Let's get the biggest bang for our sexual offense prevention dollar

From North Carolina comes this all-too-familiar story: Law enforcement is patting itself on the back for "tracking" those on the sex offender registry. In the typical it's-a-dirty-job-but-somebody's-got-to-do-it style of reporting, the journalist lauds Investigator J. Moore and the other two in the sex offender unit for spending all of their working hours verifying that Wake County's 800 registered sex offenders are where they are supposed to be. I guess when they finish with them all, they start over.

Congratulations, Mr. Moore, et al: it would appear that you are truly doing your share to keep people safe, but let's just look at the science: A Dept. of Justice study of all released sexual offenders in 1994, almost 10,000 persons, shows that 96.5% did not recidivate. 3.5% were convicted for committing another sexual crime.

Since child victims are normally the greatest concern with this issue, I have tried to find a study giving some indication of what percentage of sexually molested children were victims of repeat offenders. It appears those studies haven't been done. Instead, I find statements by law enforcement personnel that in years of dealing with child sexual abuse cases, not one, or maybe one or two out of hundreds, was committed by a repeat offender.

What I find are studies showing that virtually all of those who sexually abuse children, as high as over 98% for young children, are those close to the children in their everyday lives and people highly unlikely to be on a sex offender registry. And what I find is that, as horrible as it is, sexual abuse of children accounts for only 7.6% of the abuse that children suffer, almost always at the hands of those who claim to love them.

It would appear that, no matter how you slice it, the resources expended in “tracking” this specific category of individual, even if it actually prevented crime, are only addressing the tiniest percentage of the problem. How much is being expended on fact-based education and prevention initiatives that are shown to actually reduce the other 98-or-higher-percentage of child sexual abuse? How much is being expended on effective rehabilitative and re-entry initiatives for former offenders, things shown to bring down the already extremely low re-offense rate? How much is being expended on initiatives to reduce the other 92.4% of non-sexual violence and abuse of children as well as that of vulnerable adults? 

I wonder if the answer would show a concern for public protection that is in concert with the facts, or if it would show a topic that captures the public's imagination and earns public officials kudos for keeping children safe even though it falls far, far short of that noble goal.

Source image 1: Pub. 2003; "Recidivism of sex offenders released from prison in 1994" (NCJ198281)

Source image 2: Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Statistical Briefing Book 2008

Source image 3: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and    Families, Administration on Children, Youth and Families,Children’s Bureau.(2010).Child Maltreatment 2009. http://www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/cb/stats_research/index.htm#can

Do sentenced sex offenders deserve special mistreatment in prison?

Closing our eyes to prisoner abuse must stop

Prisons are not supposed to be fun or pleasant. They are designed for restrictions and punishment intended to bring about rehabilitation.

They are not intended to facilitate, even encourage, vigilante activities against those whom other prisoners choose to mistreat.

Men in prison for convictions involving sexual offenses are often considered “fair game” for mistreatment and violence, and all too often prison personnel appear to turn a blind eye to this.

Speculation is already dominating the reports of Ben McCormick’s conviction for child pornography and what will await him if he ends up behind bars. The irony in the situation is that, while a reporter for A Current Affair, McCormick was instrumental in exposing sit-com star Robert Hughes and for Hughes’ subsequent trial, conviction, and incarceration for child sexual abuse. 

Reports of the mistreatment visited upon Hughes are only exceeded by the speculation that the same fate or worse awaits McCormick if he is imprisoned. Reporters euphemistically speak of the “prison welcome” given to Hughes, a welcome in which inmates hurled at him their own feces and urine that they had saved up in milk cartons the first time he entered the prison yard.

Were there guards and other prison personnel who knew the inmates were hoarding their bodily wastes for this purpose? No one is even asking the question. And while this treatment is mild compared to the sexual violence, rapes, and murders that those convicted of sexual crimes fall victim to behind bars, no one is asking those questions either.

There are no statistics. No one knows how many instances of sexual violence prisoners are subjected to. It is not a horror that is visited only upon those convicted of sexual crimes, but they are without a doubt singled out especially for such treatment.

And what of beatings, of maimings, of murders? Prison is a violent place. People in prison are violent people. These things are bound to happen. As far as those who commit sexual crimes receiving more than their “fair share” of such treatment, it is “jail-house justice.” Even other criminals won’t “tolerate” those who sexually abuse children. It’s bound to happen.

But it should not happen because those who should and could prevent it are closing their eyes and tacitly enabling it to happen.

Those who harm others should be punished. The punishment should not put them in positions where others who are also being punished feel free to turn a prison sentence into a sentence of torture or a sentence of death. Those who do that are proving their criminality yet again.

And also earning the title of criminals are the prison officials who shut their eyes. Their refusal to see does not excuse them from their culpability. We must demand that they be held accountable.

What drives Ron Book?

 I watched the film Untouchable through live streaming as it was shown at the RSOL National Conference that has just concluded in Atlanta, Georgia.

This film could well have been named, “Portrait of a bitter, angry man.”

Ron Book’s daughter Lauren was sexually assaulted by a nanny the family had hired for Lauren. The abuse went on for many years. She kept Lauren from revealing the truth to her parents through threats and intimidation.

Of course he was angry to learn the truth – devastated, actually. Any parent would be. Of course he is bitter that his little girl suffered pain and horror for so many years.

Rob Book, as an outlet for his anger and his bitterness, has made himself a juggernaut whose purpose is to destroy every sex offender in the state. Involved even then in Florida’s political scene, he has become arguably one of the most powerful men in the state.

He is responsible for legislation that created the Julia Tuttle Bridge scandal. He is almost single-handedly responsible for law after law whose sole purposes are to punish everyone on the Florida sex offer registry to the furthest degree possible. He openly and proudly announced that Florida was

“scorched earth” to any registered sex offender.

He revealed that he is closely watching the progress of Lauren’s abuser toward a release date and that he will be there to hound her every second he can.

He cites unrealistically high sexual recidivism rates and makes outlandish statements about the surety of registrants to commit new crimes and their extreme danger to society. When questioned about research study after research study all showing the opposite of everything he has said, he brushes it aside like an annoying gnat. All lies, he said, trumped up figures, nonsense.

It is not until the last few minutes of the film that another motive for all of his actions, all of his hatred, emerges. He is seated behind his desk, and an off-camera interviewer asks him which, if any, of all the laws on Florida’s books today, laws whose existence he is responsible for, would have, had they existed years ago, saved Lauren.

