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Meet my friends on the registry, Josh Gravens and Galen Baughman:
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I kzbezanehr
wrote  about my brunch in The New York Daily News.
Here’s to laws that actually do what they’re supposed to — protect kids — instead of ruining the lives of people who do not pose a threat to them. – L
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Excellent stuff, Lenore… thanks!
I think your heart is in a good place, and our justice system certainly needs fixing.
On the other hand, I do not understand the problem with the statistic that 95% of sexual abuse is committed by people not on the registry. That means the registry is working as intended to prevent recidivism. We should be thrilled with that statistic.
L,
Do you honestly believe that the reason registered offenders don’t reoffend is because their name is on a list? Because the registry was never designed to deter them from reoffending. It was designed so that law enforcement had a specific database they could search after a sex offense was commited. It was not designed for public safety, it was designed for quick investigative purposes.
@L.
“That means the registry is working as intended to prevent recidivism.”
Which is like believing the sun rises because the cock crows.
Maybe recidivism is rare because:
1) Contrary to popular belief, this is not a high-recidivism crime
or
2) Many of these people did things that aren’t crimes by any reasonable standard, such as peeing in the woods in the rough off the 14th hole.
Watch this video all the way to the end. Is anyone else seeing a bunch of pornography pictures on the player after the original video stops?
i truly want to thank you for doing what your doing. the problems of the outrageous sentences and the sex registry need so badly to be corrected.
I have always believed that the Megan’s Law database is one of many tools I can utilize to help protect and educate my children but I don’t live exclusively by it. I live in a fairly large city in a pretty large county. According to the database, there are just over 2600 offenders living in the county. 1600 of them are in my city alone. Three of them live within a few hundred feet of my residence. One of them shares a duplex with one of my son’s friends. The first thing I always check is the crime they were convicted of. Unfortunately, none of the three were convicted of “banal” crimes such as urinating in public. One was convicted for possession of child pornography and the other two with lewd and lascivious acts against a child under 14.
Even so, I don’t have an issue with my children running around the neighborhood. Even the convicted felon living next door to my son’s friend (convicted of lewd and lascivious acts) hasn’t changed the fact that my son is allowed to go over to his friend’s house whenever he wants (though my kids both know who this man is and know they are not allowed to engage with him beyond societal expectations of politeness).
I do believe there is some usefulness to be gained from the database, but in our effort to protect everyone (and it’s not just children) the pendulum has swung too far in the opposite direction. A drunk guy (or girl) who is about to wet their pants shouldn’t be lumped together with a serial rapist. Unfortunately we now live in a society that has so much information at their fingertips that they’ve pretty much forgotten how to actually research things. 1600 sex offenders in my city??? Holy shit, lock the kids up! Pack our bags! We gotta move! But a lot of people (I would almost hazard a guess and say “most”) people don’t actually click on the links to see what the actual conviction was for.
While I applaud your attempt to shine a light injustice on how “sex offenders” are treated (without due process, exaggeration, …) nonetheless I hope you realize you are severely damaging the messaging your other mission (FreeRangeKids). You may think they are not at cross purposes – and perhaps they aren’t when looked at rationally and with statistics – but the messaging absolutely is.
For example – who is going to forward your website to a nervous spouse when the top story is about how sex offenders are really ok?
@Clark: The way I see it, the message is that these laws are so ridiculously harsh, before you know it, your kid too could be branded a sex offender.
I’ve written to Lenore personally of my belief that the free-range child movement
and sanitizing our reactions to SO-related offenses are two sides of the same coin.
Something happened in the late 70s, early 80s, where we as citizens collectively
threw up our hands in defeat and gave government carte blanche to clean things
up. Custody of the economy was handed over to Wall Street and the managerial
class, and we know how that worked out. And the criminal justice system reform
was handed over to similarly interested parties: careerist prosecutors,
tough-on-crime congressmen, police unions, and the prison industry, both public
and private. So you can label a 30-year-old man with inappropriately touching
an 8-year-old girl, neglecting to mention that happened almost 20 years ago,
and with his sister (which doesn’t make it legal, just that within families that
situation is more likely to present itself in an innocent framework). And you can
charge a couple with “unsubstantiated child neglect” for letting their school-age
children walk to a neighborhood park on their own. Throw the book at them.
