Tide turns against US residency restrictions on sex offenders

11-11-15 Texas:

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.

His sister forgave him long ago but Gravens still worries that the incident could force him out of his Dallas home.

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.

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.

“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.”

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.

Lawsuit: California breaks the law on sex offender website

This post is a continuation of "Registrants sue CA DOJ — Demand improvements to, or end of, Megan's Law Website"

11-10-15 California:

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.

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.

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.

“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.”

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.

‘Lie’ begets lifetime of regret for Clay County father, son

10-24-15 Missouri:

Highlights:
1) Brodie Leap says he felt pressured as a boy to say his father had touched him inappropriately

2) Now 31, Brodie is trying to get his father’s name off Missouri’s sex offender registry

3) Across the U.S., more are questioning the public benefit, legality and appropriateness of registries

Brodie Leap was 5 years old when he told what he now calls The Lie.

He says he knew it was a lie the second he said it. He is 31 now, living in Oakview in Clay County, and he has known his entire life that it wasn’t true.

“Have you been touched down there?” his mother asked him.

Leap insists he told the truth at first. “No,” he recalls repeating to his mother as she asked him time and again. The date was Dec. 1, 1989. Karen Leap, then 36, was asking her son about his father and her ex-husband, Earnest Leap.

The couple, separated for three years, had just ended their seven-year marriage that September. Despite their bitter parting, the parents received joint custody of Brodie and his toddler brother, Josh.

To Karen Leap’s grave disappointment, Earnest Leap was named prime custodial parent, meaning the boys lived mostly with him.

“Have you been touched down there?”

Retired judge: Michigan sex offense registry 'like a cancer'

9-8-15 Michigan, Indiana:

Elkhart teenager still awaits new ruling in Berrien County case

On Aug. 5, Berrien County District Judge Dennis Wiley raised Zachery Anderson’s hopes with a promise of a new ruling in his case “soon.”

A month later, Zach Anderson — who at 19 met a Niles girl online who told him she was 17, had sex and later learned she was actually 14 — and his family are still waiting.

A month later, Zach’s story — that of a young man whose punishment has included a jail term, being listed on two sex offender registries for 25 years and subject to long lists of restrictions from two probation departments — continues to spread, most recently the subject of a TV network’s crime show to be broadcast this fall.

But a month later, a former Michigan judge hopes the increased attention and public outrage will spur legislators to take action.

Retired Van Buren County Circuit Court Judge William Buhl has long lobbied his state’s legislators to reform its sex offender registry, ever since he decided during his 36 years as a judge that the registry is ineffective and overly broad.

A Grandma Reflects on Sex Offender Laws: “My Husband Would Have Gone to Jail”

8-7-15 Anywhere USA:

Following up on the Zach Anderson case — the 19 year old on the Sex Offender Registry for 25 years for having consensual sex with a girl who said she was 17 (but was really 14) — comes this grandma’s letter. The Sex Offender Registry is a Free-Range issue because it grows out of the belief our kids are in constant danger and it perpetuates that belief, by making many non-threatening people like Zach into scary dots on the “maps of local sex offenders.” These are the maps many parents consult when deciding if they can let their kids walk outside or wait at the bus stop, or really have any unsupervised time at all. It is hard to let your kids roam the neighborhood if you are convinced it is an off-site wing of Sing-Sing.

Dear Free-Range Kids: I hope this young man gets a reprieve from this unjust law. Unfortunately, there are hundreds if not thousands in his and his families situation. I live in California, and while there are laws that restrict those whose age difference is only three years apart, the age of consent is 18, So if the girl is 17 (but looks 25, and has a fake ID) , and the male is 20/21, he is considered a sex offender. It doesn’t even have to involve sex, a touch (hug/kiss) is considered lewd conduct. Yes, our friends son spent time in prison for this! His life is over.

Our registry is life time. Forever. Most go to prison, not jail. We have over 100,000 on our registry. So, there is no way to know who is possibly a danger, because it is saturated, and some pictures may look like it was a dirty old man, but the offense may have been committed 30 or 40 years ago when the now old-looking man was 19 or 20.

And our tax dollars are being used to support these laws. No one can even tell us how much this is costing the tax payer, while our education system, infrastructure, water systems, etc. decay.

