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Soft Science, Hard Time: The Expanding Sexual Regulatory State As Facilitated By Science-LIght

2011-12-22T05:31:00.000-08:00

Soft Science, Hard Time:
The Expanding Sexual Regulatory State As Facilitated By Science-LIght

Most would be shocked to learn that, in many American states, and as recently as the late 1970's, unlucky citizens, having been selected through pseudo-scientific methods as undeserving of reproductive rights, were once forcibly sterilized, having been determined to be of "subnormal intelligence" or of possessing "antisocial traits".

Abnormally high intelligence is not required to imagine the myriad uses to which such laws were put. Indeed, they came in handy when searching for a solution to the “problems” of abandoned children, the poor, the black, the American Indian and those otherwise socially disenfranchised. Criminals convicted of "sexual insanity", institutionalized boys guilty of excessive masturbation or homosexual "acting out" and girls expressing un-lady-like sexual curiosity were also sterilized, with some males even castrated. There existed little oversight of those making these decisions nor rights of appeal afforded its victims.

Hurriedly administered I.Q. tests and shocked observations by scandalized clinicians were the criteria a post-Victorian and puritanical society would employ to justify forced sterilization. The recently discovered but completely untested “science” of Eugenics provided the appearance of modernity and enlightenment so necessary for social engineering in the early 20th century.

These programs had served as an inspiration to Adolph Hitler and his National Scialism and, despite that odious endorsement, American Eugenicists continued to enthusiastically commit medical and human rights atrocities for many decades after WWII, long after the Third Reich's chief eugenicist bit down on his glass cyanide capsule to enjoy his own richly deserved genetic and existential oblivion.

Indeed, Eugenics' origins in the United States were every bit as ignominious as they would later prove to be in Germany. America was, at the time, a deeply racist country where Eugenics provided the appearance of a scientific endorsement of views which held that Irish, blacks, Italians, and Jews were biologically inferior to whites. It further maintained that laws against racial intermarriage were necessary. The Ku Klux Klan, itself praised as a champion of the Anglo Saxon people by Woodrow Wilson, in turn enthusiastically supported Eugenics, just as it did Prohibition.

Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes once famously declared "Three generations of imbeciles are enough!" in joining with the majority to affirm the imposition of involuntary sterilization by the state in a systematic effort to "eliminate defectives from the gene pool." (Buck v. Bell, 1927) In doing so, the “last stop” on the route to justice demonstrated a susceptibility to tyranny informed by a chimera of science.

We should be grateful that eugenics, as a public policy and blunt instrument of the state, eventually faded into obscurity in the United States, Norway, Sweden, Australia, Korea, Japan and Canada. But it did so only because champions of human rights, as well as principled scientific professionals, persevered in decrying its barbarity, its inconsistency with democratic ideals, and its specious scientific foundations.

The Eugenics movement, which had once enjoyed hugely popular support in the U.S., counting President Woodrow Wilson (the great "progressive") amongst its enthusiastic proponents, should serve as a warning to contemporary society in its comparably ill-considered policies of lifetime imprisonment and "civil" detention (and occasional castration) of those it considers to be "sex offenders".

For a new threat, a new war

Child sexual abuse, as a contemporary moral panic and hysterical obsession, had its origins in the legitimate concerns with the physical and emotional mistreatment of children, mostly at the hands of their parents, which began to receive much needed attention some four to five decades ago.

But what had started as a long overdue campaign to liberate children from the horrors so many had been subjected to and which rightly included non-consensual rape, was soon subverted to the purposes of both angry “gender”- feminists (the kind who actually do hate men) and their unlikely allies in this particular crusade, the bible-poisoned religious fundamentalists who hated all sex outside of marriage and, especially, homosexuality.

Soon, child “sexual” abuse was grabbing all of the headlines, having emerged as that form of abuse most in need of discovery and elimination, with many of the “gender”- feminists, having appointed themselves the saviors of those so-abused, proclaiming child sexual abuse to be a fate “worse than death” (and yes, they really did say that and, almost certainly, some really meant it).

Thus followed a multi-decadal downward spiral into the realm of increasingly shrill and improbable conspiracy theories, eagerly propagated by a media shorn of any sense of journalistic objectivity, soft-science “experts” representing newly emerged “child-saving” organizations suddenly flush with cash, and pandering politicians who knew a great opportunity for the aggrandizement of power when they saw it. And, of course, there were the lawyers.

It was also a call to arms for a credulous and, it must be said, ignorant, public which possessed, much to the delight of the foregoing hystericists, an enormous appetite for scandal involving children, sex and adults.

The laws quickly changed, with numerous statutory “loopholes”, having previously provided some semblance of justice, angrily closed by the critical mass of outrage which had been achieved with such breathtaking speed.

Milk carton depictions of the “missing children” followed on the heels of evil satanic cabals as the specter of children abducted, raped and killed by depraved strangers filled the popular imagination with horror and, it must also be said, titillation.

Underlying all of it was the central conceit that theirs was a campaign of “children's rights”. A term which clearly meant, to those of us who had long embraced it, the empowerment of children to flee abusive families and governments and to exercise rights clearly denied them, would be co-opted by the self-appointed and self-proclaimed child-savers who then, having thoroughly stripped it of any of its original meaning, sanctimoniously presented it as their own benevolent contribution to the ages.

The decades-long sex offender hysteria is especially remarkable in one respect; it's ability to hold the public in its thrall despite mountains of accumulating evidence which give lie to its extraordinary claims.

The recently-departed Christopher Hitchens, a man of formidable intellect and with an extraordinary ability to quickly slice through logical fallacies to arrive at essential truths which, once revealed, become obvious to us all, had said of religion: “What can be asserted without proof can be dismissed without proof”.

That simple and disarmingly obvious challenge should be employed to exorcise those many specters visited upon us in the name of protecting children but motivated by something much darker and more menacing.

Sex offender hysteria disproportionately shapes public policy and erodes the rights of citizens even while the evidence of its destructive powers and the absurdity of its central conjecture continues to pile up around us.

Within the past twenty-five years we have seen an enormous expansion of the powers of government to investigate, to entrap, to punish, and to marginalize those it deems “sex offenders” at the same time as it has shorn the rights of children to explore their world and to grow independently of governments which have come to view them, increasingly. as the rightful property of the state.

That the extremists, most of whom have since passed from the scene and whose popularity has long since waned, were wildly effective in the imposition of a fundamentally reordered society, there can be no doubt.

Mainstream society, in all its moderation, ingested their poisonous effluvium and thoroughly integrated it into their own world view where it has been woven into the fabric of society and codified into law.

Today, liberals, conservatives, the rather-more-pleasant “equity”-feminists and even libertarians accept as an unassailable truth that the sexually depraved pose an imminent threat to children's well being and sexual purity. Given the scale and scope of the perceived threat, most have willingly relinquished many of those rights they once enjoyed in the interest of advancing (at least, in appearance) public safety. Trust, freedom and autonomy, just decades ago widely enjoyed, are now a fading memory – an anachronism increasingly believed to be unaffordable in an age most imagine to be rife with existential threat and terror.

In this respect, the war on sex offenders is very similar to some of our other wars, such as the war on drugs and the war on terror, where the display of public demands and a government which is seen to be responsive to them is more important than an accurate perception of threat.

The Weapons in the war on sex offenders

In the endeavor to identify and prosecute sex offenders and to permanently remove them from society, sex abuse theorists have developed an arsenal of weapons which purport to provide compelling and scientifically verifiable evidence.

Those mental health professionals who receive dramatically larger, government-sourced salaries than they could ever receive anywhere else, employ tools whose efficacy is widely disputed within the wider field of psychology. Using polygraphs, penile-plethysmographs, Abel Assessments (measurement of minuscule differences in dwell time while viewing flashing pornographic images), statistical inferences and check-box quizzes, the sex offender theorists make existential decisions on behalf of those unfortunate enough to come under their total control.

Easy-to-administer metrics such as the "Static 99", just as with the IQ tests once employed by the Eugenicists, give these policies' practitioners the requisite imprimatur of "scientism" required to decide who should be locked in cages for the entirety of their lives or who should be set free.

Curiously, those sciences, other than psychology and sociology, both frequently employed as hand-maidens for social engineering experiments and various political expediencies, are entirely absent from any discussion of "what to do about sex offenders?".

The fields of anthropology and evolutionary biology, for example, may well have valuable insights, gained in the course of genuine scientific inquiry, into the role those sexual attractions which lie outside the narrow boundaries of Western acceptance may play in cohering societies or even in ensuring a species' survival.

Unsurprisingly, scientists of those disciplines remain unconsulted by those who craft far-reaching and liberty-stripping social policies which meet the punitive expectations of a tyrannical majority and which leave unanswered fundamental concerns both scientific and civil libertarian.

Instead, this cultural and legal juggernaut is informed solely by those whose work and conclusions comport with prevailing cultural prejudices and whose products are congruent with political power and ambitions as they are now exercised.

Functional MRI's, already detecting, we are assured, "atypical" patterns consistent with sexual deviancy, promise to be a future goldmine to those planning to cash in on the diagnostic gravy train.

Perhaps one can be excused for failing to adequately enthuse over the scientific certainty which fMRI is said to possess or the purposes to which it will undoubtedly be put. There is, after all, an alarming ring of familiarity which accompanies its recent emergence.

Over the millenia, humans have devised many methods to extract meaning and truth from their world and to predict the future, whether it be the scrutiny of animal entrails by the ancient Romans or the testing of buoyancy of those accused of witchcraft as a means to ascertain their guilt.

In the last century, we witnessed the emergence of myriad psychological tests which, we were promised, would produce an accurate interpretation of our psyches as well as proof-positive of the extent to our depravities.

Already, many of those lie abandoned and largely forgotten, having been thoroughly invalidated in the fullness of time. Still others, such as those irrepressible blots of ink first given life by Hermann Rorschach nearly a century ago and inflicted upon generations of test subjects exhorted to their reinterpretation are, still today, enthusiastically displayed by confident psychologists as the state-of-the-art of their trade. This, despite little credible evidence of their efficacy in determining much of anything.

The limitations of these diagnostic tools and their inability to withstand scientific scrutiny make clear that an undistorted window into men's psyches remains, for the time being, out-of-reach and that their liberty should not rest upon insights so gained nor interpreted, as they are, by those informed by deep, cultural biases.

Lifting the Veil on the Academy

The now thoroughly discredited theory of recovered memories (although many, including Paul Shanley of Massachusetts still rot in prison on the strength of that scientific canard) helped to facilitate the removal of statutes of limitations across the country, enabling successful criminal prosecutions of events which occurred decades earlier.

The memories of the younger parties to these events, having now come to define themselves as victims, are now reinterpreted with adult sensibilities and the warm embrace of sexual abuse theory, assuring them that, whatever their life failures, only their alleged “molesters” are to blame. Their memories, alone, often form the sole basis for successful criminal prosecutions.

For a behavior which, we are continuously assured, is so certainly traumatogenic as sexual contact with children or adolescents, it is remarkable that the professional victimologists are entirely at a loss to explain the mechanism for that damage.

Those who have attempted to detect such trauma and its proximate cause, such as Susan Clancy, a distinguished Harvard scholar of psychology and human memory, have been rewarded for their efforts with howls of outrage when their findings failed to deliver results consistent with the sacrosanct “trauma” model of the academy. It is telling that, in the hysterical aftermath of her books publication, she thought it safer to physically relocate to South America.

Within the incestuous academy of professional victimology, reciprocal citations and circular accolades form the disingenuous facade which serves to conceal the many deficiencies of its underlying structure.

Upon its tautological foundation (“it's wrong because it's wrong!”) the academy more closely resembles a medieval church, its priestesses insistent that all believe in their fundamental conceit, a conceit which, by itself, forms their religion's organizing principle.

If child sexual abuse theory were a science, it would not rely upon unchallenged cultural assumptions to which all of its findings are then forced to conform. It would not answer legitimate inquiries into its means and methods with howls of victimist outrage. Ad hominem attacks upon those who dare question the motives of those promulgating this travesty of pseudo-science are the norm from the academy, not the exception.

Because it's not a science so much as a weapon, its designers have been able to tap into the public's deep primeval well of atavistic rage to fuel its destructive power.

The source of this rage is, to this author's mind, clearly a persistent meme of ancient religious origins, having arisen from the cauldrons of religious superstition and in the complete absence of a rational understanding of the world - scientific insights which would only begin to emerge many centuries later.

Even so, this meme continues to propagate and to infect entire societies today, even those who would insist that religion plays no role in shaping their world view.

It has only been very recently that homosexuality, once very much a part of this “stigma meme”, has begun to wrest itself from the punishing grip of a primeval and unchallenged hatred, carried down from one generation to the next.

How we are all different today

The dramatic changes undergone by society as a result of the ongoing child sex panics which began in the late 1970's are most apparent to those of us who came of age in previous decades. From our perspective, society has been fundamentally reordered around fears and prejudices directly informed by those panics.

Periodic social upheavals as a result of moral panic seem to be the norm for humanity, with large segments of society reacting, or overreacting, with almost virally propagated outrage to perceived threats. The moral panic of our current age, an obsession with child sexual inviolability, illustrates our continued susceptibility to emotional and irrational fears.

Children:

Children now exist almost entirely within protective bubbles; ghettos of other children whose ages are within several years of their own, without any access to “unqualified” adults.

No choice is exercised by the children in choosing these adults, since their instincts for sensing danger are considered to be wholly absent, even when well into puberty.

“Unqualified adults” i.e. those adults not blood relatives or without “appropriate” academic credentials and unlicensed by the state, are almost entirely unavailable to children and adolescents as mentors and friends.

As a result, children now must derive all intellectual and emotional sustenance from those adults vetted and approved by their government and their parents.

Since children and adolescents are assumed to be, at all times, acutely vulnerable to exogenous dangers, possessing no innate instincts for self preservation, even their opportunities to play with other children are closely structured and supervised by fretful parents.

“Play dates”, entirely managed by parents in consultation with other parents, specify dates and times during which kids can get together to play, with the assurance that there will be a responsible parent close by to keep a watchful eye on them at all times. Telephone numbers are exchanged and ground rules established in advance of the “date”. The visiting children will be accompanied to and from the “date” with their parent, often driven there in a car.

Increasingly, children live indoors, in front of televisions, computers and video games. Physical activity that requires leaving the house is now limited to those times when qualified adults are able to act as their protective chaperones.

Consequently, children are now more inclined to obesity than ever before, with vanishing opportunities for vigorous physical activity to build strength or to burn calories.

Lost, too, are the opportunities for social interaction and improvisational play which is known to provide valuable life skills and emotional development.

Social isolation has replaced, in just one or two generations, real world experience, experimentation and exploration.

Children themselves are now scrutinized for any sign of “inappropriate” behavior with other children. Six-year-old boys have been charged with felonious sexual assault for playing doctor with five-year-old girls. Children are now routinely added to sex offender registries for sexual interests expressed towards other children.

Children who sexually “offend” are, invariably, subjected to involuntary “therapy” to ensure that they will not “re-offend”. Again, the soft science of child sexual abuse theory asserts its ability to define pathology and to determine its effective remedies.

Incongruously, when children commit terrible crimes, they are often quickly promoted to the status of “adults” for the purpose of severe punishment. Yet, for all others, they are rigorously constrained to the strictly limited rights of childhood.

Adolescents, once able to stake out a more independent existence and to form relationships or to conduct a life significantly outside the view of family and schools, are increasingly infantilized, enjoying little more freedom of movement or freedom from continuous monitoring than the average eight year old. For them, the future transition to full adulthood will be most abrupt.

After chasing children back into their homes to live in protected isolation from all possible contact with “unauthorized” adults, government now insists that they be completely shielded while using social media such as Facebook (which may include possible contact with “unauthorized” adults) even though they probably do so while safely ensconced within their own homes.

This is an example of "mission creep" in which we continue to move the goalposts of acceptable risk closer together to define an ever-smaller field of existence which kids must then content themselves to occupy.

The “Precautionary Principle" which posits that all risk, no matter how minuscule, is unacceptable, today informs all policies affecting child and adolescent exposure to adults.

Except that, of course, its not "all" risks. Only those risks corresponding to the most lurid possibilities with which society has become obsessed, namely, stranger abduction and the ostensibly explosive combination of kids and sex, are addressed by the social fortresses in which children are now held in protective isolation.

These stated concerns for children leave unaddressed some of the consequent dangers they face as a result of these policies: social isolation, frustration, physical inactivity, obesity, depression, life inexperience and a dissociation from the busy, complicated world which awaits them.

Adults:

Every citizen is now exhorted to look for even the slightest hint of “inappropriate” behavior on the part of adults interacting with children. Elaborate safeguards, such as never being alone with a child and never touching them in any way - even with a pat on the head - are painstakingly delineated by safety committees and vetted by attorneys for the slightest vulnerability to lawsuit.

Any displays of affection expressed towards a child or adolescent are now fraught with peril and condemned as “inappropriate” when exercised by non-parental, particularly male, adults.

“Inappropriate” is the preferred term employed by the earnest defenders of childhood “innocence” and which has been perhaps most exquisitely articulated by such high-profile, cultural “surrogate mothers” as Oprah Winfrey who exemplify the modern, redefined woman unafraid to demonstrate aggression or to impose upon society their vision of childhood “innocence”.

As with other attempts at social engineering initiated by popular movements, such as Prohibition of alcohol in the U.S., these efforts achieve a critical mass of public support through continuous reiteration of their narrative in the near-absence of competing messages, as ensured by an obliging media.

Beginning first with men, those expressing an interest in the growth and well being of children and adolescents through Scouting, Boy's Clubs, as teachers, coaches or religious clerics are now viewed with suspicion where once they were regarded with admiration.

As a result, men are today far less inclined towards activities or professions which bring them into contact with kids. The gender of those working with kids has shifted dramatically, with far fewer men now willing to assume the risks which accompany such professions or avocations.

This is not to say that women are immune from such scrutiny. Perhaps as a result of so many fewer men in contact with kids today, women have, in recent years, been themselves increasingly subject to exposure as “sexual predators” of children and adolescents, undoubtedly a consequence unforeseen by some of the moral panics' original authors.

In a remarkably short period of time, those entrusted with teaching, mentoring and caring for unrelated minors has dramatically transformed into something much colder, more indifferent and far less spontaneous. They are now tightly regulated by communities possessing obsessive levels of fear.

States continuously add entire professions to the lists of “Mandatory Reporters”, those who are legally compelled to report to police any suspicion that laws governing sexual behavior are being broken and which forcibly conscript thousands into the service of the modern police state.

States have been in an arms race with their neighbors to impose the harshest conceivable punishments upon sex offenders and to afford judges the least discretion in determining appropriate prison sentences.

Not content with “sex” convictions alone; they first imposed, and then continuously escalated, severe additional restrictions on those who had served the entirety of their sentences. Residency, professional, and now, recreational restrictions have taken hold in criminal and civil law to restrict every aspect of life upon those whose debt to society is now seen never to be fully paid.

Libraries, parks, beaches, swimming pools, schools – even shopping malls – are, increasingly “no-go” zones for those on the sex offender registries.

Those convicted of sex offenses who have, typically, spent many years behind bars, now often find themselves released, not to freedom, but to another form of indefinite incarceration which can stretch into infinity: “civil” commitment in state “hospitals” as “sexual predators”, where, we are assured, they are not being “punished” but merely “detained” for the protection of society. Amongst those being “detained” are 90 year old paraplegics whose only crimes were fondling and in which force or coercion were entirely absent. Commitments under these regulatory schemes do not require findings of mental illness and the burden of proof is placed entirely on the “patients” to prove they are not at risk for reoffending. This, despite the fact that they have served the entirety of their prison sentences which, in most cases, were plea deals negotiated in good faith decades earlier.

Chemical or surgical castration are options sometimes extended to those desperate to get out but, perversely, some of those having undergone these procedures are still denied release.

Not to be outdone by the states, the U.S. government has, in recent years, continuously federalized sex crimes and placed further civil restrictions on sex offenders through the creative application of the “Commerce Clause” and with an obliging pretense of justice provided by the Supreme Court. It, too, has implemented “lifetime civil commitment” of sex offenders when they are eventually released from federal prisons, having been convicted of federal crimes, such as possession of child pornography.

We might derive some hope from subtle, nuanced signals that not all in power are as uniformly “on board” with the furthest extents to which hysteria can be put as others. The Department of Justice recently issued a shockingly public criticism of its own F.B.I.'s obsessive preoccupation with hunting down child pornography at the expense of letting terrorist suspects go uninvestigated [DOJ: FBI digital counterintelligence weakened by focus on child porn]. This provided a fascinating insight into debates which, one could hope, might be occurring with greater frequency behind closed doors in the halls of power.

Nevertheless, at a time when the U.S. is on the brink of fiscal disaster, American taxpayers are still funding entrapment schemes such as the “Precious Treasure Holiday Company” to ensnare individuals who, although lacking the common sense they were born with, are very likely not a threat to anyone but themselves.

Child pornography, as a legal designation, has evolved into something so difficult to identify by sight that many photographers and filmmakers are now inclined to avoid child subjects altogether. Child pornography has been defined so broadly that highly stylized Japanese “manga” comics and Photo-shopped cartoons of Bart and Lisa appearing to engage in fellatio have resulted in criminal convictions.

As if that were not enough, children have been arrested for creating child porn of themselves with web cams and mobile phones; videos intended only for their friends.

This fact, by itself, best supports a suspicion which many of us share: that the crusade of child protection has less to do with protecting children than in giving cover to angry, distorted personalities who wish to propagate their hatred outward into the world.

In a culture with such an extraordinary disparity in attitudes towards sex and violence, finding the latter infinitely more tolerable than the former, we, as a society, are in critical need of rebalancing our priorities and in accurately assessing real world risks to children and adolescents.

As Jacob Sullum, columnist for the libertarian magazine, Reason, put it: “Sex offender laws represent the triumph of outrage over reason”.

The once-frequent rejoinder “it's a free country” which each of us growing up in 1960's' America heard thousands of times, is now only rarely heard, curiously absent in a nation which was once liberty's greatest champion.

Perhaps that is because it is no longer true, as we have since traded our freedom for the perception of security.

Getting a Broader Perspective on "Bullying"

2011-12-07T18:32:00.000-08:00

Fear of bullying has contributed to the massive cutbacks on "recess", the free-play periods designed into school days for over a century. By doing so, the thinking goes, time children spend together with minimal adult mediation of their interactions are reduced, limiting the opportunity for "bullying".

It should also be remembered that children have been increasingly forced to occupy "age ghettos" where their exposure to people one or two years younger or older than themselves has also been minimized. That trend was well underway many decades ago and it is clear that one of the motivations behind it was the desire to limit the corrupting influence of sexual initiation and opportunity between disparate age groups. Government schools have long been laboratories for social scientists and "educators" to try out their latest engineering theories. And we wonder why our educational system is so terrible?

Bullying is a very real issue that we should all insist needs to be addressed and is long overdue in being addressed. Children are demonstrably damaged by the process of bullying.

But that all begs the question: are government schools and the people in charge of those schools the best options to nurture and intellectually enrich children and to keep them safe?

Arab Spring, American Winter

2011-10-27T20:42:00.000-07:00

While the Middle-East and North Africa see glimmers of hope on the horizon of human rights and liberty, Americans are falling all over themselves trying to give up their own liberties.

Here is another attempt to further strip away the rights of registered "sex offenders".

This proposed federal legislation would closely resemble Soviet-era restrictions on travel and would deny American citizens who have served their time in prison the right TO LEAVE THE COUNTRY!

A very nasty and ugly law!

