At 10 years old, J. G., was diagnosed as educable mentally retarded, was found rubbing himself against a girl, 8, in his mother's care at his home in Mercer County. Both children were wearing only underwear.
J. G., as he is identified by New Jersey's courts, is 16, trying to finish high school and hoping to clear his record of something he did when he was 10. But that may be impossible, because J. G. committed a sex offense, and for sex offenders the rules are different.
In fact, the rules collectively known as Megan's Law, establishing a register of sex offenders and publicly identifying those considered most dangerous, are meant to keep the past in view.
And as New Jersey legislators respond to a voter referendum allowing the posting of offenders' names and photographs on the Internet, J. G. has presented the State Supreme Court with the question:
Can this law be applied to a 10-year-old?
The issue, being raised around the country at a time that all 50 states have passed some form of sex-offender-notification law, shows a tension between two deeply held goals. While sex-offender laws seek to give the widest possible publicity to sex crimes, the juvenile justice system seeks to give the widest possible protection to young offenders.
AUGUSTA MAINE -- A trial is likely in a case where 30 Maine people convicted of sex offenses decades ago seek to keep their pictures, addresses, educational sites, and workplaces off the Internet.
Justice Michaela Murphy said Wednesday in Kennebec County Superior Court that she expects the challenge to the state's Sex Offender Registry and Notification Act to go to trial.
"The law court seemed to require this court to look at each individual plaintiff and make a decision on each individual plaintiff," Murphy told the 16 attorneys in the court room. Each attorney represented anywhere from one to 14 sex offenders known publicly as John Does 1 through 30, and four more lawyers represented the defendants -- state, county and municipal officials.
The John Does have sued the state, district attorneys, sheriffs and police chiefs, seeking to remain relatively anonymous. The criminal convictions are public record. Most of those convictions, however, predate the state registration law, which has raised ex post facto questions.
The complex civil case has already seen two rulings from the Maine Supreme Judicial Court, and more are anticipated. The issue of reconfiguring the registry also is being looked at by a legislative committee.
What do you do when a sobbing man calls and tells you his life is cracking like a fractured goblet, that he's "at the end of his rope"?
Probably nothing, if that man is a convicted child molester.
Twelve years ago, Patrick Clark, 43, pleaded "no contest" in Florida to a "lewd and lascivious act" with a girl under 16. Clark says he was innocent then and is no sex offender today.
If I had a nickel for every time an ex-con professed innocence … Clark didn't gain my sympathy. His fiancée, Linda, a mother with a teenage daughter, however, did.
"I trust Patrick 100 percent, and my daughter loves him," Linda told me. "He can't clear his name. He can't get a job, and he can't live with me because the state doesn't allow sex offenders to be in the home with minors. I just hate to see a good man go down like this."
After Patrick was charged in Florida, he called his father, John Clark of Eureka. His father talked to a Florida attorney who felt the charges of inappropriate touching were suspect. However, the lawyer feared Patrick might face jail time if the case went to trial.
The lawyer, John Clark said, convinced him that Patrick would most likely receive probation and a "suspended imposition of sentence," which means, with no repeat incidents, the conviction would be publicly erased.
Patrick said he followed his father and lawyer's advice and pleaded "no contest." He received two years' probation and a "suspended imposition of sentence." It was the safest way to settle the matter and move on, he said.
Patrick was wrong.
In the mid-1990s, Florida and other states, including Missouri, implemented Sex Offender Registration laws. All 50 states have registration and tracking systems that require convicted sex offenders to register. Florida adopted a retroactive amendment requiring that anyone who had been "convicted, pled guilty" or, like Patrick, pleaded "no contest" to a sexual offense after Oct. 1993 had to register. Missouri requires anyone who registered in another state to register here as well. Failing to do so amounts to a felony. Sex offenders are on the lists for a lifetime.
Could my son be accused of sexual harassment? He's a good boy. He likes watching "Thomas the Tank Engine" on television and playing "Simon Says." Like many 3-year-olds, he's very affectionate. Unfortunately, hugging his teacher may get him suspended from nursery school.
I doubt that it will happen to my son. But the frightening fact is that it could. I recently learned that children nationwide, some of preschool age, have been suspended from school or taken to jail after being accused of sexual harassment. In their zeal to avoid lawsuits, educators seem to be ignoring important information, such as whether the accused child intended to commit a crime or even knows how to pronounce the word "harassment."
