastor of New Life Church in Colorado Springs in November 2006 after a former male prostitute went public with allegations that Haggard paid him for sex and used methamphetamine. A father of five, Haggard had said he bought the drugs but never used them. He confessed to undisclosed "sexual immorality" and has said, "I really did sin." The Gazette of Colorado Springs reported Thursday that in the documentary, Haggard talks about a lifelong battle with his sexuality — and that he never claimed to be heterosexual. "The reason I kept my personal struggle a secret is because I feared that my friends would reject me, abandon me and kick me out, and the church would exile and excommunicate me. And that happened and more," he says. Wife: Still committed "I know to restore the honor to our children is to help restore honor to their father," she says. "The Trials of Ted Haggard," directed by Alexandra Pelosi, daughter of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, is set to air Jan. 29 on HBO. The Associated Press reported Wednesday that Haggard has agreed to promote the documentary. Haggard moved his family to Arizona after the scandal and also lived in Texas. He re-emerged last month at a rural Illinois church, where he delivered guest sermons and said he was sexually abused as a second-grader. He now sells insurance and, in the documentary, says he isn't successful. "At this stage in my life, I am a loser," he says.
I'm not saying that they're all liars but I am disturbed that so many today accept these proclamations of abuse as if they were fact when, in most cases, there is no way to be sure. Sexual abuse has become the revelation that "explains everything".
Haggard's wife, Gayle, says she is committed to Haggard.
Ted Haggard says he was sexually abused as youngster
Camille Paglia on the Purity of Allen Ginsberg's Boy-Love
THE PURITY OF ALLEN GINSBERG’S BOY-LOVE
Dear Camille:
For many of us children of the '60s, the recent death of Allen Ginsberg was a major loss. But some critics contend that Ginsberg's legacy is stained by his support for the North American Man-Boy Love Association. What are your feelings about Ginsberg? What do you think of his pro-NAMBLA stand?
San Francisco hippie
Dear Hippie:
Allen Ginsberg, along with Marshall McLuhan and Norman O. Brown, was one of the central figures of my college years in the '60s. He had enormous influence on my intellectual development, and I would be proud to call him my guru.
I was introduced to Ginsberg's masterpieces, "Howl" and "Kaddish," by a brilliant teacher, the poet Milton Kessler, whose fierily rabbinic recitations of those bardic lines are emblazoned in my psyche. Ginsberg's hallucinatory imagery, incantatory rhythms and jazz syncopations are the ultimate, operatic expression of 20th century sexual and political radicalism. I raptly studied and treasured the small, black-and-white City Lights Books editions of the two poems as if they were sacred texts from the Jerusalem that was then avant-garde San Francisco.
Ginsberg is, just as he claimed, in the main line of modern, prophetic poetry from William Blake through Walt Whitman and Hart Crane. Therefore it saddens me that my illustrious graduate-school mentor, Harold Bloom, has always dismissed Ginsberg and even refused to list him among important contemporary American writers in the long appendix to "The Western Canon," which contains many, far lesser figures.
Through his influence on Bob Dylan (who in turn influenced the Beatles), Ginsberg revolutionized rock lyrics and directly affected the thinking of several generations of young people around the world. For this alone, he deserved the Nobel Prize -- which continues to be awarded to safe, standard, derivative, politely leftish, literary humanitarians. Ginsberg's Buddhist mysticism, Hebrew severity, Hindu comedy and African polyrhythm were too original a mix for the stuffy patriarchs of Stockholm.
I met Ginsberg only once, in April 1995 at the State University of New York at Buffalo, which had invited me to be the main speaker at Fiedler Fest, a lavish celebration of readings and performances in honor of longtime star professor Leslie Fiedler. When Ginsberg and I were introduced at a reception, I reverently bowed with hands pressed together in Buddhist homage, a greeting he returned with surprised laughter.
There are a number of photographs of us intensely conversing as we sat together at dinner at the university president's house. Ginsberg was already in ill health. He complained of the censorship on American radio, which prevented his poetry from being widely broadcast and therefore deprived him of his livelihood. He blamed his problems entirely on the government and seemed to know surprisingly little about campus political correctness, which has played so negative a role in the culture wars and has particularly threatened free speech.
As far as Ginsberg's pro-NAMBLA stand goes, this is one of the things I most admire him for. I have repeatedly protested the lynch-mob hysteria that dogs the issue of man-boy love. In "Sexual Personae," I argued that male pedophilia is intricately intertwined with the cardinal moments of Western civilization. Donatello's historically pivotal bronze sculpture, "David" (1430), was my main exhibit -- a languidly flirtatious work that would get the artist arrested for kiddie porn these days. In "Vamps & Tramps," I said that Western moralism and hypocrisy have driven the matter underground and overseas, where impoverished Third World boys now supply the sex trade.
Allen Ginsberg was the apostle of a truly visionary sexuality. Like the expansive, sensual, democratic Whitman but unlike the twisted, dishonest, pretentious Foucault, he saw the continuity between great nature and the human body, bathed in waves of cosmic energy. Seen from this pagan perspective, Ginsberg's celebration of boy-love was pure and sinless, demonstrating the limitations of Judeo-Christian paradigms of sexuality.
Flunking the Cultural Purity Test
The problem is, I just don't "get" it. Somehow, I remain obtuse to the great received truths of our age as delivered by those with the authority to deliver them.
I neither swim in the cultural zeitgeist nor accord it the proper respect as is its due.
When others remind me that mine are not the opinions widely regarded as acceptable
Amongst the many lessons which I have failed to grasp
In failing to affirm such fundamental truths as
I have failed to grasp the lessons.
That nearly everyone else lavishes upon it and lavished upon it by so many others who. collectively, must surely benefit from a wisdom greater than my own.
of our citizens.
have shown it who have shown no such reluctance in affirming its truths.
all attempts by the allowable voices to fail to grasp the
Society Builds Wall Between Men and Children
Visitors to London sometimes complain that Londoners are unfriendly, or at best reserved. To them I have an answer: get a dog. Borrow one for the duration of your stay. Last autumn, I walked George, a two-month-old cocker spaniel, for a friend while she was away. I had help from my good friend John; in fact we took it in turns. It rained every other day, so, like the little old man and woman of the mantelpiece barometer, I walked the dog on sunny days and John did duty on rainy days. This did not go unnoticed.
London is a different world when you have a dog, especially a puppy. Instead of scuttling or shuffling past, avoiding eye contact, Londoners young and old stop to talk to you and make a fuss of your little friend. Surly teenagers in hoods, studs in sunglasses melted at the sight of George, petting him and picking him up — and sounding distinctly uncool.