International Megan's Law of 2011
http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=h112-3253

Lenore Skenazy: Building Trust and Community and Making Your Children Stronger

2011-10-17T00:20:00.001-07:00

Lenore Skenazy: Building Trust and Community and Making Your Children Stronger

2011-10-17T00:20:00.000-07:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Xn6PGYD5pU

Fight to Keep Children Away From Killer Is Lost

2011-08-04T18:30:00.000-07:00

This story makes remarkably clear the disparity in treatment between those who physically abuse or even murder children and those accused of having sex with them.

Hundreds of thousands of (mostly) men are serving extremely long, life-destroying sentences in U.S. prisons for some form of alleged sexual contact with minors, often consisting of little more than fondling and, sometimes, nothing whatsoever.

If they are so lucky as to ever get out (and not be re-incarcerated in civil commitment programs) their chances of ever leading a normal life again-let alone one that includes children-are extremely unlikely.

In this story, a woman who had murdered both of her children while they slept is released from a psychiatric hospital years later and is now a stepmother to two more kids. The kid's natural mother, now divorced from their father, is, naturally, concerned about this state of affairs, as any sane person would be.

But the courts have denied her bid to keep her children from living with their stepmother, believing her (the stepmother) to be fully recovered from her "temporary insanity". Not only that, it is asserted that, because she was "temporarily insane" at the time she shot her two daughters, "no crime was committed".

Let's be blunt: we live in a country which values the sexual chastity of children over their very lives.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/31/us/31custody.html?_r=2&emc=tnt&tntemail1=y

Boulder police locate, arrest "sexually violent predator" for crime of not sleeping at homeless shelter

2011-08-04T01:27:00.000-07:00

Boulder police locate, arrest sexually violent predator Kerry Whitfield

Why? Because he chose to stay away from the homeless shelter for several days which he had registered as his address.

He was not on parole or probation and so could not have been encumbered by legal regulations which required him to report to the shelter daily.

He's just homeless but lists the shelter as his address. And the busybodies at the shelter call the police to report him absent after several days when he didn't show up to sleep there.

In other words, unlike other sex offenders, he can't travel or leave his abode even briefly without being arrested for violating the sex registration rules.

Also worth noting, and refreshingly, the reporter defines "sexually violent predator" as it is used by odious laws. It is rare to see any journalist acknowledge that it does not require actual violence.

http://www.dailycamera.com/ci_18614082?source=most_viewed

If at First You Don't Get a Prison Sentence, Try, Try Again

2011-07-27T21:02:00.000-07:00

State and federal prosecutors getting around Fifth Amendment's Double Jeopardy Clause

http://reason.com/blog/2011/07/25/if-at-first-you-dont-get-a-pri

Dutch vigilantes follow the American way

2011-07-22T14:56:00.000-07:00

"...now private citizens are increasingly taking matters into their own hands. In addition to the constant barrage of insults and threats directed at Mr Uitenbogaard in Hengelo, another member of Martijn was driven from his home in the northern province of Friesland. And a writer who merely supported Martijn’s right to free speech has also had the windows of his house smashed and ‘Paedophile’ painted on his front door in red letters."

http://www.rnw.nl/english/article/dutch-vigilantes-follow-american-way

One Last Visit for Mother and Son?

2011-07-20T21:01:00.001-07:00

Uh, no. Apparently not.

This, despite the fact that the son's original accuser has long since recanted her testimony saying the sexual assault she had originally testified to never occurred.

She was nine when she was coerced into her accusation by her mother, then embroiled in a bitter divorce proceeding and in need of an alibi to keep her from being prosecuted for unlawfully fleeing the state with her daughter.

She was eleven when she recanted.

She's now 21 and one of the two cousins she had originally accused of molestation is still in prison. His mother is dying. They would like to see each other one last time. And the State of Texas remains indifferent to both.

Let's be clear: convicted felons are routinely denied freedom even when evidence comes to light that they were wrongfully convicted.

This happens frequently in the U.S. today and should shock and outrage us to the core.

Yet somehow, this continues. And, with Justices like Antonin Scalia in the Supreme Court, we should not be surprised.

"This Court has never held that the Constitution forbids the execution of a convicted defendant who has had a full and fair trial but is later able to convince a habeas court that he is “actually” innocent. Quite to the contrary, we have repeatedly left that question unresolved, while expressing considerable doubt that any claim based on alleged “actual innocence” is constitutionally cognizable, said Antonin Scalia, Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court

http://www.austinchronicle.com/news/2011-07-15/one-last-visit-for-mother-and-son

San Jose man faces life sentence for attacking man suspected of molesting his stepdaughter

2011-07-20T17:43:00.000-07:00

The reporter, in this case, spins the story to evoke outrage from her/his readers that an enraged father could be held responsible for his premeditated and vicious attack on a man he suspected of molesting his daughter.

This has been a recurring trope in America for some time now, possibly starting with the thuggish Ellie Nessler's execution style murder of her sons "molester" within the very courtroom where he was being tried, nearly twenty years ago.

After serving just three years in prison for shooting her victim five times in the head, she returned to her life as a low-level methamphetamine dealer and mother of a nearly grown-up career criminal and soon-to-be murderer in his own right (he stomped a man to death whom he had hired to clean up his family's property).

But according to her supporters, who were, and still are, legion, she should have, instead, received a handsome reward for summarily executing a "child molester".

Largely unacknowledged is the transformation of the American public into an angry, vengeance-seeking mob who have become convinced by their leaders and their journalists that mob-violence and summary execution are perfectly reasonable propositions for securing justice. The media, through outrageously biased "realistic" crime shows, and journalistically bankrupt news magazines and cable news shows, have continuously communicated to the public that real justice is denied them through the courts.

Even the concept of rights have been redefined to include special "victim's rights" and since all virtuous people are now imbued with these emergent rights, they now see the traditional rights of the accused in direct conflict with their own "victim's rights" and demand those of the accused be degraded relative to their own.

And it isn't just the U.S. anymore. It's the U.K., Australia and even The Netherlands.

Marthijn Uittenbogaard, a controversial Dutchman who argued against that country's raising of the age-of-consent laws and who has argued for its abolition, has been continually hounded, harassed, assaulted and had his house vandalized by those who apparently believe that he should not have the right to speak or even to exist, despite his having committed no crime.

This is a very dangerous path which the U.S. has trod and which the rest of world is now following.

http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_18492755?IADID=Search-www.mercurynews.com-www.mercurynews.com

Petition forces parliamentary debate on "Martijn" in The Netherlands

2011-07-17T01:48:00.000-07:00

The previously "tolerant" Dutch nation is quickly erasing any traces of their legendary open-mindedness. U.S.-style sting operations and unprovoked searches are the new face of Dutch justice.

The group "Vereniging Martijn", is being subjected to escalating levels of legal harassment and vigilante violence.

Yesterday, one of the group's spokespersons, Marthijn Uittenbogaard, had the front window of his house smashed by rocks and ammonia was poured through his mail slot.

Previously, he has been physically assaulted and receives almost daily threats. A motorcycle gang recently held a large protest in front of his house.

So far, the police show little interest in affording him the same protections that it provides to Geert Wilders or, previously, to Ayan Hirsi Ali, despite continuous threats to his life.

http://www.dutchnews.nl/news/archives/2011/07/petition_forces_parliamentary.php

Michigan Supreme Court: Homeless sex offender can be punished for not registering address

2011-07-17T00:51:00.000-07:00

Despite not having a residence, and having been barred entrance to homeless shelters because of his sex offender status, the court ruled that he could be held criminally liable for not telling police where he was living.

These laws are working exactly as they are intended to work, to make it extremely difficult, if not impossible, for registered sex offenders to exist without violating laws to which no one else is subjected. Thus, they exist as both a means of harassment and as a pretext for further incarceration.

The term for such laws is "Status Offenses" i.e. an action that is prohibited only to a certain class of people, such as Jews in Nazi occupied countries in the last century.

http://www.therepublic.com/view/story/5f1073ab9aac46d4936c5ee4a31d283e/MI--Homeless-Sex-Offender

Social Networks: Thinking Of The Children

2011-07-15T16:24:00.000-07:00

After chasing children back into their homes to live in protected isolation from all possible contact with unauthorized adults, society/government now insists that they be completely shielded from social media (which may include possible contact with unauthorized adults) even though they probably do so while safely ensconced within their own living rooms or bedrooms.

This is a perfect example of "mission creep" in which we continue to move the goalposts of acceptable risk closer together to define an ever-smaller field of existence which kids must then content themselves to occupy.

This tendency is also described as "The Precautionary Principle" which posits that all risk, no matter now minuscule, is unacceptable.

Except that, of course, its not "all" risks. Only those risks corresponding to the most lurid possibilities with which society has become obsessed, namely, stranger abduction and the ostensibly explosive combination of kids and sex, are addressed by the social fortresses in which children are now held in protective isolation.

These stated concerns for children leave unaddressed the actual dangers they face as a result of these policies: social isolation, frustration, obesity, inexperience and ill-preparation for adulthood, loneliness, depression, a distorted view of the world, etc.

But none of those concerns are all that interesting or sensational, are they?

Where's the excitement and, well, the catharsis in those?

The problem is, real problems are just so damned boring!

It's like the difference between watching, say, Nightmare on Elm Street on the one hand, and Mr. Roger's Neighborhood, on the other. Which would you rather watch?

http://www.kqed.org/news/story/2011/07/11/60667/social_networks_thinking_of_the_children?category=technology

Kirkland 6-year-old patted down by TSA agents

2011-07-15T15:45:00.000-07:00

When Paranoias Collide:

Reconciling the paranoia of "bad touches" with the paranoia of "security theater"

Oh, what to do???

ttp://www.king5.com/video/featured-videos/Kirkland-family-says--125274814.html

Sometimes They Say What They Really Think

2011-07-14T17:36:00.000-07:00

"Former U.S. Atty. Don Heller, who wrote the California death penalty law 33 years ago, said he has turned against capital punishment, believing it is too costly and is administered unfairly and too slowly..

Anyway, he says, "some of these guys should be left out in the general prison population. Then someone can take capital punishment into their own hands, particularly with a baby rapist." "

Obviously, Heller, despite no longer believing in the death penalty, has not lost his wonderfully endearing savagery, since he advocates here the murder of sex offender prisoners by other inmates.

His statement has broader relevance since it is unlikely that he would have said this while still employed by the U.S. government. I believe that he speaks for many of our public servants who leave unvoiced their true regard for human rights.

Certainly he speaks for the majority of those posting online comments to newspapers.

Indeed, savagery is the norm today, not the exception.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-cap-death-penalty-20110714,0,5030234.column

The Trauma Myth

2011-07-14T02:54:00.000-07:00

Susan A. Clancy is a psychology researcher at Harvard University in the field of memory.

In January 2010, Perseus Books published her book The Trauma Myth,^[1] in which she suggests that child sexual abuse is rarely a traumatic experience for the victims at the time it occurs, and is instead described by victims as confusing.^[2] She argues that later in life, after the memories are processed, examined, and more fully understood, the experience becomes traumatic. Clancy writes in “The Trauma Myth” that when she arrived at Harvard in 1996, the trauma theory held that “a child will only participate in abuse if forced, threatened, or explicitly coerced” (p. 41). Then she interviewed victims and learned, “They did not fight it. It was not done against their will. They went along . . . only 5% tried to stop it” (p. 41). Clancy concludes that since sexual abuse of children is not violent per se, the millions of victims who did not experience their sex abuse as traumatic grapple with crippling thoughts of shame, embarrassment, and self-blame, thus compounding their suffering. She advocates for a refined understanding of the immediate effects of child sex abuse in order to better help those who are currently excluded from a clinical and popular culture that embraces the trauma model.

http://www.amazon.com/Trauma-Myth-Sexual-Children---Aftermath/dp/0465022111/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1310637400&sr=8-1

Flash Mobs of Sex Offenders to Descend Upon Orange County California Beaches and Parks?

2011-07-12T01:51:00.000-07:00

Using Twitter, organizers hope to stage seemingly spontaneous events with hundreds of R.S.O.'s and their supporters at parks and beaches where local ordinances declare them to be unwelcome visitors. Stay tuned; we hope to find out more!

Call to ban art with nude children in Australia

2011-07-01T22:07:00.000-07:00

As with sex offenses, child pornography is being defined ever-more widely.

Every expansion of criminal statutes is accompanied by greater government intrusion into the lives of its citizens.

Beware: this cannot end well.

http://www.heraldsun.com.au/entertainment/arts/call-to-ban-art-with-nude-children/story-fn7euh6j-1226083791539

Tenant Kills Landlord Because "He's A Pedophile!"

2011-07-01T21:12:00.000-07:00

Of course! Notice how allegations of sexual abuse have become the #1 reason for justifying a crime?

http://www.kmtr.com/news/local/story/Possible-motive-released-in-Albany-landlord/Gu_ZNM7gc0KFoW3MFiEsiQ.cspx

the incredible disparity in American societal attitudes toward sex and violence

2011-07-01T04:49:00.000-07:00

Developmental psychologist James W. Prescott, formally of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, argues that there is a "preference for sexual violence over sexual pleasure in the United States." He says, "This is reflected in our acceptance of sexually explicit films that involve violence and rape, and our rejection of sexually explicit films for pleasure only (pornography)," he says. "Apparently, sex with pleasure is immoral and unacceptable, but sex with violence and pain is moral and acceptable."

http://www.salon.com/life/sex/index.html?story=/mwt/feature/2011/06/30/violence_sex

What We Can Learn From Casey Anthony

2011-06-29T12:51:00.000-07:00

Recent statistics show that children under the age of 5 in the United States are more likely to be killed by their mother than anyone else. Contrary to popular mythology, they are rarely killed by a sex-crazed stranger.

FBI crime statistics show that parents were responsible for 57 percent of child murders, with family friends and acquaintances accounting for another 30 percent and other family members accounting for eight percent

Crime statistics further reveal that of the children under 5 killed, most were murdered by their mothers. More FBI studies have been used to prove that murderous mothers are "sick" and can be used to support the theory that mothers consider children to be their property.

.http://www.christianpost.com/news/destination-orlando-the-fascination-of-the-casey-anthony-case-51625/

Everything is Now “Potential” Child Porn By Dr. Marty Klein

2011-06-29T05:13:00.000-07:00

This is the decade of destroying children to protect them. It’s the decade of arresting teens for emailing sexy photos of themselves, turning them into Registered Sex Offenders. It’s the decade of arresting teens for having sex with each other, turning them into Registered Sex Offenders. It’s the decade of arresting and expelling 6-year-olds for “inappropriately hugging” classmates, turning them into “at-risk juveniles.”

It’s a disgusting Moral Panic. The Fear of Child Porn has gotten completely out of hand.

We know it’s a Panic, because laws that were designed to protect kids are now being used to destroy them, along with some of the basics of our adult system of government. And most people don’t even feel bad about it.

The bizarre behaviors of Sheriff’s Departments, state legislatures, school districts, and “morality” groups are not about protecting kids. They’re about responding to Panic. This is about adults, not about kids. It’s about frightened people reassuring themselves that they’re safe; that they’re doing everything they can to make a changing world less confusing; that they’re “erring on the side of caution” (as if there are no negative aspects to that); and that we specifically aren’t letting the niceties of the Constitution or common sense stop us.

http://sexualintelligence.wordpress.com/2011/06/24/everything-is-now-%E2%80%9Cpotential%E2%80%9D-child-porn/

Accusers as "Victims": A Case Study

2011-06-27T17:26:00.000-07:00

A reminder of how little is required to convict "sex offenders".

http://freedominourtime.blogspot.com/2009/05/accusers-as-victims-case-study.html

Proposed law would bar sex offenders from veterans cemeteries

2011-06-25T19:43:00.000-07:00

Apparently, this Missouri Legislator is referring to DEAD sex offenders, although I'm surprised that she doesn't also wish to exclude living sex offenders from visiting the cemeteries.

Sure, and while we're at it, lets bar any veterans who were guilty of war crimes during their stint in the armed services from being buried in "hallowed ground", too. If they massacred children in Vietnam, Iraq, or Afghanistan, let's keep them out of the Veteran's Cemeteries, too.

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. -- A Missouri lawmaker has introduced new legislation in Congress that would prevent sex offenders from being buried in national cemeteries.

The "Hallowed Grounds Act," introduced by Republican Rep. Vicky Hartzler, would prohibit an individual who is classified as a Tier III sex offender under the Sex Offender Registration Act from being buried at a veterans or national cemetery. A Tier III sex offender is one whose offenses against a child might include the crimes of aggravated sexual abuse or abusive sexual contact.

"While veterans guilty of capital crimes have justly been denied burial in our national cemeteries, veterans guilty of sexual abuse of children are still entitled to these honors," Hartzler said. "Allowing these offenders to rest in fields of honor is an insult to America's military heroes. Furthermore, it is an outrage to the victims and their families."

http://www.semissourian.com/story/1739345.html?response=no

Just Who Are the "Sex Offenders"?

2011-06-24T17:02:00.000-07:00

These National Center for Juvenile Justice findings clearly show that the vast majority of "sex offenses" against children are committed by kids themselves.

How inconvenient for the Crusaders!

http://blogs.seattleweekly.com/dailyweekly/2011/06/zachary_s_nelson_pedophile_con.php

"So far, no evidence suggests that children were harmed in the making of the murals".

2011-06-24T16:09:00.000-07:00

What a great line!

What is needed, clearly, is a modern-day, sex offender equivalent of the "Malleus Maleficarum", a 15th Century guidebook used to help witch hunters confirm the presence and identity of witches so that they could then be burned at the stake.

Instead, these poor pedo-hunters are left to flail about in their attempt to divine the meaning and significance of individual tiles used in outdoor school mosaics created by a well-known muralist recently arrested for downloading child porn to his computer.

In their vigorous efforts to root out and destroy all bewitched tiles contained within school murals scattered throughout the Bay area, individual tiles are being removed lest they cast their evil spell upon individuals who gaze upon them.

Presumably, possession of some of these tiles will constitute a class 1 felony, much as possession of bibles translated into English were at one time offenses punished by burning at the stake.

" 'Offensive' images found in S.F. school murals

Anthony Josef Norris, a muralist who runs an arts nonprofit for children, in front of a mural he created at Ida B. Wells High School in San Francisco in 2009. Norris has been charged with possession of child pornography.

The head of a children's art organization, arrested three weeks ago for possession of child pornography, placed "offensive" tiles in murals he created at four city schools, San Francisco police said Friday.

Some 100 "inappropriate" tiles have been found in murals at Sunset Elementary School and three other unnamed schools in the city, said Police Chief Greg Suhr.

Anthony Josef Norris, founder and director of Kid Serve Youth Murals,designed and worked on all the projects. The San Francisco man surrendered June 2 to the FBI after agents investigating a website known for child pornography traced the log-on name of "Spanky" to his home computer and discovered 600 pornographic images of children, according to an arrest warrant affidavit filed in federal court in San Francisco.

Also under investigation were murals Norris worked on at Old Mill Elementary School in Mill Valley, Global Family School in Oakland and Bahia Vista Elementary School in San Rafael.

Police have not found inappropriate tiles at the Global Family School, said Troy Flint, a spokesman for Oakland Unified School District, who said the mural was checked on Friday. Offensive images were also not discovered during inspections at the other two schools.

The confiscated mosaic tiles measure as small as 1-inch-by-1-inch, Suhr said. Many contain photographic negatives, inlaid behind glass. Others are drawings. Some were installed high above normal viewing levels.

"I think as an adult you look at these tiles and see possibly some sort of sexual connotation to them," said Commander Mike Biel,who declined to describe the offensive images in detail.

Authorities began inspecting close to 40 murals, which comprise tens of thousands of individual tiles, when the San Francisco Unified School District notified authorities after Norris' arrest, Suhr said.

So far, no evidence suggests that children were harmed in the making of the murals.

Norris founded Kid Serve Youth Murals about 12 years ago. He said in a 2009 interview with The Chronicle that his goal was to help youths from preschool to high school develop their design talent and create mosaic murals. "

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/06/24/BA2U1K2CHO.DTL#ixzz1QEmMYZ4u

Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam signs Bill restricting Sex Offenders from Public Libraries

2011-06-23T16:22:00.000-07:00

This is a bizarre, must-read more-than-once bill that does more than just bar sex offenders from libraries.

Inexplicably, it also bars sex offenders from "obtaining sexual offender treatment or attending a sexual offender treatment program."

I'm not sure what their line of reasoning is with that restriction but I'm sure that, in their twisted little minds, it somehow makes sense.

Here's the whole thing:

"This bill makes it a Class E felony offense for a registered sexual offender to do any of the following:

If the offender’s victim was a minor, establish a primary or secondary residence or any other living accommodation, knowingly obtain sexual offender treatment or attend a sexual offender treatment program or knowingly accept employment within 1,000 feet of the property line of any public library;

Be upon or remain on the premises of any building or grounds of any public library when the offender has reason to believe children under 18 years of age are present, unless the offender is attending a conference with public library officials as a parent or legal guardian of a child who is a participant at the public library and has received written permission or a request from the facility’s administrator; or

Stand, sit idly, whether or not the offender is in a vehicle, or remain within 1,000 feet of the property line of any building owned or operated by any public library when children under 18 years of age are present, while not having a reason or relationship involving custody of or responsibility for a child or any other specific or legitimate reason for being there."

It is tempting to dismiss this latest injustice as unremarkable given that it is coming from a state that once gave us the Scopes Monkey Trial and prevented blacks and whites from intermarrying. But, in all honesty, they are probably just keeping up with the other 49 States.

It used to be that the backwardness of the South, with its Angry-God fundamentalism and contempt for separation of church and state, created a distinct cultural dividing line within the country. But now the entire nation has fallen under a cloud of ignorance and superstition where sex offenders are the new "niggers".

All of America has now become a small-minded provincial who spys on her neighbors and makes a great public show about who she will not eat with at the lunch counter. In this environment, organizing a lynch mob must seem like a reasonable approach to solving life's problems.

Why is the government doing so little to end sexual assault in prisons?

2011-06-22T17:42:00.000-07:00

The short answer, of course, is that they don't care. They really, really don't.

http://reason.com/archives/2011/06/20/rape-factories

When the Government Keeps a 2nd Set of Books

2011-06-22T17:05:00.000-07:00

The story of a man who felt the only thing left for him to do was to go out in a ball of flames.

Literally.

"Ball and his family were casualties in what he called a federal "war on men." He wasn't exaggerating – and he has a lot of company."

http://lewrockwell.com/grigg/grigg-w219.html

Los Angeles Attorney Declares Rampant Fraud, Many Abuse Claims Against Catholic Priests are 'Entirely False'

2011-06-22T14:09:00.000-07:00

Acknowledging the role of greed in the making of accusations.

http://www.themediareport.com/jan2011/special-steier-declaration.htm

Remember Kids; the Cops are NOT Your Friends!

2011-06-21T22:51:00.000-07:00

Preteen's family forever changed by call that led to rape case

Is it really such a surprise when the same cops and prosecutors who destroy the lives of adults are just as willingly to destroy the lives of children?

And just WHEN did it become illegal for kids to have sex with other kids?

I think a lot of us were shocked to find out that kids were being arrested, forced into "therapy", incarcerated and forced to register as sex offenders for the crime of experimenting sexually with their friends.

Why is this being tolerated? Why aren't demonstrations and acts of civil disobedience taking place to protest this disgusting PERVERSION of our legal system?

How is it that adults who have even the slightest physical contact (sometimes not even intentionally sexual) with kids are permanently incarcerated and marginalized but cops, prosecutors and therapists can commit atrocities against children and never be held criminally, or even civilly, accountable? Hell, they don't even lose their jobs!

Yes, I am convinced; there IS evil in this world and much of it is committed by the self-righteous, self-proclaimed "child-savers" whose actual goal is to inflict great pain and suffering upon others. These are a power-hungry, sadistic breed who achieve their orgasms through the personal destruction of human beings, including kids.

