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This page is part of a proposal to ReformSexOffenderLaws.org. This is not an official part of that website yet.

Notes and Documentation: Cover page | Topical Index

Notes and Documentation

Compiled by Marshall Burns, Ph.D.

Background information and links to official documentation that validate statements made on this site. Click on the note number (or use the “back” button on your computer) to go back to the spot on the page that refers to that note.

Feedback is invited from readers who have corrections or additions to the information presented here. Please send e-mail to RSOL at MBurns dot com.

 

Contents

Notes on the Introduction page

I-1. “… sex offender registries of every state and the Federal government”

  NCMEC map of sex offender registries in the USA
Map of sex offender registries in the USA.
Source: National Center for Missing & Exploited Children

A sex offender registry is a collection of information about people who have been convicted of crimes that are designated as "sex offenses." Such registries may be maintained by cities, townships, counties, states, or countries.

A registered sex offender is a person listed on a sex offender registry.

What crimes qualify a person for inclusion (registrable offense) is determined by the laws of the jurisdiction establishing the registry, and they vary considerably. For example, see the list of registrable offenses for Alabama, California adults and juveniles, and Wisconsin. These offenses may range from indecent exposure (including public urination, "streaking", or "mooning") to violent rape of a child. Some states include nonsexual, violent offenses against a child, such as kidnapping, but most registrable offenses are explicitly sexual in nature.

In the United States, sex offender registries are maintained by many local jurisdictions, as well as by all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, American Samoa, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. (See NCMEC map.) At the federal level, the Dru Sjodin National Sex Offender Public Registry serves as a portal to information provided by the individual states' registries. See Counting and Over-Counting Sex Offenders for statistics on the number of people included on the 51 state and DC registries.

The first state registry was set up by California in 1947. Five states followed suit in the 1950s and '60s and by the early 1990s twelve states had established one.1 In 1994, the federal government required all states to have one,2 with a three-year deadline to avoid a financial penalty.3 The remaining 38 states then stepped up quickly and in August 1996 the 50th one was set up by Massachusetts.1 A national registry was established that same year.4

Human Rights Watch reported in 2007 that six other countries have sex offender registries: Australia, Canada, France, Ireland, Japan, and the United Kingdom.

A sex offender registry may be public, meaning its information is freely available, generally on the Internet, or access to it may be restricted to police and other government agencies. Some registries are part public and part restricted. For example, a 2006 analysis by National Public Radio showed that 23 states only provide public access to the listings of people who are considered dangerous or are repeat offenders, while in 25 states all types of offenders are shown on the public websites. (See Note I-9 below.) Similarly, some states only show the listings of adult registrants, while others include juveniles on their websites. According to the Human Rights watch report, all registries outside the US are restricted; only the US has public registries.

Sex offender laws generally require a person who has been convicted of a registrable sex offense anywhere to register him- or herself in any jurisdiction in which he or she lives, works, and/or goes to school, and to keep the registry record up to date. However, law enforcement agencies also have data on convicted individuals and if a person does not register as required, then his or her name will be put on the registry as noncompliant.

Almost all registered sex offenders are adult men, although the number of women and juveniles on the registries is growing. One out of every 200 adult men in the United States is a registered sex offender. (See Counting and Over-Counting Sex Offenders.)

People, including juveniles, may be required to register for decades, or for life. The Human Rights Watch study found that 17 US states require lifetime registration for all sex offenders, no matter how minor the offense.
——————————

1. See Status and latest developments in sex offender registration and notification laws by Elizabeth Pearson in Proceedings of National Conference on Sex Offender Registries, April 1998.

2. Jacob Wetterling Crimes against Children and Sexually Violent Offender Registration Act, which is §170101 of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 — H.R. 3355, Public Law 103-322 — US Congress, September 13, 1994.

3. The funding penalty in §(f)(2)(A) of the Jacob Wetterling Act was "10 percent of the funds that would otherwise be allocated to the State under section 506 of the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968 (42 U.S.C. 3765)." Text of the 1968 law (Public Law 90-351) is not available online. Historical records indicate that §506 was 42 USC 3766, not 3765 [FindLaw, LII]. In any case, both of those sections were part of a version of Chapter 46-V of Title 42 that was repealed in 1988 [same notes]. So it is not clear just what funds the 1994 Wetterling Act was referring to. Wikipedia says that in the 1968 law, "Block grants were provided to the states, with $100 million in funding." Ten percent of any state's share of that amount would seem to be small compared to the cost of implementing a sex offender registry. Amendments may have increased the amount of funding at stake by 1994 or the states may have found themselves under intense political pressure [See Note S-31 below] to get on the registry bandwagon, independent of any financial penalty for not setting one up.

4. Pam Lychner Sexual Offender Tracking and Identification Act of 1996 — S. 1675, Public Law 104-236 — US Congress, October 3, 1996

I-2. “Many who always despised "pedophiles" have been swept up by the hysteria and are stunned to suddenly find themselves or their children labeled sex offenders.”

It’s easy to be complacent about sex offender laws — until one of them comes crashing down out of the blue on top of you or someone in your family. Unfortunately, it’s becoming easier and easier all the time for that to happen — with behaviors that most people consider perfectly ordinary and acceptable. See Look Who’s a Sex Offender Now! for some heartbreaking examples.

I-3. “Most registered sex offenders have never committed sexual offenses against minors.”
[ >>> I've begun some analysis of my registry data on this. First indications are that the above quote may not be correct.]

According to § 628(a)(11) of the Adam Walsh Act, 56 percent of victims of sexual assault are 18 or older. The act does not cite a source for this statistic.

I-4. “[In] the American legal system … [for cases of sex offenses or terrorism] most of the rights of the accused have vanished.”

A number of legal scholars have expressed concern that basic human rights at the core of the United States Constitution have been erroded by recent actions of the U.S. federal and state governments. The following are some examples of concerns raised by reputable sources.

On search and seizure

The seizure of electronics [by US Customs agents] has prompted protests from travelers who say they now weigh the risk of traveling with sensitive [corporate] or personal information on their laptops … [The executive director of the Association of Corporate Travel Executives said] "People are quite concerned. They don't want proprietary business information floating, not knowing where it has landed or where it is going." … "It's one thing to say it's reasonable for government agents to open your luggage," said David D. Cole, a law professor at Georgetown University. "It's another thing to say it's reasonable for them to read your mind and everything you have thought over the last year. What a laptop records is as personal as a diary but much more extensive." … [A] technology security expert … and … former federal prosecutor [said,] "Lawyers run the risk of exposing sensitive information about their client. Trade secrets can be exposed to customs agents with no limit on what they can do with it."