If we try to approach these crimes reasonably, the bad guys will get away with it
like they did in the 60s, and the cities will end up covered with graffiti again.
All this because since 1980 we’ve slowly moved from a commercial nation to
a guardian nation (see Jane Jacobs’ “Systems of Survival” for an explanation
of those two main parts of any working society), and in a simple sense, because
our calvinist roots prevent us from paying people for doing nothing, as there
aren’t enough jobs in the commercial sector to go around, we pay one class of
people to guard another class of people, and so the economy continues to grow.
Lenore, why not start a nationwide “Invite a Sex Offender to Brunch” campaign?
Match people who are willing to host with former offenders who are willing to come
public with their story. If your neighborhood child pornographer was a high school
student with a nude photo of his ex on his phone, what’s there to be afraid of?
>>@Clark: The way I see it, the message is that these laws are so ridiculously harsh, before you know it, your kid too could be branded a sex offender.<<
Well, on the bright side, if you're a sex offender, you get to have brunch with Lenore……..but seriously, I agree. If there's even going to be a sex offender registry, there should be a higher threshold to get on it, and it shouldn't be so subjective. That way, kids playing doctor, or people caught outside with a full bladder and no bathroom, or people in any relationship at all (even online) with one person over the age of majority and one under, wouldn't be tarred with the same brush as actual sex offenders. Things to consider should be the age of the person when they offended (so, a kid playing doctor might have been doing just that–playing), whether it actually hurt anyone (this eliminates consensual sex), the difference in ages (so, a 16-year-old and an 18-year-old in a relationship wouldn't automatically make the 18-year-old a sex offender), or hey, whether the act was even meant to be sexual in the first place (so, this eliminates……eliminating outdoors). Otherwise, the sex offender registry is just criminalizing life. Kids are going to be curious about the fact that boys and girls have different private parts, just like they might be curious that their friends have different toys than they do, only sharing toys has always been encouraged. Young people aren't going to exclusively date people who are exactly their own age, so inevitably, one partner is going to reach the age of majority first. Unfortunately, it's usually the guy who reaches the age of majority first, and it's easy to slap that "sex offender" label on him, just because he has The Evil Appendage of Sexual Assault, although I'm calling foul on that, because a vibrator, a dildo, or even a finger, could do the job just as well. As for going to the bathroom outside, haven't any of these bureaucrats ever been camping? So, if the criteria for the sex offender registry could be pared down to non-consensual, harmful sexual acts committed by adults, then that would be a start.
As for online relationships, that's a grey area, but I don't think typing sexy things into a computer for one person's eyes is that sexual. Otherwise, where would we draw the line? We'd have to put every author of a romance novel on the sex offender registry as well, because they write sexy things that are meant for many people's eyes. After all, what if a person under the age of eighteen read that book? They could have…..developmentally normal sexual feelings!!!! We can't allow that until they're at least eighteen!!!! Seriously, though, books are the least of the problem. There's sex in romance novels, sex in movies, sex on TV, sex on the Internet, sex in advertising for products that have nothing to do with sex (like Zog's Sex Wax, which is really for surfboards), sex in the music you hear in Zumba class (which is a problem for me, because I'm in the process of becoming a Zumba instructor), but somehow, people aren't supposed to be interested in sex in real life until their eighteenth birthday, and then they're only supposed to have sex with people who've also reached their eighteenth birthday. Who else thinks this is unrealistic?
@Marilynn those images are just youtube’s algorithm suggesting related videos.
Could someone with the time please file a complain with youtube that the
algorithm is getting it wrong?
Clark,
Let me put it to you this way. That the mind of an overprotective parent is not soothed or eased by the SOR, but only fuels their paranoia to the point that they are disabled by knowing that information.
Case in point. A person on the SOR is not allowed within 2000 feet of a park. To make the park a safe zone for kids. Yet all these moms that are in support of the SOR won’t let their kids play alone in that same park, because of all the “sickos” out there.
