tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4329875281305629872024-03-05T17:25:26.232-05:00Sex Offender Reports and ChartseAdvocatehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09569822127629044435noreply@blogger.comBlogger269125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-432987528130562987.post-13068549531145526912017-04-24T21:44:00.000-04:002017-04-24T21:44:18.549-04:00Child Safety at Sea: Freed and Stuart Talk Cruise Policies to Protect Kids<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhM3sOeTkns6VLbqROKMJyNsCRhfPiVjRNpR3rKMfhMszy6GXpMn-foY8M8b9IjhcclL1Z_7-pgKP8gWjuw4htbSVtkM8xEoXmyCBFMt6vXLwiVfq8fTS0mlWhV3FunXjudK5I93dMgOBMh/s1600/a-info-post.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="137" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhM3sOeTkns6VLbqROKMJyNsCRhfPiVjRNpR3rKMfhMszy6GXpMn-foY8M8b9IjhcclL1Z_7-pgKP8gWjuw4htbSVtkM8xEoXmyCBFMt6vXLwiVfq8fTS0mlWhV3FunXjudK5I93dMgOBMh/s200/a-info-post.jpg" width="200" /></a> <b>4-24-17 National:</b><br />
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Protecting kids at sea has been a hot topic of late, as some major cruise lines have adjusted their pool policies to add lifeguards. Most revealing on the subject of child protection, though?<br />
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Vicki Freed, senior vice president of sales, trade support and service, Royal Caribbean International, told hundreds of agents attending the final General Session of Cruise360 on Saturday that Royal Caribbean initiates a process 30 days prior to sailing to help assure no registered sex offenders sail on the line.<br />
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It sends every passenger manifest to a qualified third party, which compares the names on that manifest with any names on the National Sex Offender Database. If any matches are discovered, the line cancels the sailing, said Freed to both applause and a few "wows" from agents seated at this reporter's table.<br />
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Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd.'s PR office confirmed that this process is actually completed for all three of its brands -- Royal Caribbean, Celebrity Cruises and Azamara Club Cruises.<br />
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Freed also stressed that while the booking will be cancelled, "we do protect your commission."<br />
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She said some agents have been surprised as they did not know their client was on a sex offender list.<br />
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Freed said she encountered one agent at a Cruise 360 workshop who stood up and said: "You know I did get that call from you, you did protect the commission and we respect that you guys want that kind of environment [onboard]."<br />
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To Freed's knowledge, there are only three cruise lines that send their manifests to the FBI to check against the sex offender list. She said Celebrity Cruises was one, but did not identify the third.<br />
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"For us, it's a priority to have a safe environment onboard," Freed said.<br />
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Royal Caribbean also recently announced that it will have lifeguards at all pools on all of its ships. Freed added that the line also will provide life vests for complimentary use by young children. <br />
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Speaking of pool safety, Andy Stuart, president and CEO, Norwegian Cruise Line, also briefly addressed his line's "pool policy" change with reporters at Cruise360 on Friday afternoon.<br />
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He said the line started trialing the use of pool monitors on some of its family- focused big ships back in 2015. It's now adding lifeguards at family pools and "we now are partnering with the Red Cross to train our lifeguards." <br />
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Stuart said those lifeguards will be on duty at family pools of its big, family-focused ships (Norwegian Getaway, Norwegian Breakaway or Norwegian Epic, for example) for the upcoming summer season. <br />
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Next year, Norwegian will extend the program -- lifeguards at family pools and life vests for small children -- to its entire fleet. <br />
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"It's very important that we get this right," Stuart said. But he also added: "Parents must still take responsibility for their children." <br />
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Here's more on what the duo said:<br />
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Freed explained that Royal Caribbean's ships are large, innovative ships with many features appealing to multi-generational family groups and individual families traveling with kids and teens.<br />
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In addition to the Adventure Ocean children's club and a teen club, Royal Caribbean has nurseries on its ships. "A lot of couples start having children later in life," Freed noted, "so they want to bring along their infant but they don't want to be with the infant all the time."<br />
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She stressed that Royal Caribbean has highly qualified people in charge of those children's activity programs. All kids' counselors must have a college degree in a related field such as early childhood development.<br />
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Thirty days out [from the voyage's departure] Royal Caribbean sends it passenger manifest to the FBI, which compares it against law enforcement's database of registered sex offenders.<br />
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When Freed made these comments, agents in the audience immediately clapped and some gasped with amazement -- never having heard this before. <a href="http://www.travelagentcentral.com/cruises/child-safety-at-sea-freed-and-stuart-talk-about-policies-to-protect-kids">..Source..</a> by Susan YoungeAdvocatehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09569822127629044435noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-432987528130562987.post-2238114625216469322017-04-08T01:04:00.001-04:002017-04-08T01:07:46.429-04:00Website editor found guilty of falsely reporting child abuse in Brevard County<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtLf1DXEBiBK5XqI3iLc-zgX2dT5rdf4coMpMyabxhq8eexCtbXSx1cMOkYIL2C6hDDOi_sb8GYw0uaYsGuq_HB9fb0B315HEMyChNtT3UrKo_CfAtplUeeHhxZpYyUzhsJeBTXstVEeg/s1600/a-false-claims-story.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtLf1DXEBiBK5XqI3iLc-zgX2dT5rdf4coMpMyabxhq8eexCtbXSx1cMOkYIL2C6hDDOi_sb8GYw0uaYsGuq_HB9fb0B315HEMyChNtT3UrKo_CfAtplUeeHhxZpYyUzhsJeBTXstVEeg/s200/a-false-claims-story.jpg" /></a></div><b>4-2-17 Florida:</b><br />
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BREVARD COUNTY, Fla. - A Brevard County website editor is facing up to five years in prison after being found guilty of falsely accusing a man of sexually abusing his elementary school-aged daughter.<br />
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According to the Brevard County Sheriff’s Office, Dana Loyd, 44, reported the abuse while claiming to be a substitute teacher at Quest Elementary School named Theresa Smith.<br />
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She called the Florida Department of Children and Families Hotline on April 29, 2015 and told authorities that the girl had confided in her about the abuse.<br />
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Staff at Quest Elementary School, though, told investigators that there had not been a substitute teacher by that name the day the caller said the girl had told her about the abuse, the sheriff’s office said.<br />
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Deputies were able to match the phone number used to call the hotline to Loyd, who was also found to be “chief editor” of the website brevardsbestnews.com.<br />
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The site, which was still active Sunday, posted two articles titled “Please Help Fight for Justice!!!” and “Blood in the Streets?” Both named the girl’s father.<br />
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The second article also identified the girl by name, the sheriff’s office said.<br />
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“Additionally, it was learned that Loyd was allegedly contacting the father’s employment and other organizations where he was volunteering, advising he was a child molester,” the BCSO said in a Facebook post. “The investigation determined that the allegations of the reported abuse were unsubstantiated.”<br />
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Loyd admitted she had called the DCF hotline and the father’s employer and others as “harassment,” investigators said. <a href="http://www.wftv.com/news/local/website-editor-found-guilty-of-falsely-reporting-child-abuse-in-brevard-county/508379785">..Source..</a> by Mark BoxleyeAdvocatehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09569822127629044435noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-432987528130562987.post-54618976056117615142017-03-26T21:22:00.000-04:002017-04-08T00:59:58.058-04:00An 18-Year-Old Lied About Being Kidnapped, Raped<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtLf1DXEBiBK5XqI3iLc-zgX2dT5rdf4coMpMyabxhq8eexCtbXSx1cMOkYIL2C6hDDOi_sb8GYw0uaYsGuq_HB9fb0B315HEMyChNtT3UrKo_CfAtplUeeHhxZpYyUzhsJeBTXstVEeg/s1600/a-false-claims-story.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtLf1DXEBiBK5XqI3iLc-zgX2dT5rdf4coMpMyabxhq8eexCtbXSx1cMOkYIL2C6hDDOi_sb8GYw0uaYsGuq_HB9fb0B315HEMyChNtT3UrKo_CfAtplUeeHhxZpYyUzhsJeBTXstVEeg/s200/a-false-claims-story.jpg" /></a></div><b>3-24-17 Texas;</b><br />
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On March 8, 18-year-old Breana Talbott went missing. Her fiancé called the police, saying her car was found in an apartment complex parking lot with her door open and her phone, keys, and a shoe nearby.<br />
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Later that night, she walked into a church wearing only her T-shirt and her underwear. She had scratches on her body, and she told people at the church that she had been kidnapped, taken to the woods, and gang-raped by three black men wearing ski masks.<br />
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She lied. In a press released posted on Facebook on Wednesday, the Denison, Texas police department announced that Talbott has since confessed her entire claim was a hoax. In a newly-released statement, he police said that they knew something was up after just a few days, because her story started to unravel:<br />
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“We believe the crime scene – from the initial ‘kidnapping’ scene at the apartment complex to the point of Talbott’s condition when she walked into the church - were staged,” the statement reads. “Talbott also admitted the injuries to her body were self-inflicted.”<br />
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Talbott’s story became major news in the area, and the story also caught fire on social media - particularly among white nationalist communities and other racists online, The Washington Post reports (given that Talbott, who is white, alleged that her rapists were black). "Breana Talbott’s hoax was also insulting to our community and especially offensive to the African-American community due to her description of the so-called suspects in her hoax," Denison police department's statement continued. "The anger and hurts caused from such a hoax are difficult and all so unnecessary."<br />
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According to Fox 4, Talbott has been charged with making a false report to an officer, and she may have to pay back the costs of the police investigation. Her fiance, Sam Hollingsworth, told the TV station that he and Talbott have now broken up, and feels betrayed by what she did. He said that they had argued on the day of her faked disappearance, but that he has no idea why she would have staged something like this.<br />
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“I was hurt. It was hard to take in whenever I found out about everything,” he said. “Somebody that I actually trusted and was planning on spending the rest of my life with could do something like this to me and everybody else in this community.” <a href="https://www.yahoo.com/news/18-old-lied-being-kidnapped-155536839.html">..Source..</a> <a href="http://www.cosmopolitan.com/lifestyle/a9174127/breana-talbott-false-report-kidnapping-gang-rape/">by</a> eAdvocatehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09569822127629044435noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-432987528130562987.post-68521648911957781752017-03-26T19:27:00.000-04:002017-03-26T21:10:01.307-04:00College Student Who Accused Football Players with Rape Now Charged with Lying<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtLf1DXEBiBK5XqI3iLc-zgX2dT5rdf4coMpMyabxhq8eexCtbXSx1cMOkYIL2C6hDDOi_sb8GYw0uaYsGuq_HB9fb0B315HEMyChNtT3UrKo_CfAtplUeeHhxZpYyUzhsJeBTXstVEeg/s1600/a-false-claims-story.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtLf1DXEBiBK5XqI3iLc-zgX2dT5rdf4coMpMyabxhq8eexCtbXSx1cMOkYIL2C6hDDOi_sb8GYw0uaYsGuq_HB9fb0B315HEMyChNtT3UrKo_CfAtplUeeHhxZpYyUzhsJeBTXstVEeg/s200/a-false-claims-story.jpg" /></a></div><b>2-23-17 Connecticut:</b><br />
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A student at Connecticut’s Sacred Heart University is now on the other side of accusations of wrongdoing after police charged her with filing a false report of rape against two college football players.<br />
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In 2016, student Nikki Yovino, 18, told police in Bridgeport, Connecticut, that she was raped in the bathroom of a house where a party was raging. Afterward, Yovino accused two members of the school’s football team of repeatedly raping her that night, the Connecticut Post reported.<br />
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In short order, both football players were removed from the team, lost their scholarships, and were kicked out of school over the accusations.<br />
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Now police are saying the players are innocent because Yovino recanted her rape accusation after police discovered inconsistencies in her testimony. Police also found at least one witness who said he heard Yovino talking about how she wanted to have sex with the football players.<br />
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For their part, the two players admitted having sex with Yovino but always maintained it was consensual.<br />
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A police affidavit noted that Yovino admitted to lying about the rape.<br />
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“She admitted that she made up the allegation of sexual assault against (the football players) because it was the first thing that came to mind and she didn’t want to lose (another male student) as a friend and potential boyfriend. She stated that she believed when (the other male student) heard the allegation it would make him angry and sympathetic to her,” the affidavit said.<br />
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Yovino could face up to five years in prison if convicted of second-degree false reporting of an incident and tampering with or fabricating physical evidence. <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2017/02/23/college-student-accused-football-players-rape-now-charged-lying/">..Source..</a> by eAdvocatehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09569822127629044435noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-432987528130562987.post-12369664170741792452017-02-23T16:01:00.002-05:002017-03-26T19:22:31.499-04:00Cops: Football players kicked out of SHU falsely accused of rape<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtLf1DXEBiBK5XqI3iLc-zgX2dT5rdf4coMpMyabxhq8eexCtbXSx1cMOkYIL2C6hDDOi_sb8GYw0uaYsGuq_HB9fb0B315HEMyChNtT3UrKo_CfAtplUeeHhxZpYyUzhsJeBTXstVEeg/s1600/a-false-claims-story.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtLf1DXEBiBK5XqI3iLc-zgX2dT5rdf4coMpMyabxhq8eexCtbXSx1cMOkYIL2C6hDDOi_sb8GYw0uaYsGuq_HB9fb0B315HEMyChNtT3UrKo_CfAtplUeeHhxZpYyUzhsJeBTXstVEeg/s200/a-false-claims-story.jpg" /></a></div><b>2-22-2017 Connecticut:</b><br />
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BRIDGEPORT — It was another harrowing case of an alleged rape occurring at an off-campus drinking party of underage college students.<br />
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In this instance, a teen claimed she was repeatedly raped by two Sacred Heart University football players in a tiny basement bathroom while the party raged on.<br />
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But months after the players were dismissed from the team, stripped of their scholarships and had withdrawn from the school, 18-year-old Nikki Yovino confessed she had made the rape allegations up to gain the sympathy of a prospective boyfriend, police said.<br />
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On Wednesday, Yovino, of South Setauket, N.Y., was charged with second-degree false reporting of an incident and tampering with or fabricating physical evidence.<br />
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The tampering charge is a felony punishable by up to five years in prison.<br />
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After surrendering to police here, Yovino was released after posting $150,000 bond. She is scheduled to be arraigned in Superior Court on March 3.<br />
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“She admitted that she made up the allegation of sexual assault against (the football players) because it was the first thing that came to mind and she didn’t want to lose (another male student) as a friend and potential boyfriend,” the affidavit states. “She stated that she believed when (the other male student) heard the allegation, it would make him angry and sympathetic to her.”<br />
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Yovino’s lawyer, Mark Sherman, of Stamford, said he hadn’t seen the arrest warrant affidavit but continued, “My client denies the allegations and stands by her original story.”<br />
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One of the students has now been allowed readmission to the school but without his scholarship and he is no longer on the football team.<br />