From Clarity Sought on Electronics Searches — U.S. Agents Seize Travelers' Devices — Washington Post, February 7, 2008

On privacy

Privacy no longer can mean anonymity, says Donald Kerr, the principal deputy director of national intelligence. Instead, it should mean that government and businesses properly safeguard people's private communications and financial information.

From Intelligence deputy to America: Rethink privacy, Associated Press, November 11, 2007

On rules of evidence

The Michigan state senate has passed, and the state's governor has promised to sign, a bill that would alter the rules of evidence in criminal trials. The bill provides that in criminal trials for sexual abuse of a minor, a defendant's prior convictions for similar acts would be admissible as evidence that the defendant is guilty of the offense charged in the current case.
          The bill will likely soon become law in Michigan, and an increasing number of states have passed comparable statutes. These statutes are significant, for the decision to admit such evidence against a criminal defendant represents a sharp departure from the usual approach, an approach that reflects the concern that hearing about prior offenses could unfairly prejudice a jury against the accused.

From Michigan's Proposed Law Admitting Prior Crimes in Child Sex Abuse Cases: Why It Has Broader Implications for the Law of Evidence by Sherry F. Colb, Writ, FindLaw, September 21, 2005

For a case in which this new law came into play, see Gratiot postal worker convicted of sex crime, Morning Sun (Mt Pleasant, Michigan), March 9, 2006.

On ex post facto laws

Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver … said last week that the retroactive nature of the [Megan's Law] bill [establishing a public sex offender registry] was "a clear flaw." But today Mr. Silver said he had decided to support the bill anyway and would let the courts determine its constitutionality. With the Assembly Democrats feeling vulnerable on crime issues, particularly after [Republican governor] Pataki's victory last November, Mr. Silver clearly faced intense political pressure not to oppose the bill.

From Bill to Track Sex Offenders Nears Passage, New York Times, June 27, 1995.

See also Note S-27 below.

On the statute of limitations

See Note I-12 below.

On general erosion of civil rights

America is in a state of constitutional crisis engendered by the president's unprecedented expansion of executive power. The crisis is exacerbated by the 109th Congress's failure to carry out its constitutionally mandated role to act as a check on the executive.

From The 2007 State of Civil Liberties in America, American Civil Liberties Union, January 22, 2007

See also Safe and Free: Restore our Constitutional Rights, American Civil Liberties Union.

[T]he United States has enacted or begun to undertake new laws, policies, and practices that reflect the continuing failure of the U.S. to fulfill its obligations under the ICCPR [International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights]

From Supplemental Submission to the Human Rights Committee, Human Rights Watch, June 2006

That report documents eleven problem area, including secret detention, indefinite detention, and sentencing juveniles to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

The following list provides links to the official text of some key laws and bills that have been cited to be of concern.

I-5. “Though ages vary from state to state -- between 14 and 18 -- federal law now replaces these in many cases, creating a national age of 18, below which a person is deemed a "child" with regard to sex.”

An “age analysis” of recent major federal legislation identifies three circumstances in which the age of consent for sexual activity is established by US federal law. See Is there a National Age of Consent in the US?

I-6. “What if the overwhelming focus on dangers posed by some sex offenders diverts our attention from other prevalent dangers to children …?”

The Children's Bureau of the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) keeps statistics on three prominent forms of abuse of children, with the following definitions1:

  • Sexual abuse. “involvement of the child in sexual activity to provide sexual gratification or financial benefit to the perpetrator [which may be another child]”
  • Physical abuse. “… physical acts that caused or could have caused physical injury …”
  • Neglect. “… failure … to provide needed, age-appropriate care although financially able …”
Of these, sexual abuse is the least common, with incidence declining from 1.9 cases per thousand children to 1.2 from 1995 to 2004. Physical abuse, the most dangerous of the three because it involves actual or potential physical injury, is almost twice as common, with a similar decline from 3.6 to 2.1 cases per thousand. Figures for neglect have remained fairly constant and in 2004 were 6.5 times higher than those for sexual abuse. These statistics are shown in the following graph and table.

US Child Maltreatment Data, 1995-2004
YearSexual AbusePhysical AbuseNeglectFatalities
 per 1,000 childrenper 100,000
19951.873.567.661.68
19961.803.457.581.62
19971.663.337.461.68
19981.482.936.891.62
19991.312.476.491.66
20001.242.367.281.84
20011.202.327.131.96
20021.222.297.212.07
20031.192.257.532.00
20041.152.087.442.03
Source: Children's Bureau, US Department of Health and Human Services2

The table also includes data for related fatalities, defined as “death of a child as a result of abuse or neglect ….” The numbers for this have been increasing over the same ten year period, from 1.7 deaths per 100,000 children in 1995 to 2.0 in 2004.

Based on these data, one could ask, if twice as many kids are being brutally beaten up and six times as many kids are being starved or otherwise denied their basic needs for growth, and if an increasing number of kids are being killed by physical abuse and neglect, why do the government and the media continue to focus the most attention on the less prevalent, less dangerous, and declining incidence of sexual abuse?

The US Department of Justice has sponsored numerous studies of online exploitation of children, which consistently return the result that it is a relatively small pocket of activity on the national crime stage (e.g., 2000, 2004, 2006, 2006, page 38..9). Conversely, we see from the data above that physical abuse and neglect are the cardinal crimes against children, injuring hundreds of thousands every year. Yet in May 2006, when the Department officially kicked off its Project Safe Childhood initiative, it said nothing about physical abuse or neglect, but made its mission specifically to “protect children from online exploitation and abuse.” Since that time, it has generated a steady stream of news releases, proudly trumpeting decades-long or life sentences, mainly for charges of child pornography, and not one conviction of anyone causing actual physical injury to a child.
——————————

1. Definitions from Child Maltreatment 2004, Children's Bureau, US Department of Health and Human Services, 2006, glossary

2. Data from
Victimization Rates by Maltreatment Type: 1995-99, 2000-04, from Child Maltreatment, Children's Bureau, US Department of Health and Human Services
and
Child Fatality Rates per 100,000 Children: 1995-99, 2000-04, from Child Maltreatment, Children's Bureau, US Department of Health and Human Services

I-7. “… many youngsters are now prosecuted and/or subjected to public shaming for behaviors that young people (including most of today's adults when they were young) have engaged in for millennia without public stigma.”

  11-year-old registered "sex offender"
11-year-old registered “sex offender”

What used to be called “playing doctor” for young children or thought of as normal sexual experimentation for older teens is now enough to get a kid arrested, taken away in handcuffs, put in juvenile jail, subjected to draconian psychological “treatment,” and put on a sex offender registry, often for the rest of his or her life! This is not just for aggressive or violent behavior, but also for innocent, consensual play among giggling kids. See Criminalizing Child’s Play for data on the prosecution of children as young as four for sexual behavior.