He stumbles only a little when he says no, most likely none of them would have made a difference. None would have protected Lauren from her abuser. And then he says something remarkable.

He says, stumbling a bit more, that the only thing that would have saved her is if he and her mother had, when she was young, educated her about what to do in such a situation. Told her that she could tell them anything. Told her that secrets are not forever. Told her what to say to them, her parents, if anyone hurt her or scared her. He said that she might not have told them the first time it happened, or maybe not even the second, but that he is sure she would have told them soon -- if only they had taught her that she could.

And with those words, the truth about what motivates Ron Book was revealed. Yes, he is angry. And bitter. And vengeful. But that is not what drives him.

What drives him is guilt.

Punishment does not equal prevention

How wonderful that Mr. Gary Greenburg, a wealthy New York businessman, is concerned about the young victims of child sexual abuse and wants to help. He has offered $100, 000 dollars toward that end.

That is a lot of money.

The first thing that comes to mind when reading this is an appeal made many months ago by a coalition that includes sexual assault prevention and victims’ groups. The National Coalition to Prevent Child Abuse and Exploitation called for the creation of a stable funding stream dedicated to preventing child sexual abuse and exploitation. The group asked for that funding to equal at least one percent of the millions currently spent on “after-the-fact” responses like sex registries and civil commitment. As far as I know, the group is still waiting for a response. Mr. Greenburg’s pledge would surely be a healthy beginning toward that.

A second real possibility is using the money to help establish a Circles of Support and Accountability program in New York. First begun in Canada in 1994 in the Mennonite community, these programs have gained great credibility in England and in parts of the United States. The most recent success story comes from Vermont, where preliminary results of a Circles program begun there in 2005 is seeing a reduction of 86% in the recidivism of convicted sex offenders.  

While the Circles programs are invaluable in aiding the rehabilitation and reentry of former offenders, which also serves public safety, to actually make inroads against child sexual abuse requires addressing the problem where it is occurring.

The research is very clear on this subject. First time offenders, not those already registered for a previous offense, commit the vast majority of all sexual crime. This is even truer for the sexual abuse of children and minors. Except for a tiny percentage – and an even more minute percentage are repeat offenders -- they are victimized by those in their lives, i.e., their family members, their peers, and their authority figures. Any attempts to effect a change in this scenario with a focus on those who have already committed offenses will fail; indeed, it is failing every day.

Dedicated and comprehensive programs of education and prevention are a large part of the answer. A bill called Erin’s Law is one such program that holds promise. Begun by a young woman, Erin Merryn, who, like Mr. Greenburg, was sexually abused as a child, the bill requires an age appropriate curriculum in public schools for both faculty and students. Its focus is recognizing child sexual abuse and the appropriate measures to be taken. It has already been adopted in 26 states. 

Other valuable programs, such as Stop It Now and SAEN – Sexual Abuse Ends Now -- focus on utilizing what research and science tell us about sexual offending to confront the problem of child sexual abuse.

Mr. Greenburg’s many dollars would almost certainly be welcomed by any of these programs and would certainly meet his goal of helping child sexual assault victims and preventing new ones.

What will not help is his intended campaign against legislators in New York who are questioning the efficacy of harsher and stricter laws and punishments against those who commit sexual offenses. Recent years have seen ever-increasing harshness in penalties and sentencing. Children are still being molested. While sentences appropriate to the crime committed are necessary, we should not fool ourselves. These do very little to deter the continuing sexual abuse of children committed overwhelmingly by those never arrested or charged with a sex crime.

Punishment is not prevention, and overly harsh punishment is not focused on victims or prevention but rather on vengeance.

Like Mr. Greenburg, all decent people want an end to the sexual abuse of children. To attain that goal, we must focus on the children and the situations in which they are being abused.

                    

                        

Sex offenders, transgender folk, and public toilets

I thought I was through writing about this transgender/bathroom issue when I wrote “Is Target’s bathroom policy an open door to sex offenders?” I’m really sick of the whole silly thing. The expression “tempest in a teapot” surely was penned for situations such as this. However, two recurring themes in pieces written on the issue are driving me to the keyboard again.

One is the identification of many who are protesting the loudest about the matter as “devout Christians” or “fundamentalist Christians.” I myself am a devout Christian, by some standards meeting the criteria for the fundamentalist label, and I am almost embarrassed to admit it in light of the ignorance, vitriol, and downright silliness displayed by these protesters.

My strongest ire, however, centers around statements such as this one from – what else – the Christian Post:

“…with one of the protesters, a mother of four, warning that there are as many as 209 registered sex offenders within a 5 mile radius of that particular [Target] store. ‘With Target's new policy, it's unverifiable. You cannot verify a person's intent, so these sexual predators will use these policies to gain access into the women's restroom, making it a dangerous place for women and children,’ said Carrie Peterson.”

Where do I begin? I guess first with this woman’s belief that all on the registry -- regardless of the offense committed, discounting that a few of them were wrongly accused and convicted, ignoring that the vast majority have been in the community, many for years, without committing a second sexual offense – are predators.

This is one of the most insidious dangers of the public registry. The mere presence of a name on it cries to the public, “Watch out; I am a menace; I will do you harm!” when very, very seldom is that accurate.

And as ignorant and as lacking in any evidence whatsoever is her assumption that registrants will put on dresses, wigs, lipstick, and heels and infiltrate women’s public toilets in order to molest those in there.

We all want to keep children safe, but there is no evidence whatsoever that trans people pose any sexual harm to children or that registered citizens dress up as the opposite sex in order to commit crimes in public bathrooms. Children are far, far more likely to be molested by those close to them in their everyday lives and in their own homes or other places they regularly frequent than by anyone they don’t know, regardless of their gender identity, in a public place.

So if you feel compelled by God to protest this or similar bathroom policies, please make it clear that you do not speak for all persons of faith, and for crying out loud, do a little research and learn a few facts.

Predator panic -- it might get worse, but it couldn't get sillier

Imagine this. You are at a Monster Jam event, and you see a booth selling pink, fuzzy toy trucks. You buy one for your little girl, and then you find out -- how? -- that the heart pattern on the toy is a secret symbol to pedophiles, and that your purchase has just marked your child, according to channel 8 in Florida, as one "ready to be traded for sex" to a pedophile who has a preference for girls.