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“Whenever there is any kind of incident at Sacred Heart University, we go to great lengths to ensure due process for all parties involved,” said SHU spokeswoman Deborah Noack. “The way that this particular case is playing out certainly demonstrates the validity of our procedures.”<br />
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The names of the two students are being withheld by Hearst Connecticut Media. The lawyer for one of the students said his client does not want to comment on Yovino’s arrest and wants to put the incident behind him.<br />
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According to the arrest affidavit, when police Detective Walberto Cotto Jr. pressed Yovino about inconsistencies in her original statement, she admitted she had made up the allegations against the two young men in the hope of gaining sympathy from a prospective boyfriend.<br />
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On Oct. 15, police were dispatched to St. Vincent’s Medical Center for a sexual assault complaint. Police said Yovino told them she had attended a Sacred Heart football club party the night before at a house at Lakeside Drive here.<br />
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Police said the girl claimed the two men pulled her into a bathroom in the basement of the house.<br />
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“I don’t want to be in here, I don’t want to do anything. My friends are waiting for me outside, let me go outside,” police said she claims she told the men. <a href="http://m.ctpost.com/local/article/Cops-Football-players-kicked-out-of-SHU-falsely-10950934.php">..Source..</a> by Daniel TepfereAdvocatehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09569822127629044435noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-432987528130562987.post-69851036934781099782017-01-09T21:57:00.002-05:002017-02-23T15:49:22.720-05:00Donald Trump’s Ghostwriter Tells All<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhM3sOeTkns6VLbqROKMJyNsCRhfPiVjRNpR3rKMfhMszy6GXpMn-foY8M8b9IjhcclL1Z_7-pgKP8gWjuw4htbSVtkM8xEoXmyCBFMt6vXLwiVfq8fTS0mlWhV3FunXjudK5I93dMgOBMh/s1600/a-info-post.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="137" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhM3sOeTkns6VLbqROKMJyNsCRhfPiVjRNpR3rKMfhMszy6GXpMn-foY8M8b9IjhcclL1Z_7-pgKP8gWjuw4htbSVtkM8xEoXmyCBFMt6vXLwiVfq8fTS0mlWhV3FunXjudK5I93dMgOBMh/s200/a-info-post.jpg" width="200" /></a> <b>2017:</b> <br />
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<span style="font-family: trebuchet ms; color:#ff0000;"><b> A comment by Eleanor Roosevelt: First Lady 1933-1945 "<a href="https://www.yahoo.com/style/11-inspiring-quotes-countrys-first-slideshow-wp-140038991/photo-p-eleanor-currently-longest-ever-photo-140038447.html">Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people</a>" </b></span><br />
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<b>January 2017:</b><br />
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<b>“The Art of the Deal” made America see Trump as a charmer with an unfailing knack for business. Tony Schwartz helped create that myth—<span style="color:black;background-color:#ffff04">and regrets it.</span></b><br />
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Last June, as dusk fell outside Tony Schwartz’s sprawling house, on a leafy back road in Riverdale, New York, he pulled out his laptop and caught up with the day’s big news: Donald J. Trump had declared his candidacy for President. As Schwartz watched a video of the speech, he began to feel personally implicated.<br />
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Trump, facing a crowd that had gathered in the lobby of Trump Tower, on Fifth Avenue, laid out his qualifications, saying, “We need a leader that wrote ‘The Art of the Deal.’ ” If that was so, Schwartz thought, then he, not Trump, should be running. Schwartz dashed off a tweet: “Many thanks Donald Trump for suggesting I run for President, based on the fact that I wrote ‘The Art of the Deal.’ ”<br />
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Schwartz had ghostwritten Trump’s 1987 breakthrough memoir, earning a joint byline on the cover, half of the book’s five-hundred-thousand-dollar advance, and half of the royalties. The book was a phenomenal success, spending forty-eight weeks on the Times best-seller list, thirteen of them at No. 1. More than a million copies have been bought, generating several million dollars in royalties. The book expanded Trump’s renown far beyond New York City, making him an emblem of the successful tycoon. Edward Kosner, the former editor and publisher of New York, where Schwartz worked as a writer at the time, says, “Tony created Trump. He’s Dr. Frankenstein.”<br />
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Starting in late 1985, Schwartz spent eighteen months with Trump—camping out in his office, joining him on his helicopter, tagging along at meetings, and spending weekends with him at his Manhattan apartment and his Florida estate. During that period, Schwartz felt, he had got to know him better than almost anyone else outside the Trump family. Until Schwartz posted the tweet, though, he had not spoken publicly about Trump for decades. It had never been his ambition to be a ghostwriter, and he had been glad to move on. But, as he watched a replay of the new candidate holding forth for forty-five minutes, he noticed something strange: over the decades, Trump appeared to have convinced himself that he had written the book. Schwartz recalls thinking, “If he could lie about that on Day One—when it was so easily refuted—he is likely to lie about anything.” <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/07/25/donald-trumps-ghostwriter-tells-all">..Continued..</a> by Jane MayereAdvocatehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09569822127629044435noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-432987528130562987.post-35589623835501894362016-12-24T22:23:00.002-05:002017-01-09T21:45:59.255-05:00Four Years in Prison for Driving His Son to a Ball Game<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhM3sOeTkns6VLbqROKMJyNsCRhfPiVjRNpR3rKMfhMszy6GXpMn-foY8M8b9IjhcclL1Z_7-pgKP8gWjuw4htbSVtkM8xEoXmyCBFMt6vXLwiVfq8fTS0mlWhV3FunXjudK5I93dMgOBMh/s1600/a-info-post.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="137" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhM3sOeTkns6VLbqROKMJyNsCRhfPiVjRNpR3rKMfhMszy6GXpMn-foY8M8b9IjhcclL1Z_7-pgKP8gWjuw4htbSVtkM8xEoXmyCBFMt6vXLwiVfq8fTS0mlWhV3FunXjudK5I93dMgOBMh/s200/a-info-post.jpg" width="200" /></a> <b>2014:</b><br />
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In his 2014 book, Our Kids, sociologist Robert Putnam breaks down the ways that America is failing its less-well-off children. His isn’t a liberal or conservative story–a lot of the book focuses on the terrible impact that family breakdown has in perpetuating poverty (a conservative narrative) and how widening inequality means rich and poor kids live in completely different worlds (a theme of liberals). <br />
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Putnam also notes a point that routinely gets ignored in discussions of family stability: the link between rising rates of imprisonment since the 1970s and the increasing number of single-parent families. Mass incarceration, writes Putnam, “has certainly removed a very large number of young fathers from poor neighborhoods, and the effects of their absence, on white and nonwhite kids alike, are known to be traumatic, leaving long-lasting scars.” <br />
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It’s even worse for kids with a father on a sex offender registry. Once a father is back home after serving time, often-senseless restrictions make being a good parent well-nigh impossible. In that light, a story not long ago in a newsletter of <a href="http://nationalrsol.org/">Reform Sex Offender Laws</a> caught my eye. (I’ve changed the names here to protect those involved.) Here’s the gist: <blockquote>Jim was a schoolteacher convicted of having a relationship with a 17-year-old female student. He served almost two years in prison before being released on probation. He was permitted full contact with his minor daughter. But he was prohibited from being with his 12-year-old stepson unless he was with his wife or in public places–because they weren’t biologically related. Here’s what happened next.<br />
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“My son asked me to get tickets to a basketball game. The arena is a public place, so I knew this was okay. I got the tickets, and he was really excited. I drove my son to the game, where we met with a large group of friends. We all had a great time. Afterwards, we all went out for pizza and my son was so happy.<br />
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The next time I saw my probation officer, she told me I’d violated my conditions–not because I went to the game, but because I was alone with my son for the 15-minute car ride to get to the game. This technical violation resulted in a 4-year prison sentence–twice as long as [what I served for] my actual crime. But I’m ok with this because my son asked me to take him to the game. I may have been on probation, but that night I chose to be a father.”</blockquote>Jim is back in prison. For 4 years. For driving his son to a basketball game.<br />
<br />
Registrants across the country have stories like this–of restrictions that cruelly split up families for reasons having no logical relationship to child sexual abuse prevention. (See my story last year in Al Jazeera America for more like this.)<br />
<br />
Putnam documents chapter-and-verse what splitting up families does to children. In the name of protecting kids, we’re actually making their lives worse. <a href="http://www.lifeonlist.org/how-our-sex-offense-laws-are-hurting-children/">..Source..</a> From "Life on the List" blog eAdvocatehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09569822127629044435noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-432987528130562987.post-56182784775309219722016-12-19T15:20:00.000-05:002016-12-24T22:15:21.608-05:00Women Reveal What It's Like to Be in a Relationship With a Sex Offender and Why They Stay<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhM3sOeTkns6VLbqROKMJyNsCRhfPiVjRNpR3rKMfhMszy6GXpMn-foY8M8b9IjhcclL1Z_7-pgKP8gWjuw4htbSVtkM8xEoXmyCBFMt6vXLwiVfq8fTS0mlWhV3FunXjudK5I93dMgOBMh/s1600/a-info-post.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="137" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhM3sOeTkns6VLbqROKMJyNsCRhfPiVjRNpR3rKMfhMszy6GXpMn-foY8M8b9IjhcclL1Z_7-pgKP8gWjuw4htbSVtkM8xEoXmyCBFMt6vXLwiVfq8fTS0mlWhV3FunXjudK5I93dMgOBMh/s200/a-info-post.jpg" width="200" /></a> <b>12-19-16 National:</b><br />
<br />
Susan didn’t plan to date a sex offender, but she felt like she had finally met her dream guy in Josh — never mind that she was married at the time.<br />
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Susan, 33, and Josh, 31, met in September 2013 when Josh worked a job that delivered beds to the Missouri hospital where Susan worked. According to Susan, a month into the relationship, Josh told her he was on the sex offender registry for a crime he committed while he was serving in the Marines.<br />
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“He told me within the first month. He told me very early on because he knew I had two children,” Susan told InsideEdition.com.<br />
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Falling for Josh was easy for Susan because she said her marriage with her then-husband was tumultuous. <br />
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A few weeks after the pair began secretly dating; Susan’s then husband found out his wife was seeing Josh behind his back. Their children were 2 and 5 at the time.<br />
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"My husband came home early one day after having a big fight over the weekend and he caught Josh and me in the shower,” Susan said. “I did try to end our relationship a few times but the chemistry was just so strong that it was hard to let each other go. I didn’t mean for it to happen."<br />
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After the discovery, Susan’s ex-husband filed for divorce in November 2013, but it wouldn’t be until much later that he would discover Josh’s status as a registered sex offender.<br />
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A few months into their relationship, Susan allowed Josh to meet her two children. She said she felt that she understood Josh’s crime and knew him to be a good person.<br />
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“He disclosed what happened and how it happened, all of that to me. I could see from his point of view. It’s not totally his fault that this happened," said Susan. “I didn’t find him as a threat.”<br />
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Susan isn’t the only woman willing to overlook the past of the man she loves, even a man with his name on the sex offender registry.<br />
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While it may seem surprising to many, some women are willing to go through being outwardly shunned by family and their communities in the defense of the men because to them, love trumps all.<br />
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Their experiences being in a relationship with a sex offender may be different, but these women have another thing in common: An undeniable faith in their men.<br />
<br />
---<br />
<br />
Susan’s husband Josh was 21 at the time of his crime. He was arrested in 2007 in California while serving in the Marines and remained in the brig, a military jail, until he was found guilty of wrongfully transporting and possessing child pornography in 2008.<br />
<br />
Following the conviction, he was dishonorably discharged from the military. <a href="http://www.insideedition.com/headlines/20454-women-reveal-what-its-like-to-be-in-a-relationship-with-a-sex-offender-and">..Continued..</a> by Maya ChungeAdvocatehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09569822127629044435noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-432987528130562987.post-9306362199697573092016-12-18T02:01:00.000-05:002016-12-19T15:14:39.905-05:00How Blacks and Whites Die Differently Behind Bars<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhM3sOeTkns6VLbqROKMJyNsCRhfPiVjRNpR3rKMfhMszy6GXpMn-foY8M8b9IjhcclL1Z_7-pgKP8gWjuw4htbSVtkM8xEoXmyCBFMt6vXLwiVfq8fTS0mlWhV3FunXjudK5I93dMgOBMh/s1600/a-info-post.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="137" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhM3sOeTkns6VLbqROKMJyNsCRhfPiVjRNpR3rKMfhMszy6GXpMn-foY8M8b9IjhcclL1Z_7-pgKP8gWjuw4htbSVtkM8xEoXmyCBFMt6vXLwiVfq8fTS0mlWhV3FunXjudK5I93dMgOBMh/s200/a-info-post.jpg" width="200" /></a> <b>12-18-16 National:</b><br />
<br />
New data released Thursday from the Bureau of Justice Statistics shows a stark difference in how white and black inmates are dying in the nation's prisons and jails.<br />
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Deaths of all prisoners rose slightly from 2013 to 2014, the latest year for which the bureau has compiled data. Of the 4,980 people who died in custody of <a href="https://www.themarshallproject.org/documents/3239463-Mortality-in-State-Prisons-2001-2014">federal and state prison systems</a> and <a href="https://www.themarshallproject.org/documents/3239464-Mortality-in-Local-Jails-2000-2014#.Lyuxv2LSK">about 2,900 local jails nationwide</a>, most were non-Hispanic whites.<br />
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Illness accounted for a vast majority of the deaths—heart disease and cancer were among the most common causes—but a closer examination shows significant racial differences in two causes of death.<br />
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Between 2001 and 2014, the percentage of state and federal prisoners who died from AIDS-related illnesses decreased dramatically, from a high of 9.6 percent down to 1.8 percent. Local jails saw a similar drop. At the same time, <a href="http://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=pbdetail&iid=4452">the number of prisoners living with HIV</a>, the virus that causes AIDS, also decreased. <br />
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Despite the decrease, the rate of AIDS-related deaths differed significantly between white and black people in prisons. White inmates died of AIDS-related illnesses at an average rate of 6 per 100,000 prisoners each year. The rate for black inmates was 17 per 100,000, nearly three times that of whites. In jails, a similar pattern emerged. Hispanic and Latino prisoners had roughly the same mortality rate as whites in prisons and jails.<br />
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There are similar disparities for suicide, which overall has increased slightly in prisons since 2001. It is the cause of death for 7 percent of white prison inmates, compared with only 3.5 percent of their black peers.<br />
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In 2014 alone, suicides represented 7 percent of all deaths in state and federal prisons—the highest percentage since 2001.<br />
<br />
This mirrors the overall increase of suicide among white men between the ages of 45 and 64 in the general population, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But it is also reflective of the problem with mental health treatment in jails and prisons. Michele Deitch, a senior lecturer at the School of Law at the University of Texas at Austin, says there are ways to prevent suicide among the incarcerated.<br />
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"Look at facilities that have been sued," Deitch said. Afterward, "they tend to implement good prevention strategies," she said.<br />
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For people who are already living with mental health challenges, the loss of a family member, a stint in solitary, being the victim of violence or being denied parole can <a href="https://www.themarshallproject.org/2015/08/04/why-jails-have-more-suicides-than-prisons#.j6uffcTIG">lead to a state of depression</a>, said Deitch, who urged better staff training in all areas of corrections.<br />
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Suicide is more prevalent in jails, occurring at a rate more than double that in prisons. Suicides were the cause of death for more than 35 percent of jail inmates who died in 2014, the highest since reporting began in 2000. White jail inmates commit suicide more than five times as often as blacks in jail, the data found. Hispanic inmates commit suicide at a rate of about 23 percent higher than black jail inmates.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://www.themarshallproject.org/2016/07/12/sandra-bland-one-year-later#.uEbtI86Lb">The jail suicide of Sandra Bland</a> in Texas in the summer of 2015 brought national attention to the problem and led to some changes. The new federal data released, however, covers only through the end of 2014, and would not reflect any shifts since Bland's death.<br />