Alcohol linked to 75,000 U.S. deaths a year a Newly Released Statistical Study Reports.
Over 75,000 deaths per year, drunk drivers. So why do we not have drunk drivers on a registry? Maybe because it would cover almost 80% or more of the US population!!! DUI offenders kill more people than sex offenders, which is very, very low, 5% or less. So why do we not have any outrage? Probably because you'd be on that registry, that is my impression
Killed by Drunk Driver at the Right of the below photo.
(Toledo, OH) I have thought often over the last two days about the Griffin family of Parkville, MD, five members of which were killed by a drunk driver in a horrific accident on I-280 in Toledo Sunday night. Photos of the victims and the perpetrator of this tragedy have been released by family members and Toledo police, and we now can put faces to the names of the individuals.
Then, of course, we have the image of the much reviled Michael P. Gagnon, of Adrian, MI, the drunken imbecile whose wrong-way rampage on an interstate ended in the deaths of these innocent people. DRUNK kills 5, inujures 3.. Full Story Below this article.
You do not see the national Griffin Law, or the National Griffin, Drunk Driving Registry.
But let one child get Murdered and sexually assaulted, and some guy will start a national television show, and get a national Sex Offender Registry put into place to punish to the fullest extent any type of situation which might remotely involve sex.Thousands of lives will be ruined because of that one little boy or girl who was murdered. Some of the sex offender laws were created about murder as the victim's body was never even found... so their is no way they could say it was a sex crime, and no body was found to prove any type of sexual contact!
Each year, thousands of people, Men, Women, Children are killed by Drunk Drivers. The recidivism rate is very high. How do I know this, because the following exerpt is from their report:
In its relentless efforts to expel Wendy Whitaker from her Columbia County home, the state of Georgia has crossed the line from protector to persecutor of its citizens. The state isn’t inciting torch-wielding mobs to chase Whitaker from her home 20 miles west of Augusta. But it is using a gaggle of state attorneys and a politically driven, poorly written sex offender law to wreck her life.
Twelve years ago, Whitaker engaged in oral sex with a classmate in her sophomore class on high school property. She had just turned 17; the boy was three weeks shy of 16. After they were caught, Whitaker pleaded guilty to sodomy, never realizing that the admission to a single act of adolescent stupidity would cast a shadow on her life that she could never escape. Whitaker is now doomed to be on Georgia’s sex offender registry for the rest of her life. She can’t live near schools, churches, swimming pools, school bus stops, day care centers, parks, rec centers or skating rinks, or work near schools, churches or day care centers.
Whitaker poses no danger to the children of Georgia; she’s a happily married 29-year-old, trying to get on with her life and live in the home that she and her husband bought a few years ago. Yet, the state has spent thousands of taxpayer dollars to force Whitaker from her house.
In 2006, after politicians discovered that there was political mileage in talking tough on sex crimes, Georgia passed one of the most draconian laws in the country on where offenders could live or work. Born out of political expedience rather than careful research, the law failed to differentiate offenders based on the nature or severity of the crimes, placing Whitaker and others like her in the same category as truly dangerous people such as rapists and child molesters. The law imposed the same wholesale residency and work limits on all offenders, including Whitaker. A sheriff’s deputy told Whitaker in July that she had to move within 72 hours because her house was within 1,000 feet of a day care center. She didn’t want to give up her home and sought help in federal court.
(Fascism is an authoritarian political ideology that considers the individual subordinate to the interests of the state, party or society as a whole.)
The 12 Characteristics of Fascism
Here is a list of the characteristic features of Fascism, the “common threads” of Fascist governance, as drawn out by Laurence W. Britt from his analyses of seven Fascist regimes (Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, Franco’s Spain, Salazar’s Portugal, Papadopoulos’s Greece, Pinochet’s Chile, and Suharto’s Indonesia):
1. Powerful and continuing expressions of nationalism, 2. Disdain for the importance of human rights, 3. Identification of enemies/scapegoats as a unifying cause, 4. The supremacy of the military/avid militarism, 5. Rampant sexism, 6. A controlled mass media, 7. Obsession with national security, 8. Power of corporations protected, 9. Power of labor suppressed or eliminated, 10. Obsession with crime and punishment, 11. Rampant cronyism and corruption, and 12. Fraudulent elections.
Lori Collins, an ordained minister from Henry County who found religion in prison, is no longer allowed to work with church groups that perform prison outreach.