One of George’s admirers was a girl of about seven. A plain, awkward child, she played by herself in the park. On seeing the puppy, her face lit up and the plainness vanished. Every day — or rather every other day — she rushed up to me, falling over herself to hold him and cuddle him. Naturally we fell into conversation. An intelligent child, perhaps rather lonely, she was curious to know all about the dog, its owner — and my strangely silent friend John, who appeared on rainy days. “Why doesn’t your friend talk to me?” she asked, hurt. I was surprised at the question and, thinking that John was being churlish or impatient, resolved to tackle him about it that evening. “What, are you crazy?” he asked. “I can’t go talking to little girls in parks. I’ll get arrested.”
I remonstrated with him, but had to acknowledge that he had a point. George’s canine charms had failed to break down one of Britain’s great barriers: the barrier between adults and children. It is acceptable — just — for a woman to talk to someone else’s child in a public place, but a man who does the same thing must be a pervert. Has it come to this? How many perverts are there, for goodness sake?
London Mayor Boris Johnson asked the same question in [1] the Telegraph a couple of years ago, when a British Airways stewardess asked him to change seats because he was sitting next to some children: “We have very strict rules.” Johnson wrote:
To all those who worry about the pedophile plague, I would say that they not only have a very imperfect understanding of probability, but also that they fail to understand the terrible damage that is done by this system of presuming guilt in the entire male population just because of the tendencies of a tiny minority.
There are all sorts of reasons why the numbers of male school teachers are down 50 percent in the period 1981 to 2001, and why the ratio of female to male teachers in primary schools is now seven to one. … But it is surely a huge deterrent to any public-spirited man contemplating a career in education that society apparently regards all adult male contact with young people as being potentially a bit dodgy, a bit rum, a bit you know. …
It is insane, and the problem is the general collapse of trust. Almost every human relationship that was sensibly regulated by trust is now governed by law, with cripplingly expensive consequences.
The cost is not just financial. Starved of robust, normal contact with adults — particularly men — outside the family, children remain infantilized. Driven to school in cars, continually supervised, they live in a bubble, failing to develop common sense and judgment about which strangers and situations are benign and which are dangerous. And it is a lonely bubble, in which adults seem not to care. Tonight, a British current affairs program, recently did an experiment in a shopping mall, in which a child pretended (very convincingly) to be lost and distressed. It took a long time before any passersby — certainly male ones — stopped to help her.
A kindly adult outside the family can act as confidant, mentor, and safety valve, as Esther Rantzen, founder of [2] Childline, explained in a [3] Daily Mail article denouncing hysteria about child abuse:
Last week, I met one of Europe’s most successful architects. He told me his parents were extremely poor, and that because his mother had a serious mental illness, his father left the family home.
But they had a neighbor — a man with no children of his own — who noticed his talent when he was young and gave him art classes.
Suppose the neighbor had been a pervert? Well, it’s possible, but is it likely? Here are some statistics on perpetrators of child abuse. As this is an American website, I will take them from a U.S. report, [4] Child Maltreatment:
In FFY 2005, more than three-quarters of perpetrators of child maltreatment (79.4%) were parents, and another 6.8 percent were other relatives of the victim. Unrelated caregivers (foster parents, residential facility staff, child daycare providers, and legal guardians) accounted for less than 10.1 percent of perpetrators. Women comprised a larger percentage of all perpetrators than men, 57.8 percent compared to 42.2 percent. More than three-fourths of all perpetrators were younger than age 40.
Seemingly, the “dirty old man” in the park is the least of a child’s worries. As the statistics show, most abuse, sexual or otherwise, takes place within the family. A particular problem in the UK’s Muslim community is that of [5] forced marriages, and in Islam, a girl is deemed marriageable at just nine years of age. In an article for the [6] London [6] Times on the connection between pedophilia and terrorism, Stefano Dambruoso, Italy’s anti-terror magistrate, is quoted as saying:
The most you can attribute to them is a relationship between men and women different from that of us Westerners, in which — as in many parts of the Arab world — wives are often very young girls of 11, 12, or 13 who because of family negotiations are given in marriage to men much older than them. But that is not pedophilia; it is a question of Arab culture.
Really? One thing’s for sure: a girl of “Arab culture” would not be allowed to play in the park by herself, and so would be safe from the dishonor wrought by an encounter with my friend John and an eight-week-old puppy.
This has to stop. Adults should talk to children in public, whether to joke, teach, comfort, or if need be to admonish. Normal adults, that is. Or are we prepared to leave the field clear for perverts and psychopaths?
Article printed from Pajamas Media: http://pajamasmedia.com
URL to article: http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/society-builds-wall-between-men-and-children/
URLs in this post:
[1] the Telegraph: http://www.ipce.info/newsletters/e_26/come_off.htm
[2] Childline: http://www.childline.org.uk/Pages/default.aspx?gclid=COveoMu-rJcCFUsa3godQhxfhg
[3] Daily Mail article: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1033483/I-launched-Childline-protect-vulnerable--unleashed
-politically-correct-monster.html
[4] Child Maltreatment: http://www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/cb/pubs/cm05/index.htm
[5] forced marriages: http://www.newstatesman.com/religion/2008/03/honour-killings-forced
[6] London : http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/crime/article4958674.ece?Submitted=true
The Sex-Panic Death of Operation Santa Claus
When reindeers intersect with moral panic, from writer Debbie Nathan.
International Megan's Law Bill
TO ALL RSOL participants. Here are the sponsors of the chilling �international Megan�s Law Act� bill (HR5722). We urge you to contact your own US Rep and Senator to urge them to vote against. It is especially important for those who live in the districts of these Representatives, to contact them and let them know your opposition. We think the Democrats may be particularly approacheable on this, but members of both parties should be contacted. Let me know of your efforts and the responses - alexm60@fastmail.fm. Refer to Action Item #26.
Rep. Christopher Smith [R-NJ]
Cosponsors [as of 2008-07-06]
Rep. John Boozman [R-AR]
Rep. Dan Burton [R-IN]
Rep. Steven Chabot [R-OH]
Rep. Thelma Drake [R-VA]
Del. Eni Faleomavaega [D-AS]
Rep. Jeffrey Fortenberry [R-NE]
Rep. Frank LoBiondo [R-NJ]
Rep. Donald Payne [D-NJ]
Rep. Joseph Pitts [R-PA]
Rep. Deborah Pryce [R-OH]
Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen [R-FL]
Rep. Diane Watson [D-CA]
Rep. Addison Wilson [R-SC]
Rep. Frank Wolf [R-VA]
Level 1 sex offender charged with felony for having MySpace account
James Andrew Muller of Fly Creek was charged with a felony and issued an appearance ticket returnable Dec. 29 in Middlefield Town Court.
The Otsego County Probation Department developed information about the account last month and notified deputies. Muller is a Level 1 sex offender.
That classification of sex offenders is deemed the least likely to re-offend.
Sheriff's department Investigator Michael Ten Eyck and probation officers Timothy DeForest and Christopher Farrell conducted the investigation.
Muller faces up to four years in prison if convicted, deputies said in a media release.