<br />
Although more than one-fifth of suicides in local jails happened in segregation, nearly half occurred among inmates housed in the general population. <a href="http://www.vice.com/en_ca/read/how-blacks-and-whites-die-differently-behind-bars">..Source..</a> by eAdvocatehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09569822127629044435noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-432987528130562987.post-39102804185006715012016-12-02T18:26:00.000-05:002016-12-18T01:54:39.854-05:0010 years after sex offender murders, questions linger about registr<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhM3sOeTkns6VLbqROKMJyNsCRhfPiVjRNpR3rKMfhMszy6GXpMn-foY8M8b9IjhcclL1Z_7-pgKP8gWjuw4htbSVtkM8xEoXmyCBFMt6vXLwiVfq8fTS0mlWhV3FunXjudK5I93dMgOBMh/s1600/a-info-post.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="137" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhM3sOeTkns6VLbqROKMJyNsCRhfPiVjRNpR3rKMfhMszy6GXpMn-foY8M8b9IjhcclL1Z_7-pgKP8gWjuw4htbSVtkM8xEoXmyCBFMt6vXLwiVfq8fTS0mlWhV3FunXjudK5I93dMgOBMh/s200/a-info-post.jpg" width="200" /></a> <b>4-15-16 Maine:</b><br />
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One morning in March, Bangor police Detective Jeremy Brock and Officer Dustin Dow made their rounds. Two of their stops included the Ranger Inn on outer Hammond Street and a boarding house on Union Street.<br />
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Each week, Brock usually spends a day on such visits, checking that the 120 or so registered sex offenders in Bangor are living where they have said they’re living.<br />
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At the motel, the registrants they sought weren’t there. At the boarding house, the officers found a half-dozen registrants, most of whom were home and in compliance.<br />
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One registrant had moved from the second floor to the third but hadn’t re-registered. Brock sent him to the police station to change his address.<br />
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Occasionally, Brock finds that a registrant has used a fake address. Brock and Dow spent some time searching for 247 Center St., only to find no building with that number.<br />
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The detective rarely visits a registrant’s workplace.<br />
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During his compliance checks, Brock makes calls to the registry in Augusta to see whether his information matches state files. He maintains his own list, which is not public, with names and addresses of Bangor registrants.<br />
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Most often, they match.<br />
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“What we do ensures accountability,” Brock says. “As long as they are accountable, they can live their lives. A majority are no problem, but there are about 10 percent who have trouble turning their paperwork in on time.”<br />
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Brock’s routine is similar to actions other Maine police have taken since 2003, when the state’s sex offender registry first went online.<br />
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Then, as now, the online registry includes the name, birthdate, photo, town of residence, employer, college (if the registrant is a student) and the crimes for which they were convicted, whether in Maine or elsewhere.<br />
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Little has changed in the registry despite the events of 10 years ago, when two Maine men listed on the registry were murdered by someone they never had met in the early morning hours of Easter Sunday, April 16, 2006.<br />
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In the aftermath of the murders, Maine weighed questions of balancing the aims of the registry — protecting children from pedophiles — with the suddenly real prospect of having people who had served their conviction becoming targets of vigilante violence. Debate continues to this day.<br />
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Victims of sexual assault support online registries in the name of public safety. Experts and lawmakers say there is scarce evidence that registries serve to prevent future crimes. And registrants decry the listing as dehumanizing and isolating while also putting their safety at risk.<br />
<br />
“The registry is an important piece to have in place,” Elizabeth Ward Saxl, executive director of the Maine Coalition Against Sexual Assault, says. “Every state has one, and if they didn’t, one state could become a haven for sexual offenders. The challenge is that we don’t have the research that tells us it significantly improves public safety.”<br />
<br />
—<br />
<br />
The online version of the Maine Sex Offender Registry was unveiled Dec. 1, 2003, and listed about 1,200 names of people convicted after June 30, 1992.<br />
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In announcing the website, then-Maine Public Safety Commissioner Michael Cantara noted, “it’s a violation of law to use the registry to harass anyone who appears in the database,” adding, “I think we can count on Maine people to act responsibly when given this information.”<br />
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By April 2006, when a troubled young Canadian named Stephen Marshall used the registry to find and murder Joseph Gray, 57, and William Elliott, 24, in their Maine homes, the two men were among 2,500 people listed.<br />
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Despite an extensive investigation, Marshall’s motive for the killings remains a mystery.<br />
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He crossed the border to visit his father in Houlton on Thursday, April 13, 2006. Then, either late Saturday or early Sunday, he slipped out a window with a rifle, two handguns and his laptop and drove away in his father’s silver Toyota pickup.<br />
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He stopped at the homes of four registrants before pulling into Gray’s driveway in Milo. At about 3 a.m., Marshall sprayed seven bullets through Gray’s living room window, killing him while his wife looked on in horror.<br />
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Five hours later, Marshall knocked on the front door of Elliott’s mobile home in Corinth. When Elliott answered, Marshall shot and killed him.<br />
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Later, Marshall apparently abandoned the pickup and rifle at Sawyer Arena in Bangor and then boarded a southbound bus at a downtown station.<br />
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At about 7:30 p.m, the police, scrambling to follow Marshall’s trail of clues, stopped the bus on a ramp leading to Interstate 90, a short distance from Boston’s South Station.<br />
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Marshall, sitting quietly about 13 rows behind the bus driver, shot himself with the same .45-caliber handgun he used to kill Gray and Elliott. On his laptop, Marshall had compiled a list of 32 names and addresses from the sex offender registry — including those of his victims.<br />
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Later, what came to be called “The Sex Offender Murders” sparked an emotional debate about the registry on how much information should be made public and for what types of crimes.<br />
<br />
—<br />
<br />
State Sen. Bill Diamond, D-Windham, was chairman of the Legislature’s Criminal Justice and Public Safety Committee after the Marshall murders. That committee reviewed several proposed changes to the criminal code and sex offender registry<br />
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The longtime legislator and teacher also introduced more than 50 bills dealing with sex crimes and the registry.<br />
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Maine’s initial registry was simple, he said. In 1992, the law required those convicted of gross sexual assault against victims under 16 to register for 15 years.<br />
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But over the years, said Diamond, the registry has evolved into a complex system that determines how long an individual must register based on the age of the victim at the time of the offense, the nature of the crime and when it was committed.<br />
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In 1992, when the registry was created, a conviction for one crime required an offender to register. Today, 83 state and about a dozen federal crimes require a person to be listed on the sex offender registry.<br />
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In his 2012 book about sex crimes and the registry, “The Evil and the Innocent,” Diamond wrote that what started as “a well-crafted law” in Maine had become “twisted with unrealistic expectations, cumbersome regulations and too many federal interventions.”<br />
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The most demanding of those, according to Diamond, is the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act of 2006.<br />
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Named for famed “America’s Most Wanted” host John Walsh’s child, who was abducted and murdered in 1991, the law required each state to use a three-tiered system that requires registration for 15 years, 25 years or life, depending on the crimes and ages of the victims.<br />
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It was implemented fully in Maine at the end of 2013, in all aspects but one. Maine’s registry does not list juveniles unless they were convicted as adults. Listing juveniles goes against the juvenile justice system’s goal of rehabilitation, according to Diamond.<br />
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Along with scope, the expense and reach of the registry has also increased over the years. In 2015, the Maine registry was visited 1.5 million times and 4.7 million searches were completed.<br />
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The registry’s personnel cost is about $250,000 per year, according to Matthew Ruel, who heads the Maine State Bureau of Identification. That funds a staff of four people at the Department of Public Safety who work full time with the Maine State Police and local law enforcement agencies to make sure sex offenders are following the rules.<br />
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Legal changes have caused the total number of registrants in Maine to fluctuate. In 2009, the Maine Supreme Judicial Court found a 2005 law making the registry retroactive to 1982 was unconstitutional. The court, however, did not address whether the registry itself was constitutional.<br />
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As a result, in 2010, people sentenced for crimes that required registration between Jan. 1, 1982, and June 30, 1992, were allowed to request their names be removed, dropping the total number of registrants from its all-time high in 2009 — 3,352 — to 2,956 in 2010.<br />
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Then, in a rare 4-3 decision in 2013, the court declared the registry was constitutional while also further narrowing retroactive registration. As a result, registration fell from 3,176 in 2014 to 2,841 in 2015.<br />
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Despite all the changes to the registry, the additional laws and increased enforcement, many observers say evidence the sex offender registry significantly improves public safety is lacking.<br />
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Last year, Andrew Harris, associate professor of criminology and justice studies at the University of Massachusetts at Lowell, was awarded a $1 million grant from the National Institute of Justice to study sex offender registration and notification systems and how they operate.<br />
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It will be the first comprehensive, national assessment of how registry systems operate, how the information is translated into the realm of public safety and how the information is used by law enforcement and the public.<br />
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“I’m not convinced that alone the sex offender registries have a uniform impact,” Harris said in an interview. “You have to look at registries as part of a larger context that includes treatment, probation, supervised release and community support.”<br />
<br />
“I think the registries have value,” he added. “But their public safety impact is more subtle than people think.”<br />
<br />
—<br />
<br />
The impact on registrants’ lives is not as subtle, according to some.<br />
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Augusta attorney Jim Mitchell, who represented 43 men who sued and won over being listed retroactively, said though the courts have said being on the registry is not a penalty, “it sure feels like one to them.”<br />
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“Well-rounded, happy citizens typically don’t get convicted of being sex offenders,” Mitchell said. “So, you start with people who are already a little bit outside the norm, and then you brand them and you publish it on the Internet and they can never be anonymous.”<br />
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“They have a very difficult time getting work and finding a place to live and getting along in society,” he said. “The question in my mind is what benefit does the public get in bringing that pain and harm on them?”<br />
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Failing to register is a crime, with penalties — for repeat offenses — of up to 10 years in prison. Yet law enforcement says finding offenders who failed to register is largely the exception, not the rule.<br />
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Ruell estimated between 2 and 5 percent of registrants fail to follow the rules. Brock, the Bangor detective, said he usually issues noncompliant registrants a court summons instead of arresting them.<br />
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State and federal law require law enforcement to notify communities when a sex offender moves into a town or neighborhood, but notifications are handled differently.<br />
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Most large cities and towns consider the listing on the sex offender registry as notification. Some small towns take additional steps: East Millinocket police Chief Cameron McDunnah, for example, has gone door to door delivering fliers and put a notice in an area weekly paper to let residents know a sex offender has registered in town.<br />
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Some fear the registry can deflect attention from real dangers.<br />
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The list may give the public some comfort about dangerous strangers, according to Ward Saxl, but statistically these are not the people most likely to sexually abuse a child. About 80 percent of sexual assaults are committed by relative or another person the victims know.<br />
<br />
“It’s much easier to focus on the few offenders on the registry in your town and not focus on the fact that your next-door neighbor, uncle, soccer coach may in fact be a sex offender who’s not on the registry,” she said. <a href="http://bangordailynews.com/2016/04/15/news/state/10-years-after-sex-offender-murders-questions-linger-about-maines-registry/">..Source..</a> by Judy Harrison, BDN Staff<br />
eAdvocatehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09569822127629044435noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-432987528130562987.post-45358115377524968442016-11-03T16:02:00.000-04:002016-12-02T18:19:47.944-05:00Fair employment news and resources<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhM3sOeTkns6VLbqROKMJyNsCRhfPiVjRNpR3rKMfhMszy6GXpMn-foY8M8b9IjhcclL1Z_7-pgKP8gWjuw4htbSVtkM8xEoXmyCBFMt6vXLwiVfq8fTS0mlWhV3FunXjudK5I93dMgOBMh/s1600/a-info-post.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="137" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhM3sOeTkns6VLbqROKMJyNsCRhfPiVjRNpR3rKMfhMszy6GXpMn-foY8M8b9IjhcclL1Z_7-pgKP8gWjuw4htbSVtkM8xEoXmyCBFMt6vXLwiVfq8fTS0mlWhV3FunXjudK5I93dMgOBMh/s200/a-info-post.jpg" width="200" /></a> <b>11-3-16 National:</b><br />
<br />
The National Employment Law Project (<a href="http://nelp.org/">NELP</a>) recently published its November 2016 On the Record: Fair Employment newsletter which provides links and information on a number of interesting developments related to collateral consequences and criminal record mitigation. The full newsletter is available at link below: <a href="http://ccresourcecenter.org/2016/11/02/fair-employment-news-and-resources/#more-11370">..Continued..</a> by National Employment Law ProjecteAdvocatehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09569822127629044435noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-432987528130562987.post-69930762385892088862016-10-10T13:46:00.000-04:002016-10-10T14:25:36.577-04:00Prosecutor Wants to Charge 14-Year-Old Girl with Sexual Exploitation for Taking PG-13 Pictures of Herself<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhM3sOeTkns6VLbqROKMJyNsCRhfPiVjRNpR3rKMfhMszy6GXpMn-foY8M8b9IjhcclL1Z_7-pgKP8gWjuw4htbSVtkM8xEoXmyCBFMt6vXLwiVfq8fTS0mlWhV3FunXjudK5I93dMgOBMh/s1600/a-info-post.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="137" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhM3sOeTkns6VLbqROKMJyNsCRhfPiVjRNpR3rKMfhMszy6GXpMn-foY8M8b9IjhcclL1Z_7-pgKP8gWjuw4htbSVtkM8xEoXmyCBFMt6vXLwiVfq8fTS0mlWhV3FunXjudK5I93dMgOBMh/s200/a-info-post.jpg" width="200" /></a> <b>10-10-16 Iowa:</b><br />
<br />
A 14-year-old Iowa girl, "Nancy Doe," is facing sexual exploitation charges for taking two sexy pictures of a minor and texting them to a boy at school.<br />
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The minor in question is Doe, which means <span style="color:black;background-color:#ffff04">the Marion County prosecutor has essentially threatened to brand her a sex offender for taking and sending pictures of her own body.</span><br />
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Making matters significantly worse, the pictures in question can hardly be described as child pornography, Doe's family argues in its lawsuit against Marion County Attorney Ed Bull. <span style="color:black;background-color:#ffff04">In one photo, she was wearing boy shorts and a sports bra. In the other, she had removed the bra but her hair was fully covering her breasts.</span><br />