Whaaaat????

My mind was instantly flooded with questions: How do the pedophiles match up with the pink-truck-owning children? Scour neighborhoods looking for the trucks lying in a yard or clutched in the hands of the ill-fated child? And what if the parent isn't home and a baby-sitter is? Will the pedophile make an appointment to come  back when the parent is home to complete the sale, or is the baby-sitter authorized to do so? Or are they staked out at the venues that are selling the toys and swoop in right then to complete the transaction?  What if a parent unconcerned with the whole color-gender thing bought the pink truck with the heart for his son? Would the pedophile union sue for false representation when a member went to claim his girl-child and instead was given a boy?

In what I suppose is a desperate attempt to introduce some note of authenticity into this fantasy, channel 8 interviews a detective with the cyber crimes unit at the Pasco Sheriffs' Dept. He speaks of the pedophiles he "busts" and the horrors he sees of children raped and tortured on a daily basis and how what keeps him going is protecting children and putting the bad guys away.

And there goes my crazy mind again. What does anything he is saying have to do with heart symbols on stuffed toy trucks?

And then the company who makes the toys, the same company who owns the Monster Jam franchise, is asked about the symbol, and they freak out, avow all innocence in this nefarious plot -- give me time; I'll figure out how it works -- and recall the trucks.

Again -- whaaat???

Now I have a couple of serious questions. Did channel 8 ask anyone -- the cyber crimes detective, any other police department, the FBI, anyone -- approximately how many children have fallen victim to the pink truck caper and have been sold to pedophile rings? Surely the sale of the toys can be traced to the duplicitous parents; are any of their little girls "missing"? Has an investigation been launched? The toy manufacturer said they haven't been contacted by anyone in law enforcement. Huh? They are serving as a conduit between those who want to buy children and those who are selling them, and law enforcement doesn't even contact them?

And, finally, how long will it be before the toy manufacturer / Monster Jam promoter realizes what insanity this is and sues everyone involved for slander, loss of income, and damage to their reputation?

No, Senator Grassley, the Adam Walsh Act does NOT need to be re-authorized

Mr. Grassley, like you, we grieve with families of children who are victimized and abused, and we especially grieve that virtually all of this type of crime is committed by the family members and others close to their young victims. Like you, we would like to see a strong commitment to keeping our nation’s children safe.

Unlike you, however, we have seen no evidence of this commitment for the past twenty-five years. Such a commitment must be based on solid research, on facts and evidence, and on the reality of both child sexual abuse and of those who are the abusers.

The Adam Walsh Act is ill-conceived legislation, contraindicated by empirical evidence, which fails to address the crime of child sexual abuse because it does not target those who commit child sexual abuse.

The rhetoric and the reality of the AWA are light years apart. The rhetoric says the AWA “was enacted in response to multiple, notorious cases involving children who had been targeted by adult criminals, many of them repeat sex offenders.” The reality is that the cases that drove the legislation are the rarest of rare crimes. They are crimes of murder. They are crimes that would not have been prevented by the AWA or by a thousand sex offender registries.

The reality is that the crime that set John Walsh upon his crusade, the murder of his son, was not committed by a person on the sex offender registry at all.

The reality is that the 800,000 persons on sex offender registries across the nation -- ranging in age, according to the various registries, from nine years old to well over a hundred – have not killed anyone. The reality is that the vast majority of them are not repeat offenders but one-time offenders who, after completion of their sentences, live in our communities without ever committing another offense.

The reality is that the many, many millions of dollars and many millions of law-enforcement hours expended in public notification and public registration of those who have committed sexual crimes do not advance public safety.  A huge and growing body of evidence attests that they do not affect the rate of first time sexual offenses, of repeat offenses, or of child sexual offenses. 

And so we grieve also, Mr. Grassley.

We grieve that our priorities have become focused on ineffective punishments rather than prevention programs. Last January, a coalition including both sexual assault prevention and victims’ groups called for the creation of a stable funding stream dedicated to preventing child sexual abuse and exploitation. The group asked for funding to equal at least one percent – ONE percent! -- of the millions currently spent on “after-the-fact” responses like sex registries and civil commitment. They are still waiting.

We, like you, grieve for Jetseta and Dru and Megan. We also grieve for other rare cases of children falling victims to repeat offenders, those in more recent years who were not “saved” by the registry or the AWA, those like Jaycee and Chelsea and Cherish.

And we grieve for the deaths of those who were murdered for no reason other than that they were on a public registry, targeted and slaughtered for an offense long ago paid for, such as were Gary and Jerry and Jeremy and his wife Christine, killed just because she was with him when vigilante murderers found him, and Hugh Edwards, who wasn’t even on the registry but was mistaken for someone who was.

We grieve for the registrants who have paid for their crimes and want nothing more than to be allowed to live law-abiding lives but cannot find a job or even a place to live. We grieve for their families, especially their children, who suffer ostracism and ridicule and abuse due to the crimes of their parents.

We grieve especially for the children of continuing and new sexual abuse who will grow up to know that their society chose to ignore their plight, invisible and easy to ignore, in favor of a very public and popular demand for policies and laws and legislation that wasted millions and accomplished nothing.

And we grieve for that society, which is OUR society, and for what it has become.

This is how to pass a bill with no facts to support it

The discussion in the U.S. House pertinent to International Megan's Law has ended with a vote to pass the resolution under suspension of the rules. It will now go to the President for his signature.

Ten legislators spoke in favor of the bill. They all threw out a lot of numbers, sometimes in conflict with each other, all designed to draw conclusions that cannot be concluded with any degree of logic.

Remember that the bill is named International Megan's Law to Prevent Child Exploitation and Other Sexual Crimes Through Advanced Notification of Traveling Sex Offenders. Child exploitation and other sexual crimes. Sexual crimes. Traveling sex offenders. Keep that in mind.

One legislator said, "There are tens of millions of victims of human trafficking," and another said, with somewhat less hyperbole, "There have been more than twenty million victims of human trafficking."

These are the kinds of figures that are thrown out, totally unverified but never challenged, but the actual point is that the term "human trafficking" conflates individuals trafficked for the purpose of labor and those trafficked for the purpose of sexual exploitation. Examination into the issue suggests that the far greater number is for labor, and those individuals are more likely to be adults than children. Forced labor, amounting to slavery, is horrendous, but is that what those legislators hearing the impassioned speeches of their colleagues thought of? No. They thought of little girls being kidnapped, raped, and prostituted. They thought of little girls like Megan Kanka because Megan's tragedy was recounted for them, if not by every one of the ten speakers, certainly by the majority of them.

