A former Andalusia police officer and unsuccessful 2006 candidate for sheriff will now have to register as a convicted sex offender after pleading guilty Monday in two separate cases.
Kevin Owens, who was 39 when arrested in 2007, faced charges of sexual abuse, rape, sodomy and intimidating a witness in the incidents following allegations that he engaged in sexual intercourse with a female by forcible compulsion and he subjected a child under the age of 12 to sexual conduct.
On Monday, and moments before his trial was set to begin, counsel was able to negotiate a plea deal in the cases. Owens admitted to the behavior before Circuit Judge Ashley McKathan, pleading guilty to sexual misconduct in the first case and assault III in the second.
Members of the victims’ families were pleased with the day’s outcome.
“I’m just happy he admitted in open court that he was guilty,” said the mother of one of the victims. Her daughter was 3 at the time of the incident, she said. “We didn’t want to push for trial to protect our daughter from any more bad things.”
The state was represented by Trishia Mellburg and Barry Matson, both members of the Office of Prosecutorial Services.
“These families were very patient, and now, very relieved,” Mellburg said. “The victims and their families were able to get closure and move on. They’re the importance of getting this case resolved.”
Owens, who was represented by Monroeville attorney Chris King, was given a one-year suspended sentence, placed on two years of supervised probation and ordered to pay an assortment of fees and fines in each case. The time is to run concurrently.
He was also ordered to refrain from contact with the victims and the victims’ families, as well as unsupervised visitation with any minor while on probation.
Owens is also required to provide the state a DNA sample and to register as a convicted sex offender; however, since sexual misconduct is a misdemeanor offense, it is not required that his information be posted on the online database.
COLUMBIA (WIS) - The state Supreme Court is working on a ruling that could allow some sex offenders to avoid mandatory lifetime GPS monitoring.
State law requires people convicted of first-degree criminal sexual conduct or lewd act on a child to fall under lifetime monitoring if they violate parole or probation.
A Greenville County woman is challenging that law after a probation violation forced her into wearing an ankle monitor for the rest of her life.
A jury convicted then 26-year-old [name withheld] of performing lewd acts on a 14-year-old girl, a relationship she admits to.
[name withheld]' attorney, Christopher Scalzo, asked the court to allow sex offenders an opportunity for a hearing, so a judge can decide whether they pose the threat that would require lifetime monitoring.
The justices' comments from the bench recognized that not all offenders pose equal threats to children.
"This was what an 8 month relationship she had with an underage person. Clearly wrong, clearly illegal, but, there was no predatory nature," said Justice Kay Hearn.
"She was a sex offender, she was convicted, she was punished, but when you talk about whether to monitor her for the rest of her life because she poses a danger simply because she violated parole, then what they're simply saying is one size does not fit all," said Chief Justice Jean Toal.
State probation attorney john Aplin admitted flaws with the law, but says his agency has no choice but to enforce the mandatory lifetime monitoring law.
"I'm not going to stand up here and say this is the best statute I've even seen written, and could it be done better," said Aplin.
[name withheld]' attorneys want either a chance for a hearing or a review at some point, but for those who live as victims of sex offenders, any change in the law, they say, is going easy on all sex offenders.
"It's not a far-fetched belief to believe that's softening of the sex offender laws in this state," said victims advocate Veronica Kunz. "If anything, the laws need to be a lot stronger."
Kunz heads the state's Victims Assistance Network and is outspoken about the sexual abuse she says she suffered at the hands of her father. She says lifetime monitoring of all sex offenders gives their victims the peace they need to carry on.
"If they're out walking around trying to live their life, they owe crime victims the duty to be accountable to law enforcement for their whereabouts," Kunz said.
A ruling could allow offenders a chance to have a judge decide whether they fit the case for someone who needs 24-7 monitoring. We don't know how long it could take for a ruling to come down.
NOTE: This is one mans voice, and he doesn't speak for all ex-sex offenders!
Video Playlist Description: On March 18, 2010, College Voice reporter Daniela Rocha conducted an interview with a 27 year old sex offender named Kurt Werner at the Adult Diagnostic and Treatment Center in Avenel, NJ.
Werner volunteered to talk to the Voice in conjunction with an article on the fifteenth anniversary of New Jersey's landmark sex offender registry and notification law known as "Megan's Law."
By Larry: I am needing help gathering people who feel they have a claim against Offendex.com I am in contact with two leading attorneys out of Indiana and they haven't picked up the case yet but they are looking hard at it. Regardless if they take it or not we are pushing forward with a lawsuit against them. There are 6-7 of us now and we stay in constant contact with each other and 4 of them came from the post here about Offendex extortion that is now closed (It's not closed, it's here). My email is lrared@yahoo.com and the site we are building is http://offendexextortion.co.cc. I'm no website builder. Anything you can think of to help would be greatly appreciated.
UPDATE: Apparently the above .CC site has been shut down, but a new one has been created, here.
Tracy Levy is currently doing research for a long form article on the topic of people who have been convicted of sexual offenses and the process they go through when reintegrating back in to society.
For this article, Tracy is hoping to meet with people in this community as well as the people who work with them. This would include people who have been convicted of a sexual offense, along with therapists, social workers, defense attorneys as well as people in CURE who advocate on behalf of this community.
