Frank Report published the article Interview With Five Registered Sex Offenders
Here are some comments from registered sex offenders and activists who oppose the registration of convicted sex offenders.
By CFU
Articles about sex offenders stoke fear and paranoia. There have been many target killings, beatings, arsons, and thefts to sex offenders by just looking them up on the registry. Yet, no one seems to care.
I am a registered sex offender. I had consensual sex with a 15-year-old girl when I was 21. If she was just two months older, yes two (a blink of the eye in time), I would have committed no crime. At the time, my crime was not a crime in Canada or anywhere in Europe, Mexico, or most of the developed world.
My point being that there is a very thin, grey line between a sex offender and someone who is not. Some say all sex offenders are perverts and molest children and can’t be cured. How come then we have by far the lowest recidivism rate of any group?
With all the laws against me, and with dumb idiot reporters like you, I have managed to open up two successful restaurants, complete my bachelor’s degree, and become married to a beautiful, intelligent woman. I also have many friends and family who 100% support me and love me.
I give back to my community and contribute, yet sometimes I wonder why should I? With all the hate and new laws being directed at sex offenders, what incentive do I have to become better and contribute to society? I have none. Society has constantly beaten me down and tried to force me into a ghetto. I wonder why any sex offender would do any good in society?
Yet, since I have strong morals, am a good person, I fight on. I made a mistake, but a mistake I have more than been punished for. I am continually being punished no matter what good I do. I have no attraction to children or even desire younger women as most men do.
I made a mistake but not a mistake that destroyed anyone’s life.
Some say sex offenders drive down property values but ask any of my neighbors if they enjoy living next to me and they would say yes. Not all sex offenders are weirdos, perverts, predators, a lot are none of those.
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By M.R
None of the registry policies have achieved any positive results in the US and are, in fact, destroying the lives of thousands of innocent children and their families because one of their parents or family members are on a registry.
These registry laws are a waste of tax dollars and are a misplaced use of valuable law enforcement and government agency resources. Sex offender recidivism rate for a new sex offense is 0.8%.
Under the current system, many local registering agencies are challenged just keeping up with registration paperwork. It takes an hour or more to process each registrant, the majority of whom are low-risk offenders. As a result, law enforcement cannot monitor higher risk offenders more intensively due to the sheer numbers on the registry. Some of the consequences of lengthy and unnecessary registration requirements actually destabilize the lives of registrants and their families.
No one can doubt that child sexual abuse is traumatic and devastating. The question is not whether the state has an interest in preventing such harm, but whether current laws are effective in doing so. Megan’s law is a failure and is destroying families and their children’s lives and is costing taxpayers millions of dollars.
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By Derek W. Logue
Not every registered person is a danger to society. Most registrants will never re-offend. But the public registry is not going to help them rehabilitate.
We just had a cold-blooded vigilante attack in Omaha this week, and the online vigilante groups have been emboldened to harass and threaten registered persons. Trying to paint every registered person like an uncontrollable pedophile only fuels the flames.
I’m sick of everyone making the same idiotic assumption that registered person equals pedophile. You’ll always find a few self-styled pedophiles in this world willing to play patsy to whatever whims the uneducated public may have, but not every registered person is going to lay down and let society continue to label us for an action taken years or decades ago.
Most sex crimes are committed by people not on any registry.
Also, there is a difference between a registrant who is a rapist and a registrant who was a teen who had sex with another teen. When the untrained person reads the registry, both people are listed as having “raped” someone, implying a violent act, even when no violence was involved.
Registered citizens must live somewhere. If anything, the registry should be abolished, and people should be using better tactics than relying on a corrupt government list to determine who is a danger to kids. Go here and start getting an education on this subject:
http://www.oncefallen.com/SOMyths.html
Rudy101
In your article, your assistant Sarah said, “But truthfully I wouldn’t want my children near these men, none of them. And it must be hard for the people who live near them with children, hard on the families and the communities”
This is the kind of comment that makes the registry so dangerous to public safety.
People think these kind of men [child molesters] are on the registry, when over 95% of men [child molesters] are NOT on a registry. When looking at a registry thinking these men are dangerous, it is common for people to think those who are NOT on a registry will not be men like these.