The sex offender registry is the greatest political tool ever invented. It keeps the public huddled in fear of the boogeyman. While politicians and police can still point to it, to prove how they are keeping the public safe. Then they can come around every once in awhile to tell you of a new boogeyman that came to live in the area, to scared the hell out of you all over again.
The SOR is nothing more than the Scarlett Letter of our time. So hell why not go back to doing just that. When one gets married the swear infront of God, family and friends to remain faithful. So why not make cheaters where the red A again. As far as I am concerned cheating on your spouse is more horrible than 90% of the crimes that could put you on the SOR.
I agree that people shouldn’t end up on the SOL for crimes that do not hurt children, like public urination.
Your two brunch guests, though, don’t fit that bill.
My eldest two are 13 and 11. If either one of them played doctor with one of their younger siblings at their age, I would be gravely concerned. It’s one thing when little kids express their natural curiosity in inappropriate ways, but 11 (much less 12) is old enough to know better and to control oneself.
Any 19 year old having sex with, or sending pornography to, a 14 year old is a rapist. It’s not even a near thing. There is a huge difference between a 19 year old and a 14 year old. The latter is *incapable* of providing informed consent due to immaturity and the power dynamic.
I’m not arguing this from ignorance. My friend “Mouse” used to call me every few weeks to tell me about his new girlfriend. He was 20, then 21, and they were 17, then 16. I didn’t find out until I read the court documents that some were as young as 13. (http://law.justia.com/cases/minnesota/court-of-appeals/2007/opa061567-0213.html) After he got out of jail the first time, he went back to calling me every few weeks, always to complain about the unfairness of the SOL and related laws, insisting that he wasn’t a pedophile, that what he didn’t shouldn’t be a crime. He was violating his parole every which way and felt it was justified because, in his mind, he’d done nothing wrong. I told him that I agreed with his court-appointed therapist and he stopped calling.
And then, two months ago, the nice man two doors down — who helped me patch my tire a few times, whose weekly poker game I used to attend, who gave the kids candy — was busted after visiting a prostitute and asking for her five year old daughter. (http://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime/man-brought-teddy-bear-sex-5-year-old-cops-article-1.2110635)
I’m not living scared and neither are my kids. They run around the neighborhood and beyond unsupervised. Having now had two family friends turn out to be pedophiles has not turned me off of Free Range Parenting.
But it has strengthened my conviction that these people belong on the SOL, perhaps especially the ones who think that they did no wrong.
Dan Guy,
Technically I don’t think your friend Mouse is a pedeophile, but it doesn’t matter.
Thing is to ask yourself, how does anyone being on the registry keep you or your kids safe? Give you a hint, it doesn’t make one bit of difference.
>>Clark,
Let me put it to you this way. That the mind of an overprotective parent is not soothed or eased by the SOR, but only fuels their paranoia to the point that they are disabled by knowing that information.
Case in point. A person on the SOR is not allowed within 2000 feet of a park. To make the park a safe zone for kids. Yet all these moms that are in support of the SOR won’t let their kids play alone in that same park, because of all the “sickos†out there.
The sex offender registry is the greatest political tool ever invented. It keeps the public huddled in fear of the boogeyman. While politicians and police can still point to it, to prove how they are keeping the public safe. Then they can come around every once in awhile to tell you of a new boogeyman that came to live in the area, to scared the hell out of you all over again.
The SOR is nothing more than the Scarlett Letter of our time. So hell why not go back to doing just that. When one gets married the swear infront of God, family and friends to remain faithful. So why not make cheaters where the red A again. As far as I am concerned cheating on your spouse is more horrible than 90% of the crimes that could put you on the SOR.<<
@Warren–That's about right. The sex offender registry doesn't make anyone feel safer; it just fuels paranoia, while making life a living hell for the many, many people on the registry. It may have started out as a good idea, but it's way out of control now, to the point that it's making life worse both for the registrants, and for the people with kids who pay attention to the registry.