So, let's stop being surprised that such evil exists and that our tax dollars sustain it. Let us start by standing up to these monsters who walk amongst us, unimpeded and unrestrained by any sense of humanity or decency or rule of law.

http://www.dispatch.com/live/content/local_news/stories/2011/06/19/preteens-family-forever-changed-by-call-that-led-to-rape-case.html

2011-06-20T15:31:00.001-07:00

Mom Strangles Daughter To Save Her From Pedophiles

2011-06-20T15:26:00.001-07:00

Crazy, though she undoubted is, clearly the zeitgeist of our times which identifies pedophiles as one of the gravest threats facing mankind has infiltrated the troubled mind of this mother and influenced her terrible decision to sacrifice her daughter.

Mental instability is coming to be seen as existing on a continuum, with the very slight craziness of most people at one end and the incoherently raving on the other.

Pedophile hysteria, much like religion, has infiltrated the minds of the population and can be seen to be making nearly everyone at least a little bit 'unhinged'.

http://www.kgw.com/home/Police-Sherwood-mom-strangled-daughter-to-save-her-from-pedophiles-123643419.html

F.B.I. Agents Get Leeway to Push Privacy Bounds

2011-06-20T15:25:00.001-07:00

Richard Nixon would be envious of the powers he would now have as President.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/13/us/13fbi.html?_r=2&hp

Details emerge about ‘child pornography’ yearbook photo

2011-06-20T15:24:00.001-07:00

School officials "demand" that all students return Yearbooks to Avoid Child Porn Charges.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2011/06/details-emerge-about-child-pornography-yearbook-photo.html

'Shunned' sex offender loses legal battle to keep his baby

2011-06-20T15:23:00.001-07:00

The U.K. is actively denying parental rights of fathers once convicted of sex offenses.

http://www.thisistamworth.co.uk/Shunned-sex-offender-loses-legal-battle-baby/story-12789375-detail/story.html

Federalizing Sex Offender "Management"

2011-06-20T15:18:00.000-07:00

Things to Watch Our For...
Increasing involvement of U.S. Federal authorities in R.S.O. harassment.

Sex "Offenders" were once the sole concern of state and local authorities in the U.S. All punishment, monitoring or harassment were conducted by state or local law enforcement with the federal government playing little, if any, role.

This has changed.

100 Law Enforcement Officers involved in SWAT raid on Motel in Suburban Los Angeles
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2011/06/child-molesters-arrested-wilmington-motel.html

Family's life unravels with claims dad raped daughter

2011-06-16T05:58:00.000-07:00

This is how bizarre and cruel justice in American can get.

http://www.freep.com/article/20110612/NEWS03/106120522/Family-s-life-unravels-claims-dad-raped-daughter

Mom strangled daughter to 'save' her from pedophiles

2011-06-14T19:25:00.000-07:00

Mental instability is coming to be seen as existing on a continuum, with the very slight craziness of most people at one end and the incoherently raving on the other.

Pedophile hysteria, much like religion, has infiltrated the minds of the population and can be seen to be making nearly everyone at least a little bit 'unhinged'.

http://www.kgw.com/home/Police-Sherwood-mom-strangled-daughter-to-save-her-from-pedophiles-123643419.html

After deciding fate of feral hogs, Louisiana Senate approves bill to ban sex offenders from Facebook, other sites

2011-06-14T18:22:00.000-07:00

Arguably less popular than feral hogs in the Bayou State, sex offenders face ten years in prison (when combined with subsequent civil detention, that means a lifetime) if they choose to fully engage with society through the use of, now de-riguer, communications technologies.

Mass punishment of the sort exercised by Louisiana''s benighted Legislature and its populist Governor is the order of the day, from America's impoverished swamplands to its "liberal" bastions of sophistication.

The permanent incapacitation of sex offenders, as an amorphous class, is a form of indiscriminate punishment that would be instantly compared to the Jews of Nazi Germany were it to be imposed upon any another group of citizens.

http://www.nola.com/politics/index.ssf/2011/06/senate_approves_bill_to_keep_s.html

Sex offender laws represent the triumph of outrage over reason

2011-06-14T11:48:00.000-07:00

by Jacob Sullum, Reason Magazine

http://reason.com/archives/2011/06/14/perverted-justice

Fear Tactics Used To Bring States Into Adam Walsh Act Compliance

2011-06-13T00:26:00.001-07:00

"Virginia, Maryland and the District are struggling to comply with a five-year-old federal mandate to create a national sex offender registry and critics say their failure could cause them to attract violent sex criminals to the region."

Because the threat of losing 10% of their federal funding has not been sufficient incentive to compel the vast majority of states to enact the draconian A.W.A., its proponents are now using the specter of hordes of dangerous sex offenders relocating to their (already inhospitable) states to avoid the even-more horrendous A.W.A. states in order to advance their nightmarish laws.

Ratcheting up hysteria and fear is all these people know how to do. Tragically, they have been quite successful so far.

http://washingtonexaminer.com/local/dc/2011/06/region-resists-fed-sex-offender-rules#ixzz1P8epMe47

‘No age of consent law’: Gay Irish Presidential candidate digs in deeper

2011-06-10T14:54:00.000-07:00

Editor: David Norris clearly establishes here his courage while relinquishing any possibility of becoming Ireland's next President.

Predictable are the comments pouring in as a reaction to his statements. What is obvious from reading through some of these is that much of the public wants him to be punished, criminally if possible, for voicing his heartfelt, if socially radioactive, opinions.

David Norris has failed the moral litmus test of our times, engineered as it was, by the unlikely cabal of religious fascists in league with angry female supremacists some thirty years ago but which has long since become mainstream. His renunciation of all that is pure and divine in the eyes of the mob which we euphemistically refer to as "society" will cost him dearly. He is courageous, indeed!

DUBLIN, June 9, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Homosexualist Irish presidential hopeful David Norris is fighting to maintain his candidacy amidst even more revelations that he supports “classical pedophilia” and opposes any law specifying an age of consent for sex.

full story: http://www.lifesitenews.com/news/no-age-of-consent-law-gay-irish-presidential-candidate-digs-in-deeper/

The DSK Effect: French Media Starts Reporting the Peccadilloes (and Pedophilia) of Politicos

2011-06-09T01:39:00.000-07:00

Of course, those French who say so are correct; we have been witnessing the spread of puerile American puritanism and for about 30 years now. That's precisely what it is. The result of right wing religious fanatics in league with left-wing female supremacists in the early '80's who had, as a common interest, a hatred of human sexuality and human liberty and a desire to foment hysteria and aggrandize power. C'est Ca! That is the basis upon which we have lost much of our liberty in the U.S. and, increasingly, in much of the rest of the world, by fanning the torch flames with shrieks of "protect the children from pedophiles!". It is always through hysteria and paranoia that we lose our liberties and often the topics of children and sex are the fuel that is thrown on the fire.

Hiding In Plain Sight

2011-06-07T17:31:00.000-07:00

"Sadly, the Internet is the predator's venue of choice today. We need to update our strategies and our laws to stop these offenders who are a mere click away from our children". -Rep. Anthony Weiner

Pornography sentence unconstitutionally cruel, judge rules

2011-06-07T16:05:00.000-07:00

Consider that child pornography was actually LEGAL at one time. Later, it became illegal to PRODUCE. And then it became illegal to DISTRIBUTE. And then it became illegal to SHOW to someone else. And then it became illegal to POSSESS if produced AFTER a certain date. And then all possession became illegal. And then the penalties became stiffer. Then stiffer, still. And stiffer again and again.

Consider also that child pornography now includes DRAWINGS and CARTOONS which at no time involved the use of actual children, something that would have been unthinkable just a few years ago.

And these laws can DESTROY the rest of your LIFE, even if there are no victims.

This is the essence of incremental social engineering.

Registered Sex Offenders Lower Neighboring Home Values By 9%, On Average

2011-06-06T17:36:00.000-07:00

Ed: Now that's an unintended consequence! The voters overwhelmingly demanded the Registration and they got it. Now let them reap what they have sown!

Sex offenders.
Living in close proximity to a registered sex offender is one of the biggest downward drivers of home values. Researchers at Longwood University's College of Business & Economics conclude that the closer you live to a sex offender, the more your home will depreciate. In the paper, Estimating the Effect of Crime Risk on Property Values and Time on Market: Evidence from Megan's Law in Virginia, Longwoodresearchers say, "the presence of a registered sex offender living within one-tenth of a mile reduces home values by about 9%, and these same homes take as much as 10% longer to sell than homes not located near registered sex offenders."

http://www.thestreet.com/story/11120605/2/7-neighbors-that-can-hurt-your-homes-value.html

What "Treatment" Looks Like for Kids Accused Of Sexual Abuse

2011-06-05T01:43:00.000-07:00

There is an extremely creepy "therapy" program in Phoenix, Arizona for kids accused of child sexual abuse. The same discredited voodoo pseudo-science that is widely reviled by legitimate mental health professionals as it is used on adults is being used on kids, many of whom are as young as ten. These "treatments" include:

being forced to inhale ammonia fumes as "aversion therapy" while viewing "deviant" pornography
having the circumferences of their penises measured to see what arouses them sexually and to ensure that they don't have "inappropriate" responses.
group degradation sessions in which the "therapists" attempt to destroy the child's sense of self so that it might be later recreated in the image their tormentors would prefer them to have.

If this doesn't outrage you, I can't imagine what could.

*Note: Dear Reader, after looking at this story again I realized that the date of the original story in the Arizona Republic was dated July 1992. I have no idea if the conditions under which child offenders are being treated in Phoenix Arizona are now better or worse than they were in 1992. I suspect that the authorities have become more sophisticated in covering their asses but remain just as indifferent to the emotional well-being of kids.

http://www.ethicaltreatment.org/arizonarepublic.htm

Alabama Legislators Further Endear Themselves to Ignorant Constituents

2011-06-04T18:05:00.000-07:00

Alabama Senate passes bill to require: weekly registration for homeless sex offenders, sex offenders convicted of having sex with siblings to move out of the house AND charging sex offenders a $250 registration fee whenever they register.

Much like the Chinese government who charge the family of executed criminals for the cost of the bullet required to blow-out their brains, Alabama joins other states who insist that the cost of sex offender registration must be borne by the sex offender him (and occasionally her-) self. In this case, Alabama will charge R.S.O.'s $250 for the privilege of being degraded citizens with starkly fewer rights than anyone else, including those guilty of homicide or attempted murder.

Presumably, the homeless R.S.O. would be hit especially hard in the pocketbook if they are having to register once a week. Let me guess: the State will run a tab continuously on that person which will likely lead to an eventual conviction for failure to pay. Hah! Another neat trick to get sex offenders back into prison which is what all of these bills are really about.

This seems to be Constitutionally problematic given that sex offender registration is ostensibly in aid of protecting the public and not a form of punishment. But somehow, I don't think that our current Supreme Court would see it that way.

As for forcing siblings out of the same home where one is the "victim" and the other the "perpetrator", I guess it should be quite obvious that they are talking about kids living in a family home. In other words, the family will be forced to split apart.

Now that's family-friendly, isn't it?

http://www2.wrbl.com/news/2011/jun/02/bill-tighten-ala-sex-offender-registration-heads-b-ar-1920918/

Protecting Children from Internet Pornographers Act of 2011

2011-06-01T16:53:00.000-07:00

As always, fear and hysteria are the primary tools used to strip citizens of essential liberties and privacy.

Our lawmaker's arguments are persuasive to those ignorant of essential facts and unable to rationally assess risk and danger in its absence. Tragically, this appears to be most everyone in our country today.

The media, having long since thrown off their traditional responsibility of providing their public with hard information gained through principled investigation independent of government manipulation, are simply unavailable to question the veracity of politically-sourced allegations and fabricated statistics. Indeed, the media now serve mainly as conduits of propaganda, both government and organizational, for its distribution to a similarly unquestioning public.

Both the media and politicians discovered long ago that the way to get the public's attention was to discuss the sex lives of others and that the way to enrage them was to explosively combine the topic of sex with the topic of children.

And the results are all around us: more government, less freedom, more misinformation, more fear and a wildly unbalanced, unhappy and distrustful society.

http://www.pcworld.com/printable/article/id,228708/printable.html

6 Year Old Boy Charged With Sexual Assault In Madison Wisconsin

2011-05-19T20:35:00.000-07:00

Who on Earth believes that this is a healthy and appropriate response to two small children, literally, playing "doctor"? Well, apart from the Taliban, apparently the prosecutor, Madison Wisconsin District Attorney, Lisa Riniker, does.

Several questions immediately spring to mind:

Is Grant County so flush with taxpayer money that the police and district attorney have uncovered and prosecuted all other, more serious, crimes in their community and are now free to pursue six-year-olds?

Also, let's assume for the moment that Lisa Riniker is sincere in her stated aim of getting the six-year-old boy the "help" he needs (although from past knowledge of prosecutors, sincerity is not one of their stronger traits). What will that "help"consist of? And "what" will he be "helped" with? His sexual curiosity?

Will that "help" actually end up hurting him?

How will this intervention of "help" affect his future emotional well-being?

There were two children involved in playing doctor, both a little girl and a little boy. How was it that the boy was singled-out for prosecution?

It should be manifestly clear that the anti-sex crusade begun decades ago has mutated and expanded to claim ever more victims, including the very children it professes to be "saving".

"Inappropriate" behavior has now become "criminalized" behavior with need of "qualified" taxpayer-funded "intervention" and categorization, if not outright imprisonment and permanently degraded citizenship.

Some of us said, more than a quarter of a century ago, that this was the path along which we were being taken by a bizarre and hateful alliance of right-wing, religious fundamentalists and bitter, power-hungry, female supremacists who had, as their common interest, the hatred of human sexuality.

And, sure enough, it is now easy to see the progression that this movement has taken, with a gradual erosion of rights extending to ever-greater numbers of victims.

One final question: where will this end?

the story: http://host.madison.com/wsj/news/local/crime_and_courts/article_c13c6a62-72b8-11e0-8659-001cc4c03286.html

Oak Park police charge boy who allegedly made sex-ranking list

2011-05-18T21:02:00.000-07:00

This sort of First Amendment protected speech, juvenile-obnoxious though it may be, would have warranted nothing more than a parental or school principal reprimand in times past.

Now, it's the sort of behavior that is treated as a criminal offense and will, no doubt, eventually require registration as a sex offender.

The "Zero Tolerance" society now deems a schoolboy's creation and dissemination of a list ranking schoolgirl's attractiveness (or other attributes unspecified in the news piece) as a criminal act warranting criminal sanction. Why are we not surprised that the net the hysterics have cast is growing so wide as to ensnare even the kids themselves? Could it be that they are running out of victims, err.. "victimizers"?

the story:

http://www.suntimes.com/5294285-417/oak-park-police-charge-boy-who-allegedly-made-sex-ranking-list.html

DOJ: FBI digital counterintelligence weakened by focus on child porn

2011-05-09T17:12:00.000-07:00

Cyber attacks are at an all time high but FBI spends twice as much effort fighting child porn, according to a scathing criticism by the U.S. Department of Justice.

Despite a dramatic increase in cyber attacks on U.S. public and private infrastructure and networks, and evidence that hostile foreign governments are behind many of these attacks, the F.B.I. has done little to counter these threats, preferring instead to expend twice as many resources in the investigation of online child pornography.

This criticism is being leveled by the Department of Justice itself, which accuses the FBI of incompetence and lack of commitment in countering demonstrated cyber threats while expending excessive resources on child porn.

Specific intelligence pointing to Chinese military attacks on State Department computers has resulted in a massive grab of classified material by China. U.S. corporations are also actively targeted by China and other countries seeking to acquire competitive market intelligence.

Russian and other governments are known to have active programs for penetrating U.S. computer networks with the aim of gaining strategic military and economic advantage over the U.S.

Given these demonstrated threats against the well-being and prosperity of the U.S. and its citizens, it is shocking (although not surprising) that far greater resources are instead allocated to the investigation of child pornography (much of it produced by kids themselves) and to the entrapment of those still foolish enough to fall prey to badge-wearing adults masquerading as minors.

This bizarre mis-allocation of limited tax payer dollars is the result of decades of media, government and busybody-fueled hysteria to all things having to do with kids and sex.

We are finally beginning to realize the terrible consequences which inevitably result from dangerously misguided policies brought about by a distorted perception of reality.

These consequences have become ever more apparent in the dramatic erosion of our liberty as well as in our security and prosperity.

Ironic it is that the shrill voices which proclaim as their greatest priority the protection of children are themselves the enemies of their future. And let us hope that the eventual recognition of this glaring truth will come soon.

******************************************

DOJ: FBI digital counterintelligence weakened by focus on child porn
Cyberattacks are at an all time high; FBI spends twice as much effort fighting porn

By Kevin Fogarty

April 29, 2011, 11:35 AM — Despite its growing digital surveillance capabilities and increasing responsibility for investigating and countering cyber attacks on the U.S., the FBI's core cyber security division turns out to be basically incompetent, according to a critical report from the Dept. of Justice. [PDF] http://www.justice.gov/oig/reports/FBI/a1122r.pdf

Part of the reason is that the 14 agencies that share some responsibility for online counter-espionage don't share information well. Another contributor is the lack of effective pressure from top managers to get agents trained in national-security intrusion topics and tactics.

Most of the reason is that the FBI spends twice as much effort investigating child porn as it does attempts by foreign governments to attack U.S. facilities or steal information that would damage U.S. national security, the report found.

To put that in perspective, the number of foreign attacks on the U.S. increased 40 percent between 2007 and 2008, according to the report, whose data are pretty old for such a sensitive topic.

An April study from McAfee showed 80 percent of utilities in 14 countries had been attacked during the previous year, an increase of almost 50 percent compared to the year before. Attacks ranged from distributed denial of services to intrusions to remove data to intrusions that attempted to take control of the utility's internal IT systems.

And that's just among civilian-run utility companies.

State Dept. documents released through WikiLeaks this month showed that years-long cyberattacks launched by the Chinese military had netted "terabytes" of sensitive data ranging from names and passwords that would give access to State Department computers, to the design of major weapons systems.

The "Byzantine Hades" attacks – and others coming from Russia and other unfriendly powers – represent a new state of cyberwar the U.S. is not yet prepared to fight.

The attacks have been so successful "we have given up on the idea we can keep our networks pristine," according to Stewart Baker, a former senior cyber-security official at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and National Security Agency.

The focus has shifted instead to more sophisticated efforts to detect and counter intrusions as they're made.

Unfortunately, those are exactly the kinds of skills the FBI cyber squads lack and the kind of crime they don't have the time or resources to investigate.

Of 36 agents with cybersecurity responsibilities the DOJ tested – from 10 of the agency's 56 field offices, each of which has at least one "cyber squad" – only 23 told investigators they had the training to investigate national security intrusions.

The other 13 "lacked the networking and counterintelligence expertise to investigate national security intrusion cases." Five said they were completely unqualified to investigate national security intrusions effectively, the report said.

In 2007 the FBI created a separate career path for digital security investigators called the Cyber Career Path, which includes a four-stage training plan covering 12 core courses and a set of elective courses agents can use to develop a specialty.

The agency's habit of moving agents to new offices or new assignments every two or three years to expand their skills or experience makes completing that training difficult, the report concluded. So does a generally inconsistent focus on both online counter-espionage and giving agents either the training or time to build experience in investigating it.

Top FBI managers are much more comfortable with agents trained to track down domestic hackers and breaking down doors than they are investigating or countering serious online attacks from overseas.

The report – some information in which was blacked out to avoid releasing sensitive or top secret information to which the public should not have access – included the total number of agents who had completed all 12 courses as of June, 2010.

The number was the only part of the paragraph explaining the program that was redacted.

Online espionage isn't the FBI cyber squads' only responsibility, however. In 2009, 19 percent of the cyber agents worked on national security intrusion investigations, while 31 percent worked on non-spy-related digital crimes and 41 percent investigated online child porn.

That's not to say child porn and domestic, non-national-security related cybercrime should not be investigated.

When you're losing terabytes of sensitive data to foreign governments who can walk freely through your most secure computer systems, however, maybe it's time to reconsider your priorities.

Maybe shift a few agents away from the wankers and point them toward the enemy?

http://www.itworld.com/security/160701/doj-fbi-cyber-security-largely-incompetent-obsessed-child-porn

Another Unnecessary Death At California's Coalinga State Hospital

2011-03-15T00:42:00.000-07:00

Early Saturday morning, the 5th of March, 2011, Civil Detainee Victor Segovia died in California's Coalinga State Hospital. He had complained to medical staff of chest pains and difficulty breathing earlier in the evening but was left untreated and told to go to bed. Shortly before 4:00 a.m., he collapsed on the bathroom floor and, despite attempts by other Detainees to get him the timely medical attention he desperately needed, he did not receive it and died shortly thereafter.

"Homeland Security" operation offered illicit "sex tourism" trips

2011-03-09T13:37:00.000-08:00

Ed: Let's be clear about this: at a time when the U.S. is on the brink of fiscal disaster, the American taxpayers are funding entrapment schemes such as the “Precious Treasure Holiday Company” to ensnare individuals who, although lacking the common sense they were born with, are very likely not a threat to anyone but themselves.

Once ensnared by this creepiest of enterprises brought to you be our very own Department of Homeland Security, the taxpayers are again on the hook for the cost of prosecuting and then confining such individuals for the next twenty or more years.

When the D.H.S. was formed as a "super agency" just a few short years ago, the reasons given for its massive scale and even more massive appetite for tax dollars was the exigency of combating terrorism and keeping it away from America's shores.

Instead, we find that we are paying for it to create improbably salacious sting operations having nothing to do with "Homeland Security" whatsoever.

And all of this at a time when we are being told to expect less from government but are required to give it more.

At what point will our unfounded fears and obsessions with everything having to do with children and sex be widely recognized as the ruinously expensive and bizarre misadventures they have become?

Not convinced? Let's take a look at the government's own statistics on incarceration and crime:

MARCH 9--In an aggressive bid to entice prospective “sex tourists,” the Department of Homeland Security last year launched an undercover web site that purported to arrange trips from the U.S. to Canada, where clients could engage in sexual activity with minors, The Smoking Gun has learned.

The “Precious Treasure Holiday Company” web site was active until a few weeks ago when its Massachusetts-based web hosting firm removed the site from its servers, apparently in response to a complaint about its content. Now, visitors to precioustreasureholidaycompany.com are greeted with the message, “This site has been suspended.”

After a year online, the DHS undercover site may have fallen victim to its own sleazy, overt come-on. As seen at right, the site’s front page carried three symbols that an FBI intelligence bulletin has identified as being used by pedophiles. Additionally, the site’s acronym, PTHC, is an allusion to “preteen hardcore” pornography. The site’s carefully misspelled motto--“We Help Make Your Fantasy’s Come True!”--also does little to mask its illicit intentions.

An account executive with the hosting firm, who appeared unaware that “Precious Treasure Holiday Company” was a government operation, said that following a site’s suspension an internal investigation is launched. Upon the review’s completion, a site is either reinstated or terminated. The executive, Jason Crawford, added that if a customer’s site is found to contain illicit material like child pornography, the FBI is contacted.

[Five years ago, FBI agents concocted a similar sting, launching “Wicked Adventures Travel,” a web site purporting to offer pedophiles "exotic excursions" to the Philippines and Thailand. That operation yielded at least one felony conviction.]

According to court records and several sources familiar with the sting operation, the “Precious Treasure Holiday Company” web site was operated by investigators assigned to DHS’s Cleveland office. In affidavits sworn by Agent Gabriel Hagan, the undercover web site is described as “offering ‘international travel’ from Cleveland, Ohio, to Canada for the purpose of engaging in sexually explicit conduct with minors.” While records reveal that the site was first registered in February 2010, further details about its owner (as well as administrative and technical contacts) have been carefully cloaked.

To draw visitors--and potential targets--to the site, DHS agents early last year began seeding a wide variety of sketchy web sites with mentions of (and links to) “Precious Treasure Holiday Company.” Investigators touted the undercover business on Russian and Swedish web sites, assorted chat rooms, and online destinations with words like “jailbait” in their addresses.

Using the online handle “otra,” one individual has been particularly enthusiastic in trying to drive traffic to the undercover operation. Posting on several sites, “otra” enthused that “Precious Treasure Holiday Company” was a “great place for real incest” and the “only place for the real thing.” In one online profile, “otra”--who is described as a Canadian male--opted for a profile photo (seen at left) showing a hand in a masturbatory position. Shortly after the DHS site went live, an anonymous poster on a Swedish bulletin board reported that, “I found a website where you can travel to go have sex with kids.” After including the nascent undercover operation’s web address, the poster added, “This website…is an actually thriving business that is legit.”

While it is difficult to gauge the overall success of DHS’s efforts to drum up visitors, the “Precious Treasure Holiday Company” operation has led to the conviction of at least one defendant on felony charges (he was recently sentenced to 20 years in prison), while another man is under indictment for conspiring to transport an eight-year-old girl from Canada to the U.S. with the intent of having her engage in sexual activity.

Federal court records indicate that two other individuals became targets of the DHS operation after visiting the undercover web site last year and engaging in subsequent e-mail exchanges with investigators. One subject is a former Marine now deployed in the Middle East with the Army Reserves.

In every instance, targets have visited the undercover web site and sought, via e-mail, additional information about “Precious Treasure Holiday Company” offerings. Agents responded by sending back a “brochure” with details of the sex tour to Canada. The brochure, a court filing reported, also “requested answers to specific questions so not to disappoint the customer.” These included queries about the preferred age of the minors with whom the prospective sex tourist sought to consort. The brochure also noted that a female employee would accompany customers to Canada (this role has been played by Agent Hagan).

In some cases, a target was also provided a username and password that would allow access to a section of the DHS site containing an online “catalog” of girls aged eight to 14. Two men were arrested last year when they traveled to meet a child advertised in this catalog.

The enlisted man snared by the “Precious Treasure Holiday Company” web site, TSG has learned, is Sergeant Jason Talbott, a 32-year-old Washington State native.

In a mid-June 2010 e-mail from his Yahoo account, Talbott, pictured at right, wrote that he was “interested in a discreet package” involving an eight-year-old girl. While noting that, “I have no way of knowing if you are law enforcement or FBI,” Talbott asked about rates and sought “some sort of assurance that you are a legit company. Picture of some of the services provided maybe?” An account of Talbott’s e-mail exchanges with Agent Hagan is contained in a search warrant application excerpted here.

After receiving the brochure (and being provided access to the online catalog), Talbott described one particular child as “an attractive young lady, who would more than suit my needs.” He added, however, “I will not be back in the country for another year and a half as I am abroad.” Along with asking about adoption options mentioned in the brochure, Talbott wrote, “Again, I still have no assurances that you are legitimate, and not a sting operation or scam.”

Four months passed without further contact from Talbott. Then, on October 20, he sent an e-mail seeking “an updated catalogue of your females.” Based on entries from Talbott’s MySpace page, the e-mail was sent while he was home on leave in Spokane. In an October 14 post, he told of returning in a few weeks to the “sandbox” (Talbott previously wrote of being deployed in Kuwait).

Included with the October 20 e-mail was a naked photo of a prepubescent girl. “Attached is a pic of what I like just to show that I am not FBI. I would love a sample pic of one of your girls to verify something that shows a bit more than a clothed girl that looks like one of the dateline bait girls. All I need is to find myself on dateline.” While assuring that he was not a law enforcement agent, Talbott still appeared unconvinced that the web site’s proprietors were not themselves carrying badges or NBC employees.

After identifying Talbott as a target of the DHS probe, a TSG reporter sent a series of detailed e-mails to the Yahoo account seeking comment. In an initial response, the recipient replied, “I'm sorry, why are you calling me Sgt. Talbot? And what image was sent from this email? Do I need to run another virus scan?” Subsequent e-mails noted that, “I have nothing to talk to you about” and “I don't like being accused of shit like this. You are sick.”

In one e-mail, a reporter included a link to a TSG page that contained an excerpt from a search warrant for the contents of the swlfty@yahoo.com account. Within minutes of the e-mail being sent to the Yahoo account, the particular TSG page, server records showed, was accessed by an IP address registered in Kuwait City.

Additionally, after TSG e-mails were sent last month to the Yahoo account, Talbott’s profile page on Netlog, a social networking site targeting European youth, was edited. His name and photo were removed from the page, which carried the handle “swlfty.” His date of birth was changed. And the photos and nicknames of seven female friends were deleted. Of those friends, four were 14, one was 15, and another was 16.

Talbott’s Netlog page, which described him as “a man of particular tastes,” was subsequently deleted in its entirety (though a screen grab of the original page can be seen here). But his MySpace page, which contains the exact profile photo that was deleted from the Netlog page, remains online. (3 pages)

Minnesota Sex offender program is unconstitutional

2011-03-08T20:37:00.000-08:00

Eventually the courts will reach that judgment about what is essentially indefinite incarceration.

What do you call a forced in-patient treatment program that has never successfully treated and released a patient?

Either it is a complete and utter failure, or you call it what it really is -- a prison.

That is the problem that Minnesota faces. It has 605 sex offender inmates who have no pending charges or convictions.

They are not on probation. In fact, all of these people have already been convicted and have served their debts to society.

However, some Minnesotans feel that is not enough. Rather, Minnesota is holding them for what they might do.

While both state and federal courts have called this dubious decision constitutional, they have done so only because it is "treatment."

Otherwise, the program would be considered unconstitutional. Which takes me back to my initial point.

If there has been no successful treatment, then it is nothing but incarceration.

You doubt me?

Minnesota started its Sex Offender Treatment Program in 1994. The number of inmates is growing by about 50 a year.

They are held at the Minnesota Security Hospital in St. Peter and at a facility in Moose Lake. However, both are running out of space.

St. Peter is looking to expand its facility by an additional 55 beds, while Moose Lake is seeking to expand by some 400 beds. At a cost of about $96,000 per inmate per year, this is not a cheap proposition.

And how successful has the treatment been? Not one person forced into the Sex Offender Treatment Program has ever been released.

I repeat: Not one!

As we speak, one man is trying to be the first person ever released from the program.

Admittedly, he has done some horrible things, but he has been held for decades and has done everything -- everything -- asked of him.

However, while the Special Review Board may go along with the release, state Human Services Commissioner Lucinda Jesson opposes the release. Frankly, she is a politician, and nobody would want an albatross like this around their neck if things went south.

But that is the ultimate problem. Again, these convicts have done some pretty terrible things.

As a result, the standard refrains seem to be "lock 'em up and throw away the key" or "shoot 'em out of a cannon." Of course, these arguments are irrelevant to the point at hand.

It is not about what one should do to those who commit these types of crimes in the first place.

If Minnesota thinks they should never see the light of day, the Legislature should consider that issue. This is about what we as a society should do once people have fulfilled their obligations.

If the state continues to do as it has done with this program for 16 years, the courts will see it for what it is: a prison.

When that happens, this entire system will be justifiably shut down.

Then what do we do?

Jack Rice is a criminal defense attorney , former prosecutor and former CIA officer. He also is the former host of the "Jack Rice Show" on WCCO Radio.

The Power of Lies: National Center for Missing & Exploited Children Fans the Flames

2011-03-07T18:34:00.000-08:00

Ed: "There are nearly 500,000 registered sex offenders across the country and at any one time about 100,000 are unaccounted for."

This particular fabrication comes from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) a private, non-profit organization which gets almost all of its money from the U.S. Justice Department. This pronouncement follows several decades of distortions and lies issued by the group as a means to re-engineer social and criminal policy.

___________________________________________________

For several years, state Rep. Peter G. Palumbo has worked to revise the way Rhode Island registers and monitors convicted sex offenders. This year he introduced legislation to consolidate the state’s sex offender registry under the supervision of the state police and revamp it to comply with federal guidelines.

A General Assembly news release announcing the new bill cites the reason such legislation is needed, attributing the statement to Palumbo: "Across the nation, there are nearly 500,000 registered sex offenders and at any one time about 100,000 of them are unaccounted for. As long as there is one sex offender out there that we cannot account for, there is the potential for great harm, the potential for another victim."

We wondered if that many sex offenders were really missing, so we asked Palumbo where he got those figures. He cited one source: The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, a nonprofit based in Alexandria, Va. According to its annual report, the center was created by Congress in 1984, following the highly publicized disappearance of 6-year-old Etan Patz in New York City.

The center created a national missing children’s hot line and serves as a clearinghouse for information on missing and exploited children. It also collects data twice a year from every state on registered sex offenders.

Carolyn Atwell-Davis, the center’s director of legislative affairs, says the group arrives at its figures by calling law enforcement officials in each state and requesting the totals. It uses the information to periodically publish a national map showing the number of registered sex offenders in each state. Using similar data, and what it calls conservative estimates, the center tallies offenders who are unaccounted for.

Atwell-Davis said the number of registered sex offenders, based on the most recent survey, in December, is actually 728,435 -- 46 percent more than the number Palumbo cited.

Atwell-Davis said the last time the total number of sex offenders nationally was close to 500,000 was about 2002.

The group’s estimate of the number of unaccounted for is 100,000 -- a number that hasn’t changed in years.

NCMEC receives nearly $50 million annually in government grants and charitable contributions to fight child pornography, track sex offenders, maintain a missing children’s hot line and train police and prosecutors. Its data on sex offenders are cited routinely by politicians and the Justice Department.

Because Palumbo’s underlying point is that a substantial number of registered sex offenders is missing, we decided to examine that premise.

First, we checked Rhode Island, where the sex offender registry lists 569 offenders. Of that total, 119 are so-called Level 3 offenders, who have been convicted of sexual assaults, child molestation or kidnapping a minor. Ten of those were identified as being deported, moved out of state, incarcerated out of state or whereabouts unknown.

Another 225 are so-called Level 2 offenders, those who had committed less serious felony sex offenses. A total of 12 were identified as whereabouts unknown.

So, 22 of the 569 registered offenders in Rhode Island are unaccounted for -- about 4 percent.

We checked with some neighbors. One problem is that many use different criteria in entering offenders on their registries.

Connecticut, for instance, does not have tiers of offenders. All are lumped together, for a total of 5,279. Rather than having various categories of missing, public information officer Lt. Paul Vance says the state uses a category of "not in compliance." That includes everyone from those who haven’t supplied their addresses to those who have fled. The total is 372 or about 7 percent.

New York State identifies 31,972 offenders in three tiers. But only 490 are identified as location unknown. That is 1.5 percent of the total.

Massachusetts has a total of 8,166 registered sex offenders. Those who haven’t properly registered or who are otherwise unaccounted for are termed violators. As of Wednesday, there were 227 violators - or less than 3 percent.

We aren’t the only ones wondering about NCMEC’s numbers.

Jill Levenson, chairwoman of the Department of Human Services at Lynn University, in Boca Raton, Fla., has been studying sexual offender registries, with other researchers from the University of Massachusetts, the University of California and the New Jersey Department of Corrections. She disagrees with the number of 100,000 "missing" offenders reported by NCMEC. Levenson said the highest number her group could determine was 17,688.

"When they (NCMEC) say missing, part of the question is what does that mean?" said Levenson. She said her group found many of the "missing" were homeless, in transit or simply the result of data entry errors. A study of the Florida registry found nearly a third of the people listed had died, moved or been deported.

Levenson said she feels it’s important to make the proper data available so that resources may be allocated most efficiently to deal with social problems such as sexual offenses. She argues the current emphasis on "publicly identifying and tracking known offenders may do a disservice to the public, since over 90 percent of sexually abused children are victimized by someone well known to them with no previous sex crime record, not a stranger found on a registry."

We asked Atwell-Davis about Levenson’s conclusions.

As for the missing offenders, Atwell-Davis said, "We’ve always said that was an estimate and that it was conservative." She said several studies suggest the true number is higher.

For example, she said she believes California is missing 20 percent of its offenders. The official figures from California, as of March 1, are 71,803 registered offenders, with 17,544 in violation of the registration law. That is 24 percent.

Atwell-Davis said she believes the discrepancy is due to the fact that Levenson gets her figures from public registries while NCMEC gets data directly from law enforcement agencies in each state and territory.

"We don’t want to create fear where it is unnecessary," said Atwell-Davis. "We believe it is important for communities to have good information."

So where are we?

* The 500,000 figure Palumbo cites for the total number of sex offenders in the United States was, by NCMEC’s count, off by more than 228,000. The last time it was 500,000 was nine years ago.

* If NCMEC’s numbers are accurate, the ratio of unaccounted for sex offenders nationwide is 1 of 7, not the 1 of 5 Palumbo’s statement suggests.

* NCMEC’s numbers are in dispute. A team of academics says they’re substantially overstated. Data from Rhode Island and nearby states supports that view.

Clearly, when even one registered sex offender is missing, that’s a serious problem -- a problem Palumbo is trying to fix. But public officials owe it to their constituents to get the facts right when they’re trying to address such issues.

Palumbo’s statement contains some element of truth but ignores critical facts that would give a different impression -- the PolitiFact definition for Barely True.

http://www.politifact.com/rhode-island/statements/2011/mar/03/peter-palumbo/palumbo-says-there-are-500000-registered-sex-offen/

Are Sexual Offense Laws Too Harsh? And Do They Work?

2011-03-02T14:36:00.001-08:00

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- University at Buffalo Law School Professor Charles Patrick Ewing has added to his series of critically acclaimed books on some of the most unsavory but attention-grabbing aspects of the law, this time with a book questioning the legal logic and effectiveness of the country's increasingly harsh sex offense laws.

In "Justice Perverted," Ewing examines what he calls "radically reshaped" laws dealing with the country's sex offenders. These laws include ordering sex offenders to register with authorities, punishment for people possessing child pornography that "dwarfs" sentences for more violent crimes, including murder, and a federal law that requires a minimum 10-year prison sentence for those using the Internet to lure minors for sex.

All these dramatic changes in sex offender laws have come about at least partly from input from the fields of psychology, psychiatry and the social sciences, according to Ewing, whose extensive writing credits include several books on forensic psychology, which is the application of psychological principles and methods to legal issues, and how they play out in the courtroom. And Ewing's research and experience in many trials -- both nationally notorious as well as obscure -- conclude that enforcement and administration of many of these significantly more restrictive sex offense laws rely heavily the opinions of mental-health professionals.

Working from that conclusion, Ewing takes on an original and intellectually courageous direction of answering questions about and evaluating this established legal environment:

Are these laws supported by empirical evidence, or even by well-reasoned psychological theories? Do these laws actually work? Are mental health professionals capable of reliably determining an offender's future behavior, and how best to manage it?

"All of these laws are purportedly designed to enhance public safety by reducing the incidence of sexual offending," says Ewing, whose work in forensic psychology has involved using psychology to understand legal issues such as insanity, competence to stand trial and future danger. "Not only is there no evidence that these laws have had their intended effect, but there is some evidence that some of them may in fact lead to an increased threat to society.

"The economic costs of these laws are staggering and seem indefensible at a time when other valued government programs are being cut to avoid fiscal disaster," says Ewing. "There can be little doubt that sexual offenses bring great harm to individuals and society or that we should do all that we can reasonably do to prevent them from occurring. The question is what is reasonable. It is neither reasonable nor responsible to spend billions of taxpayers' dollars on laws with no proven value."

The questions Ewing takes on in "Justice Perverted" go beyond the arcane procedures of the nation's courtrooms to issues of justice and fair treatment of all parties. Are experts capable of providing effective treatment for sex offenders, Ewing asks, for example, treatment that actually reduces the likelihood that an identified sex offender will repeat a similar offense?

Ewing is a nationally known expert on the criminal mind, a SUNY Distinguished Service Professor who has taught at the UB Law School for 25 years. He is an expert witness who has testified or been closely involved on some of the most celebrated and often grisly criminal cases in the country.

Ewing's past accomplishments have earned him a reputation for capturing the world of courtroom drama in books both scholarly and captivating. His "Insanity, Murder, Madness and the Law" took readers inside the minds of some of the nation's most heinous murderers, including David Berkowitz, John Wayne Gacy and Andrea Yates.

His previous book, "Trials of a Forensic Psychologist," was another example of Ewing's talent to produce a work of scholarship that is informative and still retains the ability to be darkly entertaining.

"Justice Perverted" has already earned impressive kudos from law and university professionals.

"A remarkable, eye-opener of a book. Professor Ewing brings to this highly controversial subject his knowledge as both a law professor and as a practicing forensic mental health expert," according to Alan M. Goldstein, a board certified forensic psychologist and professor emeritus at John Jay College of Criminal Justice.

"'Justice Perverted' is informative, readable and should be required reading for attorneys, judges and forensic psychologists and psychiatrists working in this area. Ewing's specific recommendations for public policy reform should make all of us re-think our immediate 'gut reaction' as to how those who commit these horrific crimes should be treated."

"This book is a breath of fresh air," says Michael L. Perlin, professor of law, director of the International Mental Disability Law Reform Project and director of the Online Mental Disability Law Program, New York Law School.

"It debunks the media-driven frenzy of fear, hate mongering and utterly irrational laws that do far more harm than good. Professor Ewing writes thoughtfully, carefully and persuasively. This book should be read by all who care about -- and think about -- this topic."

Scott Brown's Story Reveals America's Greatest Concerns For Child Abuse

2011-02-19T18:29:00.000-08:00

Surprise! It isn't brutalization at the hands of parents or family members.

No, it's having been briefly fondled by a camp counselor.

Senator Scott Brown of Massachusetts recently revealed that he had been horribly physically and emotionally abused (but not sexually) by several different stepfathers, repeatedly, and over years (presumably, his mother must also bear some responsibility given her failure to protect her son).

He also said that he had been very briefly fondled by a camp counselor when he was ten. Several years later, he claims to have been traumatized by being propositioned by another boy in the woods.

So guess which acts of abuse got the lion's share of coverage by our news media?

You guessed it! ALL of the major media reporting on this story ABC, CBS, Fox, CNN, NBC, Boston Globe, L.A. Times, New York Times- all lead with headlines such as "Sen. Brown Reveals He Was Sexually Abused As A Child"!

Given his own descriptions, his sexual abuse allegations are absolutely trivial compared to his abuse at the hands of his mother's various husbands or boyfriends.

How on earth could anyone (in their right mind) think that being fondled or propositioned had a greater impact on a child than physical and emotional abuse by members of his own family? Apparently, the level of common sense required to grasp this notion is now beyond the capabilities of most people.

This just tells you how far we have come in putting "sexual abuse" well before other forms of abuse in our national consciousness.

Yes, apparently, Americans do honestly believe that a boy having his genitals fondled is far more "heinous" (a word they have fallen in love with) than that same boy being beaten and emotionally tormented by his parents.

Tell me, where's the science behind that?

The answer is that you won't find it because no respected authority on the emotional well-being of children believes it.

And those authorities will also make distinctions between fondling, on one hand, and forcible penetration by violence, on the other hand, even if the government and the media automatically conflates these two very different acts.

Viewers find the combined topics of children and sex to be much more interesting as a news story than child battering. I would dare say they find it titillating; although they will be quick to proclaim their shock and outrage.

As for Senator Brown's motives in pushing America's emotional buttons, we can only speculate upon any public relations benefits he hopes to gain.

It certainly can't hurt his personal narrative or his political career, despite all the "courage" ostensibly required to bare one's soul these days in proclaiming one's childhood traumas.

Indeed, he can now be said to have established his bona fides as a defender of children; a big help in future elections.

I do have to say that I'm glad Scott Brown won that election instead of that hideous creature, Martha Coakley.

In her previous role as prosecutor in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, she destroyed the lives of innocent people in her very own day care sex abuse witch hunt. It was heartening to see her career advancement, built as it was on the destruction of others, hit an eventual brick wall.

So, it is disturbing, but not at all surprising, that her victor now weaves familiar elements of childhood sexual victimization into his publicized life story.

More disturbing yet is a public which is incapable of identifying the glaring contradictions and deranged imbalances which lie at the heart of a social policy and prejudice.

A simple fact provides the most damning evidence of all: when children are themselves increasingly being accused of child sexual abuse and losing their freedom and their futures as a result, it is becoming clear that society's stated concerns for the well-being of children have very dark and unexamined motivations having little to do with a genuine regard for their welfare.

It is long overdue that we examine the true nature of these motivations and the dubious morality shielding them from public scrutiny.

What You Must Know: "Sexually Violent Predators" need not be violent to be called "Sexually Violent Predators"

2011-02-17T17:27:00.001-08:00

You can be branded a "Sexually Violent Predator" by our government without ever committing any actual act of "violence". In every state using the term (as well as by the U.S. Federal government) it can mean having ANY kind of "sexual contact" with someone under the age of 14 or 13 (depends on the State), and even if no force or coercion was employed in the act.

Got that? The mere act of having "sexual contact" with someone under that age is, in the government's definition, "sexual violence". No actual "violence", as most sane people would understand the term, need be employed.

Combine that with the fact that "sexual contact" can consist of just about anything: kissing, touching (even through clothes and even if what is being touched are not genitals) and the government can utterly destroy the lives and reputations of lots more men and, increasingly, women.

The States and the U.S. government, having thus committed their own violence upon the rights of their people - not to mention upon the English language - can easily deploy the term "Sexually Violent Predator" to put away decidedly non-violent offenders, effectively, for the rest of their lives!

So now, when the government wants to put someone away forever, and for what may have once been considered inappropriate behavior, they have just the weapon to do it.

Its a weapon that not only guarantees the permanent incapacitation of the offender, but also the overwhelming support from a pandering press and a paranoid public.

What a great weapon!

"When words lose their meaning, people lose their freedom". -Confucius

Ohio's Supreme Court reverses an acquittal in yet another outrageous sex abuse prosecution.

2011-02-15T17:58:00.000-08:00

Another terrific piece from Reason Magazine's Radley Balko.

Good riddance to the society of suspects

2011-02-14T16:14:00.000-08:00

Ed: Is it possible the Brits are regaining a bit of sanity? After several decades of a spirited competition with the U.S. to see who could achieve an Orwellian fantasy soonest, it appears that there is growing concern for the costs it has exacted upon society. It would seem that they are somewhat less prone to having their motives impugned by speaking up against the witch hunt than are those of us in the States, where to decry an emerging police state is still regarded with suspicion.

You don't build a Big Society on the back of mutinous, resentful volunteers, nor in a climate in which all are treated with suspicion

"All men are rapists" was the pernicious slogan of radical feminists in the 1970s. "All adults are paedophiles" has been the governing rule of authority in the past decade. The two assertions are as false as each other and just as damaging, for they fill people with anger, fear and corrosive suspicion.

Society can't function without trust. Nor can individuals. As the sociologist Niklas Luhmann reminded us: "A complete absence of trust would prevent [one] even getting up in the morning." We generally assume that the commuter standing next to us on the platform won't push us in front of the train, or that the shopkeeper on the corner will give us the right change. A few paranoiacs have acute suspicion as their default, but most of us are more prepared to give the benefit of the doubt to others than we realise.

We might be scared, in the abstract, of a paedophile taking advantage of our child, but do we really think that the nice mother of our son's playmate is going to put her hand down his pants during a school trip? Of course not. So why should it ever have been necessary for her to undergo an expensive and intrusive Criminal Records Bureau (CRB) check before she was allowed to give up her free time to help supervise the class on the bus?

It is deeply insulting to treat people as potential paedophiles when, out of sheer goodness, they want to help others. At the moment, anyone who has contact with children, even just helping out with football club or arranging the flowers in a cathedral, has to go through the CRB procedure. It was one of the most ill-thought-out and socially damaging laws that the last government brought in. Now, thankfully, the Coalition's Protection of Freedoms Bill will lift the requirement for all but those with "close or regular" contact, taking more than four million volunteers out of the net.

At the crudest level, it has hurt the very people it was supposed to protect. Adults have been deterred from volunteering, not because they have convictions for kiddy-fiddling but because they don't. The last thing most adults want to do with kiddies is fiddle with them. The assumption that they might even consider it makes them understandably livid. Why should they volunteer if they are going to be treated like dirt?

As a result, activities for children have been closing down all over the country for lack of volunteers. Who suffers? The budding football players and the children struggling with their reading. Real paedophiles can find other ways to ensnare their victims.

Even those volunteers who have obediently undergone their checks are left with a sense of grievance. A government which was asking us all to do more for others (yes, the last one was keen on it too) was at the same time impugning our motives as soon as we answered the call. You don't build a Big Society on the back of mutinous, resentful volunteers.

Nor do you build it in a climate in which we are all encouraged to treat each other with suspicion. The message the CRB checks have been sending is that we can never be too careful. That public-spirited dad who gives up his Saturday mornings for soccer coaching could be another Ian Huntley. But how many men – let alone women – really have sexual designs on children? Very, very few.

The reason child murders and sexual attacks get so much news coverage when they happen is precisely because they are so rare. To treat the innocent 99 per cent of us as potential Ian Huntleys is as grossly disproportionate as putting handcuffs on everyone who enters a bank in case they plan to rob it.

In fact, it's even worse. For this unjustified paranoia is infecting our children. They are growing up to believe that most adults are dangerous and that the world is unsafe for them. Of course they should be warned not to accept sweeties from strangers or to get into a car with someone they don't know, but beyond that, why should we poison their childhood with unnecessary fear? Only a vanishingly small minority of adults want to hurt them; all the rest of us are benign.

The trouble is that many of their parents have become infected too. That makes blameless adults scared of showing kindness to other people's children. Rush to help a child who has grazed his knee near you in the park and the mother is likely to advance on you, scowling. Smile at a cute little toddler and her father may misinterpret your motives. As a result, the paranoia becomes self-reinforcing: children encounter fewer acts of compassion from adults who aren't in their family, so they are even more inclined to view strangers as dangers.

Then, as they grow up, they suddenly become independent and find themselves exposed to far greater perils. A 16-year-old girl is much more likely to be sexually assaulted than a six-year-old one, simply because most men fancy post-pubescent, not pre-pubescent, females. And she is also much more vulnerable: six-year-olds don't walk back from the bus stop on their own or get inadvisedly drunk at a party. These are the risks we should be warning our girls against.

Instead, we are obsessed with paedophilia. Do we really want to live in a society where a teacher can't sit a five-year-old on her knee and give him a cuddle when he's crying? Do we really want to live in a Crucible-like climate in which fingers of suspicion are pointed at wholly innocent people – and by government, this time, not even teenage girls? We were shocked by the anti-Communist hysteria which swept 1950s America, yet we failed to prevent the anti-paedophile hysteria taking root in our own country.

This climate is really bad for adults and children alike. All the international studies show that countries with high levels of social trust tend to have lower crime and happier, more engaged citizens. And the more people engage, the more they come to understand that most strangers are as benevolent as they are. Yet the proportion of Britons agreeing that "most people can be trusted" has halved since the 1950s, and young people are the most mistrustful of all.

It's not a good idea to be completely credulous, but a default position of trust tempered by common sense is all we need to rub along together well. That was how my generation saw adults when we were children. Most of them meant well; a few were sadistic and a few were lecherous. We knew who the sadists and the pervs were, and we kept clear of them. You need to learn to discern; it's a useful skill for adulthood. It's a lot better than relying on a piece of paper, which might anyway clear a paedo who has never been caught by the police.

Thank goodness ministers have at last seen sense. Not much the Government does these days is popular. It can't spend any more and most of its cuts cause pain. But here is one initiative which saves money, reduces bureaucracy and – most importantly – could make a real difference to our lives. It deserves an unqualified cheer.

m.sieghart@independent.co.uk

Food For Thought

2011-02-12T21:53:00.000-08:00

Wendy Kaminer recently asked this question and, I must say, it has me stumped. See If you can answer it:

"Can someone explain to me why it is a criminal offense to have sex with animals but entirely legal to kill and eat them? Surely laws against bestiality don't reflect concern about the rights of animals, (who would probably opt for sex over death.)"

Great question! I am reminded of the more hysterical of the satanic child sexual abuse "experts" some twenty-five years ago who frequently assured us that "child molestation is worse than murder!" Interestingly, I don't hear that claim much anymore, possibly because it was so obviously untrue and no sane person was really buying it. All we have to do is look to Oprah - a self-proclaimed child sexual abuse victim who went on to become one of the world's wealthiest entertainers - to see that it is nonsense!

Imagining the Worst: Just What Was That "Assault" Precisely?

2011-02-05T22:03:00.000-08:00

The next time you read in the papers or, more likely, hear on television, of an adult male being arrested for the sexual assault of a juvenile male, take a moment to ponder what could possibly be meant by the term "sexual assault'' or one of several other terms, such as "rape'' or "molest".

If you're like most people, you probably imagine the worst, or something close to it, such as forcible penetration (of the youth) or forcible fellatio (of the man). In other words, a non-consensual act with a goal of sexual satisfaction for the man but with wanton disregard for the pleasure or welfare of the youth.

If these are the first possibilities that come to mind, then the government agencies responsible for investigating and prosecuting these cases are perfectly happy to have you believe so.

And, for that matter, those who pass for journalists today clearly take personal satisfaction in injecting additional scandal into any story involving "sexual assault" of a child. They are loathe to report any detail which either mitigates the circumstances or humanizes the adult "perpetrator". Getting public approval very much depends upon the level of outrage expressed by the reporter in any case involving children and sex.

But the reality is that simple "touching" of the youth of any part of his body-shoulders, arms, back, legs, hair- can and frequently do qualify as "sexual assault" or "molestation". Both parties can be fully clothed with all touching occurring over the clothes. It can still be charged as "sexual assault".

In their own assault on civil liberties, the grand alliance of sex-hating religious conservatives and sex-hating gender feminists have been wildly successful in defining "sexual assault" ever more widely. Indeed, they are still doing so. What was once considered to be affectionate became "inappropriate" and finally, "abusive" and "assaultive" and can now be prosecuted as a crime.

In addition to being distinctly inconvenient for the authorities to release those details constituting a "sexual assault", there is also a long-standing social taboo against openly discussing specific sexual acts in detail, especially when they involve children. This cultural prudishness further serves to obfuscate the true nature of a "sexual assault".

It should be obvious that any detail shedding light on the true nature of an alleged "assault" is necessary in forming an opinion upon its veracity. The media-consuming public seems unaware and unconcerned that they are being robbed of this opportunity.

So, the next time you read or hear of a case where an adult has been charged with "molesting" a child (or adolescent), ponder for a moment how little was actually communicated about the alleged "crime".

If Oprah's Lying About Being Sexually Abused As A Child, Who Else Might Be?

2011-02-01T18:40:00.001-08:00

I want to be clear at the outset, I have no idea whether Oprah is lying about being sexually abused as a child or not. I have no way of knowing.

It has been alleged by her cousin, however, that she made the story up, as well as the story about growing up amongst filth, in order to help advance her career. Indeed, one could argue that Oprah's life-narrative of abuse and deprivation was essential in catapulting her to stardom and beyond.

Her cousin claims that, when asked why she had lied, Oprah replied "because that's what people want to hear" and that the abuse story "helped make me what I am today.''

But of course, I really don't know if she was abused or not. And I cannot know, since we only have Oprah's words asserting that she was abused and her cousin's words saying that she's a liar.

And that's just my point: hundreds of thousands of individuals, the great majority of them men, have been tried and convicted in this country for sexual abuse of children on the basis of their accuser's testimony and nothing else.

And often, the child accusers have themselves been arm-twisted into giving incriminating testimony by others, usually the police and prosecution team or even, perhaps, by one of their own parents.

Few people realize just how little evidence is needed to successfully convict someone of child sexual abuse.

After the Michael Jackson trial ended in an acquittal, many journalists, who should have known better, attributed his success in beating the conviction to "a lack of evidence.''

Actually, no. They're wrong. The evidence presented at his trial would have been plenty to convict him had he not had a defense "dream-team" and an adoring fan base who would have been scandalized to discover that it is really very easy to be convicted of sexual abuse in America.

Virtually everyone else of less-than god-like fame and fortune would be languishing in prison today with little hope of getting out within their lifetimes had they faced identical charges supported by identical victim testimony.

All it takes are words, painstakingly extracted from a kid on the stand, to convict. Testimony resulting from days of coercive coaching, cajoling and arm-twisting send men to prison in this country, in this day and age, for the rest of their lives. And it forever brands and marginalizes them should they ever be so lucky as to get out.

Let that truth sink in.

Family Extorts Paedophile of more than £50,000

2011-02-01T11:42:00.000-08:00

THREE members of a family extorted more than £50,000 from a convicted paedophile by threatening to expose his sordid past.

Liverpool crown court heard their victim had turned his life around and had a good job after serving a jail sentence for indecently assaulting young boys in 1983.

But his life was thrown into turmoil after social services revealed his criminal past to his new “friends” – parents-of-six Kerry Edwards, 31, and her husband Leslie Johnson, 32, in June 2007.

Keith Sutton, prosecuting, told how over the next year the couple, and Johnson’s brother Edward Lawler, 38, threatened, intimidated and blackmailed him into handing over his life savings.

During the conspiracy, the scheming relatives sent “sackfuls” of threatening letters, warning their victim he would “leave in a body bag” if he refused to pay up.

Mr Sutton also told how he was marched to a cash machine in the middle of the night to hand over cash, while on another occasion he was assaulted and ordered to pay for a flat-screen TV and a child’s motorbike.

Judge David Boulton said when their victim eventually ran out of cash, a “wholly put up” allegation of child sexual abuse was made against him to police and he was arrested. It was only when he was released without charge he finally revealed the plot against him.

Judge Boulton said: “It was only when he was released he had the courage to produce sackfuls of letters which showed precisely what you had been up to over that year or so.

“It was little short of despicable.

“The threats were not only to reveal his previous convictions, which he had managed over the years to put behind him, but to threaten him with violence.

“One graphically put it that if he did not pay he would ‘leave in a body bag’.”

Judge Boulton told the gang blackmail was one of the “most vicious crimes in the calendar of criminal offences”.

He jailed Edwards, of Rappart Road, Wallasey, who pleaded guilty to conspiracy to blackmail, to five years and four months.

Johnson, of Naples Road, Wallasey, and Lawler, of Balls Road, Prenton, who were convicted by jurors, were put behind bars for eight years each.

Barristers defending the men told how they maintained their denials, with Johnson putting the blame on his wife.

But Judge Boulton said they were found guilty on the “most powerful of evidence”.

Hand-writing analysis revealed Edwards had written many of the threatening letters, but Judge Boulton said he suspected she was not the “instigator”.

Mr Sutton told the court how a statement from their diabetic victim revealed how their crimes had left him financially ruined and afraid to leave his house.

He had become friends with Johnson and Lawler after moving to Merseyside in 2003 and had even loaned them up to £10,000.

But Judge Boulton said the family had “no prospect whatsoever” of repaying the cash and then, after learning of his background, used it as a “weapon” against him.

Gareth Bellis, defending Johnson, who has 20 previous convictions, said: “He denies any involvement in this offence as per his interview and his evidence-in-chief during the trial when he said this was Kerry Edwards’ doing.”

David Watson, defending Lawler, said his client only became involved at a much later stage, adding: “It seems clear Edward Lawler was not present at the inception of this offence.”

Lawler has 84 previous convictions, including 46 for theft.

Words Are Weapons -- Salem Revisited

2011-01-31T19:54:00.000-08:00

This, from Norm Pattis' legal blog, www.pattisblog.com

There will come a time in which our incredulity about the words of children looks as troubling as the manner in which we treated accused witches in Salem, Massachussetts. In 1692, 19 men and women and two dogs were convicted and executed for consorting with the devil. These deaths were the product of the words of children who claimed to have been seduced by a Satan-worshipping household servant named Tituba.

Arthur Miller wrote a play about the trials in 1953, The Crucible. He viewed the Salem trials as a parable through which the activities of the House Un-American Committee's prosecution of Americans for disloyalty could be viewed. What gives so much power to mere accusation?, he wondered. Why are some times ripe for an hysteria that is so easily seen to be false in a calmer time?

I wish Miller were writing now. I'd like to see what he would make of the moral panic present in our courts whenever the state chooses to adopt the words of a child as a truth worth fighting for. We do not permit children to make contracts and regard them as incapable in most of life's serious affairs. But yet, if the state chooses to take the uncorroborated claim of a child as truth, to treat it as a disclosure based upon which it can and should deprive a man or woman of liberty, then a defendant is left often as helpless to combat the claims as were the true victims at Salem.
I re-read The Crucible a few weeks ago to prepare for a civil trial in which a client sued the mother of a child who made extravagant claims. The mother defended by saying that it was her job to believe and support her child. I asked the jury to conclude that it was also the mother's job to behave responsbily, and to provide guidance to her child. Treating children as oracles is always dangerous. We won, proving defamation and intentional infliction of emotional distress, known in some states as outrage. It was an encouraging verdict.

I read the following words from The Crucible to the jury during my opening statement and closing argument. "Is the accuser always holy now? Were they born this morning as clean as God's fingers? I'll tell you what's walking Salem -- vengeance is walking Salem. We are what we always were in Salem, but now the little crazy children are jangling the keys of the kingdom, and common vengeance writes the law."

Children do not deserve privileged status in our courts. Perhaps it is time to reinvigorate the Mosaic "two witness" rule, once required in homicide cases, and apply it to child sex cases. In those cases in which liberty hangs solely on the word of a child, and in which there is no other witness or any physical proof of harm, it should simply be too risky to prosecute merely on the word of a child. Massachussetts learned that the hard way in Salem; why do we need to learn the lesson all over again?

2011-01-29T19:06:00.000-08:00

"Restriction of free thought and free speech is the most dangerous of all subversions. It is the one un-American act that could most easily defeat us".
- William O. Douglas

"If we don't believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all.
- Noam Chomsky

"If you're uncomfortable about Blacks, you're a racist; uncomfortable about Jews, you're an anti-semite. But today, if you're uncomfortable about sex, you're a civic leader."

-Marty Klein

"We have reached a point in our history where lies are protected speech and the truth is criminal".

- Electronic Frontier Foundation co-founder John Perry Barlow

"It is awful" to prosecute a 15-year-old girl who told a rape lie that got a boy arrested, says women's rights advocat

2011-01-29T16:32:00.000-08:00

In the news story posted below, at the end of this post, a 15-year-old girl was convicted of attempting to pervert the course of justice for telling a rape lie that caused the boy she accused, who was just 14, to be arrested. She claimed she was raped, but the court rejected her defense, and she was convicted. Yet, according to the news story: "The decision to prosecute the girl, now 16, was criticised by anti-rape campaigners. Lisa Longstaff, of the campaign group Women Against Rape, said: 'It is awful that a girl so young has been prosecuted in this way.'"

Read that again, and let it sink in.

If the girl's lie had its intended effect, would anyone have objected if theboy had been tried (and in many jurisdictions, he might have been tried as an adult) for the rape of an innocent young woman? Would anyone have said "it's awful" that a boy so young should be prosecuted?"

The question scarcely survives its statement.

So, why the double standard, Ms. Longstaff? Why are you intent on treating 15-year-old young women -- who, on average, are more mature in every measurable way than 14-year-old boys -- as if they are infants and not free moral agents who ought to know better? Why is the sexual grievance industry so intent on shielding false rape accusers from the responsibilities of their vile acts?

For every other criminal act, our society believes that punishing the wrongdoer, among other things, has the effect of deterring other would-be criminals. Why is that not a concern when women lie about rape?

When anti-rape campaigners inject themselves into cases where there was no rape, when they advocate on behalf of rape liars, they aren't helping rape victims. In almost every false rape case, judges and police officers bemoan the harm done to actual rape victims by the lies told by false rape accusers. The advocacy here by Women Against Rape trivializes rape by conflating rape victims with false rape accusers; by enabling would-be false rape accusers to spin their lies and possibly hurt other flesh-and-blood men and boys; and by diminishing the integrity of every woman who legitimately cries rape. In short, this unconscionable advocacy hurts not only innocent men and boys but actual rape victims.

Somehow, it seems they don't care that their advocacy is having the opposite effect of its stated intent to help rape victims. How could that be, and what, exactly, is really going on here?

When anti-rape crusaders advocate on behalf of rape liars, they are pursuing what can only be described as a politicized, gender-divisive agenda that seems intended to announce to all that world that the victimization of our sons is not worthy of society's attention. When it comes to even far-fetched claims of rape, men and boys have no entitlement to the mantle of victimhood.

This mentality, of course, smells of feminist bloodlust, an ugly desire for payback for the purported past sins of the "patriarchy." Even though the 14-year-old male victim in this case is a real victim, and even though he had nothing to do with any past sins of the "patriarchy."

Shame on you, Lisa Longstaff. Your advocacy here is disgraceful.

I hope that Ms. Longstaff doesn't have a teenage son who someday might be falsely accused of rape. Perhaps then she will understand that the falsely accused are treated no better than flotsam, collateral damage in the "more important" war on rape. In "he said/she said" rape claims involving two teens, even though either one of the parties might be guilty of a crime (rape for him, perverting the course of justice for her) the boy alone is routinely arrested and charged, while the girl is treated as a "victim." Boys are often subjected to indignities in detention, inflicted either by the staff or other inmates. Even when they are exonerated, they are expected to just "take it like a man." The experience of being falsely accused of rape is inhumane generally, but doubly so when it happens to a teenage boy.

The district judge concluded that the girl knew that claiming she had been raped would get the boy into trouble. It was possible, the judge added, that the girl had lied because she feared she was pregnant or it could be that she had lied to "cover her tracks."

In other words, just another day in our false rape society.

(If you want to read more about how false rape claims are treated in 21st Century America, with all its supposed enlightenment, see here.)

Virginia lawmaker wants to castrate sex offenders, as alternative to costly state treatment programs

2011-01-26T17:20:00.000-08:00

Ed: The underlying assumption behind all such hysterical and hateful legislation is that:

1. All of those sex offenders convicted and sent to prison are guilty.
2. Of those who are guilty, their crimes were "sexually violent", "heinous" or otherwise "castration-worthy". (please do see previous pieces defining "sexual violence")

Those sane individuals who understand this issue in sufficient depth to hold a rational opinion do not believe either of those assumptions.

They know that every aspect of the laws and social zeitgeist surrounding sex hysteria are informed by ignorance and an atavistic hatred of "other".

They know that the term "sexually 'violent' predator" is a complete perversion of language and a baldly cynical attempt to inflame the fires of hysteria, invariably with a hidden agenda of gaining power, funding, or influence.

The ultimate goal of those propagating such laws and ideas is TOTAL, SOCIAL COMPLIANCE, and it will NOT stop with sex offenders.

This can only get worse as society's ignorant and brutal classes organize and act while the rational and the intelligent sit on the sidelines merely observing.

DAILY NEWS
Virginia State Sen. Emmett Hanger has proposed a bill that would have Virginia state agencies study whether castrating sex offenders would save the state money.

Republican State Sen. Emmett Hanger's bill would have state agencies study whether Virginia should start castrating sex offenders instead of confining them to treatment programs after they get out of jail.

Former Gov. Timothy Kaine vetoed a similar bill in 2007.

Hanger's critics call the idea barbaric, but he said it would save the state money and could provide a cure.

"I don't think it's radical at all," Hanger told the Associated Press. "It's just something that's not typically the thing you want to bring up in polite conversation, but again the whole subject area is not for polite conversation.

"We're talking about people who are so driven because of the tendencies from the chemicals and the hormones inside their body to perform heinous acts."

Virginia is one of 20 states with a civil commitment program, whose purpose is to keep violent sex offenders off the streets by allowing the government to keep them in custody – in psychiatric hospitals, for example – after they are released from prison.

The state's commitment program ballooned to $24 million this year, up from $2.7 million in 2004, and Gov. Bob McDonnell wants to spend $70 million over the next two years.

Hanger's bill wants state agencies to study the option of physical castration – cutting off a man's testicles or removing a woman's ovaries. Louisiana and Texas have legalized physical castration, while six other states allow for some form of castration of sex offenders, including chemical, which uses pharmaceuticals to stop a person's sex drive.

The bill doesn't only aim below the belt, though.

It also would require the state to consider changing the criteria for entering the civil commitment program, as well as creating housing options for those released, who are forbidden from halfway houses.

Some critics argued that castration would not be effective because it would not address the motivation that causes sexual predators to act on their impulses.

"When abuse and mutilation of a human being is presented as an acceptable alternative to responsible treatment and housing for those deemed as sexually violent predators, there exists a fault of reason," Mary Devoy, founder of Reform Sex Offender Laws of Virginia, told the AP.

When A Boy Wants To Be A Man

2011-01-25T14:09:00.000-08:00

Ours is not a time and place in which a man can easily wax rhapsodic about his childhood sex with married men and priests; but Sergio - an accomplished, handsome and quiet middle-aged resident of Wilton Manors, in a fifteen year relationship - wanted his story told, albeit anonymously. What happened to Sergio is not unique, but his conclusions constitute a confession usually never given voice. Over dinner, I recorded that story and deliver it to you in his own words. Without judgment. Without commentary.

“I grew up in a city on the Italian Riviera that had been devastated by World War II. It was rebuilt but it had lost its soul and its prosperity. My father struggled to find work to support his family of seven. In the 1960s, he took a second job running the movie theater owned by our parish church. My mother was the cashier and I sold candy in the lobby. My father was a deeply religious man. When the canisters of film arrived on Fridays, he would pre-screen them and if he saw a kiss or even a bedroom, he would cut and splice them. He didn’t know that I was downstairs in the theater watching the uncut versions. My job was to clean up the projection room for him. I would save the scraps he had cut and hold them up to the light in my bedroom. Very Cinema Paradiso.

“Parents dropped their kids off at the theater on Saturdays because it was safe. Before the movie started, the priest would get up on stage and make us say ten Hail Marys. The church was the center of our life and I was leader of the altar boys. We each had a card that the priests would sign every time we served Mass. After twenty times, we got a prize, like candy or a soccer ball. If you didn’t go to Mass on Sunday, you couldn’t play soccer on the church team or use the church recreation field.

“Even as a small child, I learned that sex was a sin. I confessed it all the time. There were seven priests in that parish. Each one had his own confessional with his name on it and a bell. When you rang the bell, that priest would come to the church and hear your confession. I went all the time because of sex and because they taught me that in confession I could wipe the slate clean. I had to lie in each confession because I didn’t want to admit I had just gone the day before. Each day I rang a different bell and confessed to a different priest so they wouldn’t know it was me again so soon, and I never said that I masturbated, only that I had ‘done bad things behind my mother’s back.’

“One of the altar boys who was my age took me alone into a room at the church youth center. He put my hand on his dick and taught me how to rub it. I loved it and wanted to do it every chance we got. Soon there were other altar boys in our group. This kind of fun is how we ended all our Catholic activities until one time, one of the boys ejaculated and that scared the shit out of us.