It is those NOT on a registry you have to worry about more. You will trust them, they will be pillars of the community and nobody would ever suspect them. The registry gives you a false sense of security.
Some of the men are lying and some are not. When a registrant is confronted, there really is no benefit to telling the truth and because of such a wide net sex offenses cover it becomes plausible (at least in the offender’s mind) that what they did is not so bad and, therefore, the registry is not justified.
Or they are honest and the full weight of community condemnation comes upon them including violence, shame, and utter isolation. It is obvious why people will lie.
The fact is a registry takes the place of a comprehensive civil system whereby offenders evaluated are reevaluated periodically to see if they carry propensities to re-offend. Remember 1/3 of all offenders were minors themselves. Sexual experimentation should not lead to a lifetime on a registry. Evaluated offenders should be able to petition to be removed from a registry or have the parameters of the registry changed according to circumstances.
The registry is a PUNISHMENT. No person can be relieved of registry obligations for not being dangerous. It is applied ex-post facto. Its basis is a presumption of dangerousness. The result of a registry only has punitive outcomes, (loss of housing, membership in the community, and social isolation). The registry has no impact upon re-offense rates.
…. The Constitution doesn’t allow for the State to label people as dangerous and then to systematically use that label to isolate a person from the community without due process and outside of a sentence…..
By TAW
Family members are punished for a crime they never committed. Live in our shoes. Or find out how public shaming and being related to your abuser doesn’t affect the victim. Children like mine get punished even more because they spoke up against their family member, and now society looks down on them for being a child of a sex offender!
By Vicki Henry Women Against Registry dot com
The public has been groomed to believe all they have to do is check a registry and be aware of “those on it” and their family will be safe. The truth of the matter is that 93-95% of sexual offenses come from within the victim’s family, friends and those having access to the children and NEVER get reported.
There are over 819,218 men, women and children (as young as 6, 8 and 10 in some states) required to register and the “crimes” range from urinating in public (indecent exposure), sexting, incest, mooning, exposure, false accusations by a soon-to-be ex-wife, angry girlfriend, or spiteful student, viewing abusive OR suggestive images of anyone 18 years old or younger, playing doctor, prostitution, solicitation, Romeo and Juliet consensual sexual dating relationships, rape, endangering the welfare of a child and many others.
If you multiply the number on the registry by 2 or 3 family members you can clearly see there are well over 3 million wives, children, moms, aunts, girlfriends, grandmothers and other family members who experience the collateral damage of being harassed, threatened, children beaten, have signs placed in their yards, homes set on fire, vehicles damaged, asked to leave their churches and other organizations, children passed over for educational opportunities, have flyers distributed around their neighborhood, wives lose their jobs when someone learns they are married to a registrant…. all these things occur when these people try to hold their family together and provide the three things that professionals state are needed for successful re-integration; a job, a place to live and a good support system.
Education is the key…. so set-up Child Sexual Abuse Prevention training to empower kids and teens to protect themselves as much as possible and to speak up if someone makes them uncomfortable or oversteps their boundary.
By Sandi Hrozek
Reform Sex Offender Laws, Inc.
Statistics show that approximately 96% of sexual crime is committed by those who have never previously been charged with such an offense. The vast majority of sexual crime, especially against children, is committed by those well known to the victims, those already in their lives in close, trusted, and often familial positions. The truth is that if children are being molested, if women are being raped, it is almost certain the perpetrators are those already in the community, [and are] not registrants….
Registrants include children as young as nine who were playing doctor, husbands and fathers who made the mistake of having premarital sex in high school with the girls they later married, and those who were falsely accused and wrongly convicted.
The twin goals of the criminal justice system are punishment and rehabilitation. Rehabilitation involves access to services such as counseling, help with finding employment, and re-entry programs. Many registrants are married with children. They must have access to decent housing, to schools, to churches, to medical services, to civilization itself.
Research into the topic shows that the re-offence rate for registered offenders as a group is somewhere around 5%. Also compelling is the research showing that the longer one remains offense-free in the community, the less his risk with each passing year of ever re-offending,