Yeah, I got the porno on the player afterwards. Kind of the “if you enjoyed this video, you might also enjoy these”?
I think the debate on the overreach of sex offender lists is warranted. I have been following that incidentally in the context of post-conviction lasting effects (such as the virtual unemployment people with records and served sentences face)
However, something that always leave me uneasy is how these debates bring out of the woods people who also want to promote a free-for-all, in particularly regarding the idea, unacceptable in my opinion, that adults should be free to prey sexually on minors, as long as the minor consent – not as in 18 yo and 16 yo, but more like 28 yo and 15 yo. There are also those with strange views that claim it is unfair to exclude any post-pubescent teen from their right to have sex with whomever they want, including people twice their age. All in a context where no responsibility is attributed to the older adult with a more developed brain in the pair.
@Warren: It’s true that it’s not so much the registry that is keeping kids safe from Mouse, but rather the fact that the only way to get out of the Minnesota Sex Offender program is to die. Other states are not so good about it. If and when my neighbor is released, the SOR will allows parents in the know to think twice about letting their kids go over to his house.
Emily,
When it comes right down to it, the effect of the SOR that bothers me the most, is the effect is has on me and my family.
Because of the SOR, anyone with a computer can pull up a map and have it light up like a Christmas tree, with local offenders. They then use that as proof that our communities are not safe. They then start screaming at our elected officials that we have to do more to protect the kids. And we then have kids like the Metiv’s getting brought home in a police car.
As long as the SOR is accessible to the public, things are only going to get worse for our kids, grandkids and so on. And lets face it, law enforcement loves this level of fear. The more the public is afraid, the less they will be out and about, and the less law enforcement will have to deal with.
One thing that holds true, and the people that use the SOR and swear by it as a great thing are proof. It is true, and I always keep that in the back of my mind whenever talking about issues. A person can be intelligent, but people are stupid.
I have a question. If an underage teen goes into a bar with a fake ID, is carded, and served alcohol, if they are later caught, would the bar be in legal trouble for serving alcohol to a minor? Or would the minor be in trouble for drinking underage and having a fake ID?
In my mind, the teen should be the one facing legal ramifications, not the bar. If the bar checked ID, how else would they determine the person was underage?
But when it comes to sex, even if the minor lies about their age, shows a fake ID, somehow the guy is now a sex offender and pedophile if they have sex.
The way it stands now, every single college boy is at serious risk of being labeled a sex offender if they happen to go home from a bar with the wrong girl. The only way to avoid this risk is to never have casual sex at all and wait until you’re in a committed long term relationship.
That’s really what society wants to punish these men for: having casual sex with someone they just met. “Serves them right. If they had waited, they would have discovered she was underage.”
I think they should get rid of the SOR. But if they are going to have it, I think they should list the age of the offender at the time of the offense, not just the age of the victim at the time.
Looking at a 45 year old offender convicted of stat rape of a 16 year old looks pretty bad, unless it shows that he was 18 at the time.
From the example at Lenore’s brunch, looking at a 30+ year old man convicted of touching an 8 yr old makes him look like a pedophile. But if it shows his age as 11 years old at the time, maybe people would question why he is even still on the list in the first place.
And to Dan Guy – yes, an 11 year old should know better. That’s why his parents took him to a counselor, so he could get help. But the counselor was a mandated reporter, and instead of helping this child, ended up ruining his entire life.
Minors should not be added to the SOR. Period.
“There are also those with strange views that claim it is unfair to exclude any post-pubescent teen from their right to have sex with whomever they want, including people twice their age.”
First off, the law doesn’t currently exclude post-pubescent teens from having sex with whomever they want. They can have sex with an entire battalion of soldiers and absolutely nothing will happen to them. What the law does is penalize other people for that teens bad choices while not penalizing the teen at all.
Second, why shouldn’t a teen be able to have sex with whomever they want if they are going to have sex? I can think of a million reasons why a teen should not have sex at all, but none as to why their partners should be required to be within a certain number of years of their age. A requirement that nobody else has. Nor have I found any justification as to why a 15 year old can only have sex with another 15 year old while a 16 year old can have sex with anyone they choose (age of consent in my state is 16). I don’t recall waking up on my 16th birthday was some miraculous insight into sex.