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Doe's own parents described the pictures as "less 'racy' than photographs they see in fashion magazines and on television every day." They wonder if she could have been prosecuted for taking a picture of herself in her swimsuit—such a picture would have probably been even more revealing than the alleged 'sexts.'<br />
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Doe's not waiting to be prosecuted for something that shouldn't even be a crime, and probably isn't in this specific case. She has filed a lawsuit against the county attorney for threatening to violate her First and Fourteenth Amendment rights.<br />
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"It is clearly a violation of the First Amendment for a prosecutor to credibly threaten to bring criminal charges for protected speech and expression," Rita Bettis, legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Iowa, told The Des Moines Register. "While courts have held that child pornography is not protected under the First Amendment, in this case, there appears to be a real factual question about whether the image itself was child pornography."<br />
<br />
The trouble began last March, when two boys at Knoxville High School were caught using the school printers to print inappropriate photos of their classmates, both male and female, which had been obtained via texts and Snapchat. Some of the teens in the photos were nude, though emojis were covering their private parts, according to the lawsuit. Doe's two photos were among them.<br />
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School officials notified the police, and the school counselor began reaching out to the parents. Doe's family was horrified to learn that she had sent inappropriate photos to a boy who had then violated her privacy and shared them with his friends. They restricted Doe's phone access as punishment.<br />
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Police officers asked to speak with Doe as part of their investigation into the Knoxville High sexting ring. Doe's parents wisely declined permission for Doe to speak with them, though they agreed to come to the police station themselves. It was at this point, on April 6, that Doe's parents were finally able to see the photos for themselves.<br />
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The Does were "perplexed," according to the lawsuit, since neither of the pictures were pornographic. "Receiving assurances that these two photos were they only photographs of Nancy, the Does asked what the fuss was about…. Leaving the Police Department, the Does were confused why their daughter was being investigated by the police at all."<br />
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A few weeks later, Juvenile Court informed them that Doe was accused of "Sexual Exploitation of a Minor."<br />
<br />
The court was apparently pursuing investigations against a number of kids involved in the swapping of sexy text messages at Knoxville High. The kids and all their parents were asked to meet with Bull, the County Attorney, on May 24. The Does did not attend—they had a prior conflict, were skeptical that the meeting could change their mind about their daughter's innocence, and didn't want to expose her to public shaming or ridicule.<br />
<br />
According to the lawsuit, 30 kids and their parents attended the meeting. Bull told the kids that they could be charged with possessing child pornography and have to register as sex offenders. He also "slut shamed" the girls, chiding them for sending enticing photographs to the boys.<br />
<br />
Bull gave the teens an option to avoid charges: they had to enroll in a pre-trial diversion program involving community service, classes on the dangers of sexting, no phone or laptop for set period of time, and an admission of guilt. If they did all these things, they would not be prosecuted.<br />
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This deal might make sense for kids who transmitted sexually suggestive pictures—although in a sane world, none would face criminal charges for mistakes that should be handled by parents and school officials. But the Does manifestly—and admirably, in my opinion—refuse to concede that their daughter violated the law.<br />
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All of the other kids accepted the diversion program. Doe's family opted to sue Bull.<br />
<br />
"Bull's threat to prosecute Nancy criminally is completely without merit, and thus is made in bad faith as he has no, and can have no, reasonable expectation of obtaining a conviction of Nancy or an adjudication of Nancy as delinquent," according to the lawsuit.<br />
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The county's behavior is so egregiously awful, it's hard to know where to begin. How can a person—andunderage person—be credibly accused of exploiting herself? If the photos Doe sent constitute exploitation, all photos of teenagers in bathing suits are exploitation. Could Doe be charged with exploitation for stealing a glance at her own body in the bathroom mirror when exiting the shower? (To say nothing of group showers at Knoxville High School itself.)<br />
<br />
If any actual sexual exploitation took place, Doe is the victim of it, not the perpetrator. Her (not at all pornographic) pictures were shared without her consent. I don't think the boys who betrayed her trust should be charged with a crime, either—they should be harshly disciplined by the school and grounded until the end of time by their parents—but if anyone committed a wrong, it was them.<br />
<br />
By now, there should be no remaining doubt: the war on teen sexting is much more harmful to kids than sexting itself. And the only party engaged in exploiting teenagers is the state. <a href="http://reason.com/blog/2016/10/04/prosecutor-wants-to-charge-14-year-old-g">..Source..</a> by Robby SoaveeAdvocatehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09569822127629044435noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-432987528130562987.post-6586138754330239882016-10-09T10:02:00.000-04:002016-10-10T12:46:11.819-04:00How people are using the Amazon Echo: New study reveals surprising patterns<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6bUAeZfaSgZ4R3GPNSRr7Ku6rRdlg4g0LmoCHF7LaHeKY3ipRlh0rc1yU2PfdiWk6nyDjcPZ9AiIypz0Gbmw1R8-HAY0AjW_Du9v_i0UKcXYWMWn_FYMWsDHWa4x_Dftr7i4Q3kAYFls/s1600/Echo.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6bUAeZfaSgZ4R3GPNSRr7Ku6rRdlg4g0LmoCHF7LaHeKY3ipRlh0rc1yU2PfdiWk6nyDjcPZ9AiIypz0Gbmw1R8-HAY0AjW_Du9v_i0UKcXYWMWn_FYMWsDHWa4x_Dftr7i4Q3kAYFls/s400/Echo.jpg" width="370" height="210" /></a></div><br />
<b>10-9-16:</b><br />
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Amazon’s Echo product line has been called the “<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/03/technology/google-lagging-amazon-races-across-the-threshold-into-the-home.html?_r=2">accidental winner</a>” of the smart-home speaker market, but it’s more accurate to say it’s the accidental early leader. <a href="http://www.geekwire.com/2016/google-takes-aim-amazons-alexa-google-home-smart-speaker/">Google’s rival</a>, Google Home, will be released early next month, and the broader competition is just getting started.<br />
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The capabilities of the Echo are continually expanding thanks to <a href="http://www.geekwire.com/2016/amazons-alexa-surpasses-1000-third-party-skills-voice-enabled-assistant/">a growing number of third-party Alexa skills</a>. But how do people actually use their Echo devices? Numbers from <a href="https://www.experian.com/innovation/thought-leadership/amazon-echo-consumer-survey.jsp">Experian</a> and <a href="http://creativestrategies.com/">Creative Strategies</a>, published this week by <a href="https://www.statista.com/chart/6080/amazon-echo-usage/">Statista</a>, reveal some interesting patterns.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjC_qG0l_3WJX_lqSr3KhfxWfUqzzAm1mi-ujPQ0QXw7PW7V2UNfaqxODlJSA4cBgHJB9ZPeXQn0rF2qgEbvdE837prr0MyNw-O-Oe9y5GwrBOAs2mbdRx9rigbcqkfT6T5_K4velW0q1c/s1600/Echo-Use.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjC_qG0l_3WJX_lqSr3KhfxWfUqzzAm1mi-ujPQ0QXw7PW7V2UNfaqxODlJSA4cBgHJB9ZPeXQn0rF2qgEbvdE837prr0MyNw-O-Oe9y5GwrBOAs2mbdRx9rigbcqkfT6T5_K4velW0q1c/s320/Echo-Use.jpg" width="320" height="221" /></a></div><br />
Yes, that’s right, the top feature tried by Echo users is the very simple act of setting a timer, with nearly 85 percent of survey respondents doing that at least once. But only a quarter of respondents repeatedly used the timer feature.<br />
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In terms of consistent usage, the top feature is playing a song, according to the study. That’s especially notable <a href="http://www.theverge.com/2016/10/6/13190540/amazon-music-service-echo-streaming-launch">in light of reports</a> that Amazon is planning to release a discounted ($5/month) music service in the coming weeks for Echo users.<br />
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Another interesting point: 66 percent of Echo users in the study had asked the device to read the news, but only 17 percent did so repeatedly. In terms of repeated usage, controlling smart lights came in second to playing a song, at 31 percent.<br />
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Finally, the numbers show that Amazon still has some work to do if it wants the Echo to fuel its broader e-commerce business. More than 45 percent of respondents used the Echo to add an item to a shopping list, but just 10 percent used that feature repeatedly.<br />
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<b>Related:</b> <a href="http://www.geekwire.com/2016/third-party-amazon-alexa-enabled-devices-get-key-wake-word-capability-thanks-seattle-startup/">Third-party Amazon Alexa-enabled devices get key ‘wake word’ capability thanks to Seattle startup</a><br />
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<b>More from GeekWire:</b><br />
<br />
-<a href="http://www.geekwire.com/2016/amazon-ramps-up-recruiting-efforts-for-engineers/">Amazon recruiting heavily for Echo and Alexa engineers, hosts big invite-only event to find talent</a><br />
<br />
-<a href="http://www.geekwire.com/2016/echo-dot-amazons-squat-almost-independent-alexa-sibling/">Echo Dot review: Hands-on with Amazon’s smart, squat, almost-too-independent Alexa sibling</a><br />
<br />
-<a href="http://www.geekwire.com/2016/amazon-tap-review-say-hello-little-friend/">Amazon Tap review: Say hello to my little friend — and new travel buddy</a><br />
<br />
-<a href="http://www.geekwire.com/2016/google-reportedly-working-amazon-echo-competitor/">Google reportedly working on Amazon Echo competitor amid slowdown in Nest division</a><br />
<br />
<hr>eAdvocatehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09569822127629044435noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-432987528130562987.post-7323167034428685382016-10-08T14:16:00.000-04:002016-10-10T13:33:13.286-04:00Foresthill teacher, 45, arrested on suspicion of unlawful sex with male, 17<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhM3sOeTkns6VLbqROKMJyNsCRhfPiVjRNpR3rKMfhMszy6GXpMn-foY8M8b9IjhcclL1Z_7-pgKP8gWjuw4htbSVtkM8xEoXmyCBFMt6vXLwiVfq8fTS0mlWhV3FunXjudK5I93dMgOBMh/s1600/a-info-post.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="137" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhM3sOeTkns6VLbqROKMJyNsCRhfPiVjRNpR3rKMfhMszy6GXpMn-foY8M8b9IjhcclL1Z_7-pgKP8gWjuw4htbSVtkM8xEoXmyCBFMt6vXLwiVfq8fTS0mlWhV3FunXjudK5I93dMgOBMh/s200/a-info-post.jpg" width="200" /></a><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms; color:#ff0000;"><b> Interesting point, the Age of Consent in CA is 18. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ages_of_consent_in_the_United_States#California">But more here, on punishments!</a></b></span><br />
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<b>10-8-16 California:</b><br />
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A 45-year-old Foresthill woman who recently taught school at a Nevada County charter school was arrested Thursday on suspicion of unlawful sex with a minor, according to the Placer County Sheriff’s Office.<br />
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Placer County Sheriff’s Office issued a statement Friday on the case, saying that Placer County sheriff’s detectives started an unlawful sexual relations investigation Sept. 30 between Gina Therese Holbrook, 45, from Foresthill and <span style="color:black;background-color:#ffff04">a 17-year-old male</span>.<br />
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The Sheriff’s Office is alleging that the investigation revealed evidence Holbrook <span style="color:black;background-color:#ffff04">engaged in an unlawful sexual relationship with the <b>minor</b></span> starting in late 2015 that continued for about eight months into 2016.<br />
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Detectives arrested Holbrook on suspicion of a variety of allegations, including suspicion of unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor. All incidents related to the case are suspected to have taken place in Placer County, a report from the Sheriff’s Office said.<br />
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Holbrook was a teacher in the Nevada County School District during the time the alleged offenses took place, according to authorities. The male minor victim was not a student of Holbrook’s. He also was not enrolled as a student in the Nevada County School District. The district has confirmed Holbrook is no longer employed there.<br />
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Booked Thursday into Placer County Jail in North Auburn, Holbrook has since been released on bail, which was set at $75,000.<br />
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Holbrook had worked as a supervising teacher at Forest Charter School. She has been a Foresthill resident for at least a decade and was featured in a February 2007 story in the Auburn Journal on her efforts to sell candles outside an Auburn store to help with fundraising to adopt a child from China to add to her family of three children.<br />
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Holbrook’s age was given as 45 by the Sheriff’s Office but jail booking records state she is 44. <a href="http://www.auburnjournal.com/article/10/07/16/foresthill-teacher-45-arrested-suspicion-unlawful-sex-male-17">..Source..</a> by Gus Thomson of the Auburn Journal eAdvocatehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09569822127629044435noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-432987528130562987.post-87811348826788495442016-09-16T15:40:00.000-04:002016-10-08T14:04:27.811-04:00How the feds used Internet searches to find 5 child pornography victims<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhM3sOeTkns6VLbqROKMJyNsCRhfPiVjRNpR3rKMfhMszy6GXpMn-foY8M8b9IjhcclL1Z_7-pgKP8gWjuw4htbSVtkM8xEoXmyCBFMt6vXLwiVfq8fTS0mlWhV3FunXjudK5I93dMgOBMh/s1600/a-info-post.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="137" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhM3sOeTkns6VLbqROKMJyNsCRhfPiVjRNpR3rKMfhMszy6GXpMn-foY8M8b9IjhcclL1Z_7-pgKP8gWjuw4htbSVtkM8xEoXmyCBFMt6vXLwiVfq8fTS0mlWhV3FunXjudK5I93dMgOBMh/s200/a-info-post.jpg" width="200" /></a> <b>9-16-16 National:</b><br />
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<b>Let me Google that for you: EXIF data and public Internet used to crack open case.</b><br />
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In 2013, federal agents investigating the child pornography collection of one David S. Engle—who was later sentenced in Washington state to 25 years in prison—came across a new set of eight images. The pictures showed five boys, ranging in age from around seven to 15, urinating outdoors, shaving their pubic hair, and posing naked in bathtubs.<br />
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According to an affidavit from Postal Inspector Maureen O'Sullivan, who helped investigate the images, the photo set was "emerging and being widely distributed and traded by child pornography collectors on a national and international scale." Being new and uncatalogued, the images were forwarded to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC), which maintains a vast database on prohibited images for use in investigations and image blacklists.<br />
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While law enforcement generally focuses on finding those who create and/or trade child pornography, a simultaneous effort is made to identify—and if necessary to secure—the victims. At the federal level, this task is centralized within NCMEC at the Child Victim Identification Program (CVIP)—and this new image set wound up at CVIP accordingly. The investigation of the pictures, which took three years to complete, opens a rare window into the world of digital detectives who specialize in tracing some of the world's most horrific imagery.<br />
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<b>An Embassy Suites hotel room—but which one?</b><br />
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It turns out that federal agents largely run an investigation the way most of us would: on the public Internet.<br />
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CVIP took the obvious first step and pulled all the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exif">Exchangeable Image File (EXIF)</a> (<span style="color:black;background-color:#ffff04">inside this link is a wealth of info about photos and the hidden info within them, esp LOCATION info</span>) metadata from the photos. Amazingly, this data had never been scrubbed (even Facebook scrubs EXIF metadata from uploaded photos for security and privacy reasons). Though the images were not tagged with GPS locations, they did have dates attached. This would become a crucial clue. Without names and dates, finding the photos' creator would be difficult. Even if one could identify a particular hotel used in a photo, the huge number of possible dates would make guest check-in registries nearly worthless. But with a date, identifying a particular hotel might solve the case immediately.<br />
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To that end, CVIP agents looked through a subset of the pictures that had been taken in a hotel room on August 20, 2010. Background items suggested a location in Colorado, while the décor of the room hinted at an Embassy Suites hotel. To find out which hotel, CVIP "compared rooms in the images to online photos of hotel rooms in all of the Embassy Suites in the area." (This sounds like either a Google image search or a careful look at the Embassy Suites website.) The team decided that the location was the Embassy Suites in Denver.<br />