California's homeless sex offenders on parole up 800%
California's homeless sex offenders on parole up 800%
[Ed:
December 19, 2008
SACRAMENTO
Homeless sex offenders on parole jumps sharply
The number of homeless sex offenders on parole in California has increased dramatically since the approval two years ago of Proposition 83, an initiative that imposed harsh restrictions on where they can live, a state panel reported Thursday.
The Sex Offender Management Board said the number of parolees monitored by the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation -- one of the only government agencies to enforce what is known as Jessica's Law -- increased from 88 in November 2006 to 1,056 at the end of June 2008.
"Common sense leads to the conclusion that a community cannot be safer when sex offenders are homeless," the report states, citing research concluding that unstable housing can lead to recidivism.
Jessica's Law, which prohibits sex offenders from residing within 2,000 feet of schools and parks where children play, was proposed by state Sen. George Runner (R-Lancaster) and his wife, Sharon, a former assemblywoman, and strongly backed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.
When the state board looked at its effect on housing for all sex offenders, including those not on parole against whom the law has not generally been enforced, it found homelessness had increased 60%. Potential solutions mentioned included housing multiple sex offenders in the same place and putting them in mobile trailers until they can find a permanent home.
The governor's office said Thursday that Schwarzenegger still "strongly supports Jessica's Law, which all involved concede needs fine-tuning." Neither the governor nor the law's other sponsors have offered proposals to amend it.
Bringing childbirth to an orgasmic level
[Ed: So... Does this make them sex offenders? ]
The documentary Orgasmic Birth, quietly released last spring, is changing that. The film, which makes a case for natural childbirth, gained attention when ABC's news magazine 20/20 announced that it will air a few minutes of footage on January 2. The news sent mommy bloggers into a tizzy of excitement and now everyone from Lisa Belkin of The New York Times to Tracy Clark-Flory of Salon has written something about orgasming, yes orgasming, during childbirth. (Sign me up for a third! Please!)
The documentary follows 11 beautiful and natural births; two of the women orgasm during labor. Amber Hartnell of Hawaii, who gave birth to her son in a tub in her yard, says: "All of a sudden the orgasm just started rolling through and rolling through, and it just kept coming, and my whole body was spiraling and rolling, and I was laughing and crying." Similarly, Tamra Larter of New Jersey says: "It was happening, and I could hardly breathe, and it was like, 'oh, that feels good.' That's all I could say really."
So exactly how does this work?
In the film, Christine Northrup, an ob-gyn and author of Women's Bodies, Women's Wisdom, explains: "When the baby's coming down the birth canal, remember, it's going through the exact same positions as something going in, the penis going into the vagina, to cause an orgasm. And labor itself is associated with a huge hormonal change in the body, way more prolactin, way more oxytocin, way more beta-endorphins--these are the molecules of ecstasy."
The documentary director Debra Pascali-Bonaro, a childbirth educator and a doula, says the right atmosphere is key. "A woman needs privacy," Pascali-Bonaro told SFGate. "She needs to be in a place where she feels undisturbed and that place is usually at home--not a hospital where you're hooked up to machines and doctors and nurses are coming and going. You need to be with people you know and trust. In many cases, the partner is involved and intimate in the experience but that isn't always the case."
Now before you get too excited, let's talk about the odds of climaxing when pushing out an 8-pound baby?
"In my 23 years of being present at over 850 births, I really can't say that I have seen anyone experience this," says Maria Iorillo, a San Francisco-based California licensed midwife. "Maybe they did and I didn't know it? Can you hide an orgasm? And even if someone did, we are almost looking at 1 in 1000 births. I think it is definitely too high a bar to set for women. My goal is to just have a safe and satisfying birth experience. When we have a majority of women experiencing that, then maybe we can look further."
Pascali-Bonaro says her movie is about much more than orgasms. "It's about sharing the different possibilities that are available to women," she says. "It's about showing women that they can have a pleasurable experience--an undisturbed birth free of unnecessary medical interventions. It's about having freedom of movement during labor and using birthing balls, being upright, dimming the lights. But for some women childbirth is really hard and painful, and I don't want to take away from that. This movie isn't meant to raise expectations. It's meant to inspire."
Holiday 'Jeer": Police Xmas tree bears sex offender photos
Deltona bans sex offenders from parks
[Ed: The proliferation of "status" crimes- in this case criminalizing behavior by sex offenders that is completely legal when exercised by non sex offenders- continues to gather a sinister momentum. These cynical know-nothing laws, by appealing to the ignorance and sadism of the public and its basest instincts, display nothing but contempt for essential liberties and establishes a path down which we will discover the extinction of justice in our land. Remain silent at your peril!
DELTONA -- Even as Deltona's existing sex offender law continues to face legal hurdles, city leaders unanimously voted to strengthen it Monday night by banning offenders from city parks and playgrounds.
It's one of two controversial issues the commission tackled. The other would let the city reimburse itself if it approved $69.5 million in bonds for four construction projects.
Even though both expressed concern, Commissioners Zenaida Denizac and Herb Zischkau approved the stronger measure, which basically forbids a sex offender from "knowingly entering into or on any public park owned, operated or maintained by the City of Deltona."
It's similar to a law passed by officials in Woodfin, N.C., and upheld in the North Carolina Supreme Court. Deltona leaders feel that this one will stand up in Florida also.
However, Denizac expressed concerns about the effectiveness and enforcement of the ordinance, saying it had no real power.
"I am concerned we are giving people a false sense of security," she said. "I am not convinced we have enough force out there to enforce it. It's just a feel-good ordinance."
Mayor Dennis Mulder disagreed.
"For me, this is a feel-good ordinance," Mulder said. "I am going to feel very good about passing it. We ought to feel good about protecting the public."
Deltona has had problems with its ordinance, which attempts to ban sex offenders from living within 2,500 feet of a school, a playground, a park or other site where children congregate.
It has been argued the city's law is too broad and basically excludes a sex offender from living anywhere in the city limits. Last year, a judge said the city would have to pay for legal representation of three sex offenders that Deltona had taken to court.
City leaders are still discussing how to proceed with that issue but have been unwilling to rescind the law, fearing the city would become a haven for sex offenders with surrounding cities all adopting similar laws.
Discussion of the bond issue became heated at times as Zischkau and Mulder disagreed.
The issue before commissioners was whether to approve four ordinances that would allow the city to reimburse itself for expenses should leaders decided to move forward with seeking bonds for these projects.
The four projects are $25 million for a public safety complex and fire station, $22 million for a new wastewater treatment plant, $15 million for the purchase of the county's Deltona North Water and Wastewater System and $7.5 million for drainage projects.
Denizac and Zischkau objected, saying now wasn't the time for the city to talk about encumbering funds. "I am not willing to put the city at risk. It's a very wrong step," Denizac said.
"These are good projects that I advocated for myself, but these are different times. I think we need to reassess what is really urgent and what can wait. I don't want to put the city at risk."