I-8. “[We are] lumping together the innocent and the guilty.”

There are three ways this happens:

  • When accusations of abuse are assumed to be true without due process of law and they turn out to be false, innocent people suffer. See False Accusations of Child Sexual Abuse for examples of this happening.

  • Some people have become so fearful that they may see sexual abuse in perfectly innocent behavior, such as breastfeeding and taking naked baby pictures. See Look Who’s a Sex Offender Now! for examples.

  • In the UK, police have been given authority to monitor and enter the homes of people who have not been convicted of any crime, but are suspected of having an attraction to children. See New Crackdown on Paedophiles, Daily Express (United Kingdom), July 30, 2007.

I-9. “[We are] lumping together … those guilty of minor infractions with those who caused serious harm, and those accused of one violation in an entire career of supporting young people with those who caused harm on a regular basis.”

  Sex offender registries, by state
Source: National Public Radio, April 21, 2006

National Public Radio analyzed the sex offender registries in April 2006 to determine which offenders are included on their public websites. It found that while 23 states only show those who are considered dangerous or are repeat offenders, 25 states “list hard-core predators alongside people who may pose no risk to the public.”

See Look Who’s a Sex Offender Now! for examples of fairly ordinary people who got caught doing fairly ordinary things that got some of them put on sex offender registries.

See also Note S-2 below for information on registries that include those convicted of public urination, “streaking,” and “mooning.”

I-10. “… children across the land learn that adults who like them are suspect. And more and more men who pose no danger at all to kids stay away from them, refuse them rides and shun innocent interactions that involve physical contact to avoid any possible misinterpretation of genuine affection or concern.”

Two cases exemplify the horrific results of this fear in our culture:

  • An eleven-year-old Boy Scout nearly starved to death when he was lost in the woods for four days because he avoided contact with the very people who were out searching for him! His mother explained, “We've … told him don't talk to strangers. … When an ATV or horse came by, he got off the trail. … When they left, he got back on the trail. … His biggest fear, he told me, was someone would steal him.”
  • A two-year-old girl wandered off and later drowned in a pond not far from her home. A man who saw the tot from his car thought about stopping to help her, but later said, “One of the reasons I did not go back is because I thought someone would see me and think I was trying to abduct her.” (More on this case)

Reverberations of this fear are arise repeatedly in the press:

I-11. “… the destroyed lives of the falsely accused pile up by the day.”

In courtrooms across the United States and around the world, children are called to testify against their parents, teachers, neighbors, or strangers for sexually abusing them. This is an unfortunate but important burden to place on a child in order to protect other children from abuse. But when the alleged abuse never took place, or was done by somebody else, the coaxing or coercion of children to provide false testimony can only be a painful experience, especially when those children then carry the guilt of sending an innocent person to prison.

See False Accusations of Child Sexual Abuse for a collection of over 150 cases of claims that innocent people have been falsely accused of sexually molesting children. Where possible, they are presented with links to court documents and reputable news reports and analyses to allow readers to determine for themselves if they believe justice has been served in these cases.

I-12. “Statutes of limitations have been virtually abolished for these cases [of sexual behavior with a minor].”

In 2005, the US National Center for the Prosecution of Violence Against Women published a state-by-state analysis of statutes of limitations for criminal cases of sexual assault on an adult victim. A footnote to that table states that “the majority of jurisdictions have exceptions to their statutes of limitations when the victim is a child.”

For civil cases, see Extended Statutes of Limitation for Survivors of Childhood Sexual Abuse by attorney Susan K. Smith, and her state-by-state analysis.

In federal law, limitations have been eliminated for felony sexual abuse, for physical abuse or kidnapping of someone under 18, for felony sexual exploitation of someone under 18, and for felony sexual transportation or trafficking.1
——————————

1. These provisions are in 18 USC 3283 and 3299 (to be codified).
     They were established by the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, §330018, the PROTECT Act of 2003, §202, the Violence Against Women and Department of Justice Reauthorization Act of 2005, §1182, and the Adam Walsh Act of 2006, §211.

I-13. “Repressed memories, unsupported or even contradicted by physical evidence, sometimes become the basis for conviction.”
(Entry coming soon.)

I-14. “Many convicted of sex offenses receive very long sentences in the first place -- often unrelated to the seriousness of their crime and sometimes even longer than those guilty of manslaughter.”

Since the late 1900s, America has become an increasingly punitive society that sees fit to lock up its people — now almost one percent of us. Sex offenders are the latest category of villains for whom no sentence seems too harsh. The US federal sentencing guidelines make it official that photographing a 17-year-old boy with an erection earns a penalty about twice as severe as attempting to kill a child — and about four times as severe as beating a child up so badly that he or she accidentally dies. See Throwing Away the Key for factual background on this issue.

I-15. “Some states now allow the death penalty for some sex offenses against minors when murder or even physical violence is not alleged.”
[ >>> The above quote should be changed, such as to: "Until overruled by the Supreme Court, six states had attempted to institute the death penalty for sex offenses involving children when murder or even physical violence was not alleged."]

As of June 2008, six US states had passed legislation allowing the death penalty for non-murder cases of child sexual abuse: Georgia, Louisiana, Montana, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Texas. Those laws have now been struck down by the US Supreme Court.

The first law that did this was in Louisiana:

Aggravated rape. Whoever commits the crime of … anal, oral, or vaginal sexual intercourse … [where] it is deemed to be without lawful consent of the victim because … the victim was under the age of thirteen years … [and where] lack of knowledge of the victim's age shall not be a defense …, if the district attorney seeks a capital verdict, the offender shall be punished by death or life imprisonment at hard labor without benefit of parole, probation, or suspension of sentence, in accordance with the determination of the jury.

From Louisiana Revised Statute 14:42, as amended by House Bill 55 in 1995,1 sections A(4) and D(2)(a)

So stated, a woman could be put to death for allowing a twelve-year-old boy to penetrate her.

The law was upheld by the Louisiana Supreme Court in 2007, but was then struck down in June 2008. The US Supreme Court ruled that capital punishment for crimes against individuals could only be used in cases of murder.

For more on this issue, see the following references.


——————————

1. House Bill 55 gives the age of the victim for the death penalty to apply as "under the age of twelve years," whereas Statute 14:42 gives it as "under the age of thirteen years." Presumably, there was an amendment that raised the age by a year after passage of House Bill 55.

I-16. “In some states, accused persons may be held for long periods in isolation and without specific charges.”
[ >>> We may want to remove this claim entirely, unless there are some cases we can cite. The examples given in this note do not fit what is being claimed here.]