And that is another problem. Megan's killer was not a "traveling sex offender." Megan was not trafficked to the human sex trade industry. As horrific as Megan's death was, there is not one syllable or one comma in HR 515 that would have prevented what happened to her. There is no parallel to be made except--oh yeah--she was killed by someone on the registry, and that point was pushed by the speakers for the bill also.

Nothing was said to suggest that the individuals responsible for all of this raping and exploiting were on the registry. It did not need to be said. That was nevertheless the message received because, if the purpose of the bill is to stop these things from happening, and the bill targets those on the registry, then those committing the acts must be those on the registry, just as Megan's killer was.

One speaker said that, in a given time period, passports had been issued to 2,000 registered sex offenders. That may well be true. Another, also speaking of a specific time period, said, "4,500 registered sex offenders received passports; that is unacceptable." Unacceptable? Unacceptable that 4,500 American citizens, for a myriad of reasons, chose to apply for and receive an American passport? Nothing was said to suggest that any of those 2,000 or any of those 4,500 used the passport to facilitate a sexual crime against a child--or any crime against anyone. But is that the message sent and received? Of course it was. If the purpose of the bill is to prevent these things from happening....

And so it passed. If all that had gone before had not been enough to secure its passage, the last, closing remark would surely have done so. "This will save children's lives."

Again, totally lacking in evidence, but a statement that will be heartily embraced and received and repeated as though it were gospel truth.

A new name and a new law claiming to fight child sex abuse, and guess what? THIS one will work!

We could say the names in our sleep—Megan’s Law; the Adam Walsh Act; Polly Klass; Jessica’s Law; Lauren Book; Chelsea’s Law; Laura Ahearn; and so many others.

They all mark milestones for laws and policies and mandates and programs that claim to fight child sexual abuse. More than one has launched the major participant to fame, fortune, or a political stepping-stone. They all claim to be pro-victim—but they aren’t. They are pro-registry. They are pro-public notification. They are pro-lifetime punishment for those who have committed any one of over 200 offenses, from the mildest possible to the most horrific, that triggers sex offender registration.

None of them are supported by evidence or empirical data. None of them focus on victims.

Enter Erin’s Law.

Erin Merryn is not involved in self-promoting activities. She does not appear to seek fame or power. She isn’t running for political office. She has limited her activism and her advocacy, born out of her own childhood abuse, to writing books and to lobbying legislators about the need for research-based sexual molestation prevention programs in public schools.

This is from her website:  

 After Erin introduced the legislation in her home state of Illinois, the bill was named “Erin’s Law” after her by legislators and it has caught on nationwide. “Erin’s Law” requires that all public schools in each state implement a prevention-oriented child sexual abuse program which teaches:

• Students in grades pre-K – 12th grade, age-appropriate techniques to recognize child sexual abuse and tell a trusted adult
• School personnel all about child sexual abuse
• Parents & guardians the warning signs of child sexual abuse, plus needed assistance, referral or resource information to support sexually abused children and their families

 I have scoured the site. I have found zero references to the sex offense registry. As far as I am able to determine, this is a totally victim-focused program. It is an education and prevention program, not a punishment program or a revenge-motivated program.

There are one or two statistics used on the site that I find contrary to research studies, but I can forgive that, and I will attempt to communicate with Erin about those things.

What I find possibly the most significant is that in five years, 26 state legislatures have passed Erin’s Law, and a significant number more are considering it. The states are underwriting the expenses themselves. They are receiving no help from the federal government.

Compare that to the states—is it 17?—who have adopted the Adam Walsh Act in nine years, and many of those only through coercion and federal help and with many reservations and reluctances and with some states poised to repeal it.

People who commit crime should be appropriately punished. Then everything possible should be done to foster rehabilitation and re-connection to a healthy lifestyle and a law-abiding community.

Making a significant difference in the number of children who are sexually abused will only be effected through education and prevention, and of every “law” named after a victim, Erin’s Law is the only one of which I am aware that is putting the total focus in the right place.

Open letter to Laura Ahearn and Parents for Megan’s Law

Your program is advertised as an advocacy for children focused on preventing sexual abuse.

Yet this, from your site, tells a very different story: “Most parents and community members believe that they are doing everything they can to protect children from sexual predators but the disturbing reality is that registered sex offenders are obtaining employment and volunteer positions across the country where they can have unfettered access to children.”

This tells me that your focus is on people who have already committed a sexual crime and have served or are in the process of serving their court-ordered sentences. Your very name, Megan's Law--synonymous with public notification which often translates into public persecution--makes this focus crystal clear.

Why? Statistics and studies tell us that virtually all children who are sexually abused are not random victims of offenders already registered. They are overwhelmingly victims of those in their lives with whom they are comfortable: their family members, their peers—fully a third of those who molest children are themselves children and juveniles—and their authority figures.

Studies show that if we wish to work toward the goal of protecting children, we must focus on the children; we must change our focus to a victim-oriented one, one that stresses prevention through education, awareness, and empowerment programs.

And yet here you are again--or rather, still--"standing with" self-serving politicians "to advocate for stronger sex offender laws."

Why?

This is what you are encouraging and promoting:

Every suggestion that sexual harm to children will be prevented by closely monitoring all on the registry obscures the fact that virtually all such perpetrators are not on the registry.

Every dollar spent registering, tracking, monitoring, and legislating against registered citizens is a dollar not spent educating and empowering parents and victims against the overwhelmingly greater threat.

Every dollar spent impeding registered citizens in their goals of rehabilitation and second chances is a dollar not spent working toward prevention of child sexual abuse.

Every minute focused on those on the registry is a minute not focused on those who are victims of sexual abuse in their own homes and other places in their everyday lives.

Again I ask--Why?

To Save One Child--Again

It has happened again. An airplane has crashed, killing everyone on board, including quite a few children. This has happened too many times in the past and must not be allowed to continue. Clearly

it is time to ban all air flights and destroy all airplanes. Appropriate legislation will need to be proposed and passed, but if it saves one child, it will be worth it.