They can’t find housing (no one will rent to them), they can’t get jobs (no one will hire them), they are shunned by society. And yet it’s become the best way for politicians to get votes, by using them as pawns.

The general public has no idea what is happening, nor do they care if it happens to be someone who committed a sexual offense, but they ought to be concerned because someday it might be their son and their family torn apart over what a few decades ago was considered normal behavior.

I was just 16 when I met my husband of 21. Today, he would be considered a sex offender. I wonder what would have become of us if we had these laws back then. We have been successful, happily married for well over 40 years with children and grand-children. My grandfather is in a Hall of Fame, yet he married my grandmother while she was just 15, he being 20! People say, “Well that was different back then”. Really? I don’t believe that human behavior changes just because we are in a different century.

Yes, we need to protect the innocent, but let’s do that by ensuring only those that truly are a risk to our safety are prosecuted. This has become the biggest cash cow of our century.

– Jill

...

Myths and research on sex offender registries

5-16-15 National:

Studies show that while public sex offender registries sound like a good way to keep a community safe, the numbers tell a different story. And widely held beliefs turn out to be myths — among the more prevalent is that most sex offenders are pedophiles who might snatch a child from a park or bus stop.

Here are the myths, and the research that debunks them.

■ Sex offenders are among criminals most likely to re-offend.

The U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics examined 9,691 sex offenders from 15 states and found that 5.3% were arrested within three years of being released from prison, compared with 73.8% of those who committed property crimes and 66.7% of those convicted of drug offenses. The number drops even lower with the passage of time, with the majority of the new crimes committed within five years of release.

■ Most sexual assaults are committed by a stranger.

"Stranger danger" is rare. Studies show about 93% of child sexual abuse victims knew their assailant, about 34.3% are family members, and 58.7% friends or acquaintances, according to the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network.

Think All Pedophiles Need to Register as Sex Offenders? You're Wrong

7-8-15 National:

How can someone who had consensual sex with a person who misrepresented her age end up on the sex offender registry for life? The case of Zachery Anderson has many asking if sex offender registries are fair. In the New York Times William Buhl said, "The whole registry is a horrible mistake. I think it is utterly ridiculous to take teenage sex and make it a felony. This guy is obviously not a pedophile."

There is a scenario even more troubling than Anderson's. Can someone who committed a sexual crime against a child not have to register as a sex offender? Yes, and it happens every day in Maryland where people who committed sex crimes before 1996 do not need to register regardless of when they were sentenced or released from prison.

I became aware of this troubling reality in September 2014 at the sentencing of my perpetrator, Christopher Huott, who sexually abused me for years starting when I was seven. Since the crimes took place in the 1980s my perpetrator was sentenced under those guidelines, which were more lenient than today's statutes. There was also no sex offender registry in place when he was sexually abusing me. So, when Mr. Huott is released from prison -- in as little as two years -- he will not have to register as an offender.

Second Elkhart family fights to get son off sex offender registry

7-8-15 Indiana:

ELKHART - Older teenagers - considered sexual predators - for having sex with teens who are underage. Is it justice? Or as some parents argue, sex crime laws gone too far?
?
Darian Yoder was 19 years old when he found a girl claiming to be 17 on a Facebook dating app called "Hot Or Not." After chatting online for a couple weeks, she asked him to come over late one night. They had sex.

Nine months later, state troopers arrested Yoder for sexual misconduct. A judge telling him that girl was only 13-years-old.

Heeding advice from his probation officer, Darian Yoder agreed to talk to us, but asked us not to show his face. He says he knows he made a mistake, but he's not a sexual predator.

"I know I'm not a sex offender," said Yoder. "Had I known her age, I never would have even talked to her."

Polygraph rules for sex offenders rile refugee family

7-7-15 South Dakota:

Not long ago, Congolese pastor Jerome Muturutsa was fighting deportation from Sioux Falls to his home country.

The 60-year-old was in danger of ejection to his war-torn country over his conviction for a sexual contact crime his family and friends swear he didn't commit.

An immigration judge chose to let him stay, but the parole rules for sex offenders have been so restrictive that his family now says they wish they'd have let him leave the U.S.

Muturutsa's currently detained at the Jameson Annex in Sioux Falls over inconclusive polygraph test results.