Cases with long pre-trial detentions include:

I-17. “It is common that [registered sex offenders] are … driven out of their jobs.”

For a well-documented discussion of sex offender employment discrimination and restrictions, see Employment in No Easy Answers: Sex Offender Laws in the US by Sarah Tofte with research by Corinne Carey, Human Rights Watch, September 12, 2007.

I-18. “It is common that [registered sex offenders] are … driven out of their … homes ….”

  Sex offender residency restrictions in San Francisco after Prop 83
Sex offender residency restrictions in San Francisco

It used to be that this was due to pressure, often violent, from frightened or vigilante neighbors (see Note I-19 below). But vigilantism is often no longer necessary to push neighbors out, as state and local governments all across the United States and elsewhere have begun to promulgate laws to officially forbid residency of sex offenders.

The US National Conference of State Legislatures has published an analysis of States With Sex Offender Residency Restriction Laws. As of June 2006, it lists 21 states with such laws. Some of the states limit their restrictions to their most dangerous sex offenders, but most apply them to anyone on the sex offender registry.

As with presence restrictions (Note I-21 below), many residency restrictions are put in place by municipalities in lieu of or in addition to applicable state laws.

Some articles in the national press evaluating these restrictions and their impact include:

For a legal analysis of such laws, see Banishment By a Thousand Laws: Residency Restrictions on Sex Offenders by Corey Rayburn Yung, professor, John Marshall Law School, Washington University Law Review, 2007.

In addition to legal restrictions, the marketplace has also responded to the public's fear of sex offenders with the creation of new housing subdivisions that will not sell to sex offenders. See Texas developers plan sex offender-free neighborhood in Lubbock, Associated Press, June 6, 2005 and New Subdivisions Ban Sex Offenders From Moving In — Texas Developer To Begin Second Neighborhood — WRTV-TV (Indianapolis, Indiana), June 13, 2006.

For a detailed analysis of the efficacy of residency and other restrictions in one state, see Next Comes Burning at the Stake: Is Ohio getting too tough on sex offenders?, City Beat (Cincinnati, Ohio), August 15, 2007.

For brief descriptions of six lawsuits filed by sex offenders against residency restrictions, see Lawsuit List: Offenders sue over strict residence laws, GateHouse News Service, August 20, 2007.

I-19. “Such public humiliation and isolation has led to suicides. Several registered persons have been murdered by those who found their addresses, in two cases randomly.”

An anonymous website maintains an ominous list of hundreds of suicides, murders, and other inauspicious deaths of sex offenders or those falsely presumed to be such. See The Consequences, of sex laws, sex crimes and accusations!: Suicides, Deaths, Murders, and Revenge by “eAdvocate”. Click on the link in each death listed to be taken to a news report about it in the mainstream press.

Here are some examples of vigilante attacks over the years, half of which resulted in the death of one or more sex offenders trying to stay out of trouble, or else the death of innocent bystanders or the vigilante attacker. In cases marked with an asterisk (*), the vigilantes attacked an innocent person by mistake.

I-20. “Sex offenders are often very limited regarding travel”

(This note comments on restrictions against travel from one region to another. The term “travel restrictions” is also often used to refer to prohibitions on sex offenders being in certain public places. For that issue, see Note I-21 below.)

In the United States, travel restrictions are currently imposed as part of the parole or probation process. For example:

On November 28, 2000, the [Rhode Island] Department [of Corrections] … banned all out-of-state travel by sex offender probationers subject to five exceptions: [emergency, therapy, employment, medical, or religious services] … The Policy tacitly bars both casual, same-day travel and more extended travel for vacation.

From Pelland v. Rhode Island, Decision and Order, US District Court for Rhode Island

For those sex offenders who are paroled, the [Parole] Board can impose a number of specialized conditions, including community-based sex offender treatment requirements, employment and travel restrictions, prohibitions involving sexually explicit materials, polygraph examination requirements, and allowances for parole officers to conduct computer searches, to name a few.

From Snapshot: Sex Offender Reentry in Texas, p 14 in Managing the Challenges of Sex Offender Reentry, U.S. Department of Justice, February 2007

In addition to the conditions of parole, the parole officer may place added restrictions on sex offenders, [which] may include, but are not limited to: Possession of a driver's license and cell phone, computer and web access, travel restrictions, access to areas near or where children may be present, employment, housing and banking restrictions, and access to specific aftercare programs.

From Sex Offender Information, Colorado Department of Corrections

In April 2008, a bill was introduced in the US Congress calling for notification to other countries when a US sex offender intends to travel to another country and for prohibition of sex offenders entering the US from elsewhere.1 The bill was referred to various committees and as of August 2008 there had been no further action on the proposal.

In Britain, the Sexual Offences Act 2003 introduced formal procedures for monitoring or barring foreign travel by any sex offender. §86, Notification requirements: travel outside the United Kingdom, allows the government to require certain sex offenders to provide notice of any travel plans and actual travel outside the United Kingdom. §114 to 122, Foreign travel orders, allows the government to prohibit a particular sex offender from traveling to particular countries outside the UK or from leaving the UK at all.

A group in Canada is lobbying for similar restrictions:

Canadian courts should be able to impose “foreign travel orders” upon anyone for whom there are reasonable grounds to fear that they will sexually abuse a child overseas.

From How Canada Allows its Convicted Sex Offenders to Freely Travel Abroad, Beyond Borders

Notice that the Canadian group does not limit its proposal to convicted sex offenders, but includes “reasonable” suspicion as grounds for the proposed restrictions.
——————————

1. International Megan's Law of 2008 — H.R.5722 — US Congress, April 8, 2008

I-21. “Sex offenders … are often prohibited from being in many public spaces.”

(These restrictions are often called “travel restrictions” because they limit where a person can go. However, that term is more suitable for restrictions on regional travel, as discussed in Note I-20 above. The term “presence restrictions” is used here for restrictions on where a person can be.)

Presence restrictions are becoming commonplace across the United States and elsewhere in the world. Two examples:

  • The State of Oklahoma has established a “zone of safety” around schools, playgrounds, and parks. Anyone on the sex offender registry is prohibited from being anywhere within 300 feet of such a “zone of safety.”
  • The City of Indianapolis bans sex offenders from coming within 1,000 feet of parks, swimming pools, playgrounds and other sites when children are present. (More information)

The US National Conference of State Legislatures has published two analyses of state laws that impose presence and other restrictions: State Enactments Imposing Restrictions on Sex Offenders, February 2006, and Enactments Concerning Sex Offenders Near Schools and Child-Care, September 19, 2006. Note that these analyses include only laws at the state level. Many presence restrictions are now being established by municipalities, like the one by Indianapolis cited above.