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The information was sent back to the postal inspectors, who fired off a subpoena to Embassy Suites for everyone registered at a "small subset of the hotel's rooms" on the date in question. However, the registry turned up no clear leads. The trail went cold.<br />
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<b>Let me Google that for you</b><br />
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In February 2015, CVIP came back to the postal inspectors with new data. Unrelated investigations around the country had turned up additional images from the set, showing the same boys in Western locations, many of them outdoors.<br />
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EXIF data revealed that these photos were taken two days earlier than the others, and one additional boy was now pictured. More importantly, "a particular landmark" in the new photos offered a specific location: a cabin within the Antero Hot Springs cabins in Salida, Colorado.<br />
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In March 2015, the owner of the cabins sent postal inspectors information on guest rentals from the time. On the day the photos there had been taken, the cabin in question had been rented to "James Parkhurst" and three guests.<br />
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Rather than delving into some super-secret law enforcement database, agents turned to Google and Facebook to ID Parkhurst. Quick searches revealed a 55-year-old man with the same name who lived in Portland and was working as the Executive Director of Camp and Retreat Ministries for the United Methodist Church's Oregon-Idaho Conference.<br />
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A search of Facebook pages belonging to Parkhurst and his family members showed conversations about trips to national parks—along with names and (non-sexual) photos of the five boys in the prohibited image series.<br />
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Three of the boys, it turned out, were sons of Parkhurst's cousin. The other two were twins, both adopted from Vietnam by Parkhurst's brother.<br />
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<b>The full Facebook</b><br />
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This discovery led to an August 2015 search warrant for the Facebook accounts of Parkhurst, the five boys, and their parents. Cross-referencing the conversations and pictures returned by the social network with the prohibited images and their EXIF data, investigators sketched out specific dates and times during which Parkhurst appeared to be on trips alone with the boys in locations matching those in the prohibited photos.<br />
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For instance, the earliest photos dated to August 2008, when Parkhurst allegedly took all five boys on a trip to Las Vegas, the Hoover Dam, and Yosemite National Park. As part of that trip, the group stopped at Travertine Hot Springs and Buckeye Hot Springs. Inspectors found references to both places on a public website devoted to naturism ("nudity is commonplace"). Another stop, at El Dorado Hot Springs, was listed on a separate site as one of the "best places for nude camping in Arizona."<br />
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With another prohibited image, investigators used "public search engines" to identify a particular hotel in Mariposa, California. As confirmation of the location, traveler pictures on a "hotel review website" matched the bathroom amenities and décor in the prohibited photo. Still more images were identified based on "landmarks that are searchable on Google" or by matching one pond to "an online image of the Olympic Hot Springs in Olympic Park, Washington."<br />
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<b>Revenge of the thumbnail</b><br />
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Several of the photos from the set were circulating among child pornography collectors in cropped versions, with the pictures usually altered to remove an adult or to focus attention on the genitals.<br />
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But the crops didn't hide the original image completely. Investigators found that several of the image files still held thumbnail versions of the original image. One of these smaller but un-cropped images showed, in O'Sullivan's words, "Parkhurst nude next to [one of the boys]."<br />
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<b>Secret databases</b><br />
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Assembling the case against Parkhurst eventually moved beyond open source information. Law enforcement periodically busts allegedly "legitimate" businesses selling things like "naturist films from around the world" that are actually child pornography. When that happens, investigators seize and archive all sales records for future investigations.<br />
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For instance, in 2006, postal inspectors and the Los Angeles police raided Insider Video Club, which dealt in "DVDs, VHS tapes, and still images of nude men and boys;" the company's database was then seized. And in October 2010, Toronto police shut down Azov Films, which specialized in this material, and they sent a copy of the sales database to the US.<br />
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As part of the Parkhurst investigation, postal inspectors ran his name against these kinds of sales databases—and found hits at both Azov and Insider Video Club. Parkhurst had allegedly ordered Swim Party for $24.95 back in 1997 and Boys in the Mud in 2005 for $45.95. Each video showed nude young boys and contained "no meaningful dialogue or storyline." Each video had been sent directly to Parkhurst's address.<br />
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But it was a third "ping" against a sensitive database that appears to have kicked the investigation into urgent mode.<br />
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Postal inspectors plugged away on the Parkhurst case all the way through to July 2016, when they realized that Parkhurst had ongoing contact with the boys in the images—he had another trip coming up.<br />
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A law enforcement sensitive database revealed that Parkhurst had booked tickets for himself and one of the boys—a senior in high school living near Chicago—to Greece, Italy, and Sweden. The trip would begin on August 3.<br />
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On August 1, Postal Inspector O'Sullivan took a search warrant to Federal Judge Youlee Yim You in Portland, had it signed, and assembled her team. They raided Parkhurst's home the next morning, one day before the trip.<br />
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According to O'Sullivan, the search team found some of the prohibited images on "one or more" of Parkhurst's digital devices. Parkhurst then agreed to speak to investigators. He allegedly admitted that he had taken the photos, acknowledged masturbating to at least some of them, but denied that he engaged in sexual activity with the boys. Parkhurst also suggested that his collection of nude images would not "qualify as child pornography." (US child pornography law actually includes a clause banning "lascivious exhibition of the genitals or pubic area" as a way to short-circuit any "but I didn't actually touch them!" defense.)<br />
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Parkhurst was arrested. According to the Oregonian, he resigned from his job and surrendered his ministerial credentials a few days later. He was eventually transferred to Denver, where he will stand trial. He had his first court appearance there this week.<br />
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<b>Creative searching</b><br />
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While the Internet has enabled an explosion in child pornography—an issue that was largely under control in the analog era, thanks to the difficulty and expense of finding, creating, printing, and distributing it—it at least makes investigations simpler, too.<br />
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Even though law enforcement has access to expensive or secret databases, many of the Parkhurst investigation leads were based on EXIF data and publicly available Internet pages. Google, Facebook, hotel review and naturist websites, online maps, and image searches—it's all grist for the mill. Once a hotel or cabin has been located, once a person has been ID'd on Facebook, once a trip is suspected, then it's time for the subpoena, the warrant, or the secret database.<br />
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Still, with all of the tech, search, and monitoring tools available to authorities today, one of the most useful investigative skills remains the ability to use the public Internet creatively. <a href="http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/09/how-the-feds-used-internet-searches-to-find-5-child-pornography-victims/">..Source..</a> by Nate Anderson -eAdvocatehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09569822127629044435noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-432987528130562987.post-48534720423355117342016-08-30T16:06:00.000-04:002016-09-16T15:24:41.934-04:00300 Pokemon Go Players Targeted By Robbers And Child Molesters In One Month<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhM3sOeTkns6VLbqROKMJyNsCRhfPiVjRNpR3rKMfhMszy6GXpMn-foY8M8b9IjhcclL1Z_7-pgKP8gWjuw4htbSVtkM8xEoXmyCBFMt6vXLwiVfq8fTS0mlWhV3FunXjudK5I93dMgOBMh/s1600/a-info-post.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="137" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhM3sOeTkns6VLbqROKMJyNsCRhfPiVjRNpR3rKMfhMszy6GXpMn-foY8M8b9IjhcclL1Z_7-pgKP8gWjuw4htbSVtkM8xEoXmyCBFMt6vXLwiVfq8fTS0mlWhV3FunXjudK5I93dMgOBMh/s200/a-info-post.jpg" width="200" /></a> <b>8-30-16 National:</b><br />
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In the past one month there have been cases of thieves and child molesters taking unfair advantage of Pokemon Go players who are out on the streets.<br />
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A Pokemon Go crimewave seems to have engulfed most of the developed world. Robbers, thieves and child abusers have increased their predatory behavior in regard to over 300 vulnerable gamers.<br />
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The past month saw this rise in the crime rate and it is a worrisome trend. The police are on high alert as more and more gamers complain about thefts and unwanted physicality shown by strangers. <br />
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The really sad part is where criminal minds that belong to pedophiles tend to make these Pokemon Go gamers their target. Over 300 offences have happened over the past 30 days or so, according to DailyMail.<br />
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The popular smartphone game may be a healthy phenomenon since it is very interesting and lends a dopamine rush. Also it allows gamers to go on long rambling walks in the Great Outdoors which is salubrious for burning off excess calories.<br />
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Yet the potential danger of being hoodwinked and shortchanged by the dregs of society remains. <br />
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The gamers are walking ducks for the criminal element in society that knows when it has spotted the naïve and innocent playing the game on their smartphones.<br />
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There were even thefts where the thieves had rigged the game to lure the victims into a secluded area. There they stole valuable stuff from the gamers.<br />
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The police was also summoned in Surrey when a minor spat escalated into a full-fledged fight between 30 individuals. The game was the root cause.<br />
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Young children who play the game enter areas which are a sort of no-man’s land. An incident of a man luring children into his home for indecent and perverted purposes has also been uncovered. <br />
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Pokemon Go was launched in July of this year in the UK. Cartoon creatures also called monsters are imbedded in the real environment inside the game’s virtual context.<br />
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The real goal is to find as many of them as is possible. This makes for an interesting scenario. The game is so addictive that people have been known to crash their cars into trees and walk off cliffs in the act of finding the virtual monsters.<br />
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The game now poses challenges to the law enforcement agencies since the series of accidents and crimes which have been perpetrated on the gamers are one too many.<br />
<br />
Safety is the watchword for now. Players must take reality into view when they have their eyes glued to the screens of their smartphones. Otherwise dangerous mishaps could take place. <a href="http://www.i4u.com/2016/08/114873/300-pokemon-go-players-targeted-robbers-and-child-molesters-one-month">..Source..</a> by Sumayah Aamir, in News | GamingeAdvocatehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09569822127629044435noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-432987528130562987.post-81525928378139693612016-02-10T09:57:00.000-05:002016-08-30T16:01:13.990-04:00International Megan's Law, a Deception? The Recidivism Study<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhM3sOeTkns6VLbqROKMJyNsCRhfPiVjRNpR3rKMfhMszy6GXpMn-foY8M8b9IjhcclL1Z_7-pgKP8gWjuw4htbSVtkM8xEoXmyCBFMt6vXLwiVfq8fTS0mlWhV3FunXjudK5I93dMgOBMh/s1600/a-info-post.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="137" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhM3sOeTkns6VLbqROKMJyNsCRhfPiVjRNpR3rKMfhMszy6GXpMn-foY8M8b9IjhcclL1Z_7-pgKP8gWjuw4htbSVtkM8xEoXmyCBFMt6vXLwiVfq8fTS0mlWhV3FunXjudK5I93dMgOBMh/s200/a-info-post.jpg" width="200" /></a> <b>2-10-16 National:</b><br />
<br />
<b>Part I of a series: The Recidivism Study</b><br />
<br />
<b>2-7-16 A Washington Post Article:</b> "<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/an-important-step-to-reduce-child-sex-tourism/2016/02/07/86c81f14-cc10-11e5-a7b2-5a2f824b02c9_story.html">An important step to reduce child sex tourism</a>" by U.S. Representative Chris Smith<br />
<br />
<b><u>Justifying International Megan's Law, Rep Smith states</u>:</b><br />
<br />
"... ... ... Studies demonstrate that even when caught, some child predators have a propensity to reoffend. For example, a <a href="http://jiv.sagepub.com/content/24/3/522.abstract">2009 study by</a> Mark E. Olver, Stephen C.P. Wong and Terry P. Nicholaichuk, one of many available on the Justice Department’s <a href="http://www.smart.gov/SOMAPI/sec1/ch5_recidivism.html#recr_find">SMART Web site</a>, found that <span style="color:black;background-color:#ffff04"> untreated moderate- to high-risk sex offenders were reconvicted for sex crimes at a rate of 17.7 percent after three years and 32 percent after 10 years.</span> ... ... ..."<br />
<br />
<b><u>What Rep Smith doesn't explain about that study</u>:</b><br />
The study speaks about a <b>specific Canadian treatment program</b> which is explained in a Dec 2010 California Law Review titled "<a href="http://www.californialawreview.org/9-sex-offender-civil-commitment-the-treatment-paradox/">Sex Offender Civil Commitment: The Treatment Paradox</a>" pgs-2120 which explains:<blockquote style="background-color:#e1ffec">However, <span style="color:black;background-color:#ffff04">sexually violent predators</span>-who have designated mental illnesses and pose a high risk of reoffending-may respond differently to treatment than the average sex offender analyzed in these meta-analyses. Few studies focus on high-risk prison inmates who, similarly to sexually violent predators, receive treatment in secure state hospitals. Thus, <span style="color:black;background-color:#ffff04">the Clearwater Treatment Program-a high-intensity inpatient sex offender program in a Canadian federal maximum-security correctional treatment facility-provides a valuable case study.<b>162</b> The Clearwater Program study followed moderate-tohigh-risk sex offenders who had completed a six-to-nine-month long cognitive behavioral treatment program.<b>163</b></span> Significant group differences were observed between the treatment group and the control group at each stage of follow-up: 5.9 percent versus 13.6 percent after two years; 11.1 percent <span style="color:black;background-color:#ffff04">versus 17.7 percent after three years; 16.9 percent versus 24.5 percent after five years, and 2.8 percent versus 32.3 percent after ten years.<b>'164</b></span> A related study examined the sexual-violence recidivism rates for the forty-five "psychopathic sex offenders" in the Clearwater Program over a ten-year follow-up period.<b>165</b> Psychopathic offenders who failed to complete the cognitive-behavioral treatment program were more likely to recidivate violently but not more likely to recidivate sexually than those who completed the program.<b>166 </b>Researchers studying the Clearwater Program concluded that high-intensity treatment programs can decrease a moderate-to-high-risk sex offender's risk of sexual recidivism in both the short and long run.<b>167</b><br />
<hr><b>162.</b> See Mark E. Olver & Stephen C.P. Wong, Therapeutic Responses of Psychopathic Sexual Offenders: Treatment Attrition, Therapeutic Change, and Long-Term Recidivism, 77 J. CONSULTING & CLINICAL PSYCHOL. 328, 328-29 (2009).<br />
<span style="color:black;background-color:#ffff04"><b>163. </b>Mark E. Olver, Stephen C.P. Wong & Terry P. Nicholaichuk, Outcome Evaluation of a High-Intensity Inpatient Sex Offender Treatment Program, 24 J. INTERPERSONAL VIOLENCE 522, 526 (2009) (subjects had a history of one or more prior sexual offenses).</span><br />
<b>164.</b> Id. at 529, 531.<br />
<b>165.</b> Olver & Wong, supra note 162, at 330-31. Psychopathic sex offenders are high-risk and high-need offenders with diagnosed mental abnormalities as evaluated by the Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-Revised). Id. at 328.<br />
<b>166.</b> Id. at 331.<br />
<b>167.</b> Id. at 335.</blockquote><br />
Rep Smith's chosen study is of <b><u>Sexually Violent Predators</u></b> incarcerated in a high security prison in Canada (<i>likened to Civilly Committed sex offenders following their prison sentence in the U.S.</i>), and does not represent the over 800,000 U.S. RSOs which reside in communities all across the U.S. and use passports to travel on vacation (authority GAO report on passports); use of that Canadian study misleads readers.<br />
<br />
<b><u>The Appropriate Study</u>:</b><br />
<br />
Instead of comparing U.S. RSOs to <b><u>Canadian Sexually Violent Predators</u></b> (selected most violent type of sex offender) Rep Smith should be comparing them to a 2003 U.S. Dep't of Justice study, of <b><u>ALL types of U.S. Sex Offenders</u></b> <a href="http://www.smart.gov/SOMAPI/sec1/ch5_recidivism.html#recr_find">also on the SMART Office website</a>.<blockquote style="background-color:#e1ffec">Perhaps the largest single study of sex offender recidivism conducted to date was carried out by Langan, Schmitt, and Durose (2003). The study, which was published by the <b>U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics</b>, examined the recidivism patterns of 9,691 male sex offenders released from prisons in 15 states in 1994. These offenders accounted for about two-thirds of all male sex offenders released from state prisons in the United States that year. <b>Using a 3-year postrelease followup</b> period, rearrest and reconviction rates for sexual and other crimes were reported for the entire sample of sex offenders as well as for different categories of sex offenders.<br />
<br />
The <span style="color:black;background-color:#ffff04"> researchers found a sexual recidivism rate of 5.3 percent for the entire sample of sex offenders based on an arrest during the 3-year followup period</span>. The violent and overall arrest recidivism rates for the entire sample of sex offenders were much higher; 17.1 percent of sex offenders were rearrested for a violent crime and 43 percent were rearrested for a crime of any kind during the followup period. <span style="color:black;background-color:#ffff04"> Of the 9,691 sex offenders released from prison in 1994, 3.5 percent were reconvicted for a sex crime</span> and about one-quarter (24 percent) were reconvicted for an offense of any kind during the followup period. <span style="color:black;background-color:#ffff04"> Nearly 4 out of every 10 (38.6 percent) sex offenders in the study were returned to prison within 3 years of their release due</span> to the commission of a new crime or <span style="color:black;background-color:#ffff04"> a technical violation of their release conditions</span>.</blockquote><br />
What was the purpose of the Canadian study? Readers decide..eAdvocatehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09569822127629044435noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-432987528130562987.post-79648030833032035962016-01-30T16:41:00.001-05:002016-01-30T16:41:54.281-05:00South Carolina Lawmakers Pitch Invasive Response To Refugee Resettlement<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjK3OhKMgI87RXdIb77eTLHpzaGB1GmDw_UwiGd3BYMPIEWNu34I1_C1usXWzz3LxYajd42kHdcbH7BIVaWVKag2b32E5NB2qflHaDBDfe4m6qG3bO7DQrNVlYoHD_8eBLBMWGMQaErl-Nh/s1600-h/a-opinion.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 195px; height: 164px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjK3OhKMgI87RXdIb77eTLHpzaGB1GmDw_UwiGd3BYMPIEWNu34I1_C1usXWzz3LxYajd42kHdcbH7BIVaWVKag2b32E5NB2qflHaDBDfe4m6qG3bO7DQrNVlYoHD_8eBLBMWGMQaErl-Nh/s200/a-opinion.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5371149454571147154" /></a> <span style="font-family: trebuchet ms; color:#ff0000;"><b> Registries are dangerous, and Lawmakers are fully aware of that fact. Then WHY do they treat sex offenders differently than any other criminal offense type? </b></span><br />
<br />
<b>1-30-16 South Carolina:</b><br />
<br />
<b>Some want people to know exactly where refugees live.</b><br />
<br />
South Carolina lawmakers are contemplating a step that would be drastic even amid the string of extreme responses to Syrian refugee resettlement: <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/donald-trump-new-yorker-cover_us_56aa342be4b0d82286d51229?8ls4te29">a bill that would create a public online registry</a> of all refugees and require police to track them.<br />
<br />
A state Senate committee <a href="http://bigstory.ap.org/article/d6bbf599e5ef46a5838aafa1dea7df70/south-carolina-senate-committee-oks-bill-track-refugees">approved a bill</a> to do so on Wednesday, although a Democratic lawmaker's objection has blocked it from going to the floor for now.<br />
<br />
An online registry that contains refugees' addresses would be a dangerous proposition, critics say. Lawmakers have repeatedly told the public that admitting refugees would put communities at risk, and <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/26/us/refugee-crisis-in-syria-raises-fears-in-south-carolina.html?_r=0">some South Carolina residents have joked about shooting them</a>. <br />
<br />
Even one Republican senator who supports the bill said creating a registry went too far, although she still believes Syrian refugee resettlement should be stopped. The bill applies to refugees from all countries, not just Syrians.<br />
<a name='more'></a><br />
"I do not think that that would be good information to release because we don't want the general public -- especially people that would be out looking for refugees to even harm them or something" to be able to access it, state Sen. Katrina Shealy said. "I don't think that would be a good idea."<br />
<br />
If the bill goes to the floor, Shealy said she will push for an amendment to remove that provision in favor of one that restricts access to the registry to the Department of Social Services or those who need it for legal reasons.<br />
<br />
Even without a public registry of refugees, resettlement advocates said the bill would be damaging. It would require police to track refugees and make anyone who helps resettlement efforts in the state liable for damages if a refugee they assisted went on to commit an act of terrorism.<br />
<br />
Resettlement agencies often work with churches and volunteers, and many pastors strongly oppose the legislation, said Jenny Yang of World Relief, a group that facilitates resettlement in South Carolina and elsewhere.<br />
<br />
She called it "some of the worst legislation we've ever seen coming out of a state legislature" on refugees.<br />
<br />
"A lot of refugees have gone through really horrific experiences overseas and are basically being re-traumatized when they're here because they feel like they're living in communities where they're not being welcomed, although they've done everything they can to prove they're not a security threat," Yang said.<br />
<br />
South Carolina state Sen. Kevin Johnson, the Democrat who put the bill on hold, has called for a minority report on the bill. He said he isn't opposed to listening to ways to improve the refugee vetting process, but does not think this bill is the right way to go about it. It might not even be constitutional, Johnson noted, since the federal government sets immigration and refugee policy, not the states.<br />
<br />
Johnson said a lot of the debate surrounding refugee resettlement reminded him of the rhetoric his ancestors and other black Americans have endured: "'We don't want you in our neighborhood' or 'We don't want you in our state, you're going to come over here and rape and steal and take all of our jobs.'"<br />
<br />
"I think that we can deal with that issue without being hateful," Johnson said.<br />
<br />
South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley (R) joined other governors last fall in proclaiming her state would no longer accept Syrian refugees -- a move most experts say they lack authority to actually carry out. Some Syrian refugees have since resettled in the state despite Haley's call to block them.<br />
<br />
Republicans and some Democrats at the federal level have tried to make it harder for the government to admit Syrian and Iraqi refugees. The House passed a bill last year aimed at slowing the admission process for people from those countries and pressuring officials not to accept them. Democrats blocked that legislation from moving forward in the Senate last week.<br />
<br />
U.S. Reps. Mick Mulvaney and Jeff Duncan, both South Carolina Republicans, got involved in the state's refugee bill, and testified about the process before the committee.<br />
<br />
"If you let in the wrong Irishman, the downside is really not that serious. You let in the wrong Syrian refugee -- one -- and people could die," Mulvaney said, according to The Associated Press. A spokeswoman for Mulvaney did not respond to a request for comment on exactly what he meant by "the wrong Irishman."<br />
<br />
Shealy, the Republican state senator who supports the bill, said it "doesn't stop the people of South Carolina from helping refugees, because not all refugees are coming from terrorist countries." <br />
<br />
"It's not that we're trying to keep refugees out of South Carolina," Shealy said. "We just want to make sure that those that do come to South Carolina that we know who they are, we know that they've been fully vetted and that we can know where they are until we know that it's a safe situation." <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/south-carolina-refugee-registry_us_56aa451ee4b0d82286d52074">..Source..</a> by Elise FoleyeAdvocatehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09569822127629044435noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-432987528130562987.post-48679590727040801732015-11-24T20:57:00.002-05:002016-01-09T17:29:16.510-05:00 We’re All Offenders Who Haven’t Been Caught <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBUmgeZ15At2hkLudwMWSSOwF-02mounT0-LAfTgcJwBfb4XnSaNCgNmSLR3IViEsTZLrc4PL4sUICtFdhk0NMxYIp6K0SSvou15hyGigjz8y6WtCmf5LSW5DOUauKND7MG6tg7S_RX1U4/s1600/a-personal-story.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBUmgeZ15At2hkLudwMWSSOwF-02mounT0-LAfTgcJwBfb4XnSaNCgNmSLR3IViEsTZLrc4PL4sUICtFdhk0NMxYIp6K0SSvou15hyGigjz8y6WtCmf5LSW5DOUauKND7MG6tg7S_RX1U4/s200/a-personal-story.jpg" /></a></div><b>11-24-15 New York, Virginia:</b><br />
<br />
BY <b>LENORE SKENAZY </b>| Are we all sex offenders?<br />
<br />
That’s the question posed to the audience of mostly college students by Galen Baughman, a Soros Justice Fellow and the final speaker at the <a href="http://www.tedxcuny.com/2015/speakers/">City University of New York TEDx</a> talks at the Borough of Manhattan Community College last week.<br />
<br />
TEDx talks are known for introducing new speakers with new ideas on everything from tech, to teaching, to society — but Baughman was the first TEDx presenter to address the issue of sex offenders from an unusual viewpoint: He is one. And he must register as a sex offender forever.<br />
<br />
His crime?<br />
<br />
He had consensual sex with a teen when he was a teen. He was 19, his boyfriend, 14. They had sex once. It was consensual. The younger teen did not want to prosecute, but his parents did.<br />
<a name='more'></a><br />
Had Baughman and his boyfriend slept together in another country — Canada, for instance — it would not have been considered a criminal act. But here, Baughman informed his audience, his crime resulted in a prison sentence.<br />
<br />
He served nine years.<br />
<br />
Four and half of those were in solitary.<br />
<br />
Just when he was about to be set free, well, that’s what Baughman came to talk about.<br />
<br />
“Three and a half years ago,” the 32-year-old told the audience, “I was sitting alone in a cell in Arlington, VA, waiting for a trial that would determine whether I would spend the rest of my life in prison.”<br />
<br />
See, Baughman had originally been handed a six-and-a-half year sentence. But when it was over and he was about to be released, the authorities informed him that they considered him a violent sexual predator too dangerous to let go.<br />
<br />
As it turns out, the state can lock up “violent predators” indefinitely. The legal term for this is “civil commitment.” The person is kept behind bars to get “treatment” — except that treatment looks exactly like prison.<br />
<br />
Because it is.<br />
<br />
How does the state get away with keeping some people for years — sometimes decades — after their release dates?<br />
<br />
It plays on the public’s fear of sex offenders, Baughman explained. Politicians score points by keeping sex offenders locked up. It sounds so good: “It is for the sake of our children!”<br />
<br />
The problem is that once a person gets the label “sex offender,” the public ceases to consider that person a human. In most people’s minds, a sex offender is a monster out to rape little kids. The fact that the Department of Justice reports that sex offenders actually have the lowest recidivism rate of any criminals other than murderers is not well known.<br />
<br />
What’s worse, “The label ‘sex offender’ is a made-up category,” Baughman continued. You can get labeled a sex offender for raping a toddler — or for sleeping with your freshman girlfriend when you’re a senior. There are people on the sex offender registry for urinating in public. For visiting a prostitute. For streaking. Teens even get on it for sexting.<br />
<br />
“We brand all these people the same. And once they get that label we treat them all as if we know what they’re going to do next,” he said.<br />
<br />
We treat them as if they’re going to hide in the bushes and pounce on a kid walking home from school — even if they never did anything remotely like that.<br />
<br />
That’s what the state decided about Baughman: Since he was officially a sex offender, he was automatically a menace to society. At his civil commitment trial, the state argued that he suffered from a horrible mental illness, which caused him to be attracted to sexually mature teens.<br />
<br />
At that, the audience of mostly college students burst out laughing — they probably suffered from the exact same thing.<br />
<br />
Luckily for Baughman, his jury concluded that this made-up disease (it isn’t in the psychiatric diagnostic manual) was ridiculous.<br />
<br />
Because our laws are so overly broad, and because so few people commit a new crime after release, Baughman told the crowd, a child is “more likely to be labeled a sex offender, than to be abused by a sex offender.”<br />
<br />
Baughman added that he is the only person in Virginia to have successfully fought indefinite detention via a jury trial, and won. Another 5,000 people nationwide are languishing past their release dates, most because they carry the label “sex offender.”<br />
<br />
But if all it takes to get that label is to be attracted to sexually mature teens, or to sext, or streak, maybe, indeed, we’re all sex offenders — who just haven’t been caught. <a href="http://chelseanow.com/2015/11/were-all-offenders-who-havent-been-caught/">..Source..</a> eAdvocatehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09569822127629044435noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-432987528130562987.post-27903075510027364452015-11-23T11:02:00.000-05:002015-11-23T11:02:22.154-05:00International Human Rights Instruments<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhM3sOeTkns6VLbqROKMJyNsCRhfPiVjRNpR3rKMfhMszy6GXpMn-foY8M8b9IjhcclL1Z_7-pgKP8gWjuw4htbSVtkM8xEoXmyCBFMt6vXLwiVfq8fTS0mlWhV3FunXjudK5I93dMgOBMh/s1600/a-info-post.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="137" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhM3sOeTkns6VLbqROKMJyNsCRhfPiVjRNpR3rKMfhMszy6GXpMn-foY8M8b9IjhcclL1Z_7-pgKP8gWjuw4htbSVtkM8xEoXmyCBFMt6vXLwiVfq8fTS0mlWhV3FunXjudK5I93dMgOBMh/s200/a-info-post.jpg" width="200" /></a> <b>As of this date (11-22-15) the following is correct:</b><br />
<br />
Excellent <a href="http://www1.umn.edu/humanrts/instree/ainstls1.htm">alphabetic list</a> of ALL International Human Rights InstrumentseAdvocatehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09569822127629044435noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-432987528130562987.post-11844276546005319132015-11-22T21:47:00.003-05:002015-11-23T10:59:39.917-05:00Ratification of International Human Rights Treaties - USA<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhM3sOeTkns6VLbqROKMJyNsCRhfPiVjRNpR3rKMfhMszy6GXpMn-foY8M8b9IjhcclL1Z_7-pgKP8gWjuw4htbSVtkM8xEoXmyCBFMt6vXLwiVfq8fTS0mlWhV3FunXjudK5I93dMgOBMh/s1600/a-info-post.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="137" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhM3sOeTkns6VLbqROKMJyNsCRhfPiVjRNpR3rKMfhMszy6GXpMn-foY8M8b9IjhcclL1Z_7-pgKP8gWjuw4htbSVtkM8xEoXmyCBFMt6vXLwiVfq8fTS0mlWhV3FunXjudK5I93dMgOBMh/s200/a-info-post.jpg" width="200" /></a> <b>As of this date (11-22-15) the following is correct:</b><br />
<br />
This is quite a good table of all International Treaties/Documents and when, or if, the United States of America has signed/ratified such.<br />
<br />
We must remember this Table is not a UN Official table it is kept up to date by the University of Minnesota, Human Rights Library.<br />
<br />
With that in mind <a href="https://www1.umn.edu/humanrts/research/ratification-USA.html">CLICK</a> for the Table.<br />
<br />
Enjoy and have a better day tomorrow.<br />
eAdvocateeAdvocatehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09569822127629044435noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-432987528130562987.post-10760891985644277852015-11-22T21:06:00.003-05:002016-01-23T10:06:52.808-05:00International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhM3sOeTkns6VLbqROKMJyNsCRhfPiVjRNpR3rKMfhMszy6GXpMn-foY8M8b9IjhcclL1Z_7-pgKP8gWjuw4htbSVtkM8xEoXmyCBFMt6vXLwiVfq8fTS0mlWhV3FunXjudK5I93dMgOBMh/s1600/a-info-post.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="137" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhM3sOeTkns6VLbqROKMJyNsCRhfPiVjRNpR3rKMfhMszy6GXpMn-foY8M8b9IjhcclL1Z_7-pgKP8gWjuw4htbSVtkM8xEoXmyCBFMt6vXLwiVfq8fTS0mlWhV3FunXjudK5I93dMgOBMh/s200/a-info-post.jpg" width="200" /></a> <b>As of this date (11-22-15) the following is correct:</b><br />
<br />
The USA has ratified the <a href="http://www.ohchr.org/en/professionalinterest/pages/ccpr.aspx">International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights</a>, UN Document with Reservations and Understandings.<br />
<br />
Click <a href="https://treaties.un.org/pages/viewdetails.aspx?chapter=4&src=treaty&mtdsg_no=iv-4&lang=en">HERE</a> and scroll down to USA for dates.<br />
<br />
To read what the Reservations are, click <a href="https://treaties.un.org/pages/viewdetails.aspx?chapter=4&src=treaty&mtdsg_no=iv-4&lang=en#EndDec">HERE</a> scroll down to the following:<br />
<br />
<center><b>-----------</b></center><br />
<b>United States of America</b><br />
<br />
<b>Reservations:</b><br />
<br />
"(1) That article 20 does not authorize or require legislation or other action by the United States that would restrict the right of free speech and association protected by the Constitution and laws of the United States.<br />
<br />