"Here, you have no freedom," said his son Michael Gahakanyi. "In the refugee camp, he would be free. Even in the year and a half that he was out of prison, he was not free."

Muturutsa's family, along with supporters like Pastor Dennis Thomas, are learning the strict reality of life for sex offenders on parole in South Dakota.

All paroled sex offenders are given a regular polygraph tests in South Dakota. Dishonesty, dangerous behavior, failure to comply with parole terms or inconclusive test results can land an offender back in prison with the stroke of a parole officer's pen.

'Old-fashioned scarlet letter': Elkhart 19-year-old fights sex offender status after encounter with Michigan teen

This is a case of "Victim Entrapment" likened to police entrapment. Seems a lawsuit -or several by anyone else so entrapped- suing the website that permitted her to lie and open account, and the girl who lied (or her parents), would eventually curtail this esp. if enough families are held accountable for the actions of their children.

6-7-15 Michigan:

ELKHART — As Zach Anderson sits in the Berrien County Jail in St. Joseph, Mich., his parents worry.

And plead.

And fight.

The young man from Elkhart, 19, pleaded guilty in Berrien County, Mich., Trial Court in March to a misdemeanor count of criminal sexual conduct for having sex — consensual sex — on Dec. 19, 2014, with a Niles, Mich., teen. She said she was 17, and met him in person after a whirlwind courtship in cyberspace that started with a meeting via the social app Hot or Not.

It turns out she was only 14, though, two years under the age of consent in Michigan. And now, Anderson finds himself sitting out a 90-day jail sentence, with another five years probation and, of particular concern to his parents, 25 years on Michigan’s sex offender registry. Worse yet, Les and Amanda Anderson, who run a small Elkhart media and printing company, fear their son could face a lifetime on Indiana’s sex offender registry on returning to the Elkhart area after his jail sentence is up.

“Here’s the thing: This mistake should not haunt him the rest of his life,” Les Anderson says from the family home in east Elkhart. That’s where his son — a 2014 Concord High School grad and Ivy Tech Community College student until his jailing — lived before Judge Dennis Wiley handed down the sentence on April 27.

Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act (AWA): Funding over the Years

5-21-15 Washington DC:

How much has been spent or appropriated on AWA/SORNA? Federal, State, Tribal, Unfunded Mandates (might be bigger than we think)? WOW! Just to give folks an idea of what is involved on the FEDERAL level.

I started with the old congressional website (Thomas) which is still updated daily, I did this because it has search capabilities which do not exist in the new congressional website.

Using the multiple congresses search option I searched for AWA (Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act) and got 12 responses, I've reordered them below for easier understanding which congress passed what.

There are two links for each bill. The PDF links to the OLD Congressional website, while the bill number links to the NEW Congressional website. Reason, the NEW site is often down (or not updated as quickly as the old site) and you can use the other and still get research done.

---

3 . [109th] Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act of 2006 (Enrolled Bill [Final as Passed Both House and Senate] - ENR)[H.R.4472.ENR ][PDF]

First, using the main AWA law above, page search (bill/PDF) for every place it shows "GRANT" that will show you every individual grant authorized by AWA. Now, below I show every later congress which appropriated funding for AWA and the bills congress used back then.

Women seek to dissolve sex offender registry

5-3-15 Wisconsin:

One local woman is caught in the middle of a battle over the public's access to sex offender registries and the right to keep her family together.

"Families are the collateral damage of the sex offender registry,” said Rayida Grooms, a former St. Joseph resident who married a registered sex offender in 2013. “The sex offender registry doesn't really protect anybody, because it just gives a false security.”

All 50 states have a registration and tracking system in place to monitor sex offenders, their location, identifying features and vehicles. For Mrs. Grooms, the public’s access to the database has affected the guardianship of her three children.

“Because of his status alone”

After a divorce in 2007, Mrs. Grooms said she fell in love with her neighbor — a registered sex offender who was convicted of sexual assault of a minor in Maine in 2003. Even after learning about his past, the couple got married and began a life with her children.

A nasty custody battle, however, prompted her to lose her three children.

One Survivor's Crusade Reveals a Plague of Errors in Nation's Sex Offender Registries

4-21-15 National:

Estimates of the number of entries with crucial mistakes run into the tens of thousands. One man—and pretty much only one man—is trying to fix them.