For an example of how fully such restrictions can ostracize someone from society, see Child sex offenders can't enter schools to vote, Daily Herald (Chicago, Illinois), August 30, 2007.

I-22. “Sex offenders are often very limited regarding … where they can live … A new wave of local legislation is sweeping over the land make it illegal for registered persons who have served their sentences to live virtually anywhere at all.”

See Note I-18 above.

I-23. “There are nearly 700,000 registered sex offenders.”
[ >>> The above quote should be changed, such as to: "There are over 500,000 registered sex offenders in the United States."]

Sex offender registries have been created in all 50 states of the USA, as well as the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, Guam, other territories and possessions, and several foreign countries. How many people are listed on these registries? The only honest answer to that question is that nobody really knows, but there are a lot. The US government isn’t counting, and the states and citizen groups are wildly over-counting. Many registries include large numbers of people who have been dead for many years and others who no longer live in the states that are listing them. Despite this, it is still true that there are a lot of real people on the registries. A reasonable estimate for the United States is probably somewhat over 500,000. Approximately one out of every 200 men in the country is a registered sex offender.

For details and analysis of the numbers, see Counting and Over-Counting Sex Offenders.

I-24. “several hundred thousand being sought for registration”

The number of people being sought for registration in the United States is included in the number of registered sex offenders because jurisdictions include them on their registries as “noncompliants.”

I-25. “several hundred thousand in prison”

The sex offender registries include a good number of people who are currently incarcerated (see Counting and Over-Counting Sex Offenders), but there may be over 200,000 people currently in prison for sex offenses who are not yet on the registries.

US government statistics1 indicate there were 154,000 people in state prisons at the end of 2004 whose most serious offense was rape or other sexual assault. The same source also shows that the federal prison population is about 14% that of the state prisons,2 so if the offense ratio is similar, this would imply a total of about 175,000 sex offenders in federal and state prisons. Add to this prisoners who committed sex offenses along with more serious crimes, people imprisoned for sex offenses not classified as sexual assault, people incarcerated in non-prison facilities (mainly jails and juvenile detention3), and growth in prison population since 2004, and the total number of people incarcerated for sex offenses probably well exceeds 200,000.

There is an unknown amount of overlap between the population on the registries and that in prisons for sex offenses, but that overlap is not likely more than ten to 20 percent.4 Thus it is likely that the total number of people who are either registered (see Note I-23 above) or incarcerated, or both, in the United States for sex offenses is in the neighborhood of 700,000.
——————————

1. Prisoners in 2006, Bureau of Justice Statistics (US DoJ), December 2007 (abstract with link), Appendix table 9, page 24

2. same, Table 1, page 2

3. See same, inset at bottom of page 3, Total incarcerated population at yearend 2006.

4. See figures reported in Count Analysis of the US Registries.

I-26. “The youngest person now required to register is six years old”
[ >>> The note following assumes the above quote is changed to: "The sex offender registry includes children as young as eleven years old"]

  11-year-old registered "sex offender"
11-year-old registered “sex offender”

The photograph on the right was taken — without the bar across the boy's eyes — from an actual entry on the sex offender registry. We do not provide a link here to the entry in order to protect the privacy of the boy and his family. Along with his full name and street address, the registry gives his date of birth and date first registered, indicating he was put on the registry at age eleven. It also indicates that his crime was “Aggravated indecent liberties with a child,” which, in the boy's state, is a felony that includes consensual sexual touching of another child under 14 years of age.

This boy is one of six eleven-year-olds who were found in an analysis in 2007 of the registry data for four US states (Colorado, Georgia, Idaho, and Kansas) that include juveniles and dates of birth on the public registry. That analysis showed over one thousand sex offenders under the age of 18 on the public registry in just those four states.

There is also a case in England of an 11-year-old boy being put on the sex offender registry for an offense committed when he was ten years old. See Boy, 11, on sex register, Liverpool Echo (United Kingdom), May 12, 2006.

I-27. “4-year olds are being charged with sexual harassment.”

Some examples of young children being formally admonished or legally prosecuted for innocent and playful sexual activity:

For more information on this, see Criminalizing Child’s Play.

I-28. “Juveniles whose feelings or actions are considered deviant have been subjected to the same aversive therapies once used to "cure" gay men.”

The psychological treatments used on children who are caught being sexual are discussed in the Treatment section of Ethical Treatment for All Youth. Abusive treatments that were commonly used on homosexuals in the 1950s and are currently used on children are discussed under Arousal Reconditioning.

I-29. “Juveniles whose … actions are considered deviant have been subjected to … public humiliation - their names, addresses and photos provided the public on the internet and in other media.”

See Note I-7 above.

I-30. “In eighteen states, life-time civil commitment is now mandated for some categories of sex offenders who have completed their prison sentences.”

In general usage, "civil commitment" is the process by which a court of law orders a person to be confined in a psychiatric hospital due to a mental illness.1 It is called "civil" to distinguish from criminal confinement, which is based on a finding that a person is guilty of a crime. Because the conditions leading to civil commitment usually do not subside and are not cured, civil commitment is generally expected to last for the lifetime of the person committed.

There is a history of abuses of civil commitment to suppress political dissent or to remove "undesireables" from society. In such forms, when used to detain large numbers of people, it becomes equivalent to internment.2

  Map of US states with sex offender civil commitment
US states using civil commitment of sex offenders.
Source: New York Times

In the mid-1990s, US states began passing laws to permit the civil commitment of persons who, due to a "mental abnormality" or a "personality disorder," were deemed likely to engage in "predatory acts of sexual violence."3 This is used to continue the confinement of certain sex offenders. after they have finished serving their prison sentences. As of March 2007, the number of states providing for civil commitment of sex offenders stood at twenty.4

For a review of one state's implementation of civil commitment for sex offenders, see Trapped in the Treatment Mall — For some California sex offenders, prison is just the start of their confinement. — California Lawyer, September 2008.
——————————

1. See Civil Commitment: Past, Present, and Future by Paul F. Stavis, New York State Commission on Quality of Care, August 1995, for background on the concept before it was applied to sex offenders.

2. See Involuntary commitment and Internment in Wikipedia.

3. Kansas vs. Hendricks, US Supreme Court, June 23, 1997, first paragraph of opinion.

4. See A Profile of Civil Commitment Around the Country, New York Times, March 3, 2007.

I-31. “Though this [civil commitment] status is supposed to be reserved only for truly violent predators, existing law now defines any offense against a minor, including those without any violence, as a violent act.”

