OK - Thousands come off sex offender list months after new law

Original Article

05/13/2014

By La'Tasha Givens

A new law took thousands off the sex offender registry.

Exposing yourself near a playground, urinating in public or peeping in a bathroom stall are just some of the actions that have landed thousands of people on the sex offender registry.

Now many of those names are disappearing from the list.

“If you were to slap a woman on the behind, that would be sexual battery and you would have to register for 15 years and that has nothing to do with children on the playground,” said attorney David Slane. “People who urinated in public or fall under what we call the Romeo and Juliet situation, where the young man may have been just a little bit older than the girl or vice versa. They’re the ones typically being removed.”

Slane said he’s taken on over 400 sex offender cases, more than anyone else in the state.

In many situations the offenders were on the list way past their punishment because the laws kept changing.

“They’ve had a number of changes or revisions of sex offender registration act over the last ten or 15 years and the court said those later laws could not apply retroactively,” said Jerry Massey spokesperson for the Department of Corrections (DOC).

Out of the 2,400 now off the list, Slane said most are level one or level two offenders which does not include those who committed violent and heinous sex crimes.

He also said under the new law a judge is able to decide a punishment on a case by case basis and not paint all offenders with a wide brush.

Slane said, “The more serious cases are the one we should spend our resources on, not someone who urinated in public.”

DOC officials say they still have another 2,700 cases to review to see if there are more offenders who are eligible to come off the list based on the new law.

Danny Finds Out Why Will Is on the Sex Offender Registry (Love Thy Neighbor)

Hard to believe this is from the Oprah Winfrey Network!

Video Description:
After convincing his mother to end her relationship with Will, Danny finds out that Will is only listed as a registered sex offender because he dated a 16-year-old when he was 17.

MO - Juvenile sex offenders say the crime doesn't fit the time

Original Article

10/16/2013

SPRINGFIELD - "My face is blacked out because I am ashamed for everyone to know what I am," says Convicted Sex offender _____.
- But leave it up to the news media to splash your name all over the article!

Missouri considers _____ a sex offender, after one decision he made 15 years ago with a 14 year old girl when he was living in Washington.

"One thing led to another and we ended up having consensual sex," he says.

That's considered to be a crime in Washington. _____ served time in juvenile hall for the crime, even though the sex was consensual.

"It wasn't rape, wasn't child molestation. It wasn't anything with a baby, it wasn't a violent crime and yet I am still paying."

_____ has tried to move on with his life, he even joined the army. But, his past still haunts him.

"Even with my military record and my degrees in school, I am still overlooked and passed. It sucks," he says.

"There's a whole coax of people who are accused, plead guilty that didn't have that mindset that don't have that same mental makeup as some of the people who are on the list," says Attorney Adam Wood.

Wood says the problem is with how the registry is run, separating the consensual crimes from those that were not.

"The list is all encompassing list and it doesn't differential between those two types of people and that's a big issue," he says.

It's an issue that _____ deals with every day of his life.

"If you're going to judge me on something that happened 15 years ago for the person I am today, then shame on you. Shame on you," says _____.

There was a push a few months ago for a bill that would allow people 18 and under to no longer appear on the registry. But, it did not get passed.

Dr. Phil - Torn between My Mother and My Boyfriend

Dr. Phil

Original Article

For those who saw this episode, Dr. Phil does have some good statistics instead of the usual BS. He mentions that ex-sex offender recidivism for new sex crimes is very low, 5.3% to 3.5%. See more videos at the link above.

10/14/2013

Michele says she refuses to meet her daughter, Malinda’s, boyfriend, Jack, and can’t even refer to him by name — because he’s a registered sex offender. Jack, now 26, was convicted of sexually abusing an 11-year-old relative when he was 15 years old. He admits to inappropriately touching the victim when he was 13 and she was 8. Jack says he hates being labeled as a sex offender and insists that he's now living the straight and narrow.

However, Michele maintains that she's not convinced that Jack is reformed at all. She says that she wants Malinda to break up with Jack, for the sake of Malinda's 4-year-old daughter. "It's true that I do refer to him as 'it,'" Michele says. "I honestly believe that the 'it' is pursuing my daughter to get to my granddaughter," she claims. Michele adds, "In my opinion, once a sex offender, always a sex offender."

Malinda claims that the real issue is not her boyfriend — it's her mother's need for control. "I don't feel that my boyfriend should be on the sex offender registry," she says. "He was just a kid ... I just don't get the vibe that he would ever harm anyone intentionally." Malinda says that her family has asked her to choose between them and Jack — and insists that for her it's "everybody or nobody." "I want my mother to know that I do love him, and he loves me. We're not breaking up," she says. "There's just no way."

AFRICA - Teen sex no longer a crime

Original Article

10/04/2013

By Sapa and Yolisa Tswanya

Cape Town - Criminalisation of sexual conduct between consenting adolescents is unconstitutional, the Constitutional Court has ruled.

On Thursday, the court confirmed a lower court’s order that sections 15 and 16 of the Criminal Law Amendment Act, which relate to sexual offences, were unconstitutional.

The unanimous judgment, written by Judge Sisi Khampepe, was published on the court’s website on Thursday.

The sections infringed on the rights of adolescents between 12 and 16 to dignity and privacy, and further violated the best interest principle contained in section 28(2) of the constitution.

Relying on expert evidence, the court concluded the impugned provisions criminalised developmentally normative conduct for adolescents and adversely affected the very children the act sought to protect.

The court said the effects of the impugned provisions were found not to be rationally related to the State’s purpose of protecting children.

“We must be careful, however, to ensure that, in attempting to guide and protect children, our interventions do not expose them to harsh circumstances which can only have adverse effects on their development,” said Khampepe.

She said the matter was not about whether children should or should not engage in sexual conduct, nor was it about whether Parliament should set a minimum age for consensual sexual conduct. Khampepe said the court was concerned with a far narrower issue: whether it was constitutionally permissible for children to be subject to criminal sanctions to deter early sexual intimacy and combat the risks associated therewith.

The judgment declared invalid provisions of the act that criminalised consensual sexual conduct between adolescents. The criminal prohibitions against non-consensual sexual conduct with children of any age remained in place.

Criminal restrictions against sexual activity between adults and older children on the one hand, and adolescents on the other, also remained.

Childline national co-ordinator Joan van Niekerk told the Cape Argus Childline was pleased with the ruling.

“We are 100 percent delighted by the ruling, we say it is about time. From the time it was passed we objected to it, we found it to be very child- unfriendly.”

Van Niekerk said Childline had not been given the opportunity to “make their voices heard” before it was passed.

“We were denied public participation, there were absolutely no public hearings on this. But we think it violates children’s rights to health care. We are pleased to see that the children who were convicted under this act will see their convictions expunged.”

Van Niekerk said it was important to understand that the ruling did not mean that the age of consent had been reduced but that adolescents who consent to sex would not be criminalised for it.

Paula Proudlock, child rights manager at the Children’s Institute said the institute was “elated by the judgment”.

“We have been getting so much confusion from doctors and nurses because if an adolescent came in for contraceptives and HIV tests they would have to report them to the police, but it is their obligation to treat them.”

Proudlock said many teens were afraid of getting help from professionals because they were afraid of be handed over to the police.

The judgment suspended the declaration of invalidity for 18 months to allow Parliament to amend the provisions.

Khampepe ordered a moratorium on all investigations, arrests, prosecutions and criminal and ancillary proceedings (regarding adolescents) in relation to sections 15 and 16 of the act. This remains until Parliament has remedied the defects identified.

OK - Romeo and Juliet Sex Offender Program

David Slain Web Site