Furthermore, with this latest incident and the innocent lives that have been lost on everyone’s mind, we should include automobiles as well. Statistics show that more children’s lives are lost in car accidents than plane accidents, so a complete outlawing of automobiles should have occurred long ago. Think of the children that would still be alive today had that been done.

And guns—that most sacred of subjects; I can hear the yelling about constitutional rights, and logically I agree. I am a strong supporter of our Constitution and the rights and protection it offers, but this has moved beyond that. We simply must be willing to sacrifice some of our rights in order to protect our children.

Knives should be included, and swimming pools, and even bathtubs. How many precious lives are lost yearly by drowning?

More children die each year by any one of these methods, many, many more, than are killed or even harmed by someone on a sex offender registry. Yet the notion of eliminating travel by air or auto had those of you who thought I might be even half serious shaking your heads in disbelief.

Yet let a legislator or any other individual suggest making something else illegal for those on the registry in order to save one child, and most of America jumps on it even though research and law enforcement show clearly that such legislation is a waste of resources because it does not address the very real issue of child sexual abuse. Studies show that approximately 96% of newly reported sexual crime is committed by those not already registered for a previous offense. Law enforcement knows that virtually all sexual crime against children is committed by those in the children’s lives in close and trusted positions, namely: 1) relatives; 2) authority figures; 3) peers.

Why are we so willing to put our children at risk by putting them in cars and planes, by housing them in proximity to guns and knives and sometimes killing them ourselves with those same instruments, yet when it comes to reforming a system that offers nothing in the way of protection against sexual harm to them, we defend that system with every breath in our bodies? We close our eyes and cheer on the laws that blind us to the truth and turn us in the wrong direction, and in so doing, we are taking the greatest risk of all.

I owe thanks to Larry for giving me the idea for this post. Thanks, Larry.

Are We Right to Encourage Hatred, Violence, Rape Against Sex Offenders?

Close your eyes and remember the worst thing that ever happened to you. Maybe you lost a loved one in a tragedy. Maybe you suffered a horrible accident that left you paralyzed or disabled. Or maybe you are one of the more fortunate ones, and the loss of an expensive diamond ring or the break-up with a boyfriend or girlfriend is the worst you have experienced.

Or maybe you are like Diena Thompson and suffered the almost unimaginable—the violent death of a precious child at the hands of a rapist and murderer. What kind of revenge would you have wished on her killer? What type of payback would ease your pain a little?

Jarred Harrell is right where he belongs, in prison for life for the brutal murder of little Somer in late 2009. Would that be enough for you, or would you want more payback, more revenge?

The house where Jarred had lived and Somer was murdered had fallen into disrepair and long been condemned. Earlier this month, it was burned to the ground as part of a fire-training exercise by the Orange Park, Florida, fire department—and Diena Thompson. She participated with glee, her smile described as “cathartic” by a journalist, and, according to his interview, she felt delight in the act, proclaiming herself “the big, bad wolf this time.”

I am sure there is not a one of us who does not understand her feelings.

The media is making much of this, and beyond the local level. Is this wrong? If so, why?

One answer is found in the comments posted to the comment board of one article. They range from, “He [Harrell] should have been in it,” to, “Maybe he will be getting raped for life where he is. Wouldn't that make you feel better? And when he is 80 and some young 25 y/o comes in and rapes him and the guards ignore his screams, that will be part of justice.”  

No, that will be part of something that has no place in justice. That is part of vigilantism. That is as much a part of evil as that which Jarred Harrell committed. What irony it is that, in a protest against sexual violence, one wishes for more sexual violence to be committed.

The journalist who wrote that article and played up the joy that Diena experienced in her metaphoric act of vengeance knew that comments would be of that nature, as did the media outlet that published it, as did other journalists and outlets that wrote and published like stories, and they are many.

The harm is more than just giving vigilantes a platform from which to spew their hatred, ignorance, and violence. There are, according to fairly difficult-to-gather figures, somewhere over 700,000 men, women, and children registered as sex offenders in our nation. A scant handful have come near the atrocities that Harrell visited upon Somer, but the vigilante mentality is unable to process that.  To those determined to hate, stories such as this are all of the justification they require to continue the hatred, to refuse to believe the facts, to demand with every opportunity the harshest possible consequences to everyone on the registry because, you see, they all molested children; they are all rapists and destroyers of innocent young lives, and if they haven’t murdered yet, well, just give them time because they will all do it again and will probably kill their next victims.

They are undeterred by the facts that give lie to these spurious statements.

So the questions remain: Are we right to encourage hate and violence against sex offenders? Does it really help those in pain heal? And the biggest question of all, in a paraphrase of an old cliche: Does an eye-for-an-eye make the world a safer, better place to live—or just a blind one? Or, in this case, a raped one? 

A Result of Sex Offender “Stranger Danger” Nobody Saw Coming

The entire sex offender registry—indeed, the entire sex offender industry—is built around the concept of “stranger danger,” the idea that children are at high risk of sexual assault from people they do not know, strangers, people who have already sexually offended and are out there just waiting to grab a random kid and do it again. Nothing will produce spasms of eye-rolling and unintelligible

sounds of disgust and derision in the well informed as will the term “stranger danger.”

The greatest part of the American citizenry supports the public sex offender registry. And yet when anyone says that those most likely to sexually abuse a child are those the child knows, those who aren’t on the registry but rather are close to the child in his everyday life, often family members, everyone within hearing distance nods his or her head in agreement. They do know this. It has been written in article after article, talked about ad nauseam by television talk show hosts and pop psychologists, and verified by any personal knowledge they have on the subject. Yet still they support the public sex offender registry.

Three members of a family and their accomplice are in jail because of stranger danger. They apparently had not read the articles or seen the talk shows, and when the mother of a six-year-old child in Missouri felt her son was too friendly and nice to strangers, to people he didn’t know, thus increasing his risk of becoming a victim, the boy’s grandmother and aunt agreed. So they did what any loving family would do; they decided to teach him a lesson.

They enlisted the help of a co-worker of the boy’s aunt who was ready and willing to play the part of Mr. Stranger Danger himself, and his performance was truly Oscar-worthy. He lured the little boy into his pickup as he got off the school bus. There the stranger from Hell proceeded to tie his hands and feet together; he told the terrified child he would not see his mother again; he threatened him with being “nailed to a wall.” He threatened him by waving a gun at him and covered his face with his jacket so that he could not see.