City Manager Faith Miller said approval of the four ordinances was just the first step, and that it didn't obligate the city. She said a bond issue for all four projects would have to be approved by city voters.
Richard Dawkins On Child Abuse
Excerpt from his spectacularly successful and brilliant "The God Delusion":
"Priestly abuse of children is nowadays taken to mean sexual abuse, and I feel obliged, at the outset, to get the whole matter of sexual abuse in proportion and out of the way. Others have noted that we live in a time of hysteria about pedophilia, a mob psychology that calls to mind the Salem witch hunts of 1692. In July 2000 the News of the World, widely acclaimed in the face of stiff competition as Britain's most disgusting newspaper, organized a 'name-and shame' campaign, barely stopping short of inciting vigilantes to take direct violent action against pedophiles. The house of a hospital pediatrician was attacked by zealots unacquainted with the difference between a pediatrician and pedophile. The mob hysteria over pedophiles has reached epidemic proportions and driven parents to panic. Today's Just Williams, today's Huck Finns, today's Swallows and Amazons are deprived of the freedom to roam that was one of the delights of childhood in earlier times (when the actual, as opposed to perceived, risks of molestation was probably no less).
In fairness to the News of the World, at the time of its campaign passions had been aroused by a truly horrifying murder, sexually motivated, of an eight-year-old girl kidnapped in Sussex. Nevertheless, it is clearly unjust to visit upon all pedophiles a vengeance appropriate to the tiny minority who are also murderers. All three of the boarding schools I attended employed teachers whose affection for small boys overstepped the bounds of propriety. That was indeed reprehensible. Nevertheless, if fifty years on, they had been hounded by vigilantes or lawyers as no better than child murderers, I should have felt obliged to come to their defence, even as the victim of one of them (an embarrassing but otherwise harmless experience).
The Roman Catholic Church has borne a heavy share of such retrospective opprobrium. For all sorts of reasons I dislike the Roman Catholic Church . But I dislike unfairness even more, and I can't help wondering whether this one institution has been unfairly demonized over the issue, especially in Ireland and America. I suppose some additional public resentment flows from the hypocrisy of priests whose professional life is largely devoted to arousing guilt about 'sin'. There is the abuse of trust by a figure in authority, whom the child has been trained from the cradle to revere. Such additional resentments should make us all the more careful not to rush to judgement. We should be aware of the remarkable power of the mind to concoct false memories, especially when abetted by unscrupulous therapists and mercenary lawyers. The psychologist Elizabeth Loftus has shown great courage, in the face of spiteful vested interests, in demonstrating how easy it is for people to concoct memories that are entirely false but which seem, to the victim, every bit as real as true memories. This is so counter intuitive that juries are easily swayed by sincere but false testimony from witnesses.
In the particular case of Ireland, even without the sexual abuse, the brutality of the Christian Brothers, responsible for the education of a significant proportion of the male population of the country, is legendary. And the same could be said of the often sadistically cruel nuns who ran many of Ireland's girls' schools.
The infamous Magdalene Asylums, subject of Peter Mullan's film The Magdalene Sisters, continued in existence until as late as 1996. Forty years on, it is harder to get redress for floggings than for sexual fondlings, and there is no shortage of lawyers actively soliciting custom from victims who might not otherwise have raked over the distant past. There's gold in them thar long-gone fumbles in the vestry - some of them, indeed, so long gone that the alleged offender is likely to be dead and unable to present his side of the story. The Catholic Church worldwide has paid out more than a billion dollars in compensation. You might almost sympathize with them, until you remember where their money came from in the first place.
Once, in the question time after a lecture in Dublin, I was asked what I thought about the widely publicized cases of sexual abuse by Catholic priests in Ireland, I replied that, horrible as sexual abuse no doubt was, the damage was arguably less than the long-term psychological damage inflicted by bringing the child up Catholic in the first place. It was an off-the-cuff remark made in the heat of the moment, and I was surprised that it earned a round of enthusiastic applause from that Irish audience (composed, admittedly, of Dublin intellectuals and presumably not representative of the country at large). But I was reminded of the incident later when I received a letter from an American woman in her forties who had been brought up Roman Catholic. At the age of seven, she told me, two unpleasant things had happened to her. She was sexually abused by her parish priest in his car. And around the same time, a little schoolfriend of hers, who had tragically died, went to hell because she was a Protestant. Or so my correspondent had been led to believe by the the then official doctrine of her parents' church. Her view as a mature adult was that, of these two examples of Roman Catholic child abuse, the one physical and the other mental, the second was by far the worst"".
"highrise buildings will provide opportunity for residents to observe, photograph and film children"
[Ed: Dangerous levels of stupidity achieved in Australia.]
A SECOND Brisbane school is fighting a high-rise development application amid fears of pedophiles who could prey on their children.
Parents at the Holy Cross School, in the inner-northern suburb of Wooloowin, are objecting to a proposed multi-level high-density affordable housing project that would surround their Morris St campus.
The development application - which includes 323 dwellings, shops, a childcare centre and a 602-space car park - was lodged by the Sisters of Mercy for land used as the school's oval for 50 years.
Brisbane City Council this week limited developments surrounding Wynnum's Guardian Angels Primary School to five storeys instead of the eight originally proposed following concerns that "highrise buildings will provide opportunity for residents to observe, photograph and film children".
Councillor Amanda Cooper said the council would ensure that children's security was a priority when considering any future development.
The Holy Cross Parents and Friends Association has distributed 1400 flyers to parents and residents urging them to object to the project, which would trade their school oval for buildings up to eight storeys overlooking the school's play and assembly area.
Traffic concerns were also outlined.
Parent Alisa Bradley-Moore, who has two sons at the school, said the loss of the oval and proximity of highrise buildings were her main concerns.
"I don't know who is going into those buildings, it could be pedophiles or people with freaky fantasies looking over our children," she said.
"It's a fantastic school that does a lot in the community and I would hate to think the Sisters (of Mercy) wouldn't listen. I would hate (to pull the children out)."
Another concerned parent, who did not wish to be named, said she felt parents were right to be worried.
"All it takes is one pair of bad eyes to target one child and do something nasty, and that's too many," she said.
"If we don't look out for these things, who will?"
About 14 objections have been lodged with council, many fearful of potential access by "irresponsible adults".
Submissions close next Friday, December 19.
An objection lodged by parents Amanda and Adrian O'Callaghan said: "The dramatic shrinking of the school's grounds represents a great loss to the children's sense of freedom and space and, much more seriously, the multiple levels of apartments immediately overlooking the school prompt genuine fears about access and surveillance."
Parent Natalie Pelusi writes in her submission: "It is not right for the public to have such direct access to hundreds of children. The privacy and safety of the children must be paramount."
Another lamented the increased possibility of "irresponsible adults watching, tracking and or getting to know our children in possibly unsafe situations", while a fourth stated they would not be comfortable sending their children to the school if the project went ahead.