Andrew Norton of Cobb County has been told he can't sing in his church choir or help set up for church events. Steven Lee Williams of Polk County is forbidden from playing drums at services.
Churches frequently invite College Park's Omar Howard to offer testimony about how God rescued him from a life of violent crime. Eventually, he hopes to join the ministry. For the time being, however, Howard risks a mandatory 10-year term if he so much as performs a Bible reading before a congregation.
This past Thursday, lawyers with the Southern Center for Human Rights argued in federal court that a new law unconstitutionally criminalizes religious practice by making it illegal for people on Georgia's sex offender registry to volunteer at a church. A judge's ruling is expected within weeks.
It was the latest challenge to a controversial law that targets registered sex offenders with wide-ranging restrictions and stiff punishments. Initially authored by state House Majority Leader Jerry Keen, R-St. Simons, and adopted in 2006, the law was overhauled by the Legislature this year after large chunks of it had been thrown out by various courts.
Even so, the chipping away continues. Last month, the state Supreme Court struck down a provision to send homeless sex offenders to prison for being unable to register a valid address with their county sheriff's office. The plaintiff in that suit, William James Santos, had spent a year in a Hall County jail and was facing a life sentence for failing to register his address – even though he didn't have an address.
If you think aspects of the sex offender law seem to defy common sense, welcome to the club.
"My parole officer doesn't understand it," says Howard, the would-be minister. "He told me it's safer just to stay away from church."
A home school legal advocate is disturbed by the recent actions of a social worker in Florida. This is another example of Government violating the rights of citizens. America, you had better wake up and realize the wave of laws which are being implemented to take away all rights from Americans.
According to Kris Klicka of the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA), a social worker in Miami, Florida, overstepped the boundary of law when she demanded to interview a home schooler's children. He says the social worker showed up at the family's home when the father was at work -- and out of fear and intimidation, the mother let the social worker into the home to interview her children, even though the worker neither had a warrant nor would disclose why she was there.
The social worker -- according to HSLDA -- then partially stripped the children and searched them, but found nothing.
During the ordeal, the mother called Klicka for legal advice. Klicka was able to talk with the social worker and inform her that she was violating federal law.
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"[E]very family needs to realize that the Constitution of the United States has a Fourth Amendment that states that no one from the government can enter a home unless they have a warrant [that has been] signed by a judge," Klicka explains. "And the judge cannot sign it unless there is probable cause -- and most of the time these social workers do not have probable cause or credible evidence."
A Young Lady, who under Mark Foley, (Child Predator Congressman from Florida) legislation, is wrongly labeled a Sex Offender, isn't letting a state's court decision force her from her Columbia County home, Monday.
On Thursday, a Georgia judge ruled that Wendy Whitaker needed to move from her home because she lived within 1,000 feet of a church.
Whitaker’s attorney is now filing a new lawsuit at the county level which could prevent her from having to move.
Georgia law prohibits sex offenders from living within 1,000 feet of churches, daycares and schools.
Ten years ago, when Wendy was 17, she performed a consensual sex act on a 15-year-old boy.
She was convicted and forced to register as a sex offender under Georgia law.
One-size-fits-all laws don't fit all cases, and this is one of them
Should the law punish a motorist who is ticketed for a broken tail light as harshly as it punishes a drunken driver with multiple offenses who's found guilty of causing a fatal crash?
Of course not. Traffic law violations, like other crimes, are punished according to the seriousness of the offense. But that's not necessarily true when it comes to Georgia's sex offender law. Just ask Wendy Whitaker of Harlem. More than 10 years ago, when she was a 17-year-old high school student, she engaged in consensual oral sex with a 15-year-old male classmate. In 1997 she pleaded guilty to sodomy and was put on five years' probation. This kind of lawmaking is typical all across the united states. Every state is punishing thousands of people who have already served there time or sentences. This practice is banned in the U.S. Constitution, and every state constitution. It is called Ex Post Facto Law. Retroactive application of laws is against the law, but legislators are getting these laws passed, Governors are violating their oath of office by passing these laws.
Look at the video about how Governor Bobby Jindal of Louisiana is doing the same thing as is going on in Georgia.
Since then Whitaker has gotten married and been free of any hint of misconduct. Yet she still must register each year as a sex offender. Her photo appears on the sex offender Web site and she is subject to a Georgia law that prohibits convicted sex predators from living within 1,000 feet of places where children gather, such as schools, parks and day care centers.