“When I was about ten years old, I was in the movie theater in the back row on the aisle. One of the priests was sitting next to me. He was the youngest of the seven, maybe 25 or 30, and he was in charge of the youth groups. The other altar boys were spread throughout the theater. I felt his knee against my leg. I didn’t move away. It felt very nice, all through the movie. Next week, the same thing, only I put on a lot more pressure. I started leaning against him. He took my hand and drew it into his robes and into his pants and I grabbed his dick, and I have to say it was the best thing I ever felt in my life. I didn’t want to let it go for the rest of my life. I didn’t move it. I just held it. I felt that either I had died and gone to heaven or that I was home. Next day, I went to the church and rang his bell. Instead of the confessional, he took me into the storage basement of the church where we were surrounded by statues and all the stuff used on feast days. The only thing I wanted was to take out his dick. I was really the aggressor. We did it frequently. I only knew that it felt good. He never asked me not to tell. He never forced me to do anything I didn’t want to do. Sometimes it was with the priest and three altar boys. Never kissing or hugging. Just the sex organ. No incentives offered, just my own pleasure. If I did not have that experience with the priest, I would have found it somewhere else.

“One time, my father kicked a man out of the theater because a boy said he had been touched by him, and my father chased him down the street yelling insults at him. The only thing I wanted to do was to run after that man, grab him by the hand and say, ‘Take me with you.’ I had fantasies about our family doctor, that he would take me away and we would live on an island where everyone was just like us. No wonder I live in Wilton Manors which is exactly that kind of island.

“After the priest, I started seeking other opportunities. There were always several married men at the church who I was having sex with. With one I had a code. If his wife was not home, there was a white towel on the door. With another one, I would go to the cemetery with him when he bought flowers to place on his wife’s tomb in the little chapel over the family vault, and that is where we had sex. In my little head it began to click that I should get married like them but still do this forever. The other altar boys I had sex with all got married. I did not want to be a priest. I hated the priests who came into our church to recruit for the seminary. They would take me for a walk and put their arms around me and say that Jesus was calling me.

“Also in my head it began to click that sex was forbidden by the church but that everyone did it anyway. We were strictly forbidden even to watch when the bull was brought to a neighbor’s house to stud the cows; but every time we saw the truck go by with the bull in it, all of us boys would say, ‘Okay, we know where we’re going later.’

“When I was 18, the pressure was on me to get married. For two years, I had a girlfriend who broke off our engagement because I would not have sex with her. I left the country and went to London where I joined a huge gay community. I met mostly older gay men and one friend brought me to an Anglican church that hosted gay nights with dances and raffles and events. My friend said, ‘Honey, you’re home.’ I went home with someone on my first night there. It’s funny that some church is always involved in the milestones of my sex life. The experience of religion is the experience of the erotic, and that is something people won’t talk about.

“They say we repeat our early sexual experience, but I would never have sex with a boy. I shy away from young people. I’m not comfortable. I don’t know why. I owe a lot to what some older guys did for me. Maybe I should be helping younger guys.

“I was absolutely not abused. After the first contact with his knee, I was going after that priest more than he was going after me. That is the truth. There is no doubt in my mind, that I wanted it more than he did. I have a very difficult time with these people who are suing priests because for me, there was no coercion. He didn’t even offer candy or gifts. There was no incentive but my own pleasure. All these years when all of these abuse stories came out, I never felt sympathy for those who brought charges against priests. I know that I was very young when it happened to me but I could have stayed with it or walked away. Some of my friends walked away. I didn’t. I went back. I rang that bell. I liked it.

“Today kids don’t have the same opportunity. Those married men would today be classed as predators. It never occurred to me, never crossed my mind that I would turn in any of them. I believe that now kids 12-16 are a lot more aware of things than I was. I think they have some malice that I didn’t have. I believe that what I was doing was not wrong. It was consensual. Some would say that you can’t have consensual sex when one of the parties is a kid. That’s bullshit. I was the aggressor. I had to ring that bell. I had to go up the stairs. I had to seek it out. Either I am a freak or there is something else that I either can’t explain or don’t understand.

“Sex comes with the baggage of guilt. The fact is that when I was a kid, I couldn’t talk about sex with anybody, and this sense of sin screws you up with your whole life. I think I am a better person because of what happened to me. That’s how I was able to understand who I was. That so many people in the church did what I did, there is not anything wrong with it. We are sexual beings. We can control our urges as we get older only because they diminish. The church gave me not just my sexual identity but my whole identity. It showed me that what they preach is not the truth, and I think the priests wanted me to know that. My experience freed me from big baggage.”

Comments

#4 Martin D. Goodkin 2011-01-24 13:39
JP, there is a difference--I, and in most cases Sergio,did the pursuing--we knew what we wanted and went for it.
I knew I was gay by the time I was 10--hey I played 'doctor' with the older boys of 12-13, not the girls--but didn't act on it til I was 12.
I was VERY active in NYC as a teenager going to the baths, bars, Rockefeller building 8th floor tearoom, the subway restrooms, etc. but, again, I did the pursuing.
I am sure some of the guys I picked up were predators but I didn't care--I got what I want.
I am, and always will be, indebted to those older men who taught me so much including not to be ashamed of who I am.
Sorry you had a 'bad' time and it sounds as if you are still carrying the baggage of what happened that long ago time.
Maybe I was lucky because all I have 50+ years later are kind warm thoughts and memories, including remembering many names, of those 'old' men.
Quote

#3 JP 2011-01-24 13:08
Marina Fontanascura's story rang several bells for me since there were aspects in the narrative concerning my own pursuit of adults when I was a teenager. But I have to say that there were also aspects that disturbed me a little. As an eight year old I was sexually abused by the verger of the church where I was a choir boy and it was a very unpleasant experience. For someone that age, I truly did not have the ability to say "no' and although it would be wrong to say that the encounter coloured the rest of my life, it did awaken my sexuality at much too early an age which brought its own problems. The other important point is where the person telling the story says he has a difficult time with the people who are bringing cases against the priests. I think it's worth pointing out that for a heterosexually inclined boy, being molested by a man would have the same adverse effect as a homosexually inclined boy being molested by a woman. It is a trifle naive to believe that all children have the ability to resist. Recently there was a TV program concerning four middle-aged men who had been systematically abused by a school master. As they recalled the abuse, their distress was absolutely genuine and very hard to watch. One man said that the worst thing about it was that he felt terribly guilty for enjoying the attention the abuse was giving him. I think when young, it is extremely difficult to sort out emotions aroused in these sort of encounters. We are all different and we all react to situations in different ways which is why I sincerely believe that adults have an absolute responsibility concerning the way they treat young people and therefore no form of sexual abuse of the young should be tolerated.
Quote

#2 sam 2011-01-21 20:44
I have to agree. When I was a kid of about eleven or twelve I started actively pursuing older men. I remember one man I knew liked me, he was my father's friend, but he kept turning me down. Finally one weekend I knew his wife was out of town I went over to his house and succeeded in my quest. I was thirteen at the time. Those are the best memories of my life.

Because of the hysteria, the gay community of America has become extremely hostile to boys who want to express their sexuality. It's really sad, and I think very damaging.
Quote

#1 Martin D. Goodkin 2011-01-21 11:38
At the ages of 12-13 in the late 40s I was cruising 'old men' of 20, 21 in the Bronx at the local movie theatre. By the time I was in my mid-teens I was going to the bars and baths in Manhattan going after the older men in their 30s-40s.
I looked older, was never questioned about my age, and agresively pursued the older man. I have many tales and in fact wrote a book called "The Free Prisoner", published a couple of years ago telling the story.
Having always gone for older men now at 75 I am not finding too many!!! LOL

Who Screams For Justice For 12 Year Old Jonathan Foster?

2011-01-18T18:48:00.000-08:00

Ed: Since first announcing the disappearance of Jonathan Foster amid her speculation that a (male; of course) sex criminal might be responsible, Nancy Grace went strangely silent when Mona Yvette Nelson, female and black, was arrested for the crime. Especially surprising given the extraordinarily vicious means of snuffing out the 12 year old boys life: murder by immolation using a welding torch. Even more baffling, other major news media uncharacteristically went quickly into "dead-silent mode" on news of the boy's horrific murder. I am left to speculate why this may be. And I am surprised and shocked at the conclusions to which I have unavoidably arrived.

A. She is a woman. A woman unrelated to the victim. This is not what we want to hear as a society. These horrendous crimes are necessarily committed by men. Especially such vicious crimes against children.

B. She is, at least at times, a lesbian. And very, very butch. A former professional boxer. This is not what journalists want to think about. They are, of course, condescending to their audience to assume that their readers/viewers will react with homophobic rage upon learning this information. Yes, this will be used by those with a gay-hating agenda but will not influence anyone else with a brain. And the inconvenient and discomfiting truth is that there are pathologically man-(and boy-) hating women who express great unbridled rage at the male sex. Many are lesbian. Fortunately, very, very few seem to act on their worst impulses. Sorry, but the truth is what it is. And, by the way, this writer is gay.

C. She is black. The victim is white. Black people are historically victimized in this society but sometimes they ARE the victimizers. That's just what it is.

D. The victim was a boy. He was twelve years old. He was white. White boys are supposed to be victimized by unrelated perverted white men, not sadistic black lesbians.

So those are the uncomfortable facts of this case as it is known so far which, when taken in their aggregate, apparently silenced the press and quickly averted the attention of the bloggers, comment-writers, and general public to other, more "acceptable" outrages such as crazy young guys shooting female politicians.

Let's face it: some people, whether victims or victimizers, are worth more than others. And this case simply failed to reinforce the prejudices of the public as well as its conveyors of news and outrage, rendering both the victim and victimizer of lesser value. They just don't fit into "the narrative".

A postscript: Can there be any doubt that her defense at trial will include claims of having been sexually molested as a child, thereby shifting ultimate blame to a predatorial male? This is just "de-riguer". This WILL happen. We don't even have to wait.

----

Hours after Christmas Day dinner at her sister's Third Ward apartment, Mona Yvette Nelson, a nomadic 44-year-old maintenance worker, was jolted by a TV news report detailing the disappearance of 12-year-old Jonathan Foster from a ramshackle Garden Oaks enclave.

"I know those people," she reportedly told her sister, Angie Johnson, 62, after watching Jonathan's mother, Angela Davis, plead for help in finding her son.

Four days later, Nelson found herself in a Harris County jail cell, charged in the boy's slaying as veteran homicide detectives with uncharacteristic candor painted her a monster.

"She is a cold, soulless murderer who showed an absolute lack of remorse in taking the life of Jonathan Foster," said Michael Miller, the lead homicide detective on the case for the Houston Police Department.

With that, the evil that had visited the impoverished pocket of Garden Oaks on Christmas Eve had a face, and a nickname that went viral on the Internet: "Mona the Monster."

Since her arrest, a much more nuanced picture of Nelson — the daughter of a retired schoolteacher and deceased mortician - has emerged. There are hints of the alleged monster. Her Facebook page described an affinity for the movie Saw. Her boxing nickname was "Iron Fist." But those details are troubling only when taken in the context of Jonathan's grisly death.

Nelson's family, her defenders, paint her as a patsy who dumped what she thought was a bag of trash at someone else's request. She's a mother, a grandmother of five. Doing this, to a boy the age of one her own grandbabies?

No way, they say.

"She is not a monster," insisted her mother, Mary Lee Preston, of Mount Pleasant.

Whether Nelson is the cold-blooded killer, the raspy voice overheard in Jonathan's last phone call to his mother, remains to be seen. She has been charged with capital murder and kidnapping but has admitted only to dumping the boy's body, saying she thought it was "garbage."

Possible accomplice?

The key piece of the puzzle in the case - the motive - is elusive, or at least still a well-guarded secret. And then there's this: If Nelson didn't do it, she must know who did. She must know the Monster.

Somewhere along the six miles between the rundown apartment where the boy had lived with his mother and the weedy ditch near the Hardy Toll Road where his scorched body was dumped lie the vexing and scant details.

"This is the only person (Nelson) we have evidence on for the murder," Assistant District Attorney Connie Spence told the Houston Chronicle when asked if it was possible there was an accomplice.

At first, the Foster case seemed unbelievably random. A boy spending Christmas Eve day at home - alone while his mother worked - playing computer games, watching cartoons. Neither police nor anyone who knows her have an explanation for why Nelson might have killed Jonathan.

Interviews with family and friends who saw her in the days after the boy disappeared say Nelson was not nervous.

She was, though, worried about money.

"I asked if she was coming home (for Christmas)," said Preston, Nelson's 79-year-old mother. "She said, 'I don't know. I'm trying to save up money to buy something for my truck.' "

The day after Christmas, Nelson received a $20 pay advance from her boss so she could fill her truck with gas. Nelson's adult daughter, who also lives in Mount Pleasant with her five children, said Nelson was strapped for cash.

"The Tuesday after Christmas, she called, checking up," said Ava Nelson, 27. "She said she couldn't come up there because she didn't have any money."

Caught on video

The biggest break in the case for police came after the missing boy was found dead.

Security video in the area shows Nelson getting out of her silver pickup and placing what was later determined to be Jonathan's body in a culvert at 6 p.m. Christmas Eve, about four hours after he was last seen.

Traction on Jonathan's disappearance was hampered initially because of conflicting stories from Jonathan's family. His mother, Angela Davis, who once struggled with drug addiction, first told police the boy was left in the care of her roommate, when he actually was home alone.

On Dec. 14, some 10 days before Jonathan disappeared, Davis and her son moved out of the Villa Nueva apartment complex on Oak Street where they had shared a home with David Davis, her husband and Jonathan's stepfather.

Davis said her husband had hit the boy. With Jonathan in tow, she moved to a dumpy duplex next door with her friend Sharon Ennamorato, whom Jonathan called "Aunt Sharon."

According to interviews, David Davis dropped by the apartment at 1:45 p.m. Christmas Eve to check on the boy and found him playing games on the computer.

Enter Mona Nelson, who allegedly came to the house some time later looking for Ennamorato. Instead, she found Jonathan, who called his mom at work, supposedly at Nelson's behest, and talked to a co-worker, saying he needed to get "Aunt Sharon's" phone number.

Angela Davis called her son back moments later. A "raspy-voiced woman" answered. Davis told the woman she was Jonathan's mother, and the woman asked Jonathan: "Is Angela your mother?"

"Yes ma'am, Angela's my mother," he reportedly said.

The phone went dead.

And Jonathan was gone.

Since the killing, Ennamorato has been evicted from the duplex she shared with Angela Davis and Jonathan. She appears to be the only person who connected Nelson to Jonathan and his mother and stepfather, police say.

Police believe Nelson knew Ennamorato well before Jonathan and his mother arrived on Ennamorato's doorstep. Ennamorato, who had a felony drug record, said she met Nelson when Ennamorato was living in the Tiffany Oaks Apartments on Oak Street, where Nelson worked in maintenance.

Angela Davis says she never met Nelson until she showed up at the duplex about 7 p.m. Christmas Eve - an hour or so after she was captured on video dumping the body. Nelson reportedly offered to look for Jonathan, saying she had stopped by earlier in the day, before he disappeared, looking for Ennamorato. She said he answered the door shirtless, and she suspected someone else was in the house.

Started on good path

Mona Yvette Nelson was the ninth child, the youngest, born to Mary Preston, a longtime elementary school teacher in Houston's Third Ward. The man Nelson called her father, mortician James Russo, never married her mother. Though Preston said Russo was part of Nelson's life, Russo's grown children said they never heard of Nelson until a year and a half ago, when she turned up at the family's mortuary claiming to be kin.

Nelson started out on a good path, Preston said. She was a tomboy who loved sports and volunteered at the MLK Community Center as a teenager. At 15, she met her future husband, Mike Nelson, a construction worker. At age 16, Nelson was a pregnant high school dropout. Two months after they married in 1983, she had twins, a boy and a girl, born three months early.

By the time Nelson was 19, she was in serious trouble. She was arrested in the aggravated robbery of a barbecue restaurant. She told police a man forced her to do it, that she feared he was going to hurt her if she didn't. Nelson pleaded no contest in 1985 and was given 10 years of deferred adjudication, which would revert to prison time if she committed another crime.

"Oh, my God, that almost killed me," Preston said of her daughter's arrest.

But Nelson was just getting started.

Some time in the ring

Four years later, in 1989, she was caught by federal officials driving Mexican nationals through the Sarita, Texas, checkpoint, for $600 per person. Her federal arrest resulted in her return to prison because of her robbery case.

For the next 20 years, Nelson would be arrested in nearly a dozen more minor incidents ranging from criminal mischief and theft by check to operating a stolen vehicle and marijuana possession.

Nelson divorced, and her children lived with their father. She began a relationship with another woman, Danita Morris, and they lived together as a couple for about 10 years, raising Morris' young children in East Texas.

Nelson was arrested in 2001, accused of assaulting Morris and three neighborhood children she was baby-sitting, but Morris dropped the charges.

"She's always been there for me and my kids no matter what," said Morris. "She's not what they're claiming her to be."

At nearly 5-foot-11, weighing more than 225 pounds and with crewcut hair, Nelson is an imposing figure who failed on the women's boxing circuit. After winning her debut bout in Syracuse, N.Y., in 1997, she went on to lose three more matches in 2003, 2004 and 2006. According to her Texas boxing license, which expired last year, she chose the nickname "Iron Fist."

Nelson's daughter, Ava Nelson, declined to press charges against her mother after Mount Pleasant police found her with a blackened eye and a bloody face in 2008.

"It was a misunderstanding," Ava Nelson said this week, adding that despite her mother's faults, she is a good person.

"This is the lady who helped me raise my kids."

For the past year, Nelson had worked as a handyman for a management company that took care of odd jobs at various apartment complexes, including the Tiffany Oaks Apartments, just across the street from the duplex where Jonathan and his mom lived with Ennamorato.

Nelson was paid by the job but was on call around the clock. Also a welder, she collected scrap metal at the various apartment properties and was allowed to keep half of what she could get for it.

About three months ago, Nelson moved into a garage apartment near the Hardy Toll Road, about 10 minutes from the ditch where Jonathan's body was found. Still, she hung out on Oak Street when she didn't have a job to do.

Alibi offered, but . . .

Maintenance worker Frank Nickles, 47, said on Christmas Eve he was hanging out with Nelson, drinking beer outside his Tiffany Oaks apartment from about 10:30 a.m to 2:30 p.m. - and she didn't leave during that time. But that conflicts with what witnesses told police.

Except for Nelson, "everyone else in the case is accounted for," said HPD's Miller.

Early reports cast suspicion on Jonathan's stepfather, but he is captured on security video at a nearby bar, the Catty Corner Ice House on Wakefield. "His time is accounted for," Miller said.

At the time of Nelson's arrest, Quanell X, an advocate for people accused of crimes, asserted that Nelson was innocent of the crime, and a drug debt was at the heart of the boy's disappearance and killing.

Miller scoffed at the suggestion: "We don't have any evidence of that at all. I've never had a case where an individual who owed up money had their child killed. That's a fantasy."

Police said a "wealth of evidence" shows Jonathan was burned at Nelson's apartment.

They reported finding burned carpet and twine like the kind used to tie Jonathan's hands at Nelson's apartment, along with welding equipment they believe she used to burn the body postmortem.

A skilled welder, Nelson owned torches, but nothing inside her apartment was burned, her landlord, Gary Arnold said, noting that it had tile floors.

On whether Nelson has given them the name of an accomplice, Spence added, "We're not saying."

The day after she interred her son's ashes, Davis called Jonathan's accused killer "cold."

"God will punish her," she said.

Surprisingly, Davis also offered her absolution.

"I forgive her," she said, explaining that she could afford to because Jonathan is now free from harm. "My son's safe. He's not hurting."

Eek! A Male! Treating all men as potential predators doesn't make our kids safer.

2011-01-12T13:45:00.001-08:00

By LENORE SKENAZY

Last week, the lieutenant governor of Massachusetts, Timothy Murray, noticed smoke coming out of a minivan in his hometown of Worcester. He raced over and pulled out two small children, moments before the van's tire exploded into flames. At which point, according to the AP account, the kids' grandmother, who had been driving, nearly punched our hero in the face.

Why?

Mr. Murray said she told him she thought he might be a kidnapper.

And so it goes these days, when almost any man who has anything to do with a child can find himself suspected of being a creep. I call it "Worst-First" thinking: Gripped by pedophile panic, we jump to the very worst, even least likely, conclusion first. Then we congratulate ourselves for being so vigilant.

Consider the Iowa daycare center where Nichole Adkins works. The one male aide employed there, she told me in an interview, is not allowed to change diapers. "In fact," Ms. Adkins said, "he has been asked to leave the classroom when diapering was happening."

Now, a guy turned on by diaper changes has got to be even rarer than a guy turned on by Sponge Bob. But "Worst-First" thinking means suspecting the motives of any man who chooses to work around kids.

Maybe the daycare center felt it had to be extra cautious, to avoid lawsuits. But regular folk are suspicious, too. Last February, a woman followed a man around at a store berating him for clutching a pile of girls' panties. "I can't believe this! You're disgusting. This is a public place, you pervert!" she said—until the guy, who posted about the episode on a website, fished out his ID. He was a clerk restocking the underwear department.

Given the level of distrust, is it any wonder that, as the London Telegraph reported last month, the British Musicians' Union warned its members they are no longer to touch a child's fingers, even to position them correctly on the keys? Or that a public pool in Sydney, Australia last fall prohibited boys from changing in the same locker room as the men? (According to the Daily Telegraph in Sydney, the men demanded this, fearing false accusations.)

What's really ironic about all this emphasis on perverts is that it's making us think like them. Remember the story that broke right before Christmas? The FBI warned law-enforcement agencies that the new Video Barbie could be used to make kiddie porn. The warning was not intended for the public but it leaked out. TV news celebrated the joy of the season by telling parents that any man nice enough to play dolls with their daughters could really be videotaping "under their little skirts!" as one Fox News reporter said.

This queasy climate is making men think twice about things they used to do unselfconsciously. A friend of mine, Eric Kozak, was working for a while as a courier. Driving around an unfamiliar neighborhood, he says, "I got lost. I saw a couple kids by the side of the road and rolled down my window to ask, 'Where is such-and-such road?' They ran off screaming."

Another dad told me about taking his three-year-old to play football in the local park, where he'd help organize the slightly older kids into a game. Over time, one of the kids started to look up to him. "He wanted to stand close to me, wanted approval, Dad stuff, I guess. And because of this whole 'stranger danger' mentality, I could sense this sort of wary disapproval from the few other parents at the playground. So I just stopped going."

And that's not the worst. In England in 2006, BBC News reported the story of a bricklayer who spotted a toddler at the side of the road. As he later testified at a hearing, he didn't stop to help for fear he'd be accused of trying to abduct her. You know: A man driving around with a little girl in his car? She ended up at a pond and drowned.

We think we're protecting our kids by treating all men as potential predators. But that's not a society that's safe. Just sick.

Ms. Skenazy is a public speaker and author of the blog and book, "Free-Range Kids" (Wiley, 2010).

'Stranger Danger' and the Decline of Halloween

2010-10-29T05:57:00.000-07:00

Wall Street Journal

No child has ever been killed by poisoned candy. Ever.

By LENORE SKENAZY

Halloween is the day when America market-tests parental paranoia. If a new fear flies on Halloween, it's probably going to catch on the rest of the year, too.

Take "stranger danger," the classic Halloween horror. Even when I was a kid, back in the "Bewitched" and "Brady Bunch" costume era, parents were already worried about neighbors poisoning candy. Sure, the folks down the street might smile and wave the rest of the year, but apparently they were just biding their time before stuffing us silly with strychnine-laced Smarties.

That was a wacky idea, but we bought it. We still buy it, even though Joel Best, a sociologist at the University of Delaware, has researched the topic and spends every October telling the press that there has never been a single case of any child being killed by a stranger's Halloween candy. (Oh, yes, he concedes, there was once a Texas boy poisoned by a Pixie Stix. But his dad did it for the insurance money. He was executed.)