In this condition—bound, vision obscured, terrified and sobbing—he was carried into the basement of his own home. There he had his pants removed and was told he would become a sex slave. This surely begs the question of what a six-year-old child knows about being a sex slave. After four hours in captivity and terror, he was released and told to go upstairs to his mother. There he was lectured by his family about—you got it—stranger danger. This kid would have been safer with almost any stranger I could drag in off the street than he was with his family members.

At school the next day, he disclosed his ordeal to school authorities. The four adults were arrested, and the little six year old victim of the unfathomable ignorance and cruelty of the people who should have protected him from ignorance and cruelty was placed in protective custody and is by now most likely with a foster family.

What will happen to this family and to this child is anybody’s guess; all we can do is keep the child in our thoughts and prayers.

And, lest the irony has escaped anyone, this case proves that, in spite of the myths that persist about bogeymen hiding in the bushes, strangers that will pounce without notice, once again the true bogeymen, the ones so much more likely to bring fear and pain and horror to children, are those close to them in their everyday lives. 

Really--the nerve of some people!

~~by Shelly Stow

The headline says it all: "Freed Texas day care owners still want exoneration."

I mean, they spent only 20 plus years in prison for a crime that never happened, but they are free now. Isn't that enough?

They--Fran and Dan Keller--ran a day-care facility in the 1980s. They were charged with "child abuse involving satanic rituals." Sound familiar? And yes, this one came complete with "recovered memories" also. "... therapists testified that they helped three children recover memories of satanic rituals and sexual abuse at an Austin preschool the Kellers operated."

But they weren't convicted solely on the testimony of the therapists, goodness me, no. There was physical evidence too. "During their trial, the only physical evidence came from an emergency room doctor who testified that internal lacerations on one child were evidence of abuse."

And that was enough for a jury of their peers to find them guilty of the charges and sentence them to 48 years in prison, of which they served 21. They maintained their innocence for every day of those 21 years, but hey, doesn't everybody who goes to prison say they are innocent?

In 2013, Dr. Michael Mouw, the emergency room doctor whose testimony was instrumental in the guilty verdict, said, according to official court records, that "...what he thought were lacerations were actually normal physiology." Based on that, the Travis County prosecutors agreed that "...the case's evidence was faulty..." and the Kellers were released on bond a year ago.

And now they have the audacity to ask that their convictions be thrown out.

Well of course the Travis County Prosecutors' Office isn't about to do that. You just can't go around proclaiming people innocent once they have been found guilty in a court of law, especially not on a charge of sexually molesting children, not without "... new evidence that unquestionably establishes innocence — something like an ironclad alibi or DNA proof."

What a shame that the burden of proof hadn't been that high in order to find them guilty.

They have lost 21 years of their lives in prison for something they did not do, something that never happened. They were divorced in prison, so they have lost more than the years. There will be those--probably many--who will continue to believe they were guilty--the "Where there's smoke, there's fire" principle.

I pray I am wrong, but I do not believe they will win this. They have been told they must prove their innocence. How do you prove that you are innocent of doing something that didn't happen? This will be decided by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, a group of judges who "typically takes a skeptical view toward overturning jury verdicts. The court will be guided by the recommendations of Senior District Judge Wilford Flowers, who presided over the Kellers' 1992 trial and their recent appeals — and who has already twice ruled that they had failed to prove their innocence."

I am not a jurist nor an attorney; I have in the past described myself as someone who can't read legalese without my eyes rolling back in my head, but it seems to me, in my simple, ignorant, non-legal mind, that the state of Texas failed in 1992 to meet its burden of proof in finding them guilty.

Shouldn't that be enough for an exoneration?

Lions in Cages....

I love metaphors. They help words paint pictures; they make meanings clearer; they are usually beautiful and always descriptive.

I read one this morning that, while very descriptive, misses the mark quite a bit on beautiful. It does, however, get high points for misleading, inflammatory, and downright sickening.

It was used in an on-line article that, not surprisingly, is very well written. The editorial is not attributed, but whoever wrote it was paying attention in journalism school. It has a very effective “hook”—the lead-in. It follows standard usage and punctuation rules. The vocabulary level is above average, and it makes good use of the well-chosen words.

This writer, however, fails in one lesson that surely is still stressed in journalism school: even in editorials and opinion pieces, stick to the truth. This writer, again not surprisingly, is clever. The untruth is presented in the metaphor. It is therefore implied, not directly stated and is all the more effective—and misleading, inflammatory, and sickening--due to that fact.

The metaphor, in words and graphic, implies that all who are listed on a sex offender registry are dangerous—and not merely dangerous but wild-animal dangerous, raging wild lions that need to be caged and constantly monitored, even in the cages, to keep them from terrorizing the community.

This is a lie, and it is no less a lie for being clothed in figurative language and vicious-appearing cartoon-figure graphics.

I know it is a lie from personal experience. I know many on the registry. They are good husbands and fathers, good neighbors and employees and employers and fellow church members. They are good citizens and good people. They are as far from being dangerous as I am from qualifying for the Olympics.

A large volume of literature says it is a lie.

The Federal Probation Journal, Volume 74, Number 3, in an analysis of the Kentucky Prison System specifically, a study titled, “Evaluation of Kentucky's Early Inmate Release Initiative: Sentence Commutations, Public Safety and Recidivism,” has this to say:

THE PRISON SYSTEM is one of the most expensive and largest public systems in the nation….

…41.2 percent of drug offenders returned to prison are reincarcerated for a subsequent drug offense, 31.2 percent of reincarcerated public order offenders are reincarcerated for another public order offense, 21.6 percent of violent offenders returned to prison are returned for a subsequent violent offense, and only 2.5 percent of reincarcerated rapists are returned to prison for a subsequent rape….

 Hmmm; only 2.5% of rapists are convicted for a rape re-offense.

And, from Sex offense recidivism, risk assessment, and the Adam Walsh Act, a study published by Dr. Jill Levenson at Lynn University in Florida:

According to a study by the U.S. Department of Justice, 5.3% of American sex offenders are rearrested for a new sex crime within three years (Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2003).

Sex offenders are among the least likely criminals to kill their victims (Sample, 2006).

Harris and Hanson (2004) concluded: “Most sexual offenders do not re-offend sexually over time … this finding is contrary to some strongly held beliefs.