An example of this is the passage of Senate Bill 2161 in California in 1996. Section 3 of this bill changed the meaning of the legal term, “sexually violent offense,” which is the qualification for civil commitment, to include essentially any sexual act with a child under the age of 14. This means, for example, that a woman allowing a thirteen-year-old boy to penetrate her is committing a violent act on him. Also, allowing a curious child of thirteen or younger to touch one's genitals is a violent act on the child.

California Attorneys for Criminal Justice opposed this bill, saying that “the civil commitment procedure for sexually violent predators was carefully crafted to be as narrow as possible and to apply only to the most violent predators. … there was agreement between the various parties that the statute would only apply to violent offenses.”

In discussing this bill, the Senate Committee on Criminal Procedure asked itself, “Should the civil commitment process for sexually violent predators be expanded to include nonviolent offenses? If so, should the statute refer to "sexual predators" rather than to "sexually violent predators"?” Apparently, the legislature's answers to these questions were, respectively, “yes” and “no.” The bill passed without a single vote in opposition in both the State Assembly and Senate.

This means that for the purposes of determining who is eligible for civil commitment, the actual use of force in a sex act on a child under 14 is irrelevant. Since any sexual act at all with the child is automatically, by legal definition, violent, a brutal rape of the child is not any worse, in this linguistic construction, than a consensual act.

Although not applicable to civil commitment, there is a similar redefinition of language in federal law. 18 USC 3559(c)(2)(F)(i) defines serious violent felony to include a violation of 18 USC 2241(c), which includes any consensual sexual act with a person under 12 years old by a person at least four years older. This means that any touching of genitals between an eleven-year-old and a 15-year-old is a “seriously violent” act on the younger party, no matter how much he or she may have wished to participate or even initiated it.

I-32. “… nearly 4,000 sex offenders were held under [civil commitment] statutes”

According to figures reported by the New York Times, the number of civilly committed sex offenders in 18 states as of Fall 2006 was 2,694, except for some inmates not included in the count in two states due to changes in laws. See A Profile of Civil Commitment Around the Country, New York Times, March 3, 2007.

Figures provided by the State of California indicate that the population of Coalinga State Hospital, its facility for civil commitment of sex offenders, grew from 408 on October 30, 2006 to 688 one year later, a difference of 280, or 69 percent. If other states have similar growth figures, then the total national figure would be well over 4,000 by the end of 2007.

I-33. “Though such persons … may be released to supervised parole, very few have ever been released.”

According to figures reported by the New York Times, the number of civilly committed sex offenders that have ever been fully discharged in 18 states as of Fall 2006 was 252, or nine percent of the committed population at that time. In addition, another 154 inmates (six percent) were on conditional, supervised, or transitional release. See A Profile of Civil Commitment Around the Country, New York Times, March 3, 2007.

I-34. “Though such persons are supposed to be in treatment for verifiable mental illnesses, … many go virtually untreated.”

See, for example, A Record of Failure at Center for Sex Offenders, New York Times, March 5, 2007.

Notes on the Statement page

S-1. “Often … crimes are labeled violent … where no force or violence occurred.”

See Note I-31 above.

S-2. “In some jurisdictions, [sex offender registration] includes those … accused of public urination”

Public urination is typically charged under “indecent exposure” statutes, which also cover mischievous pranks, such as “streaking” and “mooning.” Here are some examples of people on the sex offender registries for such innocuous offenses.

  • A Colorado man is on that state's registry because of his conviction for a bout of drunken nudity in his own backyard in 2002. (See Absurdity Breakout: Laws end up targeting not-so-dangerous 'sex offenders', GateHouse News Service, August 20, 2007.)
  • A Pennsylvania man is on his state's registry for "streaking." (See State Registration Laws in No Easy Answers: Sex Offender Laws in the US by Sarah Tofte with research by Corinne Carey, Human Rights Watch, September 12, 2007.)
  • Juan Matamoros pleaded guilty to public urination in Massachusetts in 1986. Because of that, 21 years later, he must move from the Florida home his family lives in because it is too close to a city park. (See Florida Banishes Man for Public Urination, MSNBC, March 2007.)
  • A Chicago construction worker who relieved himself behind a garbage can in an alley was spotted by a police officer, arrested, and convicted of public urination and indecent exposure. As a Mexican immigrant, he was later rounded up for deportation by Homeland Security's "Operation Predator." (See Immigrant sex offenders targeted, Chicago Tribune, February 24, 2005.)
  • Nancy Phipps was convicted of flashing a detective and will be on Oklahoma's registry for that until 2012. In 2007, she moved into a homeless shelter with her 16-year-old daughter because residency restrictions barred her from 90 percent of the city they live in. (See Absurdity Breakout: Laws end up targeting not-so-dangerous 'sex offenders', GateHouse News Service, August 20, 2007.)
  • In 1973, the California Supreme Court allowed James Birch to retract his plea of guilty to public urination because he did not know when he entered it the year before that it would make him subject to lifelong registration as a sex offender. (See case 10 Cal. 3d 314.)

In 2007, Human Rights Watch found thirteen states that require sex offender registration for public urination. While two limit the requirement to cases in which it was done in view of a minor, the other eleven states have no such limitation.

S-3. “There are now about two million persons --adults and children-- who are identified as sex offenders, either in prison, on parole, registered or being sought as unregistered.”
[ >>> The note following assumes the above quote is changed by changing "two million" to "700,000". In addition, the following could be added on the Statement page: ", and upwards of 2 million family members living with the consequences of the sex offender registries."]

As discussed in Counting and Over-Counting Sex Offenders, there is no reliable data on the number of registered sex offenders in the United States. Published estimates exceeding 600,000 are probably exagerated. The correct number of people on the US registries is probably somewhat over 500,000. This includes anyone on parole for a sex offense and satisfying their parole requirements. It also probably includes most people being sought for registration because most jurisdictions include such “noncompliants” who have not actually registered on their registries nonetheless.

Regarding the number of sex offenders in prison and the total number of those on the registries and in prison, see Note I-25 above.

S-4. “… registration and classification is required of … children as young as six years old”
[ >>> The note following assumes the above quote is changed by changing "six" to "eleven", i.e., changed to: "… registration and classification is required of … children as young as eleven years old".]

See Note I-26 above.

S-5. “registration and classification is required of … minors convicted of consensual sex with other minors.”

See Note I-7 above.

S-6. “[Registered minors] are sometimes subject to public posting of their photographs, addresses and other personal information.”

See Note I-7 above.

S-7. “Most states and municipalities forbid sex offenders to live in certain areas near schools or day care centers”

See Note I-22 above.

S-8. “Most states and municipalities … limit the travel of sex offenders within states and across state lines.”

See Note I-20 above.

S-9. “Registered sex offenders are often required to wear ankle bracelets with global positioning units that trace their every move.”