And the law is very under-inclusive. The most pressured I’ve ever felt to have sex has been from guys the same age as me, not guys older, and I dated both in high school. A 16 year old with her 66 year old boss is 100% legal, but a 15 year old with her college freshman boyfriend of 2 years is not? That really makes sense to you?
This is not to say that it should be legal to use your power over someone to manipulate them into sex (and that currently is 100% legal, by the way). Or that relationships with disparate ages should not be more closely scrutinized for that manipulation. But that the manipulation should actually exist before someone is convicted of a crime and not just be assumed based on age.
>>Emily,
When it comes right down to it, the effect of the SOR that bothers me the most, is the effect is has on me and my family.
Because of the SOR, anyone with a computer can pull up a map and have it light up like a Christmas tree, with local offenders. They then use that as proof that our communities are not safe. They then start screaming at our elected officials that we have to do more to protect the kids. And we then have kids like the Metiv’s getting brought home in a police car.
As long as the SOR is accessible to the public, things are only going to get worse for our kids, grandkids and so on. And lets face it, law enforcement loves this level of fear. The more the public is afraid, the less they will be out and about, and the less law enforcement will have to deal with.
One thing that holds true, and the people that use the SOR and swear by it as a great thing are proof. It is true, and I always keep that in the back of my mind whenever talking about issues. A person can be intelligent, but people are stupid.<<
Warren, that's so true, but so sad. What can possibly be done about it, if the government is on board with the sex offender registry, because maintaining it makes the elected officials look good, and the police are on board with it, because it makes their jobs easier by keeping more people inside? I mean, Lenore's book, and the Free-Range movement in general, is a start, but the voice of the sheeple is so much louder sometimes, even if they're wrong.
Emily,
Say for the sake of having numbers to work with. 75 % of the people are for the SOR, for all the moronic reasons they have. And we are in the 25 % that wants to dump it for the waste it is.
Elected officials do not care about right and wrong, good or evil. All they care about is that 75 %. If they keep making the SOR more inclusive and more restrictive they win all those votes. If they strike down the SOR, they lose the next election. It is really that simple.
I applaud the elected ones in California for what they did with their SOR. But it was a career ending move for a lot of them.
@Dan: “Any 19 year old having sex with, or sending pornography to, a 14 year old is a rapist. It’s not even a near thing. There is a huge difference between a 19 year old and a 14 year old. The latter is *incapable* of providing informed consent due to immaturity and the power dynamic”
Sorry, but I find that nonsense. Sending a 14-year-old some pictures at THEIR request is a long way from having sex with a 14yo. Plus, and now I’m talking about this specific case, just imagine for a moment you’re that 14-year-old boy. You’re curious about sex (which 14yo isn’t?), and you’re smack in the middle of the process of discovering/admitting to yourself that you are/might be gay. That’s hard. Doesn’t matter how progressive the people in your life are. It’s makes you different from pretty much everyone around you, such as your friends, who are giggling over pics of (half)naked women. Whom are you going to talk to? Then you get to know, or maybe you knew him already, this young man a couple years older, a couple years further, who knows exactly what you’re going through.
And since you’re 14 and curious, you ask him for dirty pictures of the kind that you (think you) DO like, and he sends some.
How on earth is that rape?? And even if you think the 19yo did something wrong, was it really so horrible that it should be used as a reason to ruin his life?
@Dan:
Really? I think ‘Rape’ might be a bit strong considering that no actual touching can take place over the phone or video-call. What’s the worst he could do over the phone? Live stripping performance over the phone, I guess, while cat-calling.
No, I’m not saying that it’s okay to force a live stripping performance on somebody. I don’t know how you would though because it is possible to block people. If he goes around the block, that is a different matter entirely.
It’s the difference between a burglar walking into an unlocked, open house and helping themself and a burgular who smashes a window to get in. Neither person deserved to be burgled and burgling is still wrong. It was just still stupid to leave the door open.