Sex offense recidivism rates are much lower than commonly believed. The best estimates suggest that 5-14% of known sex offenders will commit a subsequent sex crime within three to six years, and after 15 years, three-quarters will not have recidivated. These recidivism rates are far lower than those for other types of criminals.

Media attention to child abduction and sexually motivated murder creates a sense of alarm and urgency among parents and often inspires sex crime legislation. Such cases are actually extremely rare; it is estimated that about 100 such events occur in the United States each year (National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, 2005). By comparison,…over 1100 children died in 2002 as a result of physical abuse or neglect at the hands of their own parents or caretakers (Child Welfare League of America, 2003).

Those are the extreme cases. Certainly more than 100 on the registry rise to the level of dangerous and in need of law-enforcement monitoring, but surely that point can be made without resorting to images and comparisons with wild animals in cages. And many, many more than 1,100 children each year suffer abuse and neglect at the hands of their parents or caregivers but stop short of being murdered. In fact, we know for a certainty that virtually all sexually abused children are victims of those parents and caregivers and others close to them in their lives, not of anyone already on a sex offender registry.

However, no one would compare all parents, as a group, to dangerous, ravenous lions that must be caged in order to protect society. It is even less appropriate to suggest that all on the public registry must be so treated.

The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth

On May 20, an editorial was printed in the Keene, New Hampshire's Sentinel. Titled "State's sex-offender registry overreaches,” it says much that is good and grounded in facts.

Its primary thesis is that inclusion on a public sex offender registry is punishment and not merely regulatory. When this scheme was first conceived, it was pronounced to be a regulatory mechanism, and the Supreme Court agreed. Since then, being placed on a public registry has indeed become, increasingly each year, a

death knell for many.

Employers have fired productive workers due to threats of boycotts and, in some cases, vandalism to their property because they employed a sex offender. Many registrants can’t even get hired.

Registrants with children suffer many varied punishments: inability to keep suitable housing in which to raise their children, forced separation from their families due to the housing and a myriad of other issues, having their children terrified by vigilantes vandalizing the home or the family vehicle, and seeing them come home in tears and even bruises from the treatment received at the hands of their peers due to daddy being on the sex offender registry.

Registrants and their family members are indeed targets for all sorts of acts of vigilantism, up to and including murder, as witnessed not only in Maine, as the article points out, but also in Washington State--twice--in California, in South Carolina, and, ironically, in a very suspicious case right there in Keene itself--and these are only the tip of the iceberg.

So--well done, Sentinel.

Until you said, "Given the recidivism rates involved in sexual assault cases, especially those victimizing children, there’s a lot to be said for keeping the public informed of legitimate threats."

Which recidivism rates, Sentinel? Those of the latest study by the Department of Justice showing the re-arrest rate for a second sexual offense by a registrant to be 5.7% and the re-conviction rate to be 3.5%? Or possibly New Hampshire's own  2010 state report of sex offenders returned to prison within five years for a sexual re-offense, as reported by the Citizens for Criminal Justice Reform. "... the 5-year new victim re-offense rate for sex offenders was just 1.2%….

"These low numbers suggests sex offenders respond well to supervision and treatment, and don't commit new sex crimes at the rate the public thinks they do, said Michael Lawlor, Connecticut’s chief of criminal-justice policy."

And as far as those who victimize children, two facts come into play. Children who are sexually abused are
overwhelmingly victims of those in close and trusted positions in their lives, many of them conditions of incest. Studies show that, once these types of offenders are arrested and dealt with in the court system, they have extremely low levels of re-offense, lower than the average lows, and it has nothing to do with "keeping the public informed." These are not the "legitimate threats"; they almost always are correlated with those whose chosen victims are random strangers, and those situations are rare.

Those who advocate for fact-based legislation governing the treatment of those who have sexually offended appreciate the Sentinel's tearing away some of the myths and exposing the facts. We will appreciate it more when all of the facts are revealed.

In defense of the judge who sentenced the man who raped his three year old daughter to probation

From one of the many, many articles and op/eds written about this case: "A Delaware man convicted of raping his three-year-old daughter only faced probation after a state Superior Court judge ruled he 'will not fare well' in prison."              
Those words, "will not fare well" in prison may go down as among the most, if not the most, infamous words ever attributed to a judge. What was the judge thinking, critics ask, and the cynical and even not-so-cynical find ready answers: he was rich, one of the DuPont family heirs; naturally he could afford the best of the best in legal representation; he was initially charged with two counts of second degree child rape, which carry mandatory minimum sentences of ten years each. He was allowed to plead down to a charge that requires no mandatory minimum and enabled the judge to pronounce the sentence of probation with required participation in a sex offender rehabilitation program.

In all criminal justice reforms movements, a common and very valid complaint is “cookie cutter” or "one size fits all" sentencing, usually driven by the aforementioned mandatory minimum sentences, and not enough judicial recognition of individual circumstances or judicial discretion to individualize as warranted. Although ill phrased and highly criticized, this judge's ruling may do exactly what was best for all concerned in this case.

Sexual assault of a child is an awful thing. The younger the child, the more horrible it seems; the fact that it is one’s own child is something that society cringes from and therefore shuts its eyes to. Incest is one of the most frequently charged categories of child sexual abuse. It is also the sub-category that responds the best to therapy and treatment. Therefore, it is the sub-category that, after confrontation, facing up to what one has done, and treatment, yields the very lowest of all low sexual re-offense rates, with some studies showing zero re-offense over lengthy periods of time for incest offenders.

Rather than vilification of a judge who may have just chosen the wrong words to define an otherwise appropriate decision, I would like to see this situation create instead an awareness of the prevalence of the crime and discussion, if not a public outcry, highlighting the need for a comprehensive program of education and prevention in communities and schools in all states. Our present practice of punishing the crime after it has occurred and doing next to nothing to prevent it before it occurs does not work. Some studies show as high as 96% of all new sexual crime is committed by first time–never before charged–offenders. And by far the greatest majority of that is committed by persons known, and not only known but often also trusted and loved, by the victims; and for children under the age of twelve, slightly over half are related to their victims.

This is something that flourishes, and has flourished for millennia, whether we want to admit it or not, in darkness and in secret. It is time to bring it into the light, and the best way to do that is to place the emphasis on treatment and prevention rather than excessive punishment and a lifetime of shaming that harms the victim as much as the offender.

Do we really need new sex offender laws every time a child is killed?