A spokeswoman for the Sisters of Mercy was unavailable for comment.
Stab murder man was sex offender
B.B.C. U.K.
Andrew Cunningham suffered stab injuries to his head, neck and chest A man found stabbed to death in a "frenzied" attack was a convicted child sex offender, it has been revealed.
Andrew Cunningham, 52, was found dead in his caravan in Riverside Road in Earlsfield, south London, on Wednesday.
A post-mortem examination said the cause of death was multiple wounds including mutilation of the groin.
Mr Cunningham who worked as a lorry driver, was convicted of a sex attack on a girl under the age of 16 in 2001, police sources said.
Scotland Yard sources said Mr Cunningham had recently been taken off the sex offenders' register.
Police do not know how many people may have been involved in the attack, which they described as "frenzied".
Mr Cunningham had been stabbed numerous times in the head, neck and body and his groin area was mutilated.
Det Chief Insp Nick Scola, leading the investigation, said: "We're currently at an early stage in our inquiries and are keeping an open mind about the circumstances of this man's death."
He appealed for anyone in the area on Tuesday night or early Wednesday morning to contact police.
Study quantifies proportion of teens and young adults sending or posting sexually suggestive text and images
In an effort to better understand the intersection between sex and cyberspace with respect to attitudes and behavior, The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy and CosmoGirl.com commissioned a survey of teens and young adults to explore electronic activity. This is the first public study of its kind to quantify the proportion of teens and young adults that are sending or posting sexually suggestive text and images.
Note: Unless otherwise stated, teen means ages 13-19 and young adult means ages 20-26. A significant number of teens have electronically sent, or posted online, nude or semi-nude pictures or video of themselves.
How many teens say they have sent/posted nude or seminudepictures or video of themselves?
20% of teens overall
22% of teen girls
18% of teen boys
11% of young teen girls (ages 13-16)
Sexually suggestive messages (text, email, IM) are even more prevalent than sexually suggestive images. How many teens are sending or posting sexually suggestive messages?
39% of all teens
37% of teen girls
40% of teen boys
48% of teens say they have received such messages
Officer, lawmaker team up to criminalize "peering at children"
Editor: Yes, you read that correctly. The State of Maine is in the process of criminalizing those who look at children in public places. While your mind reels at the ramifications of this groundbreaking legislation, do consider that no one has ever been injured by someone looking at them. Consider too the practicalities and the inevitable selective enforcement flowing from such a law. Of course, we all realize how the law will be used: to further marginalize those who've already been through the legal wringer and to provide the mechanism necessary to imprison those whom the "child protectors" wish to permanently remove from society, having been unsuccessful in previous attempts. This is an odious law but one which is entirely predictable, given the succession of ever greater outrages introduced into law by very nasty and contemptuous lawmakers such as Dawn Hill.
Bill toughens law on "visual sexual aggression" against children in Maine
Those who peer at children in public could find themselves on the wrong side of the law in Maine soon.
A bill that passed the House last month aims to strengthen the crime of visual sexual aggression against children, according to state Rep. Dawn Hill, D-York.
Her involvement started when Ogunquit Police Lt. David Alexander was called to a local beach to deal with a man who appeared to be observing children entering the community bathrooms. Because the state statute prevents arrests for visual sexual aggression of a child in a public place, Alexander said he and his fellow officer could only ask the man to move along.
"There was no violation of law that we could enforce. There was nothing we could charge him with," Alexander said.
He attended a talk with Hill a week later and brought the case to her attention. Hill pledged to do what she could, Alexander said, and the result was a change through the Criminal Justice and Public Safety Committee in the House, which made the law applicable in both private and public places.
Alexander said he's grateful Hill was willing to take up the cause, and is hopeful the measure will clear the Senate.
"I'll be pleased that we were able to identify this flaw and take steps to rectify it," he said.
Under the bill, if someone is arrested for viewing children in a public place, it would be a Class D felony if the child is between 12 to 14 years old and a Class C felony if the child is under 12, according to Alexander.
Hill said she believes the move was necessary to correct what she called a "loophole" in the state's criminal law statutes.
"I told Lt. Alexander that I would be happy to work with him and sponsor a bill that would correct this in the 2008 session," Hill said. "And so we did."
In arguing for the bill, Alexander said she cited public rest rooms as places where the people using them should have a reasonable expectation of privacy. She said the committee determined that there would not be any major side effects from expanding the statute to include public places.
The bill recently cleared a fiscal review, done because of the state's major prison budget crunch, and Hill said it should be heading to the Senate before long.
York Police Chief Doug Bracy said the statute would represent a fairly minor change that would help keep the public safer, especially children. He noted that York police respond fairly regularly to reports of public peepers on the town's beaches.
With ever-growing concern over sexual predators, Bracy said the arrests will also allow police to check backgrounds and determine if there is a criminal history involved.
"There is a growing outcry by the public to protect our children," Bracy said, noting that tourists from all over the country visit York.
Alarming number of teens send nude pics
Editor: Once again, the ALARMISTS are ALARMED!!! It would seem that the recognition of adolescents as sexual beings never ceases to alarm them. Sadly, their alarm will take the form of even more government regulation, even more criminalization, and even more surveillance in a society that already distrusts itself to the point of hysteria having already cast off nearly all vestiges of liberty. Those of us who are not so easily alarmed need to open our mouths and tell the alarmists to shut theirs! Last Edited: Wednesday, 10 Dec 2008, 7:11 PM EST WPRI - A new survey reveals that nearly one in five teenagers has posted or sent explicit photos of themselves, either over the computer, or via their cell phone. The study was conducted by The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy and CosmoGirl.com. Researchers questioned 1,280 teens and young adults. Twenty-two percent of the teenage girls surveyed admitted having sent or posted nude or semi-nude photos of themselves. Even more disturbing, 11% of girls between ages 13 and 16 admitted doing the same. But the girls are not alone. 18% of teenage boys also admit sending or posting nude or semi-nude photos of themselves. And those racy photos often end up going to more viewers than intended. About one-third of girls and a quarter of boys say they've seen nude photos of others that were originally meant to be private. "It's as simple as right click, copy, paste, and someone owns that picture forever," says Scituate Middle School principal Lawrence Filippelli, who educates Rhode Island middle and high school students about cyber safety. Filippelli tells us parents are often the last to know when their children are taking part in explicit activities, online. "When you're dealing with online activity, or IM-ing activity, believe it or not the child will keep that information private and not tell an adult for anywhere from three to six months." He's says the best way to keep your kids away from racy behavior, is to keep a close eye on what they're doing. "Our message is always for the parents to be aware of what their kids are doing online, what they're texting to each other, and investigating that."1 in 5 admits to sending, posting nude photos
Created On: Wednesday, 10 Dec 2008, 6:13 PM EST
Rye sex offender indicted on charges he worked with youths
PORTSMOUTH — A Rockingham County Superior Court grand jury has handed up three indictments against a convicted rapist accused of working as a youth counselor and not informing his employer of his sex offender status.
Jeremy "Jay" Semprebon, 40, of 541 Washington Road in Rye has been indicted on felony charges of "prohibition of child care services" and failure to report as a sex offender. He was also indicted on a misdemeanor charge of prohibited sales of alcohol to a minor.
Portsmouth police arrested Semprebon on Aug. 14 and charged him with five felony counts of "prohibition from child care services of a person convicted of certain offenses."
Semprebon's Portsmouth charges resulted in him being held on $30,000 cash bail at the Rockingham County House of Corrections, where he remained as of Tuesday, according to jail officials.
Authorities say Semprebon is a registered sex offender on New Hampshire's public list, having been convicted in 1995 in Strafford County of aggravated felonious sexual assault on a 5-year-old child.
Three of the Portsmouth charges alleged that Semprebon failed to disclose his sex offender status before counseling minors at Seacoast Outright, while acting as an agent of AIDS Response Seacoast.
A separate felony charge alleges that he provided services as a youth education coordinator at Cross Roads House homeless shelter, and a fifth alleges he failed to inform AIDS Response Seacoast that he is a sex offender.
Police allege Semprebon had contact with minors during his course of employment with AIDS Response Seacoast, despite a court order to not have contact with children. He is alleged to have begun working as a youth coordinator for the nonprofit in the summer of 2007 and did not disclose his sex offender status when he was hired.
As part of his job, Semprebon was sent to other nonprofits and worked with both adults and minors.
In August, investigators said they knew of five instances in which Semprebon was in the presence of youths.
Calls to the Rockingham County Attorney's Office regarding which "prohibition" charges he was indicted on, were not returned on Tuesday.
The "failure to report" and "prohibited sales" indictments stem from charges brought forward by the Rye Police Department.
Rye police charged Semprebon with a felony-level count of "duty to report" for allegedly failing to notify police of his employment status after he lost his job with AIDS Response Seacoast.
They also charged him with a Class A misdemeanor of prohibited sales for allegedly providing a 17-year-old boy with a mixed beverage.
Sex offender charged with photographing children
[Ed: Let this sink in a moment: A man has been charged with taking pictures of children while on his property without their permission. Given that they were trick-or-treating, it is safe to assume that the children were fully clothed and not engaged in sexual behavior, so the photographs could in no way be considered "child pornography". The salient and disturbing fact of his arrest and charge is that he, as a registered sex offender, has had his liberties greatly reduced by the state to exclude such things as taking pictures of minors without permission, a right which everyone else enjoys throughout the United States.
This right is summarized in the publication "The Photographer's Right" by attorney Bert P. Krages:
"Members of the public have a very limited scope of privacy rights when they are in public places. Anyone can be photographed without their consent except when they have secluded themselves in places where they have a reasonable expectation of privacy such as dressing rooms, restrooms, medical facilities, and inside their homes. Despite misconceptions to the contrary, the following subjects can almost always be photographed lawfully from public places: accident and fire scenes, children, celebrities, bridges and other infrastructure residential, and commercial buildings, industrial facilities, and public utilities transportation facilities (e.g., airports), Superfund sites, criminal activities, and law enforcement officers".
The state of Alaska has seen fit to eliminate liberties of a sex offender NOT currently on probation or parole (an important distinction often lost not only on the public but by reporters) for the rest of his life, a disturbing trend playing out across the U.S. In other words, rights enjoyed by everyone else and thus perfectly legal become felonies when exercised by registered sex offenders who are then sent to prison for having failed to recognize that they have no rights. ]
JUNEAU — A registered sex offender accused of taking photos of children while they were trick-or-treating has been charged.
Edward Lieber, 35, of Waupun, made his initial court appearance Monday in Dodge County Circuit Court. He is charged with three felony counts of a registered sex offender intentionally photographing a minor without consent. Each count carries a maximum penalty of up to 3½ years in prison and a $10,000 fine.
The Waupun Police Department was contacted by three Waupun parents who said that Lieber had taken pictures of their young children, ages 2, 3 and 4, while they trick-or-treated at his Madison Street home on Oct. 31. A woman told police that the children entered a “Halloween-type structure” where Lieber was sitting inside with a camera. As the children entered, witnesses say he followed the children and proceeded to take pictures of them without asking permission, according to the criminal complaint.
Uncomfortable with the situation, one of the parents logged onto the Wisconsin Sex Offender Registry and found a photograph of Lieber, who was convicted of sexually assaulting a 14-year-old Fairwater girl in 1993, according to the criminal complaint.
When questioned, Lieber told police that he took about five to six photographs that were intended for his father. Lieber then surrendered the role of film to police. Upon developing the film, Waupun police Officer Brian O’Donovan discovered six images of underage children on the film, according to the criminal complaint.
A preliminary hearing date has not been set.
http://www.fdlreporter.com/article/20081208/FON0101/81208141/1985/FON04#pluckcomments
Kids who photograph themselves naked are child pornographers and sex offenders in Ohio
A fifteen year old girl in Newark, OH faces being labelled a "sex offender" for sending naked cellphone photos of herself (a minor) to other minors. If convicted, she'll spend the next ten years on public registries, classed as a producer of child pornography. No word on what compensation she (as the victim of the crime) will be able to get from herself (as the perp).
According to Ohio law, 2907.323(A)(3) states anyone possessing material that shows a minor in a state of nudity is guilty of a fifth-degree felony. The violation also might qualify the juvenile as a Tier I sexual offender, which requires annual registration for a decade.
The section of the law the girl, who is a foster child, was charged with allows parents or guardians to take photos of their unclothed children for a list of acceptable purposes but does not provide an exemption for the child themselves.
Parents say assault charges against son too much
[Ed: As outraged as I am by the treatment of adults as sex offenders, I am doubly so by cases in which children or adolescents are subjected to the sex hysteria witch hunt. Those self-proclaimed "child savers" who would torture children in this manner should themselves be regarded as predators and punished for their actions! And, what the hell, put them on a publicly accessible registration and subjected to a lifetime of second-class citizenship and restrictions. It is long past the time when they come to be seen for the threat to society that they pose. District Attorneys such as Sandy Williams need to be held criminally liable for their offenses against children. ]
Mequon - In a case his parents consider prosecutorial overkill, a 14-year-old Mequon boy has been charged with five counts of fourth-degree sexual assault and faces the prospect of being tagged a sex offender for touching several girls in what his parents admit was an inappropriate manner.
So, last week in Ozaukee County Circuit Court, the boy's parents said no when Ozaukee County District Attorney Sandy Williams offered to reduce the charges to two counts of fourth-degree sexual assault and, if he pleaded no contest, to expunge his conviction if he stayed out of trouble for a year.
The parents said their son was guilty of nothing more than disorderly conduct.
"We don't want to have anything to do with sexual assault," said the boy's father, who along with the boy's mother is not being identified to protect the identity of the juvenile boy. "He could be put on a sex offender registry list that would come back to haunt him."
Now the boy is scheduled to appear in court again Feb. 3 for an evidentiary hearing, which amounts to a trial, in which the girls are likely to be compelled to testify and experts will be called to give their opinion on whether a 12- or 13-year-old boy can be sexually aroused by grabbing a girl's buttocks.
The maximum penalty for each of the five misdemeanor charges is nine months' incarceration, according to a juvenile delinquency petition. According to state Department of Corrections spokesman Rachel Krueger, those convicted of fourth-degree sexual assault are not required to register as sex offenders, but a judge could order the boy to do so, especially since the alleged victims were children and because of the number of counts against him.
According to the petition filed in July by Williams, here's what happened:
Two girls at Steffen Middle School in Mequon told officials June 6, a Friday, that the boy, 13 years old at the time, during class had grabbed the buttocks of one girl, 14, and unhooked the bra of the other girl, 13.
Under questioning by police, officials learned of other unreported incidents going back to October 2007, when the boy was 12, when he grabbed other girls' buttocks or their breasts, licked a girl's neck and tickled another girl in the stomach, according to the petition.
The boy's father met with Steffen Principal Deborah Anderson later that day and was informed that his son would be suspended for the last four days of the school year and that the matter was being referred to the school's police liaison officer "as matter of routine," the father said.
Mequon-Thiensville Schools Superintendent Demond Means declined to comment.
On the following Monday, the parents learned that what they thought was a school issue had become a police matter when the boy was called into the Mequon Police Department to be interviewed and was arrested.
The father had hoped that a visit to the police station would be little more than an attempt to help his son "man up" to what he had done, he said.
"I was in total shock" when his son was arrested, he said, especially after he had told the police officer they had already taken steps to discipline their son.
The weekend before the arrest, the boy's parents had made arrangements for their son to be taken to a wilderness camp for troubled teens in Utah.
It was a surprise to the boy when he was whisked away in the middle of the night on Wednesday and flown to the camp.
He stayed there for the next two months.
Mequon police Capt. Dan Buntrock, who recommended the charges to Williams, said the charges are appropriate for the behavior.
"If someone touches someone sexually in a bar, is that fourth-degree sexual assault? Yes," he said. "It doesn't really matter where it occurs. And when the victim is of a certain age, it's even more serious."
State law says fourth-degree sexual assault occurs when someone intentionally touches another person to gratify himself sexually, or sexually degrades or humiliates that person.
In the opinion of Buntrock and Williams, that's what the boy did.
To the parents, however, their son is guilty of inappropriate behavior, disorderly conduct and "numskull friendliness," the mother said, quoting a therapist with whom her son has met.
"A 12-year-old boy does not do these things to sexually gratify himself," she said.
According to affidavits submitted in court Thursday in an attempt to block an order to testify in court, the girls and their parents said they did not feel degraded by the boy and that they did not want him criminally prosecuted, only disciplined by the school for the two events on June 6.
Their son and the girls remain friends, the boy's parents said.
OKC molester removed from treatment, sent to prison
[Ed: One of the myriad bizarre implications flowing from residency restriction laws]
OKLAHOMA CITY — A convicted child molester has been sent to prison after a judge learned the treatment center where he was living was located near a city park.
District Judge Virgil C. Black on Friday ordered 58-year-old Claude Stanley Fontenot be removed from the Avalon Correctional Services' Carver Center in south Oklahoma City and sent to prison. Fontenot has been at the center since being sentenced Oct. 15 on two counts of child sexual abuse.
At Friday's hearing, Black said he could no longer allow Fontenot to stay at the center because it violates a state law that prohibits sex offenders from living within 2,000 feet of a park.
The two victims, now teens, were in the courtroom. The girls' mother said she's relieved Fontenot is going to prison.
"That's what we've wanted all along — to see him behind bars," she said.
Attorney Josh Welch said sending his client to prison for three years after he was sentenced to the Carver Center violates the double jeopardy provision of the Constitution.
Welch said he hopes to have Fontenot released within 30 days and keep him out of jail while his case is under review.
Fontenot initially was sentenced to three years at the Carver Center and 17 years of probation and was required to register as a sex offender. The Carver Center, on south May Avenue, is 813 feet from Ted Reynolds Park. District Judge Virgil C. Black said at the time Fontenot was sentenced, no one involved in the case realized the center's proximity to the park.
Videotapes Could Reverse Sex Abuse Convictions
Sunday, December 7, 2008 Copyright 2008 by KTVU.com. The Associated Press contributed to this report. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Advocates for sex offenders take aim at registry, other rules
Elected officials and victims’ advocates say tough sex-offender laws are necessary to protect society from dangerous criminals. But some offenders and their relatives, like Kennedy, see the restrictions as overly intrusive and unnecessary.
Her husband has served his time and is a danger to no one, Kennedy argues.
“In Salem, they had a witch-hunt, and in America, we’re still having a witch-hunt, and the witch-hunt is just different,” said Kennedy, a Parsonsburg nurse. “It’s the sex offender.”
Kennedy runs a blog called Sex Offenders and Their Wives, where she vents about the difficulties of living with sex-offender restrictions and debunks what she said are myths about offenders, like the high probability that they will re-offend and their imperviousness to treatment.
She also heads the Maryland chapter of the national group Reform Sex Offender Laws. So far, there are only three other members, she said.
Out eight years
Sandy Coulbourne, now 48, met Michael Kennedy, now 53, in 2007 at a bookstore. Both were browsing the murder mysteries.
After only a couple of dates, Michael Kennedy sat his new girlfriend down and told her he had spent 20 years in federal prison for rape and murder before being paroled in 2000. He hadn’t done it, he insisted.
She cried at the thought of an innocent man imprisoned for that long. The two married a few months later, despite his parole officer spending 45 minutes trying to convince her not to go through with it.
People ask how she can love a killer and rapist, but the man she knows could never have done those things, Sandy Kennedy said. She can recite the details of his case, pointing out police, prosecution and witness errors along the way. In fact, it took three trials, with two hung juries, to convict him.
She was spurred to activism when Michael Kennedy was required to register as a sex offender earlier this year, even though he had been out of prison for eight years.
The directive to register came out of a recent federal law that Kennedy and other convicted sex offenders are fighting.
She started reading about sex offender laws on the Internet and found that lots of offenders, their family members and some advocacy groups agreed the restrictions had gone too far.
Human Rights Watch released a study last year arguing that registration laws are overbroad, that registries have led to violence and harassment against registrants, and that residency restrictions “banish[] offenders from entire urban areas.”
Like Sandy Kennedy’s blog, offender-advocacy Web sites argue that the majority of registered sex offenders are not monsters who repeatedly kidnap and rape children — or, as Baltimore criminal defense lawyer Thomas P. Bernier put it, “some lecherous guy pulling 10-year-olds into a van.”
Many don’t pose a continuing threat to children, Bernier said; some never did in the first place.
Challenging the premise
Fred Berlin, founder of the Johns Hopkins Sexual Disorders Clinic and an associate professor of psychiatry, said sex offender monitoring laws and restrictions are predicated on the premise that offenders are more likely than not to commit another offense.
Recent studies have shown that, at most, 20 percent to 30 percent re-offend, a lower rate of recidivism than other criminals, he said. (Other sources point out that different types of sex offenders re-offend at different rates, and that this statistic only covers reported offenses.)
Annapolis lawyer Thomas A. Pavlinic said few offenders need to be monitored for life, although many are anyway.
“There are these evil people,” said Pavlinic, who specializes in defending accused child molesters. “Those are violent sexual predators, people from whom the public has to be protected. There are a lot of people who have in the course of their life simply made a mistake, either with their own children or because of the age difference.”
They “get treatment and then they never do it again,” he said.
Sandy Kennedy suggested that the government register criminals with a higher risk of recidivism, like drug dealers.
She said she is not opposed to all sex offender restrictions, just the pointless ones.
“I’m not against totally what they make us do,” she said. “I know there’s a reason people need to be protected. But come on, that Halloween stuff was a joke.”
She was referring to a widely mocked Maryland effort to get certain sex offenders to post “no candy” signs on their houses, turn off their outside lights and ignore knocks on the door on Oct. 31.
The signs were provided not only to child sex offenders but to those registered as sexually violent. So Michael Kennedy received a sign, even though the crime for which he was convicted did not involve children, his wife said.
Elizabeth Bartholomew, who runs Maryland’s Sex Offender Registry, said the effort was merely a “request” on the state’s part, designed to protect the offenders “so the community knows that they’re trying to make sure everyone’s safe.”
Opposing the registries
“Safe,” though, was not what Sandy Kennedy felt when a local newspaper published her husband’s name.
“[O]ur hick town’s little newspaper, decided to use a full page to report every sex offenders name and address,” she wrote on her blog. “I’ve read about the vigilantes who prey on sex offenders. We are small town Delmarva and I could just see some red neck get his buddies loading up in his pick up and start working on the list.”
Vigilantism is one reason some activists oppose putting offenders’ identifying information, including pictures, on Internet registries.
Paul Shannon, a founder of Reform Sex Offender Laws, said registries encourage people to target sex offenders, citing the 2006 murder of two Maine offenders by someone who found their names online. (Shannon would like to see public registries abolished; information about truly dangerous criminals should be shared among law enforcement officials, who would decide whether to alert the community.)
One of the men killed in Maine had served time for having otherwise consensual sex with his girlfriend when he was 19 and she was a few days shy of 16.
So-called “Romeo and Juliet” offenders shouldn’t be required to register as child sex offenders alongside pedophiles, Shannon said.
“Virtually all adolescent sexuality is now criminalized,” said Shannon, who said he is not an offender or ex-offender, just a civil liberties advocate. “This is a serious attack on children and their right to grow up.”
ABC reporter John Stossel did a series earlier this year on offender laws gone overboard; among other people, he featured a man who had, had sex with his girlfriend when he was 19 and she was 15. Twelve years later, they are married with four children, but he must still register as a sex offender.
Russell P. Butler, executive director of the Maryland Crime Victims’ Resource Center Inc., said cases involving two consenting adolescents are usually dealt with less harshly than other sex cases. Judges often give statutory offenders probation before judgment so they do not have to register, he said.
Besides which, he said, he is primarily concerned with protecting children who don’t have the capacity to consent to sex, not the older people who have sex with them.
“If we have to balance the rights of pedophiles versus the rights of children, I’m going to balance those to protect children and not pedophiles,” Butler said.
Legislators seem to feel the same way, said defense lawyer Bernier, a shareholder at Segal, McCambridge, Singer & Mahoney Ltd.
“In general, the real problem is, any time someone in the legislature feels they haven’t done enough, they propose a law on sex offenses,” he said.
He said sex offenders have begun pushing back against the regulations but haven’t gotten much traction.
“Who wants to be the guy who wants to be known as out in [the] legislature championing sex offenders?” Bernier said.
‘Opportunity to know’
Bartholomew, of the state’s Sex Offender Registry, said critics of sex offender laws actually have much less to complain about in Maryland than they would elsewhere.
For example, some states prevent offenders from living within a certain distance of schools, daycares or churches, forcing them out of cities, into the country or even onto the streets. Critics say such residency restrictions ultimately do more harm than good by forcing offenders underground.
In Florida, several sex offenders were famously discovered to be living together in a colony under a bridge because it was the only place where they wouldn’t be living too close to a forbidden landmark.
Maryland does not have automatic residency restrictions, Bartholomew said. Judges can, however, order individual offenders as a condition of parole or probation not to live within a certain distance of a place.
For those who doubt the necessity or fairness of registries, U.S. Attorney Rod J. Rosenstein points to Richard D. Morris.
Morris was a baseball coach about to take three of his players on a trip to Florida, according to a press release Rosenstein’s office issued earlier this year. A suspicious grandfather of one of the boys searched the Maryland Sex Offender Registry and found that Morris was a convicted sex offender.
The trip was halted. The grandson told police Morris had touched him inappropriately in the past, and when police searched Morris’ home computers, they found child pornography.
“The community ought to have an opportunity to know and therefore be alert to any sex offenders who might present a risk to other people,” Rosenstein said.
Freedom to fight
As a convicted rapist and murderer, Michael Kennedy is hardly a sympathetic poster boy for changes to the sex offender monitoring laws.
Still, his wife tries.
Sandy Kennedy said she started the blog and the Maryland chapter of Reform Sex Offender Laws so she could find other women who could relate to the experience of living with a convicted sex offender.
“I can talk to my husband and I do a lot, but I thought it would be nice to talk to other wives or other girlfriends,” Sandy Kennedy said.
Shannon, the national organization’s founder, said it’s typical for women who are close to sex offenders to advocate on their behalf. The offenders themselves don’t necessarily want to call more attention to themselves, he said.
“These stories are absolutely heartbreaking,” he said. “The people who are carrying around the pain are mostly the women: the mothers and the wives.”
Kennedy has her own pain. She said her sister, who didn’t know about Michael’s past, stopped returning her calls after his picture went online.
Though Kennedy worries about her safety and that of her husband, she said she needs to speak publicly in order to bring change.
“I figure he’s on the registry; how much more visible can you get?” she said. “I felt that if we didn’t want publicity, that we won’t be able to change the way things are.
“We were trying to keep a low [profile], not being public,” she said, “until he registered and they kind of gave us the freedom to go on out and make it known, and fight some of the injustices.”
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