This Halloween, costumes based on "Jersey Shore" stars Snooki, DJ Pauly D and The Situation are flying off the shelves. WSJ's Elizabeth Holmes reports.

Anyway, you'd think that word would get out: poisoned candy not happening. But instead, most Halloween articles to this day tell parents to feed children a big meal before they go trick-or-treating, so they won't be tempted to eat any candy before bringing it home for inspection. As if being full has ever stopped any kid from eating free candy!

So stranger danger is still going strong, and it's even spread beyond Halloween to the rest of the year. Now parents consider their neighbors potential killers all year round. That's why they don't let their kids play on the lawn, or wait alone for the school bus: "You never know!" The psycho-next-door fear went viral.

Then along came new fears. Parents are warned annually not to let their children wear costumes that are too tight—those could seriously restrict breathing! But not too loose either—kids could trip! Fall! Die!

Treating parents like idiots who couldn't possibly notice that their kid is turning blue or falling on his face might seem like a losing proposition, but it caught on too.

Halloween taught marketers that parents are willing to be warned about anything, no matter how preposterous, and then they're willing to be sold whatever solutions the market can come up with. Face paint so no mask will obscure a child's vision. Purell, so no child touches a germ. And the biggest boondoggle of all: an adult-supervised party, so no child encounters anything exciting, er, "dangerous."

Think of how Halloween used to be the one day of the year when gaggles of kids took to the streets by themselves—at night even. Big fun! Low cost! But once the party moved inside, to keep kids safe from the nonexistent poisoners, in came all the nonsense. The battery-operated caskets. The hired witch. The Costco veggie trays and plastic everything else. Halloween went from hobo holiday to $6 billion extravaganza.

And it blazed the way for adult-supervised everything else. Let kids make their own fun? Not anymore! Let's sign our toddlers up for "movement" classes! Let's bring on the extracurricular activities, travel soccer and manicure parties for the older kids. Once Halloween got outsourced to adults, no kids-only activity was safe. Goodbye sandlot, hello batting coach!

And now comes the latest Halloween terror: Across the country, cities and states are passing waves of laws preventing registered sex offenders from leaving their homes—or sometimes even turning on their lights—on Halloween.

The reason? Same old same old: safety. As a panel of "experts" on the "Today" show warned viewers recently: Don't let your children trick-or-treat without you "any earlier than [age] 13, because people put on masks, they put on disguises, and there are still people who do bad things."

Perhaps there are. But Elizabeth Letourneau, an associate professor at the Medical University of South Carolina, studied crime statistics from 30 states and found, "There is zero evidence to support the idea that Halloween is a dangerous date for children in terms of child molestation."

In fact, she says, "We almost called this paper, 'Halloween: The Safest Day of the Year,' because it was just so incredibly rare to see anything happen on that day."

Why is it so safe? Because despite our mounting fears and apoplectic media, it is still the day that many of us, of all ages, go outside. We knock on doors. We meet each other. And all that giving and taking and trick-or-treating is building the very thing that keeps us safe: community.

We can kill off Halloween, or we can accept that it isn't dangerous and give it back to the kids. Then maybe we can start giving them back the rest of their childhoods, too.

Ms. Skenazy is the author of "Free-Range Kids" (Jossey-Bass, 2010). She blogs at www.freerangekids.com.

'Vulnerable' man lured to death with offer of sex act

2010-10-14T17:20:00.000-07:00

Ed: Here is another example of deeply evil people attaining release for their sadistic pleasures by targeting those who are both vulnerable and unpopular in the eyes of society.

The cultural narrative has been, of course, that these poor people (the murderers) had doubtless been the victims of childhood sexual abuse themselves and that, while regrettable, it's understandable why these things happen. Thus the inevitable psychologist's reports to the court claiming "early childhood victimization". This will soften the legal blows that fall upon them and further reinforce the myth that sadists who kill sex offenders (or, in this case, suspected "nonces") are motivated not by their own sociopathy or sadism but out of a deep "wound" resulting from some sex act experienced in childhood. It is time to put this mythical narrative, recognized as such by countless reputable mental health professionals, to rest!

Mr Rossington's body was found on grassland in Lincoln

A 21-year-old man described as "vulnerable and gullible" was beaten to death by a gang who considered him a paedophile, a court has heard.

Shaun Rossington, of Lincoln, was lured to Searby Road in the city by a 13-year-old girl on the promise of a sex act, Nottingham Crown Court heard.

His body was found face down on grassland on 3 June. He died from lack of oxygen, the court heard.

Continue reading the main story

Judge Weinstein Takes On Child Pornography Laws

2010-05-21T14:38:00.000-07:00

New York Times

In his 43-year career as a federal judge, Jack B. Weinstein has come to be identified by his efforts to combat what he calls “the unnecessary cruelty of the law.” His most recent crusade is particularly striking because of the beneficiary: a man who has amassed a vast collection of child pornography.

Judge Weinstein, who sits in the United States District Court in Brooklyn, has twice thrown out convictions that would have ensured that the man spend at least five years behind bars. He has pledged to break protocol and inform the next jury about the mandatory prison sentence that the charges carry. And he recently declared that the man, who is awaiting a new trial, did not need an electronic ankle bracelet because he posed “no risk to society.”

There is little public sympathy for collectors of child pornography. Yet across the country, an increasing number of federal judges have come to their defense, criticizing changes to sentencing laws that have effectively quadrupled their average prison term over the last decade.

Last week, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit vacated a 20-year child pornography sentence by ruling that the sentencing guidelines for such cases, “unless applied with great care, can lead to unreasonable sentences.” The decision noted that the recommended sentences for looking at pictures of children being sexually abused sometimes eclipse those for actually sexually abusing a child.

Judge Weinstein has gone to extraordinary lengths to challenge the strict punishments, issuing a series of rulings that directly attack the mandatory five-year prison sentence faced by defendants charged with receiving child pornography.

“I don’t approve of child pornography, obviously,” he said in an interview this week. But, he also said, he does not believe that those who view the images, as opposed to producing or selling them, present a threat to children.

“We’re destroying lives unnecessarily,” he said. “At the most, they should be receiving treatment and supervision.”

The man he has spent three years trying to save from a long incarceration is Pietro Polizzi, a married father of five who collected more than 5,000 graphic pictures of children. If prosecuted in a New York State court, he would have faced a maximum prison sentence of four years. Instead, in federal court, he faced a minimum of five years and a recommended sentence of 11 to 14 years. Because of Judge Weinstein’s intervention, he remains free as he awaits another trial.

“I don’t see Judge Weinstein as a judge,” Mr. Polizzi said during an interview as tears rolled down his face. “I see him as my father. He helps people. He doesn’t destroy lives the way the prosecutor has. He’s the one who is going to set me free from the court.”

The child pornography industry has flourished through the Internet, with the number of federal cases growing from fewer than 100 annually to more than 1,600 last year. As the number grew, Congress increased the recommended prison terms and established a mandatory minimum sentence of five years for anyone convicted of receiving child pornography. According to the federal defenders office, the average sentence was 91 months in 2007, up from 21 months a decade before.

But the tough penalties have chafed at many judges, echoing previous battles over drug cases. Last year, judges imposed sentences below the recommended range in more than half of all child pornography cases.

“What has caused concern in courts across the nation is that we have a lot of relatively law-abiding individuals sitting in the basement downloading the wrong kind of dirty pictures facing not just prison sentences but incredibly long prison sentences,” said Douglas A. Berman, a professor at Moritz College of Law, who studies sentencing issues.

In one recent case, James L. Graham, a United States District Court judge in Ohio, sentenced a 67-year-old man who had suffered a stroke to a single day in prison, along with restrictions on computer use and registration as a sex offender. As part of a deal with prosecutors, the man had pleaded guilty to possession of child pornography, which carries no mandatory sentence.

“When you have to sit there on the bench and look at someone like my stroke victim and say, ‘I have to send this man to prison for six years,’ it just doesn’t feel right,” he explained in an interview. “It’s not right.”

Child advocates like Ernie Allen, the president of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, are upset by such thinking. “Real children are harmed in the production of these images,” he said, “and these same children are harmed every time these images are downloaded and viewed.”

At 88, Judge Weinstein is one of the longest serving members of the federal bench. Supporters praise his taking unusual actions in pursuit of his notions of justice, like for a time refusing to handle drug cases out of opposition to mandatory minimums. Critics say that in the process, he disregards the law.

(On Thursday, he made headlines by refusing to dismiss a lawsuit by a public school teacher removed from the classroom for allowing students to use vulgarities during a lesson on H.I.V. He ruled that she appeared to have followed the spirit of a state syllabus that directed that students be encouraged to use sexual terms they understood.)

“Jack is somebody who will step out and do what he thinks is right and take his chances of being overturned by an appeals court,” said John S. Martin, who cited his disagreement with mandatory sentences when he retired from the federal bench in Manhattan. “He sees the injustice in these things and he tries to do something about it.”

Both sides point to his efforts in the Polizzi case as quintessential Weinstein.

In 2005, Mr. Polizzi signed up for a child pornography Web site. He began obsessively stockpiling thousands of images, mostly of prepubescent girls. When F.B.I. agents arrived with a search warrant, he led them to the two-story garage where he kept his collection behind locked doors, saying, “The pictures of the children are upstairs.”

Child pornography cases almost always end with guilty pleas. But when the case was assigned to Judge Weinstein, Mr. Polizzi’s lawyer recommended that he go to trial.

The lawyer used an insanity defense, claiming Mr. Polizzi had been repeatedly raped as a child and had collected the pictures not for sexual gratification, but in hopes of finding evidence of his own abuse — claims the prosecution dismissed as implausible. When the first of the images were shown in court, Mr. Polizzi collapsed and was taken to a hospital.

The jury was given the standard instruction not to consider possible punishment during deliberations. After three days, on Oct. 5, 2007, Mr. Polizzi was convicted of all 12 counts of receipt of child pornography and 11 counts of possession. Then Judge Weinstein broke from the script with a question almost never posed in court: If the jurors had known about the minimum prison sentence, would they have voted to convict?

Five jurors spoke up against imprisonment. Two said they would have changed their votes. Judge Weinstein tossed out the guilty verdict on the more serious receipt counts and ordered a new trial. He sentenced Mr. Polizzi to a year in prison for the possession counts, which Mr. Polizzi has served.

Judge Weinstein declared that Mr. Polizzi had a constitutional right to have a jury know the punishment that would accompany a guilty verdict, a right he said he had violated. He pledged to inform the next jury of the mandatory minimum sentence. That idea, floated by a federal judge in Manhattan several years earlier in another child pornography case but rejected on appeal, would give jurors the option of refusing to convict if the punishment seemed disproportionate, as several jurors had indicated they believed it was in Mr. Polizzi’s case.

“That was quite an unusual way of handling it,” said Amy Baron-Evans, the national sentencing resource counsel for the federal public defenders’ office. “Usually the judges are just stuck with the mandatory minimum.”

The Court of Appeals last year overruled Judge Weinstein’s order of a new trial, but left unresolved whether it was permissible to tell the jury about the punishment. The case was remanded, and Judge Weinstein, after consulting with other District Court judges, again ordered a new trial, though this time on different grounds. And again he pledged to inform the jury of the mandatory minimum sentences. That decision is under appeal.

In the meantime, the cases keep coming.

On Wednesday, Judge Weinstein dealt with a man who had pleaded guilty to receipt of child pornography. He imposed the mandatory five-year minimum prison term, though unhappily.

“This is an unnecessarily harsh and cruel sentence under the circumstances,” he said. “The court has no alternative under the statute. This defendant requires treatment and a stable life outside of prison. Prison will only harm him and will do nothing to protect society, since he does not constitute a risk of crime or any acting out towards children.”

“I’m sorry,” he added, “there is nothing I can do in this case.”

Worst-Case Thinking

2010-05-16T20:28:00.000-07:00

"Our society no longer has the ability to calculate probabilities. Risk assessment is devalued. "

by Bruce Schneier

At a security conference recently, the moderator asked the panel of distinguished cybersecurity leaders what their nightmare scenario was. The answers were the predictable array of large-scale attacks: against our communications infrastructure, against the power grid, against the financial system, in combination with a physical attack.

I didn't get to give my answer until the afternoon, which was: "My nightmare scenario is that people keep talking about their nightmare scenarios."

There's a certain blindness that comes from worst-case thinking. An extension of the precautionary principle, it involves imagining the worst possible outcome and then acting as if it were a certainty. It substitutes imagination for thinking, speculation for risk analysis and fear for reason. It fosters powerlessness and vulnerability and magnifies social paralysis. And it makes us more vulnerable to the effects of terrorism.

Worst-case thinking means generally bad decision making for several reasons. First, it's only half of the cost-benefit equation. Every decision has costs and benefits, risks and rewards. By speculating about what can possibly go wrong, and then acting as if that is likely to happen, worst-case thinking focuses only on the extreme but improbable risks and does a poor job at assessing outcomes.

Second, it's based on flawed logic. It begs the question by assuming that a proponent of an action must prove that the nightmare scenario is impossible.

Third, it can be used to support any position or its opposite. If we build a nuclear power plant, it could melt down. If we don't build it, we will run short of power and society will collapse into anarchy. If we allow flights near Iceland's volcanic ash, planes will crash and people will die. If we don't, organs won't arrive in time for transplant operations and people will die. If we don't invade Iraq, Saddam Hussein might use the nuclear weapons he might have. If we do, we might destabilize the Middle East, leading to widespread violence and death.

Of course, not all fears are equal. Those that we tend to exaggerate are more easily justified by worst-case thinking. So terrorism fears trump privacy fears, and almost everything else; technology is hard to understand and therefore scary; nuclear weapons are worse than conventional weapons; our children need to be protected at all costs; and annihilating the planet is bad. Basically, any fear that would make a good movie plot is amenable to worst-case thinking.

Fourth and finally, worst-case thinking validates ignorance. Instead of focusing on what we know, it focuses on what we don't know -- and what we can imagine.

Remember Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's quote? "Reports that say that something hasn't happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns -- the ones we don't know we don't know." And this: "the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence." Ignorance isn't a cause for doubt; when you can fill that ignorance with imagination, it can be a call to action.

Even worse, it can lead to hasty and dangerous acts. You can't wait for a smoking gun, so you act as if the gun is about to go off. Rather than making us safer, worst-case thinking has the potential to cause dangerous escalation.

The new undercurrent in this is that our society no longer has the ability to calculate probabilities. Risk assessment is devalued. Probabilistic thinking is repudiated in favor of "possibilistic thinking": Since we can't know what's likely to go wrong, let's speculate about what can possibly go wrong.

Worst-case thinking leads to bad decisions, bad systems design, and bad security. And we all have direct experience with its effects: airline security and the TSA, which we make fun of when we're not appalled that they're harassing 93-year-old women or keeping first graders off airplanes. You can't be too careful!

Actually, you can. You can refuse to fly because of the possibility of plane crashes. You can lock your children in the house because of the possibility of child predators. You can eschew all contact with people because of the possibility of hurt. Steven Hawking wants to avoid trying to communicate with aliens because they might be hostile; does he want to turn off all the planet's television broadcasts because they're radiating into space? It isn't hard to parody worst-case thinking, and at its extreme it's a psychological condition.

Frank Furedi, a sociology professor at the University of Kent, writes: "Worst-case thinking encourages society to adopt fear as one of the dominant principles around which the public, the government and institutions should organize their life. It institutionalizes insecurity and fosters a mood of confusion and powerlessness. Through popularizing the belief that worst cases are normal, it incites people to feel defenseless and vulnerable to a wide range of future threats."

Even worse, it plays directly into the hands of terrorists, creating a population that is easily terrorized -- even by failed terrorist attacks like the Christmas Day underwear bomber and the Times Square SUV bomber.

When someone is proposing a change, the onus should be on them to justify it over the status quo. But worst case thinking is a way of looking at the world that exaggerates the rare and unusual and gives the rare much more credence than it deserves.

It isn't really a principle; it's a cheap trick to justify what you already believe. It lets lazy or biased people make what seem to be cogent arguments without understanding the whole issue. And when people don't need to refute counterarguments, there's no point in listening to them.

This essay was originally published on CNN.com, although they stripped out all the links.

http://www.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/05/12/...

Security conference:
http://www.ewi.info/dallas

Precautionary principle:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precautionary_principle

Iceland volcano affects organ donations:
http://www.cbsnews.com/...

Areas where we tend to overestimate the threat:
http://www.schneier.com/essay-170.html

New particle accelerator may annihilate the planet:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-9905448-7.html

Movie plot threats:
http://www.schneier.com/essay-087.html

Rumsfeld quote:
http://www.defenselink.mil/Transcripts/...
Possibilistic thinking:
http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/...

Making fun of the TSA:
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2010/05/...
The TSA harasses a 93-year-old women:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wHxy5GattLY

The TSA keeps a first-grader off airplanes:
http://www.bostonherald.com/news/regional/view/...
Steven Hawking on communicating with aliens:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/36769422/

Frank Furedi on worst-case-thinking:
http://www.frankfuredi.com/index.php/site/article/326/
http://www.frankfuredi.com/index.php/site/article/386/

How we are easily terrorized:
http://www.schneier.com/essay-124.html

Christmas Day underwear bomber:
http://www.schneier.com/essay-304.html

Times Square SUV bomber:
http://www.schneier.com/essay-315.html

Nazis Started Pedophile Priest Panic In 1937

2010-05-12T23:12:00.000-07:00

"There are cases of sexual abuse that are coming to light every day against a great number of the members of the Catholic clergy. Unfortunately, we are perhaps not talking so much about individual cases but rather a collective moral crisis that the cultural history of humanity may never have known at such a frightful and concerning level. Numerous priests and religious have confessed to the crime. There is no doubt that the thousands of cases that have come to be known to the authorities represent only a small fraction of the true number, since many molesters have been covered and hidden by the hierarchy." - Joseph Goebbels, 1937

Although the above quote could have appeared in any number of editorials in recent weeks, the statement was made by Nazi propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels in 1937, according to Italian journalist Massimo Introvigne.

In an article published recently for Avvenire, the newspaper of the Italian Catholic bishops' conference, Introvigne says that Goebbels launched a fierce smear campaign against the Catholic Church following its condemnation of the Nazi regime that same year, attempting to convince the public that the Catholic priesthood was filled with child sex abusers.

Introvigne says that Goebbels' campaign followed the same pattern seen in recent media attacks on the Church. Although it was based on a few real cases that had come to light in 1936, and far fewer that the number of cases currently being discussed from mostly the 1960s and 70s, it exaggerated their extent and attempted to revive them after they had already been resolved, in an attempt to discredit Catholics.

"The cases, which were few, but real, produced a very strong reaction from the episcopate," writes Introvigne. "On June 2, 1936, the Bishop of Münster - Blessed Clemens August von Galen (1878-1946), who was the soul of Catholic resistance to Nazism, and who was beatified in 2005 by Benedict XVI - had a declaration read at all the Sunday Masses in which he expressed 'pain and sadness' for these 'abominable crimes' that "cover our Holy Church with ignominy.'"

The German episcopate soon after published a condemnation of the perpetrators, and implemented what Introvigne called "severe measures" to prevent future crimes. The bishops privately pointed out that the Hitler Youth and the schools had a far bigger problem with child sex abuse.

However, in March of 1937, the Nazis growing conflict with the Catholic Church came to a head, with the publication of the papal letter "Mit Brennender Sorge" (With Burning Concern), which was smuggled into the Riech and read from the pulpit of every Catholic parish. In it, Pope Pius XI condemned both the behavior and the philosophy of the Nazis in unequivocal terms, and defended the Church's Jewish heritage against Hitler's racist attacks.

Goebbels responded by reviving the charges of sex abuse against Catholic priests, and created new ones, according to Introvigne, who writes that "It was the anti-Nazi encyclical of Pius XI that led to the great campaign of 1937. [German Jesuit priest Walter] Mariaux proved it publishing highly detailed instructions sent by Goebbels to the Gestapo, the political police of the Third Reich, and above all to journalists, just a few days after the publication of Mit Brennender Sorge, inviting them to 'reopen' the cases from 1936 and also older cases, constantly recalling them to public opinion."

"Goebbels also ordered the Gestapo to find witnesses willing to accuse a certain number of priests, threatening them with immediate arrest if they didn't collaborate, even if they were children," he adds.

However, Introvigne writes that Fr. Mariaux published the confidential documents he had discovered in a two volume work in Spanish and English, which detailed the Nazis' attack on the Catholic Church, thus discrediting it.

"Thanks to the courage of Canaris and his friends, and to the persistence of the Jesuit detective Mariaux, the truth was already out during the war," notes Introvigne.

"The wickedness of the campaign of Goebbels aroused more indignation than the eventual guilt of some religious. The father of all moral panics in the area of pedophile priests blew up in the hands of the Nazi propagandists who had tried to organize it."

Calif. bills target sex offenders online

2010-04-03T18:02:00.000-07:00

Editor: This is entirely about demagogues like George Runner exacting more revenge against sex offenders. To make their lives impossible into perpetuity is his sole aim. To marginalize sex offenders who have already served their sentences to the point of social slavery is what makes Senator George Runner tick. And, despite the fact that he is a Christian fundamentalist with a deep and abiding hatred for sexual freedom in general, he will, no doubt, receive lots of support across the political and theological spectrum for his continued expansion of governmental intrusion into every nook and cranny of everyone's - not just sex offender's - lives.

That the law is hardly enforceable on first reading is also not the point. The point of this law will be to criminalize acts committed by registered sex offenders that would never be criminal if exercised as a right by anyone else. By so doing, it further instills terror in people who, despite not committing new crimes and attempting to put their lives back together and contribute to society, must break absurd laws such as the one he is proposing in order to work and function in that very society, knowing that at any time they come under scrutiny by the police (a constant threat for the R.S.O.) their "crime" of not registering an email address will land them back in prison.

When are we going to stop taking the lead from the zealots amongst us, whether they are the most extreme sex-hating gender feminists or the religious sex-hating fanatics? The common denominator between them is authoritarianism and a contempt for the individual and, of course, a hatred of other people's sex lives. By dominating our national conversation, we allow them to set an agenda for all of us. When would you ever wish to have these people dictate your personal lives and priorities, demanding each and every email address you use?

Sex offenders would be required to share Internet identifiers.

Posted at 10:55 PM on Friday, Apr. 02, 2010

By E.J. Schultz / Bee Capitol Bureau

SACRAMENTO -- New York passed a law a couple of years ago requiring sex offenders to report e-mail addresses to the state's offender registry.

The result: At least 4,336 registered sex offenders were purged from social networking sites such as Facebook and Myspace thanks to the new data, Attorney General Andrew Cuomo recently announced.

Several California lawmakers want to follow New York's lead.

Newly introduced bills would require sex offenders to share online identifiers -- such as e-mail accounts and instant-message aliases -- while at the same time prohibiting offenders on parole from using social networking sites.

"These social networks become a real trolling place for predators," said Sen. George Runner, R-Lancaster, author of one of the bills. "I think we should create as many speed bumps as possible to keep them off those social networks."

But the bills are far from foolproof. Supporters concede that offenders could switch e-mail addresses and not tell the authorities. But if they are caught, they run the risk of going back to prison -- and "that's a pretty big risk," Runner said.

In Fresno, an estimated 10% to 15% of sexual assault cases involve victims who were first contacted online, according to the Fresno Police Department. About 1,600 sex offenders live in Fresno.

Lt. David Newton, head of Fresno's criminal investigations bureau, supports the bills, but said they aren't ironclad. "We don't necessarily believe this may prevent many sexual assaults from occurring," he said. But "this is going to provide another arrow in our quiver."

He said the ban on social sites use by offenders will allow investigators to levy additional charges against predators.