But the gap between a 19 y/o boy and a 14 y/o girl is closer than you would think. Especially because the girl is the younger one – girls really do mature quicker.
See this for the what: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/science-news/10529134/Girls-really-do-mature-quicker-than-boys-scientists-find.html
See this for some rough ideas on implications for modern technology: https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-athletes-way/201312/scientists-identify-why-girls-often-mature-faster-boys
The ‘standard creepy rule’ comes out to 16.5 being the minimum age he should date. Which may not be too far off if the girl, is, say, almost 15.
“Sending a 14-year-old some pictures at THEIR request is a long way from having sex with a 14yo.”
Sending pictures NOT at their request is a LONG way from forcing sex with them. I have gotten unwanted pictures from men. I do not consider myself raped. I do not feel victimized; annoyed, maybe, but not victimized. I deleted the pictures, blocked the person and went about my day.
When I was a teen, pre-texting days, I saw the occasional unwanted penis. A flasher when I was walking. I guy who thought he was being funny at a party. A different guy who was being an immature jerk at a different party. I do not consider myself raped. I do not consider myself a victim. My life was not scarred. I didn’t need therapy. While I cannot speak about the random flasher, I do know that the two guys from the two parties did not grow to be rapists. They aren’t even particularly jerky anymore.
@Donna: I totally agree. I should have isolated ‘at their request’ a bit more, because it indeed doesn’t matter.
I really like Lenore and am not necessarily an advocate for offender registries but I am disappointed in this. In her linked article, I applaud her initial points about stranger danger and the false sense of security that the register may provide are great. I would consider myself a free range parent and allow my child the freedom to explore. We talk, at length, about safety and what to do and, as a professional in the field of child sexual abuse, we do not talk about stranger danger recognizing that the risk is most likely to happen by someone who is not a stranger.
However, in addition to my clinical work with victims of child trauma, I also have extensive experience working with children and adolescents with “problematic sexual behavior.” With the knowledge I have from that work, I am troubled by her comments about the register in general and about those two cases more specifically. I appreciate (and agree with ) her point that not everyone on the register is a danger to kids but her comments perpetuate some inappropriate (at best) beliefs about the sexual behavior of adolescents and pre-adolescents.
First, no one is on the register for peeing in public. Of the 13 states that could require registration for this, the law is about public indecency. It’s about exposing your genitals in view of a minor or someone who could be offended. Of these 13 states, several have further criteria (like subsequent incidences or even fondling) for registration. Despite this, there is NO ONE on the register for peeing in public.
Second, her two case examples are problematic. 12 is too old to be playing doctor. The other child was more than 3 years younger, also a problem. It doesn’t matter if she forgave him, what he did was inappropriate and illegal. 14 is below the age of consent. This means that 14 is too young to be involved in consensual sexual activities (even requesting/receiving porn). The person was 19, an adult, by the law. It doesn’t matter that they are gay. If the 14 year old have been a girl, I suspect there’d be a different response from people. And, this 19 year old had a previous sexual encounter with another 14 year old. It doesn’t matter that it was once. I’m not saying these two men SHOULD be on the register. I have not personally assessed either nor have I read the investigation files or their professional risk assessments, but I suspect neither has Lenore.
I have a number of problems with the sex offender register. I don’t agree with it, on many levels. And, I don’t necessarily believe in labeling teenagers who commit offenses as “sex offenders” (professionally, I’d use the term “adolescent with harmful sexual behavior”), but Lenore’s argument against the register by minimizing these two individuals’ sexual behavior as teens is appalling. This article may be published under the guise of being about not being lured into a false sense of security for your kids, but in reality this is a (thinly) veiled attack on the sex offender register. While such an attack may be warranted, basing it on such misinformed arguments is seriously disappointing.
People do need a 2nd chance and the video does tell of difficulties for these individuals whose cases were really not that severe and even blown out of proportion but we do need to be aware that sexual offenders often are repeat offenders. We shouldn’t scare our children but it is a parents job protect and warn our children. It is naive to think that there aren’t adults who do prey on the innocent trust of children.