Tim Fisher steps slowly up the driveway, glancing back with mournful eyes a few times toward his sister-in-law across the street, silently pleading for her encouragement. With neat, shoulder-length, salt-and-pepper hair and a mustache, dressed in a plaid button-down shirt and shapeless jeans, Fisher is 49, but in his mind he’s the cherub-cheeked boy with the sun-bleached bangs who walked this asphalt hundreds of times, every Saturday for seven years. Today he trembles with the same trepidation that his boyhood self felt.

By the time he reaches the doorstep, he feels a strange, unsettling vulnerability in being shadowed and hidden from street view by a red-tile overhang. This is his decision, his right, he reminds himself. He just drove five hours from his Las Vegas home to this quiet block in Anaheim, California, fruitlessly trying to release his gathering anxiety with cigarette after cigarette as his sister-in-law soothed him with assurances that she was there for him, come what may.

Interesting that this article points out tens of thousands of errors in registries nationally. These errors caused by the wording and manner in which the Adam Walsh Act was implemented. The Act that was supposed to do the exact opposite; make all states the same, but ultimately caused a mess so bad that it will be impossible to fix. So much for the work of Congress!

... ... ...

Two Teens Have Sex. Neither Could Legally Consent, But Only the Boy Gets a Felony Charge.

3-10-2015 Kentucky:

Underage teens having sex is awkward, but it shouldn't be criminal.

If two people are equally unable to give consent, but have sex anyway, should either be charged with a crime? It's a question that many college administrators wrestle with when drugs and alcohol are factors in sexual assault disputes. The verdict often seems to be that male students are uniquely responsible for ascertaining that their sexual partners are in a state of mind to consent, even when the female is the initiator and both are intoxicated.

This double-standard for men seems to apply to underage teenagers as well. Take, for example, this recent story in The Courier-Journal: the Kentucky Supreme Court has agreed to hear the case of "B.H.," who was 15-years-old when he was charged with sexual misconduct and possessing pornographic material featuring a minor (the latter is a felony charge). B.H. was in trouble for having sex with his 13-year-old girlfriend and exchanging nude pictures with her. The acts were voluntary, though neither teen could legally consent to sexual activities since they were both underage at the time.

Program helps homeless, mentally ill people find shelter

2-18-2015 Ohio:

There are thousands of homeless people in the Miami Valley, including hundreds who are mentally ill and lack the mental capacity or physical ability to get to a shelter during inclement weather like the one the area is experiencing.

But a program operated by the Miami Valley Housing Opportunities has been helping those people find shelter and get their lives back on track for more than 20 years.

“We drive through town and look for people who don’t know how to get to a shelter or are unable to travel to one,” said Andrea McGriff, the director of Projects for Assistance in Transition from Homelessness or PATH. “We also provide bus tokens.”

PATH, started in 1991, is funded by a $25,000 federal grant, she said. They use the funds to transport people to St. Vincent De Paul Homeless Shelters in Dayton.

The program helps transport 220 men, 150 women and 80 children, many of whom are younger than 6, said St. Vincent De Paul Executive Director David Bohardt.

‘I’m the big bad wolf this time’: Florida mom burns down home of convicted child-killer in firefighter training exercise

2-13-15 Florida:

The mother of a 7-year-old who was raped and murdered got some measure of payback by helping firefighters burn down the Orange Park, Fla., home once owned by the convicted killer. The man is now serving a life-sentence, and his residence, where the crime occurred, was torched as part of a training exercise for local firefighters.

Diena Thompson’s desire for revenge burned white hot, but she didn't break any laws when she finally got it.

Wearing a firefighter jacket and a cathartic smile, the mother of a 7-year-old who was raped and murdered got some measure of payback by helping local smoke-eaters burn down the Florida home of the man now serving a life sentence for the crime. It was a firefighter training exercise.

“I get to burn their house down," Thompson told News4Jax Thursday after throwing a flare into the Orange Park, Fla. home. "I am the big bad wolf this time, knocking down your door."

Firm offers to raze Newtown shooter's home for free

2-18-15 Connecticut:

NEWTOWN -- A construction company with ties to Newtown has offered to demolish Adam Lanza's home at no cost, First Selectwoman Pat Llodra announced Tuesday.