See More States Move to Use GPS Tracking of Sex Offenders, Fox News, May 31, 2006.

The US National Conference of State Legislatures has published an analysis of statutory provisions regarding GPS tracking of sex offenders. It lists 26 such laws in twenty states as of June 2006.

Several companies have stepped up to answer the demand for such monitoring services, including iSecureTrac, RemoteMDx, and Pro Tech Monitoring.

The chief financial officer of a major manufacturer of electronic monitoring devices said in 2006:

It seems like you can’t do a Google search or pick up a newspaper or turn on a national newscast without hearing about GPS monitoring, especially in the area of sex offender monitoring. So the market has really started to take off. We see around 100% growth in the number of GPS units for 2006, and we see that growth rate being extended into 2007.
          If you take a look at the legislation that has been sweeping the United States, say, take sex offender monitoring, for example, just 15 months ago, there was not a single state of the United States that had legislation requiring the GPS monitoring of sex offenders. Today, 41 states have either introduced or passed legislation for the GPS monitoring of sex offenders. Within the next 12 months, virtually all 50 states will have passed such legislation. The market is just exploding.

From David Vana - iSecureTrac Corporation (ISEC): CEO Interview, Wall Street Transcript, September 4, 2006

S-10. “Mandatory chips … may be implanted in the bodies of offenders in some jurisdictions.”
[ >>> The note following assumes the above quote is changed to: "Mandatory chips … have been considered by some jurisdictions for implantation into the bodies of offenders."]

For example, a proposal to implant such chips in sex offenders made its way to the floor of the Wisconsin legislature in 2006. The lawmakers rejected the chips, but approved alternative satellite-tracking technology. (See Tracking Bill Passes Senate: Legislative Roundup, Wisconsin State Journal (Madison, Wisconsin), April 26, 2006.)

S-11. “In some states, the residential limits are so severe that sex offenders have great difficulty finding housing. Some towns and cities make it virtually impossible for registered sex offenders to live there.”

See Note I-22 above.

S-12. “The term "sex offender" includes an extremely wide range of people who have been judged guilty of behaviors from bad taste to serious abuse”

See Note I-9 above.

S-13. “the vast majority of persons attracted to children are not violent.”

This has been found to be the case in numerous psychological studies. For example:

Sex offenders against minors … were found for the most part to be non-violent and not aroused by sexually aggressive stimuli involving children … 26 studies conducted over the past 40 years have found that adult-child sexual activity rarely involves force or violence. … Some studies … showed that they were significantly more aroused by consensual stimuli than by those involving force.

From Personality Correlates of Pedophilia: Are They Reliable Indicators? by Paul Okami and Amy Goldberg, Department of Psychology, University of California, Los Angeles, The Journal of Sex Research, August 1992 (Abstract)

Other studies reporting similar findings include:

  • Theory-based assessment, treatment, and prevention of sexual aggression by Gordon C. Nagayama Hall, Kent State University, Ohio, 1996 (Google Books)
  • Sexual encounters between boys and adults by Donald J. West and T. P. Woodhouse, Institute of Criminology, University of Cambridge, England, 1990 (Amazon)
  • The heterogeneity/homogeneity of pedophilia by J.M.W. Bradford, B.A. Bloomberg, and D. Bourget, Forensic Service, Royal Ottawa Hospital, Psychiatric Journal of the University of Ottawa, 1988 (PubMed)

S-14. “a pedophile is defined medically as a person primarily attracted to children under puberty (about 12)”

See Diagnostic criteria for … Pedophilia in Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition, Text Revision (DSM-IV-TR), American Psychiatric Association, 2000.

S-15. “the age of consent - which has been set in Federal sex laws at eighteen”

See Note I-5 above.

S-16. “… only a small percentage of sex offenders were convicted of crimes against minors (and an even smaller percentage against young children)”
[ >>> The above quote may not be correct, along with Note I-3 above, q.v..]

See Note I-3 above.

S-17. “… most sexual violation of children is by family members, not strangers.”

Actually, this is true of all violation of children, including sexual, as well as physical, neglect, and others.

The Children's Bureau of the US Department of Health and Human Services publishes annual statistics on child abuse of all kinds in the United States. The greatest perpetrators of all kinds of abuse are parents. According to Child Maltreatment 2005, out of 93,000 cases of physical abuse of children in 42 states in 2005, parents were responsible for 76 percent and other relatives committed another seven percent. Of the 67,000 cases of sexual abuse, parents accounted for 26 percent and other relatives 29 percent. (See Table 3-17.) Amazingly, more abuse occurs at the hands of mothers than any other category of relationship, 40 percent by the mother acting alone and 23 percent by the mother acting together with either the father or someone else. (See Table 3-16. Note that the latter data are not broken down by type of abuse, so are mainly driven by the 520,000 cases of child neglect, which must usually be blamed on the primary caregiver.)

Some older data give more details on sexual violence in particular.

In Sexual Assault of Young Children as Reported to Law Enforcement (July 2000), the US National Center for Juvenile Justice presented statistics on 60,000 cases of forcible sexual assault in twelve states from 1991 through 1996. According to this study, 34 percent of sexual assaults of a juvenile were committed by a family member, 59 percent by an acquaintance, and seven percent by a stranger. (See Table 6, page 10.) The younger the child, the greater the likelihood of the abuse being committed by a family member: 49 percent for children under six, with only three percent of this abuse coming from strangers. 77 percent of sexual assaults of a juvenile occurred inside a residence, or 87 percent for children under six. (See Table 4, page 6.)

  Age and relationship of child sexual assault victims and offenders
Age and relationship of child sexual assault victims and offenders.
Source: NCJJ, Ch 2, p 29

Juvenile Offenders and Victims: 1999 National Report, also from the US National Center for Juvenile Justice, presented analysis of the same data that included a breakdown by age of offender. (See Chapter 2, page 29 of the report.) The results are shown in the chart to the right. According to this data, most sexual assaults on children six years old and younger were committed by friends and family members aged 12-17 (29%) and by family members over 25 (26%). For victims aged seven to eleven, assaults came mostly from family members and friends over 34 (30%) and from older juvenile friends and family members (27%). For youth aged 12 to 17, the largest proportions of assaults were by young adult friends (27%) and by friends in the same age range as the victims (20%). Assaults by strangers were rare across all categories, and were the most rare for the youngest children.

The Survey of Inmates in State Correctional Facilities by the US Bureau of Justice Statistics (1997) reported on the victim characteristics of 50,000 men serving sentences for rape or sexual assault of one victim under the age of 18. Of these, the victim was the child or step-child of 31 percent of the prisoners, another relative of 14 percent, a friend or acquaintance of 47 percent, and a stranger to seven percent of the prisoners. (See table on page 36 of Recidivism of Sex Offenders Released from Prison in 1994.)