"(2) That the United States reserves the right, subject to its Constitutional constraints, to impose capital punishment on any person (other than a pregnant woman) duly convicted under existing or future laws permitting the imposition of capital punishment, including such punishment for crimes committed by persons below eighteen years of age.<br />
<br />
"(3) That the United States considers itself bound by article 7 to the extent that `cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment' means the cruel and unusual treatment or punishment prohibited by the Fifth, Eighth, and/or Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution of the United States.<br />
<br />
"(4) That because U.S. law generally applies to an offender the penalty in force at the time the offence was committed, the United States does not adhere to the third clause of paragraph 1 of article 15.<br />
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"(5) That the policy and practice of the United States are generally in compliance with and supportive of the Covenant's provisions regarding treatment of juveniles in the criminal justice system. Nevertheless, the United States reserves the right, in exceptional circumstances, to treat juveniles as adults, notwithstanding paragraphs 2 (b) and 3 of article 10 and paragraph 4 of article 14. The United States further reserves to these provisions with respect to States with respect to individuals who volunteer for military service prior to age 18."<br />
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<b>Understandings:</b><br />
<br />
"(1) That the Constitution and laws of the United States guarantee all persons equal protection of the law and provide extensive protections against discrimination. The United States understands distinctions based upon race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, proerty, birth or any other status - as those terms are used in article 2, paragraph 1 and article 26 - to be permitted when such distinctions are, at minimum, rationally related to a legitimate governmental objective. The United States further understands the prohibition in paragraph 1 of article 4 upon discrimination, in time of public emergency, based `solely' on the status of race, colour, sex, language, religion or social origin, not to bar distinctions that may have a disproportionate effect upon persons of a particular status.<br />
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"(2) That the United States understands the right to compensation referred to in articles 9 (5) and 14 (6) to require the provision of effective and enforceable mechanisms by which a victim of an unlawful arrest or detention or a miscarriage of justice may seek and, where justified, obtain compensation from either the responsible individual or the appropriate governmental entity. Entitlement to compensation may be subject to the reasonable requirements of domestic law.<br />
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"(3) That the United States understands the reference to `exceptional circumstances' in paragraph 2 (a) of article 10 to permit the imprisonment of an accused person with convicted persons where appropriate in light of an individual's overall dangerousness, and to permit accused persons to waive their right to segregation from convicted persons. The United States further understands that paragraph 3 of article 10 does not diminish the goals of punishment, deterrence, and incapacitation as additional legitimate purposes for a penitentiary system.<br />
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"(4) That the United States understands that subparagraphs 3 (b) and (d) of article 14 do not require the provision of a criminal defendant's counsel of choice when the defendant is provided with court-appointed counsel on grounds of indigence, when the defendant is financially able to retain alternative counsel, or when imprisonment is not imposed. The United States further understands that paragraph 3 (e) does not prohibit a requirement that the defendant make a showing that any witness whose attendance he seeks to compel is necessary for his defense. The United States understands the prohibition upon double jeopardy in paragraph 7 to apply only when the judgment of acquittal has been rendered by a court of the same governmental unit, whether the Federal Government or a constituent unit, as is seeking a new trial for the same cause.<br />
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"(5) That the United States understands that this Covenant shall be implemented by the Federal Government to the extent that it exercises legislative and judicial jurisdiction over the matters covered therein, and otherwise by the state and local governments; to the extent that state and local governments exercise jurisdiction over such matters, the Federal Government shall take measures appropriate to the Federal system to the end that the competent authorities of the state or local governments may take appropriate measures for the fulfillment of the Covenant."<br />
<br />
<b>Declarations:</b><br />
"(1) That the United States declares that the provisions of articles 1 through 27 of the Covenant are not self-executing.<br />
<br />
"(2) That it is the view of the United States that States Party to the Covenant should wherever possible refrain from imposing any restrictions or limitations on the exercise of the rights recognized and protected by the Covenant, even when such restrictions and limitations are permissible under the terms of the Covenant. For the United States, article 5, paragraph 2, which provides that fundamental human rights existing in any State Party may not be diminished on the pretext that the Covenant recognizes them to a lesser extent, has particular relevance to article 19, paragraph 3 which would permit certain restrictions on the freedom of expression. The United States declares that it will continue to adhere to the requirements and constraints of its Constitution in respect to all such restrictions and limitations.<br />
<br />
"(3) That the United States declares that the right referred to in article 47 may be exercised only in accordance with international law."<br />
<br />
eAdvocatehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09569822127629044435noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-432987528130562987.post-86949257276078653672015-11-12T19:38:00.000-05:002017-04-24T21:37:49.959-04:00Secret Service officer arrested in Delaware child sex sting<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhM3sOeTkns6VLbqROKMJyNsCRhfPiVjRNpR3rKMfhMszy6GXpMn-foY8M8b9IjhcclL1Z_7-pgKP8gWjuw4htbSVtkM8xEoXmyCBFMt6vXLwiVfq8fTS0mlWhV3FunXjudK5I93dMgOBMh/s1600/a-info-post.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="137" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhM3sOeTkns6VLbqROKMJyNsCRhfPiVjRNpR3rKMfhMszy6GXpMn-foY8M8b9IjhcclL1Z_7-pgKP8gWjuw4htbSVtkM8xEoXmyCBFMt6vXLwiVfq8fTS0mlWhV3FunXjudK5I93dMgOBMh/s200/a-info-post.jpg" width="200" /></a> <b>11-12-15 National:</b><br />
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A Secret Service officer assigned to the White House has been arrested after he was caught sending pictures of his genitals to what he thought was a 14-year-old girl in Delaware, according to a criminal complaint filed Monday in U.S. District Court in Delaware.<br />
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Lee Robert Moore, 37, of Church Hill, Maryland was allegedly chatting on a social media application with an undercover Delaware State Police detective when he sent the naked photos of himself and requested that they meet, according the complaint.<br />
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Moore was placed on administrative leave and turned himself in at the Maryland State Police Barracks on Monday.<br />
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"The Secret Service takes allegations of potential criminal activity extremely seriously," the Secret Service wrote in a release. "This incident was reported to our Office of Professional Responsibility on Friday, Nov. 6. <br />
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On that same date the employee’s security clearance was suspended and the employee was placed on administrative leave. <br />
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All Secret Service-issued equipment was retrieved and the employee’s access to all Secret Service facilities was terminated." <a href="http://www.delawareonline.com/story/news/crime/2015/11/12/secret-service-officer-arrested-delaware-child-sex-sting/75669296/">..Source..</a> by Jessica Masulli ReyeseAdvocatehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09569822127629044435noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-432987528130562987.post-72298627939558363142015-11-11T09:56:00.000-05:002015-11-24T20:51:24.796-05:00Tide turns against US residency restrictions on sex offenders<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBUmgeZ15At2hkLudwMWSSOwF-02mounT0-LAfTgcJwBfb4XnSaNCgNmSLR3IViEsTZLrc4PL4sUICtFdhk0NMxYIp6K0SSvou15hyGigjz8y6WtCmf5LSW5DOUauKND7MG6tg7S_RX1U4/s1600/a-personal-story.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBUmgeZ15At2hkLudwMWSSOwF-02mounT0-LAfTgcJwBfb4XnSaNCgNmSLR3IViEsTZLrc4PL4sUICtFdhk0NMxYIp6K0SSvou15hyGigjz8y6WtCmf5LSW5DOUauKND7MG6tg7S_RX1U4/s200/a-personal-story.jpg" /></a></div><b>11-11-15 Texas:</b><br />
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Nearly two decades have passed since Josh Gravens, then 12 years old, was playing with his 8-year-old sister and touched her body in an inappropriate way, landing himself on a sex offender registry.<br />
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His sister forgave him long ago but Gravens still worries that the incident could force him out of his Dallas home.<br />
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Concerns about sexual predators have led communities in 30 U.S. states to adopt laws limiting where registered sex offenders can live, typically keeping them away from schools, parks or other places where children congregate.<br />
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Gravens, now 29 and an advocate for prisoner rights, spends a lot of his time courting Dallas City Council members, including volunteering on election campaigns, in hopes of preventing them from imposing rigid limits on where sex offenders may live.<br />
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“It would be absolutely disruptive and possibly push me out of a town where I finally feel like I’ve found my way,” said Gravens, who lives near a park. “Dallas is the first city I felt I had a chance. A lot of places I was terrified of my own name.”<br />
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Increasingly tough laws adopted in the United States over the past 20 years have had the unintended consequence of forcing many of the nation’s 800,000 registered sex offenders into homelessness. That in turn makes them harder to track, according to law enforcement, and strips them of the stable homes advocates say are key to getting a job and rehabilitation.<br />
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Recently there has been something of a backlash against such residency restrictions — with courts striking them down in 2015 in New York, Massachusetts and California. Last week in Rhode Island, a federal judge granted a restraining order that allowed high-risk offenders who live within 1,000 feet of a school to stay in their homes at least until January. This week in Texas, civil rights advocates demanded that 46 small communities immediately rescind their residency restrictions or be sued.<br />
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At the same time, Wisconsin legislators are considering a bill for a statewide standard, which would upend local ordinances.<br />
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In Dallas, where Gravens lives, the City Council set aside a proposal for residency restrictions due to lack of evidence that bans work.<br />
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Gravens, part of the effort to get city leaders to mothball the plan, spoke out about how his mother’s call to a Christian center seeking advice about her son’s adolescent curiosity had triggered a police report that landed him in jail the next day.<br />
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His sister helped get his name off the public registry but Gravens, now a divorced father of three, remains on a separate list available to law enforcement until he turns 31.<br />
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A Department of Justice report in July on dealing with sex offenders found “the evidence is fairly clear that residence restrictions are not effective” and may even expose communities to greater danger.<br />
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Residency bans have arisen from public sex offender registries, which require people who have served their sentence to continually update for decades — often for life — their photograph, physical description, address and place of employment. Failure to do so means felony arrest.<br />
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Today, thousands of registrants are people like Gravens who committed offenses as minors, said Elizabeth Letourneau, a professor at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.<br />
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Supporters say residency restrictions are meant to thwart adult strangers lurking nearby to snatch child victims.<br />
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“I don’t want those people living near children,” said Ron Book, a Florida lobbyist and nationally recognized proponent of residency restrictions.<br />
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“If you put young children in the faces of people prone to commit sexually deviant behaviors on children, there is a greater chance than not that they’ll act out. They’ll do their thing,” Book said.<br />
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But more than 90 percent of offenders who target children are known to the children and their families, and more than 30 percent of those offenders are minors themselves, said Jill Levenson, a professor at Barry University in Florida who has studied offenders.<br />
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In some municipalities, enormous buffer zones surrounding places where children gather have effectively placed every possible residence off-limits to sex offenders, often regardless of whether the victim of their offense was a child.<br />
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The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation said in a 2010 report that after a 2,000 foot barrier was enacted statewide in 2006, homelessness among paroled sex offenders “increased by approximately 24 times. Presently, more than one-third of all sex offenders on parole have become transient.”<br />
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Parole officers said it was harder to supervise homeless parolees, and the department announced in March it would no longer impose the restrictions.<br />
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“There are some hopeful signs that evidence may triumph over emotion and hysteria,” said Emily Horowitz, a professor at St. Francis College in New York who has studied the restrictions.<br />
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Despite signs of changing attitudes, new residency bans continue to be approved by local politicians across the U.S. In Maine alone, the towns of Old Orchard Beach, Biddeford and Saco all passed 750-foot residency restrictions in recent months.<br />
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Elsewhere, municipalities expanded the size of existing restrictions, such as Flower Mound, Texas, broadening a 1,500-foot barrier to 2,000 feet and Providence, Rhode Island, tripling a 300-foot barrier to 1,000 feet.<br />
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But Gravens said he had hope that public opinion was changing.<br />
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“I do believe the tide is turning,” Gravens said. “It has very much to do with the fact that people are coming out of the darkness, speaking about their experiences and saying ‘We’re just trying to get on with our lives. Can we?’” <a href="https://bangordailynews.com/2015/11/11/news/nation/tide-turns-against-us-residency-restrictions-on-sex-offenders/">..Source..</a> by Barbara Goldberg, ReuterseAdvocatehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09569822127629044435noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-432987528130562987.post-83258768238958755482015-11-11T01:29:00.003-05:002015-11-11T16:53:11.831-05:00Lawsuit: California breaks the law on sex offender website<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-uKiZxC_CiYOybg4ZILcAqQg7n9SC7fks-Fib5j1top5s9hXQxYUkQe-XwCBSlxHYeyZKlgYiK8LWC9ShAWq_XHJV56Uuidk_hM_FRpxL-6HvkscQG7A4s_7GcsaBb6bFobR6u6uJD00/s1600/a-news-4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="146" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-uKiZxC_CiYOybg4ZILcAqQg7n9SC7fks-Fib5j1top5s9hXQxYUkQe-XwCBSlxHYeyZKlgYiK8LWC9ShAWq_XHJV56Uuidk_hM_FRpxL-6HvkscQG7A4s_7GcsaBb6bFobR6u6uJD00/s200/a-news-4.jpg" width="200" /></a></div><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms; color:#ff0000;"><b> This post is a continuation of "<a href="http://congress-courts-legislation.blogspot.com/2015/11/registrants-sue-ca-doj-demand.html">Registrants sue CA DOJ — Demand improvements to, or end of, Megan's Law Website</a>" </b></span><br />
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<b>11-10-15 California:</b><br />
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SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) - California is breaking the law by failing to include updates about sex offenders on its Megan’s Law website, leading some offenders to be targeted by vigilantes, according to a lawsuit filed Tuesday.<br />
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The suit filed by two offenders says the California Department of Justice has not updated the sex offender registry to include the dates offenders were convicted and released from prison. That has been required under state law since 2010.<br />
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The information is important so citizens can better gauge if an offender is an immediate threat, said Janice Bellucci, president of the advocacy group California Reform Sex Offender Laws. The website includes a current photo and home address for offenders, no matter how old the crime.<br />
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“Most people jump to the conclusion that it must have happened recently,” she said. “We have people who have been on the registry for 50 years or more.”<br />