When does a snapshot of a mother breast-feeding her child become kiddie porn? Ask the Richardson police.By Thomas Korosec
The service was fast, the judgments even hastier. Never did Jacqueline Mercado imagine that four rolls of film dropped off at an Eckerd Drugs one-hour photo lab near her home would turn her life inside out, threaten to send her to jail and prompt the state to take away her kids.
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Jacqueline Mercado, a 33-year-old Peruvian immigrant, took a few photos of her young children at bath time. A week later, Richardson police were rummaging through her house for kiddie porn, and a state child welfare worker came to take her kids away.
By Diane Dimond Of the Journal David is a convicted sex offender, a registered sex offender who has served his time and currently lives in Albuquerque. So what should society do with him now that he's out? Watch him like a hawk? Well, that's already being done via the registry through which he must regularly report his every lifestyle move — where he lives, where he works, what car he drives, where he spends his time. For many of us the quick answer would be, “Lock him up and throw away the key!” And until I met David I would have joined in that chorus. Once a sex offender always a sex offender — that's been my mantra. To make a very long story short, David's estranged wife accused him of sexually touching their 5-year-old daughter during a visitation. Their 7-year-old son allegedly saw it happen during a naptime when all three of them had laid down to take a quick snooze. At trial stories changed, physical examinations proved nothing wrong. But David was sentenced to six years in prison. He says everything you've heard about life inside for a convicted child molester is true, it's the hardest time you can do. David says he never ever would have done what he was charged with.
Doing your time. We all know that people who do the crime have to do the time and we all accept this as part of the judicial system. Once a person has paid his debt to society, they are free to do as they please as any other citizen in this country, as it should be.
This is not so with sex offenders however. Citizens with this type of crime are persecuted and punished for many years after they have completed their sentence via the Sex Offender Registry laws.
You may say, so what? Look at what they did. I'm not here to argue about the crime that was committed or what the sentence should be. A crime was committed and a sentence was handed out, well and good.
What we are talking about here is that after that sentence has been served and all has been done that was required by the courts (and this may include having to register while serving that sentence) these free citizens of society still have to register. The same rights that they are entitled to as you and I enjoy are being violated.
What is just as wrong and more so is that after these free citizens have served their sentence and are still doing their unjust time in the Registry (10 yrs in Indiana) and the Registry laws change, they become retroactive.
WASHINGTON (AP) - Television these days is loaded with sex, sex, sex—double the number of sex scenes aired seven years ago, says a study out Wednesday. And the number of shows that include "safer sex" messages has leveled off, it said.
There were nearly 3,800 scenes with sexual content spotted in more than 1,100 shows researchers studied, up from about 1,900 such scenes in 1998, the first year of the Kaiser Family Foundation survey.
Vicky Rideout, a vice president at Kaiser, says the number of shows that included a message about the risks and responsibilities of sex is still very small, and has remained flat since 2002. |
About 14 percent of the shows with sexual content also had discussions of contraception, waiting to having sex or other "safer sex" messages. While that figure is about the same as it was in the last study, it's still up from 9 percent in 1998, and Rideout says that's encouraging.
Writers and producers are "seeing they can do it in a way that is entertaining, that doesn't cost them anything in the ratings ... and we know from research we've done that it makes a real difference to the kids in the audience," she said.
The study examined a sample of a week's worth of programming on ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, WB, PBS, Lifetime, TNT, USA Network and HBO. Sexual content, as defined in the study, could be anything from discussions about sex to scenes involving everything from kissing to intercourse.
Legislators create laws, claiming to Protect children, Get tough on crime!. These laws are harming thousands of children daily.
Child Abused by U.S.Government
Children arrested for having sex. Labeled Sexual Predator, Sex Offender for the rest of their lives for having sex with each other. American Laws gone Terribly Wrong.{sharethis}
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At 10 years old, J. G., was diagnosed as educable mentally retarded, was found rubbing himself against a girl, 8, in his mother's care at his home in Mercer County. Both children were wearing only underwear.
According to Kris Klicka of the 
Doing your time. We all know that people who do the crime have to do the time and we all accept this as part of the judicial system. Once a person has paid his debt to society, they are free to do as they please as any other citizen in this country, as it should be. 
There were nearly 3,800 scenes with sexual content spotted in more than 1,100 shows researchers studied, up from about 1,900 such scenes in 1998, the first year of the 