S-18. “Recidivism rates for sex offenders with children [i.e., sex offenders against children] have … been shown … to be quite low.”
(Entry coming soon.)

S-19. “Most child abuse has nothing to do with sex.”

See Note I-6 above.

S-20. “… non-sexual violence against children is at least as pervasive as sexual violence.”

Actually, in the US, physical abuse of children is twice as prevalent and child neglect five times as prevalent as sexual abuse. See Note I-6 above.

S-21. “If convicted, they [children accused of sex offenses] are often forced to comply with the same public registries and life-time commitment as adults.”
[ >>> The note following assumes the above quote is changed by striking "and life-time commitment", i.e., changed to: "If convicted, they [children accused of sex offenses] are often forced to comply with the same public registries as adults.".]

See Note I-7 above.

S-22. “Teens and children may now be criminalized and forced to register for activities considered experimentation or play since the dawn of history and in most cultures.”

See Note I-7 above.

S-23. “Demonization is destructive even when applied to truly violent offenders. … To view dangerous offenders as totally 'other' than us prevents us from getting at the roots of such crimes. Permanent stigmatization not only makes impossible re-integration into society of those who are rehabilitated, it signals a breakdown in civil society.”

The destructive impact on society of demonization of its individuals has been a recurrent theme of a number of eminent social scientists. For example:

Decivilizing and demonization form a structural-cum-discursive couplet in which each element reinforces the other and both serve in tandem to legitimize the state policy of urban abandonment and punitive containment responsible for the parlous state of the contemporary ghetto.

From Decivilizing and Demonizing: Remaking the Black American Ghetto by Loïc Wacquant, Department of Sociology, University of California at Berkeley, 2004 (Linked on Wacquant's Web page)

I have also investigated the psychological processes involved in dehumanizing other human beings, in thinking about them as less than human, and then labeling them as "the enemy." Doing so enables average people to behave like "brute beasts" in their hostility and violence toward those they consider to be dangerous, or insignificant animal-like creatures. The psychological process of dehumanization is a central destructive force in prejudice, discrimination, stigmatization and genocide.

From Liberation Psychology in a Time of Terror by Philip G. Zimbardo, Department of Psychology, Stanford University, October 5, 2005 (Linked at Stanford Prison Experiment)

S-24. “Reporting laws [require] doctors, social workers and therapists … to report anyone mentioning past, present or possible "abuse" in previously confidential settings.”

See Mandatory Reporting of Child Abuse and Neglect by Susan K. Smith, Smith & Moore, LLC, August 25, 2007.

S-25. “Reporting laws … discourage[] people in need of counseling for sexual problems from seeking out professional help.”

A number of professional organizations and publications have expressed this concern, such as:

We fear that such a [mandatory reporting] provision will discourage minors from obtaining vital health care out of fear that conversation with a healthcare provider or counselor will no longer be held in confidence.

From Memorandum in Opposition: S.1069 – Saland, New York State Chapter of the National Association of Social Workers

Absent confidentiality, individuals might not disclose information, which would diminish the ability to provide appropriate services.

From Legislative Memo: Child Abuse Reporting, New York Civil Liberties Union, 2004

The bill will … discourage young people from obtaining needed health care out of fear that conversations with doctors and nurses will no longer be confidential. … Upon learning that their conversations with health care providers may no longer be confidential, young people will be far less likely to seek or obtain necessary health care. … The risk of a police report will discourage young people from confiding in adults about sexual issues when doing so could bring the police to their door and send their girlfriend or boyfriend to jail.

From The Mandatory Reporting of Child Abuse Under the Child Welfare Act, Health Law Journal, 1999 (Linked at Health Law Institute)

An example of the kind of thing people would be afraid of is given by the following:

Kevin's mom walked in on him performing a sex act on another child, who was under the age of ten. His mother was concerned and took Kevin to a therapist. The girl was also counseled. "Next thing I know, I have my son registered as a sex offender because I took him in for counseling."

From Kids as Young as 12 are Being Put on the Kansas Sex Offender Website, KAKE-TV (Wichita, Kansas), November 16, 2005.

S-26. “Most states, and the Federal government, have abolished or are considering abolishing statutes of limitation.”

See Note I-12 above.

S-27. “Retroactive registries seem to violate the Constitutional rubric against ex post facto laws.”

An ex post facto law is a law that changes the legality of an act, or the punishment for it, after the act has been committed. Such laws are prohibited in the United States by the Constitution, Article I, Sections 9 and 10. (See also Wikipedia.)

The US Supreme Court decided in Smith v. Doe (March 2003) that retroactive sex offender registration is constitutional if it is instituted for purposes of public protection and not punishment. Three of the nine judges disagreed and said that the registration requirement is punishment and should only be applied to individuals convicted after the creation of the registry. (Hear radio reports from NPR before and after the court's decision. Read the court's opinion in the case.)

In December 2007, the Indiana Court of Appeals decided otherwise and reversed the lifetime registration requirement of Todd Jensen. (See Court says registry violated offender's constitutional rights, Associated Press, December 26, 2007 and Todd Jensen v. Indiana: Opinion, Indiana Court of Appeals, December 26, 2007.)

S-28. “Four states have mandated the death penalty for some sex offenses [not involving death], and other states are considering the death penalty for a second sex offense.”
[ >>> The note following assumes the above quote is changed, such as to: "Six states attempted to institute the death penalty for nonviolent sex offenses involving children, until it was struck down by the Supreme Court."]

See Note I-15 above.

S-29. “Mainstream legal scholars are debating whether pedophiles should receive death or life-time incarceration in camps.”

See, for example, Better Dead than R(ap)ed?: The Patriarchal Rhetoric Driving Capital Rape Statutes by Corey Rayburn Yung, professor, John Marshall Law School, St. Johns Law Review, September 2004, which discusses the notion that child sexual abuse is as bad as or worse than murder.

Regarding legislation of the death penalty for nonviolent sexual activity with a child, see Note I-15 above.

S-30. “One wonders why all this doesn't raise red flags at least among human rights advocates”
[ >>> It might be a good idea to change the above quote and its following clause, such as to "Red flags raised about all this by human rights advocates attract little attention. Unfortunately, this is quite similar in nature to previous panics aimed at other groups."]

The applause given to harsh treatment of sex offenders easily drowns out voices calling for more fair and effective ways of dealing with the problems of child abuse and sexual assault. A good number of organizations and people have been raising red flags for quite some time about the rising tide of sex offender laws and their consequences. Some examples: