Josh Gravens, Subject of Observer Feature, Removed from Sex Offender Registry

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12-7-2012 Texas:

The Texas Observer’s June cover story, “Life On the List,” looked at what happens when children are placed on Texas’ public sex offender registry. It centered on Josh Gravens, who at age 12 had sexual contact with his sister, was handed over to the Texas Youth Commission for more than three years, and has been listed in the public registry ever since.

Before agreeing to be interviewed for by the Observer, Gravens had never discussed his ordeal with anyone who didn’t strictly need to know. Gravens had never been an activist. He had struggled privately, moved from place to place, job to job.

Each time he started to build a life, he’d be fired, threatened, or evicted after a couple of years when something called attention to his presence on the registry. As of November 15, though, the 25-year-old married father of four is, for the first time since he was 13, not on the list.

Report: Registry does more harm than good for teen sex offenders

May 2013 National:

Joshua Gravens can't do a lot of the normal things parents do, like drop his son off at school, attend parent-teacher conferences, or take his daughter to the park, a library or anywhere else children gather.

For the offense of inappropriately touching his 8-year-old sister when he was 12, Gravens, 26, has spent almost half his life as a registered sex offender. The designation subjects him to residency and zoning restrictions that dictate where he can live and spend time. It has also made him the target of harassment, death threats and hampered his ability to find a job or keep a home, he said.

As he sees it, his wife and four children are still paying the price for what he did as a child.

"The biggest effect is obviously not being able to provide stable housing and a stable environment," said Gravens, who lives in Dallas. "I have missed two first days of school, experiences which can never be re-lived."

The collateral effects of life on the registry are the subject of a new Human Rights Watch report challenging the view that registration and related restrictions are appropriate measures for dealing with children who commit sex offenses. "Raised on the Registry: The Irreparable Harm of Placing Children on Sex Offender Registries in the U.S.," recommends adolescents be exempt from registration and community notification in the absence of empirical data showing that doing so makes communities safer.

Gravens said he does not want to minimize the severity of his actions, for which he spent 3½ years as a teen in the custody of the Texas Youth Commission for one count of aggravated sexual assault, followed by 10 years of parole. But it seems like the older he gets, the consequences become harsher.

"I admit that I did something wrong. I didn't understand the consequences and while I regret every day what I did, I can't go back. I can only go forward," he said.

The U.S. Supreme Court held in a 2003 ruling that sex offender registration is a public safety tool not intended to punish offenders. But the report suggests that restrictions associated with life on the registry do more harm than good and amount to continued punishment with little evidence to suggest the public is any safer.

Report details lives ruined for children put on sex-offender registries

December 2013 National:

Nudity, streaking, petting, not just rape, have led to youths put on sex-offender registries

Put on a sex registry for the offense of public nudity as a minor. Harassed by neighbors out of a home and banned from a homeless shelter because of an offense committed at age 15.

The New York-based research group Human Rights Watch issued an extensive report today on the life-shattering consequences of putting minors on sex registries for offenses — sometimes shockingly mild offenses — for the rest of their lives.

Filled with devastating stories of teens and young adults unable to put offenses behind them, the rights group's report is called “Raised on the Register: The Irreparable Harm of Placing Children on Sex Offender Registries in the U.S.”

The report is the product of a 16-month investigation into 581 cases and interviews with 281 sex offenders — median age 15 — in 20 states. Prosecutors, defense attorneys, child sexuality experts and victims of “child on child” sexual assault were also interviewed. The investigation explores how a burgeoning national web of laws in various states requiring constant registration and public disclosure of offenders’ identities has affected the lives of young offenders long after time served or rehabilitation. Some on registries have killed themselves, even before reaching adulthood.

The report begins with Jacob C., who was 11 years old when convicted of one count of sexual misconduct in Michigan for touching, not penetrating, his sister’s genitals. He was not allowed to live in a home with other children, was eventually put into foster care and was placed on a sex registry that was made public when he turned 18. He struggled to graduate from high school, and was shunned because of his registration status. And when he enrolled in college, he said, campus police followed him everywhere. He dropped out.

Now 26, the report says, Jacob’s life continues to be defined and limited by a conviction at age 11.

Another case in the report: “In 2004, in Western Pennsylvania, a 15-year-old girl was charged with manufacturing and disseminating child pornography for having taken nude photos of herself and (posting) them on the internet. She was charged as an adult, and as of 2012 was facing registration for life.”

Sex offender laws, the report says, “that trigger registration requirements for children began proliferating in the United States during the late 1980s and early 1990s. They subject youth offenders to registration for crimes ranging from public nudity and touching another child’s genitalia over clothing to very serious violent crimes like rape.”

Registries can also include “people who have committed offenses like public urination, indecent exposure (such as streaking across a college campus), and other more relatively innocuous offenses.”

The Human Rights Watch report acknowledged that registration laws were designed to protect the public from offenders, and that they are based on assumptions that offenders are likely to violate again.

“But including youth sex offenders on registries assumes that they are highly likely to reoffend, which is not the case,” the report says. “Numerous studies estimate the recidivism rate among children who commit sexual offenses to between 4 and 10 percent, compared with a 13 percent rate for adult sex offenders and a national rate of 45 percent for all crimes.”

The report was prepared by Nicole Pittman, a national expert on the application of sex offender registration laws who was an attorney at the Defender Association of Philadelphia. She specialized in child sexual assault cases and registries, and has provided testimony to Congress and state legislatures on the subject.

The report calls current registry laws “an overbroad policy of questionable effectiveness” that leaves the public often unable to discern who on a registry is actually dangerous. ..Source.. by Susan Ferriss