First, we need to get out of the way the accusations, based on the title of this post, that I don't care about the victims. I care about the victims much, much more than those who persist in supporting a system that all but ignores the victims and apparently doesn't care about any victims except those victimized by registered sex offenders.

Florida has just passed a plethora of laws, and is looking to pass more, under the guise of protecting children from those registered sex offenders

According to the FBI Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Statistical Briefing Book, 2008, family members and acquaintances are responsible for, depending on the age of the child, 98 to 95% of sexual crime against children. The remaining small percentages are committed by strangers, and those already on the registry are a small percentage of those small percentages, leaving the focus on registrants, the public registry, and all of its appendages a useless but very expensive exercise in futility, virtually worthless in addressing the serious issue of child sexual abuse.

As far as these new bills in Florida are concerned, careful analysis seems to reveal one impetus: an opportunity to make political hay driven by the tragic death of a child, Cherish, by a repeat sex offender. Even though Florida has some of the most self-defeating and draconian laws on the books, the civil commitment program that has been in place has actually done a good job. Much has been made of the fact that "...Florida has a serious problem with repeat offenders. Hundreds of violent sexual offenders have committed new sexual crimes after being released from prison...." That sounds so alarming, and of course any violent crime is alarming and should be answered with a prison sentence commiserate with the crime, but using all of Florida's numbers relevant to this reveals a totally different perspective.

Those hundreds of violent offenders--a few short of 600--represent the failures of the program over a 14 year period of time. During those 14 years, the program screened and released 31,000 individuals. That means that, under the program in place, 30,400 released sex offenders did not commit a second offense over the 14 years. It appears the program had a 98% success rate with violent offenders over the time period. The number of total re-offenses, including the almost 600 violent ones, for the 14 years is 1,400. For those who like recidivism--sexual re-offense--rates, that is less than 5%. Some states come in lower, some a bit higher. Florida is right in the middle, right at the figure the DOJ arrived at after a multi-state, mega-study released in 2003.

These new laws are not needed. I predict that the rates will not change. Somewhere around 5% of released offenders either will not choose or will not be able to alter their behavior and will be, deservedly, returned to prison. And children in Florida will continue to be sexually abused at exactly the same rate as they have been and by the same people, and so few of them will be registered sex offenders that everyone on the registry could drop dead today and the amount of sexual crime against children will be the same tomorrow.

When sex offenders are the topic, we need some honesty in journalism and in legislation

Florida, which already has the reputation for its harshness and apparent lack of concern for measures promoting rehabilitation when dealing with sex offender legislation, has churned out four new bills, as detailed here.

The political posturing is seen from the first sentence but is no where more colorful than in the quote by Florida Senator Gaetz promising to "make Florida scorched earth for those who seek to harm our children."


I have two problems with the presentation of information in this article.

First, the standard for "sexually violent predator," if one actually reads the criminal code, is extremely vague and structured so that it could be, and undoubtedly is, applied to many who should not be in that category. The article, to be fair and balanced, has a responsibility to point that out.    

Secondly, using Mr. Harrel, who was not on the registry and therefore not a known repeat offender, as an example equal with Mr. Smith as "cases involving repeat sexually violent predators" is misleading, even unethical, journalism. Is Harrel the second-best example? Then the entire premise is a lie. Removing Mr. Harrel leaves only Mr. Smith, and the justification of "repeat sexually violent predators" coupled with the "last three years" is gone.

Both of these men were murderers. Both committed heinous crimes against their victims before they murdered them. Both deserve(d) appropriate punishment through the justice system. However, those designated as sexually violent predators in Florida who have murdered no one and fall far short of committing such heinous acts do not deserve punishment thinly disguised as "public safety measures" based on what those two men did.

If another has brutally raped a child, if another has murdered a child, then apply the stricter guidelines to him, not to the 99.9% who have done neither.

Just How Offensive Can a Sex Offender Be?

A short while ago I read an opinion piece entitled, "Viewpoint: Sex offenders need stronger punishments," in the Baylor Lariat.

The author ridiculed the 5th annual conference held by Reform Sex Offender Laws, Inc. in Los Angeles the end of August and said that he found a conference held by those who seek reform to these laws to be offensive.                            
I find his taking offense at this offensive. The author said that these laws placing people on a public registry, often for life, laws that impede their rebuilding their lives, are needed to protect children. I find this to be untrue.

It is no secret to anyone, except possibly the writer of "Viewpoint...," that virtually all child sexual abuse is committed by those close to the children in their lives, specifically their family members, their peers, and their authority figures, individuals who almost certainly have no previous arrest records for sexual offenses. This fact renders the public sex offender registry impotent as a means of protecting children from sexual crime.

In fact, experts in the field credit the registry and the entire sex offender industry that has grown up around it with obfuscating the real problem of child sexual abuse by keeping the focus turned in the wrong direction.

The author of this opinion piece states disbelievingly, "Yet those that are labeled as sex offenders...believe that laws that limit where they can live or where they can go are too restrictive and repressive." I find this surprising. How could this author not know that empirical evidence supports that view and goes even further? Research shows no correlation between these types of restrictions and public safety; therefore, whatever resources are spent on supporting and enforcing these restrictions are wasted.

They are indeed too restrictive and repressive in that they work against the goals of rehabilitation and community reintegration, which do work toward public safety; however, their greatest shortcoming is that they are not based on facts or empirical evidence; this is why they are ineffective.

And finally the author appeals to the plight of the victims and the loss of their innocence and their years of pain. I find this disingenuous and hypocritical, for he is supporting a system that has in its bloated budget little to nothing for victims' services, which helps past victims, or for prevention, which is designed to help present victims and reduce the number of future ones. He uses the pain of victims, which is indeed real, to support his emotional appeal, yet he suggests nothing that will help victims or work toward prevention.

I find that this author has written an opinion on a subject about which he has done no research and has little to no factual information.

However, this need not be a terminal disorder. If he wishes to find the truth, he will find these to be helpful.

http://ccoso.org/1000feet_rule.pdf
http://forensicpsychologist.blogspot.com/2013/11/static-99-developers-embrace-redemption.html
http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2013/02/20/too-many-restrictions-on-sex-offenders-or-too-few/panic-leads-to-bad-policy-on-sex-offenders
http://www.doc.ks.gov/publications/kdoc-community-field-services-publications/sex-offender-housing-restrictions