Representatives from Plainville-based Manafort Brothers are expected to meet with town officials this week to discuss the details and possibly set a demolition date for the 36 Yogananda St. property, the home where Lanza lived with his mother before he took her life and killed 20 students and six educators at Sandy Hook Elementary School.

Llodra said several Manafort employees live in Newtown, which helped encourage the company to make the offer.

Prior to Manafort's proposal, the town was planning to pay about $30,000 for demolition with money from a special insurance fund dedicated to costs associated with the Dec. 14, 2012, shooting. The fund was used in the demolition of the Sandy Hook Elementary School in late 2013.

Representatives of Manafort could not be reached for comment Tuesday night.

Llodra's announcement came minutes after residents at a special town meeting voted 6-0 to authorize the Board of Selectmen to proceed with the demolition plan.

Sheriff: Why sex offenders live in our communities

1-30-2015 Wisconsin:

Throughout the years I have written articles pertaining to many topics that affect the overall safety of our communities. From theft and fraud prevention to animal bites and cold weather preparation, there is never a shortage of issues in which helpful information can be shared.

This week I would like to cover some information regarding sex offenders and the guidelines that govern their re-integration into our communities.

By state statute definition, a person who must register is any individual who has been convicted of a charge as defined in Wisconsin State Statute 301.45. These crimes involve sexual assault and include a variety of specific offenses.

While these types of offenses have been committed throughout history, it was in 1997 that the Sex Offender Registry and the Community Notification Law went into effect, thus providing a means by which law enforcement and the community can work together to better inform and ultimately prevent further offenses from occurring.

While no issue has the potential to create more anxiety, it is important to note that the recidivism rate among these offenders is only 8.8 percent and that a majority of the cases (86-94 percent) were committed by either family members or close acquaintances.

Three people spent years in prison over a horrible crime against children – that never happened

2-8-2015 New York:

A week before Christmas in 1992, Buffalo police rounded up three suspects. They handcuffed a machine operator at Rich Products on Niagara Street, a chemist working his second job at a downtown hotel, and later a federal employee living near City Hall. ¶ The three were named in an appalling crime.

Two 8-year-old girls, twin daughters of the machine operator, said their father raped them on three occasions during the previous year – when they were 6 and 7 – and the other defendants joined in the assaults. ¶ The girls said they had been tied to mattresses or chairs, then violated as their mouths were sealed with duct tape. Afterward, life would go on as normal. ¶ Prosecutors could offer no scientific proof and only dubious physical evidence of rape and molestation. But they had the girls’ statements.

As the suspects fought the charges and rejected plea deals, prosecutors placed the sympathetic victims in front of the jury. The verdict: guilty on all counts. ¶ The years passed, and the three convicted sex offenders refused to back down. From prison cells they filed appeal after appeal. All were long shots. But the three insisted they were innocent. ¶ As it turns out, they were.

That’s not simply because appellate judges eventually agreed that the three had been poorly represented and deserved new trials. Nor is it because prosecutors never tried them again, nor because their indictments were sealed forever as the former inmates started new lives.

It’s because, as the twins now say, no crime occurred. They are now 30 years old and working in Buffalo’s health care field. In legal papers, both say the allegations were never true.

The women state that when they were compliant children, the officials leaped to the wrong conclusions, and county prosecutors coached them through false testimony. Through numerous pretrial rehearsals, they were rewarded when they did well and admonished when they didn’t.

“The prosecutors would tell us what to say,” the women say in one of their affidavits. When they tried to retract the claims, either no one would listen or they were told bad things would happen, they said. As children in an adult world, they could not stop the train rumbling toward convictions.

It’s common for lawyers on both sides to prepare their witnesses. But this case was a miscarriage of justice, said Michael Stachowski, a lawyer who argued one of the successful appeals in 2010. The defense team performed badly, he said, and prosecutors went too far.

In that era, sex crimes against children were exploding onto the national stage, and the public expected action. Rape, incest and child abuse ranked just behind murder in a survey of the most heinous crimes.

At the same time, the forensic interviewing of young victims was faulty and corruptible. An adult’s tone and expectations could, and did, taint the outcome. In California’s McMartin Preschool trials, the authorities led children to tell of satanic ritualistic abuse that never happened.