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The law says the department must have the date of conviction and the date of release before it can post either detail. It also must say if the offender was later imprisoned for any other felony, or say it doesn’t know of any subsequent incarcerations.<br />
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“The statute requires all three items before any date can be posted,” department spokeswoman Kristin Ford said in an email, but there is no requirement that local law enforcement tell the department when an offender is released.<br />
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The information is lacking in 92 percent of Megan’s Law profiles, the suit says. It asks a judge to order the state to update the website immediately or take it down entirely.<br />
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The suit filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court says the lack of information can lead to vigilante violence, as was the case recently in Shasta County, according to the sheriff’s department there.<br />
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Roy Anthony Matagora, 62, of Shasta Lake was shot twice and wounded as he opened his door in mid-September. The suspects heard he was a sex offender and confirmed it on the Megan’s Law website, the sheriff’s department said in announcing two arrests.<br />
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However, his conviction was in 1997, 18 years ago, according to the lawsuit.<br />
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Another sex offender, Frank Lindsay, 62, of Grover Beach was released in 1982, 33 years ago. The lawsuit says he was attacked in his home in 2010 by a stranger whose goal was to kill a sex offender and who had previously attacked another offender.<br />
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The suit lists five other offenders it contends were attacked, and some killed, because of incomplete information on the website.<br />
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“He was taking the law into his own hands,” Lindsay said of his attacker. “Unfortunately when you have a current photo and the rest of the information is blank it makes it seems like it happened yesterday.” <a href="http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/nov/10/lawsuit-california-breaks-the-law-on-sex-offender-/">..Source..</a> by DON THOMPSON<br />
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<a href="http://www.redding.com/news/local-news/two-arrested-in-weekend-shooting">Man accused in sex offender shooting</a><br />
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<b>9-21-2015:</b> <br />
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A Redding man was arrested Monday and a Redding woman detained and questioned in connection with the shooting over the weekend of a Shasta County man because he is a registered sex offender.<br />
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Timothy Joseph Gould, 28, was arrested and Tanna Nicole Curran, 25, was detained and questioned Monday on Eureka Way in Redding, according to the Shasta County Sheriff’s Office.<br />
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Gould is accused of shooting Roy Anthony Matagora, 62, after he and Curran found out he was registered as a sex offender, sheriff’s officials said.<br />
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Curran had become an acquaintance of Matagora’s over the past week and she had been borrowing the man’s vehicle. But Curran had found out Matagora was a registered sex offender, officials said.<br />
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Some time on Saturday, Matagora was at a home in the 5100 block of Main Street in Shasta Lake. When Gould knocked on the door of the home Matagora opened the door and Gould allegedly shot him in the hand and calf with a .45-caliber handgun, sheriff’s officials said.<br />
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“It appears the motive behind the shooting was due to Matagora being disliked because he is a registered sex offender,” the sheriff’s office said in a news release.<br />
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Gould was arrested and booked into the Shasta County Jail on suspicion of attempted murder, while Curran was released, officials said. by <br />
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<hr><br />
<a href="http://www.sanluisobispo.com/news/local/article39150873.html">Man gets 13 years in prison for robbing gas station, attacking sex offender</a><br />
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<b>5-2-2011:</b><br />
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A registered sex offender who was attacked in Grover Beach by a schizophrenic last year forgave his assailant at a sentencing Monday and said he would visit him in prison.<br />
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David Jordan Griffin, 25, was sentenced to 13 years in prison after pleading no contest to robbery, assault with a deadly weapon and burglary charges in connection with a two-day crime spree last year that targeted two men who were on the state’s sex-crime website.<br />
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Griffin’s sentence, handed down by Judge Hugh Mullin in San Luis Obispo Superior Court, included a conviction for an attack with a sledgehammer April 22, 2010, on 58-year-old Frank Lindsay. Griffin tracked down Lindsay from the Megan’s Law sex offender list.<br />
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“I forgive you, David,” Lindsay said in court, directing his comments to Griffin. “You will get better.”<br />
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Griffin came after Lindsay with the hammer after breaking into his home. Lindsay fought against him and escaped serious injury.<br />
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Lindsay and Griffin’s mother, Lea Ann Heath of Shelter Cove, also have made peace, they’ve said, and she has apologized to Lindsay for the incident.<br />
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The same day as his attack on Lindsay, Griffin went to the home of another man on the Megan’s Law sex offender list and tried to break down his door unsuccessfully while swearing at him.<br />
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A day later, on April 23, Griffin carried a machete into a Chevron at 1284 Grand Ave. and stole money and lottery tickets.<br />
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While attempting to flee, Griffin backed a car toward police, one of whom shot him in the leg.<br />
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Griffin has no prior criminal record, and his mental illness “significantly reduced his culpability for the crime,” his probation report states.<br />
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“My son was never a bad guy, never aggressive,” Heath said. “But six months before this happened, he started showing signs of paranoia. He bought into conspiracy theories.”<br />
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Heath said she didn’t know the extent of her son’s illness and encouraged him to live with his uncles in Grover Beach to have male role models and look for work in a more populated area than their isolated hometown in Humboldt County, where he was unemployed.<br />
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Griffin’s attorney, Gael G. Mueller, said that her client was seriously ill. She hopes he gets proper psychiatric treatment in prison.<br />
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“He was diagnosed as actively schizophrenic and paranoid,” Mueller said. “I see these events as all part of one episode where his brain was telling him all sorts of bizarre things.”<br />
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Mueller called Lindsay an “amazing guy” for going out of his way to meet with her client and to try to help him.<br />
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Lindsay said outside court Monday that he’ll be there for Griffin “wherever and whenever” he needs him.<br />
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Lindsay added that he has visited Griffin in County Jail several times.<br />
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“It wasn’t easy for either one of us,” Lindsay said. “When he first saw me he was definitely alarmed and had hatred in his eyes. I think it took us both awhile to get to a place where we were comfortable.”<br />
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Lindsay said leading up to the attack, one of his biggest fears was being targeted as a sex offender — a lewd act with a child under 14 that didn’t involve intercourse and which he committed more than 30 years ago.<br />
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But regardless of his efforts to keep his name off the Megan’s Law website, his fears became a reality.<br />
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“I stepped out of bounds, but I have completed my sentence conditions and probation to the court’s wishes,” Lindsay said. “I pleaded no contest with the understanding the case would be dismissed. I don’t think it’s right that I’m a potential target (on the Megan’s Law list).” by Nick Wilson<br />
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<a href="https://www.themarshallproject.org/2015/11/11/what-s-in-a-date">What’s In a Date?</a> <br />
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<b>11-11-15 California:</b><br />
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<b>For registered sex offenders in California, quite a lot.</b><br />
<br />
When Frank Lindsay walked into his home to find a young man wielding two hammers—one in each hand—in his dining room, he assumed he had disrupted a robbery. It wasn’t until the man called him a “pervert” that Lindsay realized he was the target of a planned attack.<br />
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“Then I knew for sure,” Lindsay said. “This wasn’t a robbery in progress. This was about me being a registrant. This person was there to do to me as much damage as he could.”<br />
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Lindsay is on California’s sex offender registry for a crime he committed in 1979, when he was 26 years old. That was more than 30 years before he was attacked, in 2010, in his Grover Beach, California home.<br />
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But the attacker, who had already tried to break into the home of another registered sex offender in the neighborhood, had no way of knowing how old Lindsay’s crime was, or that his record had been clean in the three decades since he was released from jail.<br />
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That’s because Lindsay’s profile on the state’s sex offender registry, like the profiles of most of California’s registered sex offenders, did not include a date of conviction or release.<br />
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“What he saw was a bunch of men with current photographs, and there’s no date of offense,” Lindsay said. “So he thought ‘This must have just happened.’ And he was appalled that there were all these sex offenders out on the loose.”<br />
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While the photographs and addresses on California’s public sex offender registry are updated annually, fields marked “year of last conviction” and “year of last release” are almost always left blank.<br />
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“At least 90 percent of the time there’s no date,” said Janice Bellucci, an attorney and president of the group California Reform Sex Offender Laws. Bellucci filed a lawsuit Tuesday in a Los Angeles County Superior Court, accusing the California Department of Justice of failing to comply with a state law requiring the agency to include the dates of conviction and release.<br />
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Department officials could not be reached for comment. Most states with online registries include information on the date of offense, conviction or release.<br />
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Bellucci helped Lindsay amend his profile to reflect the date of release, as she has done for more than 100 individual registrants, she said. But there are more than 100,000 registered sex offenders in California, and the process to amend or correct a profile is expensive and time consuming. It also requires the help of an attorney, as registrants are not allowed to look at their profiles online.<br />
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The omission of a date, Bellucci said, gives the impression that all of the registrants are dangerous repeat offenders. She points to a man who was a minor when he was convicted of engaging in inappropriate behavior with child under 14. His profile doesn’t include a date.<br />
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“Well, he himself was 13,” she said. “Now he’s in his 30s, and he looks like a dirty old man.”<br />
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<a href="http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/rsorp94.pdf">Justice Department studies</a> show that around 5 percent of registered sex offenders commit another sex crime within the first three years after they’re released—a lower rate than just about any other category of former convicts. A recent <a href="http://www.cdcr.ca.gov/Adult_Research_Branch/Research_Documents/2014_Outcome_Evaluation_Report_7-6-2015.pdf">California corrections department report</a> found that almost 92 percent of the registered sex offenders in the state who returned to prison did so because of a parole violation, while only 0.8 percent were rearrested because they committed another sex crime.<br />
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“People think once they do it they’re going to keep doing it and that’s not the reality,” she said.<br />
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The lawsuit accuses state officials of “callous disregard and indifference for the rights and safety of individuals already punished and publicly shamed for their crimes.”<br />
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Lindsay, who escaped his attacker without serious injury, is a named plaintiff in the lawsuit, as is a Northern California man who was shot in September after his assailant saw his profile on the registry website. Like Lindsay, he survived the attack. But the lawsuit also includes detailed information about several California men who were murdered by neighbors or strangers who saw their profiles on the registry.<br />
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Lindsay’s assailant -- who is serving time for the assault -- was 25 years old at the time of the attack, around the same age as Lindsay when he pleaded no contest to committing “lewd or lascivious acts with a child under 14 years of age.”<br />
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“That’s not who I am now,” said Lindsay, who reached out to the man in the weeks after he was assaulted. “I wanted to show him that I’m not who he thought I was.” by Anat Rubin, The Marshall Project<br />
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<hr><br />
<a href="http://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article44263749.html">Sex offenders sue California, claim Megan's Law website puts them in danger</a><br />
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<b>11-11-15 California:</b><br />
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Two registered sex offenders are suing California for lax management of an online sex offender database, saying a lack of timely information prompted vigilantes to attack them for past crimes.<br />
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A measure commonly known as Megan’s Law sought to inform people about the presence of sex offenders by having the state publish publicly available information about their offenses and whereabouts. A website managed by the California Department of Justice includes a tool to search for sex offenders by name or location.<br />
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While the site warns against vigilantism, stating that “anyone who uses this information to commit a crime or to harass an offender or his or her family is subject to criminal prosecution and civil liability,” plaintiffs in the lawsuit say they have been targeted because of the state’s negligence in updating the website to include their dates of conviction and release <a href="http://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=200520060AB1849">as required as of 2010 by a 2006 law</a>.<br />
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That lack of information has exposed registered offenders to “physical harm, loss of employment, underemployment, lack of adequate housing and other deprivations of rights,” charges a lawsuit filed by the organization California Reform Sex Offender Laws in Los Angeles County Superior Court. The complaint alleges that 92 percent of the profiles on the Megan’s Law site lack dates of conviction or release.<br />
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According to the complaint, plaintiff Roy Matagora was shot in September by someone who had viewed his profile. The online profile for Matagora lists three offenses involving a minor under 18 and a rape offense but does not include information about when he was convicted or released.<br />
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An assailant broke into the home of the other plaintiff, Frank Lindsay, in 2010 and tried to kill him with a sledge hammer after finding his information online, the lawsuit alleges. Lindsay’s profile notes “lewd or lascivious acts with a child under 14 years of age” and registers that he was convicted and released in 1979, but the lawsuit alleges that information wasn’t available until 2012.<br />
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Lindsay also had the lease for his business denied because of issues with the website, the lawsuit alleges. The complaint lists four other registered sex offenders who were slain in what the complaint characterizes as reprisal killings.<br />
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To remedy the alleged shortfall, the lawsuit asks that the court compel the Department of Justice to update the website.<br />
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A spokesperson for the Department of Justice did not immediately respond to a request for comment. <a href="http://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article44263749.html">..Source..</a> by Jeremy B. WhiteeAdvocatehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09569822127629044435noreply@blogger.com0