Tracy would like to interview these people about the obstacles that convicted sex offenders face after they have served their sentence, specifically sex offender registries and the restrictions on housing and jobs and how these issues intersect with human rights and the criminal justice system in the US.
If you could forward this information to people in the New York area who may be interested in speaking about this, Tracy would greatly appreciate it.
Sex offender, the mere mention of the word can turn even the most pleasant conversation into one filled with anger. Questions like ‘How could they?’ and ‘Why would they?’ inevitably come up. And those who commit the crimes often face years in prison. But if and when they get out, what greets them on the outside?
“Any metro area of Oklahoma, they’re not going to be allowed to live in. So you have to think rural when you begin to reintegrate them, almost from the beginning. When I say rural, I’m saying at a minimum the outskirts of a metro town or city.”
Floyd Long is transition coordinator for the state’s Department of Corrections. He works to get the worst of the worst integrated into society, so they can contribute whatever is possible. He tries to find them housing, a job, and transportation, with the help of family.
“The ability to buy a car, your metro transportation, your bus systems do not go out to the metro areas. So it becomes a big challenge when it comes to transportation.”
“Thus it becomes a challenge to get employment because they can’t get to their job. So it kinda snowballs, there’s a snowball effect that begins to occur.”
Inside the Crossings Community Center, just north of Lake Hefner, non-profit leaders, DOC staff, religious leaders, and interested volunteers, all came together a couple weeks ago to get a sense of the problem.
“If anything it’s going to get worse…”
This is one of the few conferences in the country devoted to the topic. Steve Gordon heads the Oklahoma Partnership for Successful Reentry and organized the gathering of about 50. That’s fifty people trying to help hundreds of sex offenders due out this year…
“We want to get that dialogue started. Dialogue with each other, dialogue with the powers that be, dialogue with the community and the two biggest challenges, nothing personal against you, but the media and public opinion.”
But yet here in Oklahoma, a state often cited in national media as backwards and behind the times, a discussion about what can be done. Why?
“We have a very strong faith community in Oklahoma and a lot of the churches have been stepping up. And then if they really are sensitive to the needs, the hardest reentry of anybody is the sex offender.”
“Nobody wants to help them, they’ve typically burned their bridges. And so it takes someone with a great heart of mercy even to want to look at them. They’re the lepers of society.”
I’m out on a walk with John at Hand Up Ministries in southwest Oklahoma City.
A registered sex offender from California, he now works full time for the ministry. John got out of jail in 1994 and has been in Oklahoma for years. An enthusiastic, eternally optimistic guy, he seems to take the best possible view of the situation he put himself in. But he’s fighting his registration requirements because of the stigma..
“I believe if a person lives like me, I’ve been out for twenty years, why shouldn’t I be able to?”
Everyone I talked to described a snowball effect. They have trouble finding a place to live, then they don’t have access to transportation, and so they can’t even try to interview for a job, where there’s a whole another set of barriers. Wayne Bowers works with CURE-SORT, devoted to sex offender reentry.
“I think all of a sudden, there’s beginning to be more and more people who are speaking out. When I moved here, I was worried. I thought ‘Am I really getting into something?’. But I’m encouraged to see there is a lot of place for growth here.”
But how does this affect you and me? Lately, the default position has been to wall sex offenders off. Well, Steve Gordon says some are starting to realize why that often doesn’t work…
“It’s making the public less safe because right now in Oklahoma County, we have 120 homeless sex offenders because there’s no place for them to go. That’s not good. Everybody I talk to, no matter what their background or what their profession, they say that’s a bad thing.”
But in the back of Steve Gordon’s mind, there’s the question of the standards these programs are held to.
“We can have the best reentry policies, the best reentry concepts and systems, they will not work. All we need is one angry citizen going up onto the steps of Legislature pitching a fit and it will undue years of good work we’ve been trying to do.”
That’s all it came down to in the day-long conference. The best programs could struggle to compete with one of the most powerful motivators: fear. A solution to that is far more difficult.
Last week the parents of a Wisconsin boy sued Grant County District Attorney Lisa Riniker for charging their son with first-degree sexual assault, a Class B felony, after he played "butt doctor" with a 5-year-old girl. He was 6 at the time. When the boy's lawyer tried to have the charge dismissed, Riniker replied: "The legislature could have put an age restriction in the statute if it wanted to. The legislature did no such thing."
According to the complaint (PDF), the girl is "the daughter of a well-known political figure in Grant County," and her brother, who is the same age, also was involved in playing doctor but was not charged. In addition to Riniker, the lawsuit names as defendants retired Grant County Sheriff's Sgt. James Kopp and Jan Moravits, an investigator with Grant County Social Services "whose regional supervisor...is the political figure's wife's sister-in-law"—i.e., the aunt of the alleged victim.
Although the boy, now 7, is too young to be prosecuted or named in a juvenile delinquency petition, Madison.com reports, county officials are using the felony charge to force his parents into accepting "protection or services" for him. The lawsuit says that once he turns 18, he will be listed as a sex offender.
I noted a similar case in my July Reason story on sex offender laws.