Opponents fear the bills would lead to overzealous prosecutions and needlessly send more people to already crowded prisons.

Sex offenders already must register for life, including those who commit less-serious crimes such as indecent exposure, said Ignacio Hernandez, a lobbyist for California Attorneys for Criminal Justice, which represents criminal defense lawyers.

"All this would do is prohibit people from using these social networking sites for lawful, positive, productive purposes -- and that really makes no sense," he said.

A similar bill failed last legislative session, as concerns arose about the costs of collecting the new information and imprisoning offenders who violate the new rules.

A report last year suggests children face no greater danger online than they do in real life. Rather, the biggest risks on the Web are harassment and bullying among children -- not adults targeting kids, said a report by the Internet Safety Technical Task Force, created by 49 state attorneys to study the threats children face online.

"The image presented by the media of an older male deceiving and preying on a young child does not paint an accurate picture of the nature of the majority of sexual solicitations and Internet-initiated off-line encounters," reported the task force, which included academics and representatives of Internet businesses and nonprofits.

However, Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, who helped create the task force, criticized the report, saying it relied on inadequate research and downplayed the threat of online predators.

Current law requires sexual offenders to register their home addresses with local authorities every time they move. Under the bills, new e-mail accounts would have to be registered days after they are created.

The bills are SB 1204 by Runner, AB 1850 by Assembly Member Cathleen Galgiani, D-Livingston, and AB 2208 by Assembly Member Norma Torres, D-Pomona.

The registry information is sent to the state and portions are displayed publicly at the Megan's Law Web site. Social networking sites such as Facebook already run checks against offender information. Having e-mail addresses would improve the process, said Chris Kelly, a state attorney general candidate and the former privacy officer and head of global public policy for Facebook.

Kelly, a Democrat, said Facebook already has strong protections in place, including a "real name culture" that weeds out users employing fake monikers. The site also flags suspicious users whose friend requests are rejected at a high rate or who overuse the search function.

"None of these systems are foolproof, but they go far beyond what most people assume has gone on," he said.

The state legislation comes after Congress in 2006 passed a law, known as the Adam Walsh Act, setting minimum standards for sex offender registries, including collecting Internet identifiers. States that don't comply by July 2011 risk losing some federal grants -- about $3 million in California.

California's Sex Offender Management Board has recommended the state not implement the federal law, partly because the costs of making the changes would exceed the grant loss.

The reporter can be reached at eschultz@fresnobee.com or (916) 326-5541.

Why humanists shouldn’t join in this Catholic-bashing

2010-04-01T00:59:00.000-07:00

"The reaction to the paedophile priest scandal is as guilty of scaremongering, illiberalism and elitism as the Catholic Church has ever been."
Brendan O’Neill

With all the newspaper headlines about predatory paedophiles in smocks, terrified altar boys and cover-ups by officials at the Vatican, it is hard to think of anything worse right now than a sexually abusive priest. Yet today’s reaction to those allegations of sexual abuse is also deeply problematic. For it is a reaction informed more by prejudice and illiberalism than by anything resembling a principled secularism, and one which also threatens to harm individuals, families, society and liberty.

When considering the problem of child sexual abuse by Catholic priests, it is important to distinguish between the incidents themselves, some of which were of course horrific, and the way in which those incidents are understood in today’s political and cultural climate. The acts of sexual abuse themselves were no doubt a product of various problematic factors: the Catholic Church’s culture of celibacy, its strange views on sex, the fact that in some institutions priests were given ultimate authority over young boys and girls. But the way in which those acts are understood today – as supremely damaging to individuals and the inevitable consequence of people ‘deciding it is a good thing to abandon any commitment to fact and instead act on faith’ – is powerfully informed by two problematic contemporary trends: the backward cult of victimhood and the dominant ‘new atheist’ prejudice against any institution with strong beliefs.

With all the current claims about Pope Benedict XVI himself being involved in a cover-up of child abuse by an American priest and a German priest, and newspaper reports using terms like ‘stuff of nightmares’, the ‘stench of evil’, and ‘systematic rape and torture’, anyone who tries to inject a bit of perspective into this debate is unlikely to be thanked. But perspective is what we need. Someone has to point out that for all the problems with the Catholic Church’s doctrines and style of organisation – and I experienced some of those problems, having been raised a Catholic before becoming an atheist at 17 – the fact is that sexual abuse by priests is a relatively rare phenomenon.

Even in Ireland, whose image as a craic-loving nation has been replaced by the far-worse idea that it was actually a nation of priest rape, incidents of sexual abuse by priests were fairly rare. The Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse, which was launched by the Irish government in 1999 and delivered its report last year, intensively invited Irish-born people around the world to report on incidents of abuse in Irish religious-educational reform schools, where the majority of clerical abuse is said to have occurred, between the period 1914 to 1999. For that 85-year period, 253 claims of sexual abuse were made by males and 128 by females. It is important – surely? – to note that these are claims of sexual abuse rather than proven incidents, since the vast majority of them did not go to trial.

The number of sexual abuse claims in these institutions fell for the more recent period: for males, there were 88 claims from the pre-1960s, 119 from 1960 to 1969, 37 from 1970 to 1979, and nine from 1980 to 1989. The alleged sexual-abuse incidents ranged in seriousness from boys being ‘questioned and interrogated about their sexual activity’ to being raped: there were 68 claims of anal rape in reform institutions for boys from 1914 to 1999. Not all of the sexual abuse was carried out by priests. Around 65 per cent of the claims pertain to religious workers, and 35 per cent to lay staff, care workers, and fellow pupils.

Of course, one incident of child sexual abuse by a priest is one too many. But given the findings of Ireland’s investigation into abuse in religious-educational institutions, is there really a justification for talking about a ‘clinging and systematic evil that is beyond the power of exorcism to dispel’? As Ireland is redefined as a country in recovery from child sexual abuse, and the ‘scandal of child rape’ spreads further through Europe into Germany and Italy, it might be unfashionable to say the following but it is true nonetheless: very, very small numbers of children in the care or teaching of the Catholic Church in Europe in recent decades were sexually abused, but very, very many of them actually received a decent standard of education.

The discussion of a relatively rare phenomenon as a ‘great evil’ of our age shows that child abuse in Catholic churches has been turned into a morality tale – about the dangers of belief and of hierarchical institutions and the need for more state and other forms of intervention into religious institutions and even religious families. The first contemporary trend that has turned incidences of sexual abuse into a powerful symbol of evil is the cult of the victim, where today individuals are invited not only to reveal every misfortune that has befallen them – which of course is a sensible thing to do if you have been raped – but also to define themselves by those misfortunes, to look upon themselves as the end-products of having being emotionally, physically or sexually abused. This is why very public revelations of Catholic abuse started in America and Ireland before more recently spreading to other parts of Western Europe: because the politics of victimhood, the cult of revelation and redefinition of the self as survivor, is more pronounced and developed in America and Ireland than it is in continental Europe.

In Ireland, for example, the state has explicitly invited its citizens to redefine themselves as victims of authority rather than as active agents capable of moving on and making choices. The Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse discusses at length the ‘debilitating’ impact that abuse can have on individuals, to the extent that many of Ireland’s social problems – including unemployment, poverty, drug abuse and heavy drinking – are now discussed as the products of Ireland’s earlier era of abuse rather than as failings of the contemporary social system.

This, I believe, is why claims of sexual abuse in Ireland’s religious-educational institutions were so much higher for the period of 1960 to 1969 (nearly half of all claims of sexual abuse against boys during the period of 1914 to 1989 were made for that decade). It is not because priests suddenly became more abusive in the 1960s than they had been in the far harsher Ireland of the 1940s and 50s, but because the people who attended the institutions during that period were in many ways the main targets of the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse. They would have been in their mid-40s to mid-50s when the commission began in 1999 and many of them had suffered long-term unemployment, health problems, and other disappointments. Reporting their misfortunes to the commission offered them the chance, not only of getting financial compensation, but also of validating their difficult life experiences as a consequence of their having been abused. In a grotesquely convenient marriage, the state redefined social problems as consequences of Catholic abuse and the individual redefined himself as a sufferer from low self-esteem who did not bear full responsibility for the course of his adult life. In such a climate, not only are incidents of abuse by priests more likely to surface, but they are also more likely to be heavily politicised, turned from undoubtedly distressing and possibly criminal acts into modern-day examples of evil capable of distorting society itself. Thus did the contemporary cult of victimhood ensure that Catholic abuse was blown out of proportion.

The second contemporary trend that has elevated something quite rare into a social disaster is the rise of the ‘new atheism’. Now the dominant liberal outlook of our age – in particular in the media outlets that have most keenly focused on the Catholic abuse scandals: the New York Times, the Irish Times, and the UK Guardian – the new atheism differs from the atheism of earlier free-thinking humanists in that its main aim is not to enlighten, but to scaremonger about the impact of religion on society. For these thinkers and opinion-formers, the drip-drip of revelations of abuse in Catholic institutions offers an opportunity to demonise the religious as backward and people who possess strong beliefs as suspect.

Many contemporary opinion-formers are not concerned with getting to the truth of how widespread Catholic sexual abuse was, or what were the specific circumstances in which it occurred; rather they want to milk incidents of abuse and make them into an indictment of religion itself. They frequently flit between discussing priests who abuse children and the profound stupidity of people who believe in God. One commentator wildly refers to the Vatican’s ‘international criminal conspiracy to protect child-rapists’ and says most ordinary Catholics turn a blind eye to this because ‘people behave in bizarre ways when they decide it is a good thing to abandon any commitment to fact and instead act on faith’.

Richard Dawkins, author of The God Delusion, unwittingly reveals what draws the new atheists towards the Catholic-abuse story: their belief that religion is itself a form of abuse. ‘Odious as the physical abuse of children by priests undoubtedly is, I suspect that it may do them less lasting damage than the mental abuse of bringing them up Catholic in the first place’, he argues. He admits that physical abuse by priests is rare, but only to flag up what he sees as a more serious form of abuse: ‘Only a minority of priests abuse the bodies of the children in their care. But how many priests abuse their minds?’ In this spectacularly crude critique of religion, no moral distinction is made between being educated by a priest and raped by one – indeed, the former is considered worse than the latter, since as one Observer columnist recently darkly warned: ‘We have no idea what children are being taught in those classrooms…’

If ‘bringing a child up Catholic’ is itself abuse, there can only be one solution: external authorities must protect children not only from religious institutions but from their own religious parents, too. One new atheist has proposed an age of consent for joining a religion: 14. In an Oxford Amnesty Lecture popular amongst new atheists, a liberal academic argued that children ‘have a human right not to have their minds crippled by exposure to other people’s bad ideas’, and parents ‘have no god-given licence to enculturate their children in whatever ways they personally choose’. Here, a simplistic leap is made from protecting children from paedophile priests to protecting them from their own parents, since in the new-atheist view strong beliefs and freedom of religion – which, yes, includes the freedom of parents to bring up their children as they see fit – are the real problem. They exaggerate the extent of Catholic sexual abuse in order to strengthen their prejudicial arguments.

Whatever you think of the Catholic Church, you should be concerned about today’s abuse-obsession. Events of the (sometimes distant) past which nobody can change are being used to justify dangerous trends in the present. A new kind of society is being solidified on the back of exposing abusive priests, one in which scaremongering supersedes facts, where people redefine themselves as permanently damaged victims, where freedom of thought is problematised, and where parents are considered suspect for not adhering to the superior values of the atheistic elite. Seriously, radical humanists should fight back against this.

Brendan O’Neill is editor of spiked. Visit his personal website here.

Ed: I would like to point out that, amongst the "Horsemen of the Apocalypse" (Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris, and Dennett) Dawkins (and perhaps Dennett) has exercised great restraint in not equating pedophilia with religious clericalism unlike Hitchens and Harris who have practically presented the priest scandals as "Exhibit A" in their arguments against religion.

In "The God Delusion" he questioned the prevailing sacrosanct belief which holds that great trauma is necessarily visited upon any child or adolescent who experiences sexual contact with an adult. He has questioned society's preoccupation with the subject and suggested that it is a form of hysteria.

I give tremendous credit to him for that since it has become extraordinarily easy to join the legions of torch-carrying hysterics in condemning the Catholic Church. His position also requires a great deal of courage in this day.

I also think that he has some very good points about the forced inculcation of religion into children. I'm not sure, however, that he has advocated a governmental or legal response to these perceived "abuses". I would hope not as I think that would be a real travesty.

I agree with you, however, that the atheist movement would be making a grievous error in actively vilifying beliefs and cultures and using the abuse scandals as a facile means to do so.

And I am chagrined when anyone, including Catholic priests, are caught in the maelstrom of the witch hunt in which we find ourselves today.

Like Dawkins, I do believe that religion can be destructive and anachronistic in many ways which are harmful. But expressing this as a matter of opinion is quite different from enforcing it as public policy. This, I believe, would be manifestly evil.

-David Kennerly

Jessica's Law prevents paroled sex offenders from residing near schools or parks. That means they can only live one place in S.F.: on the streets.

2010-03-31T18:49:00.000-07:00

Ed: If you have ever seen the movie "Idiocracy" or read the book "The Marching Morons" you could get a pretty good idea of what I suspect is the single greatest influence upon society in the last thirty years or so. For a society to so utterly denigrate, and to so thoroughly abandon, its earlier magnificent achievements in justice, liberty, and the arts, must surely require something akin to Dysgenics, a sort of "counter-Darwinian" pressure on natural selection which, in short, lavishes progeny upon those with the least intellectual resources while consigning the most intelligent to a barren maturity bereft of offspring.

How else to explain publicly-driven policies which are informed solely by emotion and a near-total ignorance of basic facts?

When the public demands laws which so clearly violate Constitutional restrictions on ex-post facto punishment and the politicians cynically recast them as "regulatory, not punitive" and our Supreme Court accommodates the whole travesty with the most brazen of affected obtuseness, we must know that we have utterly abandoned any sense of real justice.

If you were to track the location of the GPS unit cinched to Mr. C's ankle on a recent Thursday at dusk, the red dot would veer northeast on Market and then head north on Grant. At Broadway, the dot hooks a U-turn — with all the street's porn shops and strip clubs, he knows he shouldn't get caught there — and finally stops in Union Square.

Mr. C settles onto a bench to rest beside the plaza's ice rink. Chatting about the reason he's tracked by satellites, he doesn't seem to notice a cheery announcer welcoming people to "kids' night out at the skate rink!" As he surveys the skaters, he notices a girl pulling herself around the rink's wall. With a red duffle coat and a brown bob framing ruddy cheeks, she could have been plucked straight from a Gap Christmas commercial. She looks to be about 11.

"People like that — I stay away from," Mr. C says. "Don't even want to look at 'em. Taboo."

Mr. C, now 61, used to love all things "taboo," be it European child porn he locked away in a chest in his Outer Mission garage, or the Israeli and Hungarian semiautomatic weapons he stowed in his bedroom. Then there was the girl.

She was 8, from a family whose older members considered him a friend. "I started to like her a lot, like fall in love kind of thing. ... Somehow you lose track of reality." He knew he shouldn't have "kissed her and touched her" while he was supposed to be babysitting. He knew he shouldn't be taping nude videos of her, directing the smiling girl to stroke one of his weapons, footage even his defense attorney calls "a little sickening." (Mr. C, like most sex offenders SF Weekly interviewed for this article, doesn't want his name printed for his safety.)

So when the cops rang his doorbell early on a December day in 1998, he was ready. He walked into the bathroom in his pajamas, shoved his 9 mm Browning handgun into his mouth, and, when police knocked on the door telling him to come out, he pulled the trigger. Bullet fragments blasted out his teeth and mangled his face. He woke up handcuffed to a hospital bed. During the preliminary hearing, he drank a glass of green antifreeze. ("Tastes kinda sweet," he recalls.) He passed out, but survived again.

So Mr. C accepted fate. He pleaded guilty to continuous sexual abuse of a child and spent the next nine years in prison. Considered a "high-risk sex offender," when he was released on parole two months ago he agreed to stay 100 yards away from any place children might gather. That meant no pools, parks, or schools; ice rinks didn't make the list. Yet there's a reason Mr. C is sitting in Union Square insisting on his lack of interest in young girls, rather than at one of the motels where parole officials used to house guys like him.

He's homeless. Californians voted for him to be.

In 2006, voters passed Jessica's Law, a tough-on-crime ballot measure promising to better track people who'd committed sex crimes. Such people would permanently wear GPS devices and be banned from living in "predator-free zones," 2,000 feet from a park or school. In densely populated San Francisco, that basically means the approximately 70 paroled sex offenders in the city can't live anywhere at all. (Although the city is home to 1,100 registered sex offenders, the residency rules are currently enforced only for those released on parole after the passage of the law.)

Some psychiatrists, social workers, police officers, and attorneys contend that Jessica's Law makes everyone less safe. The tumult of transience increases the risk of parolees reoffending, falling into addiction, or going missing altogether. Attorneys and parolees alike complain that the law doesn't merely net child molesters like Mr. C, but also those whose offenses occurred decades ago for sex crimes that had nothing to do with children and were sometimes as minor as indecent exposure.

The state Supreme Court is reviewing a challenge to the law's constitutionality, and will decide by the beginning of February to whom — if anyone — residency restrictions should apply. Until then, those paroled to San Francisco and across the state will remain banished as they have been for the last three years — lone rangers on the fringe.

Mr. C is determined not to go back to prison. While California prisons offer no sex-offender–specific treatments, he swears he's cured and will never reoffend. "I'm really good at turning things off in myself, if I feel that it's gonna do more harm," he says, scanning the skaters gliding by. "Even if I look and saw [them], I don't care. Just like everyone else rolling around, [the girls are] meaningless to me." Out on the street, he gets many chances to prove that every day.

At 8 a.m. sharp each Monday, Mr. C walks up to the parole office in a red building on Mission Street in the shadow of the Central Freeway. Checking in on transient sex offenders, many of whom can't afford cellphones, would require parole agents to hunt them down all over the city. So, every week, parole officers make the homeless come to them.

Dozens of transients arrive by foot, on motorcycle, and in used trucks with mattresses plopped in the back. Mr. C, normally a chatterbox, keeps to himself. Even among sex offenders, there's a hierarchy of shame — child molesters at the top, a guy who exposed himself at a gas station near the bottom — and Mr. C hears others grumble that it's because of people like him that Jessica's Law passed. ("If someone did something to one of my kids, I'd probably cut his hand off," said one man who had been convicted of rape. "They need to give [child molesters] the gas chamber, in my book.")

Mr. C turns in a handwritten log of every place he has been over the last week. Parole officers will later compare it with the GPS printouts. He goes to his psychiatric appointment, and that's it. The rest of his week is less defined by where he needs to be than by where he shouldn't go.

Homelessness may seem a simple concept, but Jessica's Law has turned it into a semantic game. The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) policy for parolees defines a residence as "one or more addresses at which a person regularly resides," such as a house, apartment, motel, shelter, or even vehicle. "Regularly" depends on a parole officer's review of the "totality of the circumstances," though guidelines state that when a person stays in the same place for two or more days or nights, or even for one day or night in consecutive weeks, it's starting to look like a residence — even if that "residence" is a couch or shelter bed.

So the trick each day is to avoid acquiring an "address." Some transients live in RVs on out-of-the-way lots. Others park vans in alleys or casino parking lots. The poorest sleep in doorways, beneath underpasses, or outside bus stations. Some unwritten rules show bureaucracy at its most inane: Sign up for a bed at a homeless shelter, and you're establishing a residence; fall asleep on a seat at the drop-in center at the same shelter, and you aren't.

Some parolees can't handle the restrictions. Parole officers say a couple of parolees have placed their GPS units on their desks — a blatant violation — and declared: I can't live like this. Do what you gotta do. At least in prison, they'll have a bed and three meals a day.

While no studies directly connect homelessness to reoffending, the California Sex Offender Management Board (CASOMB) says transience is not helping. The board is an amalgam of legal, law enforcement, and medical experts under the jurisdiction of the CDCR that addresses the handling of the state's sex offenders. A 2008 CASOMB report concluded that homelessness destabilizes parolees' lives, making it harder for them to get and keep jobs, re-establish relationships with families, and reintegrate into society — all safeguards against reoffending.

In San Francisco, evidence of whether homelessness has pushed parolees into committing more sex crimes is anecdotal and inconclusive. While the CDCR declined to give information, Jim Serna, an inspector with the San Francisco Police Department's sex offender registration unit, says he could think of only two cases in which post–Jessica's Law transients have committed further sex crimes. Both were misdemeanor offenses — indecent exposure and sexual battery — though he says both were charged as felonies, given the perpetrators' priors. Yet Serna said both men had long histories of similar crimes, whether homeless or not.

Still, no one needs to look further than Bob H. to see how transience can make it hard to stay out of trouble. On a recent Tuesday morning, the charismatic 360-pound tank of a man plugs in his ankle GPS unit at a cafe across from the Hall of Justice. A gold nugget ring adorns one of his chafed fingers, and the contours of his goatee are blurred for lack of upkeep. "I'm generally a well-dressed cat," he says, "but this is what happens when you sleep in the streets."

When Bob was paroled in 2007 after serving three years for forced oral copulation with an 18-year-old, his parole agent let him switch houses every two days and remain registered as a transient. A few months later, the agent told him he had to move every day. In 2008, parole officials changed the policy, hoping to prevent people from couch-surfing to get around the residency rules. The time limit for staying in any "residence" shrank to just two hours a day, solely to charge a GPS unit. There is no limit on parolees being indoors if they're working, receiving medical care, or seeking government services.

Bob claims when the two-hour policy went into effect, his problems began. He was arrested for registering for a seven-day bed at a homeless shelter, and was sent back to prison. He says his massive frame makes it impossible for him to sleep in a flimsy chair at a shelter, so finding alternatives has become a game of cat and mouse. He has checked into psychiatric wards, declaring himself suicidal, or at a detox drop-in center, declaring himself high — both are technically considered getting treatment by a licensed provider, one of the permitted exceptions to the residency rule. Sometimes he'll snooze on BART; other nights, he'll fall asleep in a hospital emergency room before guards kick him out.

To numb the stress of constantly moving around, Bob says he resorted to smoking crack. That only kicked off a series of dirty drug tests, more parole violations, and more prison.

It's a common scenario. "They're sleeping outside, whatever it takes for them to stay warm, that's what they do," says Na'im Harrison, a case manager at the Northern California Service League, a nonprofit in SOMA that provides services to parolees. "They drink and they smoke crack. It makes them get through their night."

With residential rehab programs rejecting sex offenders (those would be considered residences, anyway), Bob says he began a 20-day outpatient rehab class four times. Each time was interrupted by his being sent back to prison. Once, the charge on his GPS got too low, which was another parole violation. The CDCR confirms that Bob has been charged with nine parole violations and returned to prison five times, the longest stay of which was five months.

Bob says he's trying to get himself together. He recently got certified in a city jobs program, and has been dropping off résumés. He started attending church, and has gotten engaged to his longtime girlfriend, the mother of his 7-year-old daughter, though he can't live with them any time soon. Yet he says he still drinks hard liquor every night to fall asleep, and feels himself getting addicted. His stress is palpable. He cries as he talks about being exhausted all the time: "They say, 'Don't be involved with the streets,' but they put you in the street. It's like dangling meat in front of a tiger. You're setting us up to fail."

San Francisco was the only county in California that voted against things being this way, rejecting Jessica's Law at the ballot box in 2006. The law draws its name from 9-year-old Jessica Lunsford, who was raped and buried alive in two garbage bags in Florida in 2005 by a previously convicted sex offender. California's version was part of a national wave of such legislation to get tough on sex criminals. It increased mandatory sentences for sex crimes and increased the number of offenders who must be screened for being "sexually violent predators," who are sent to a state psychiatric hospital after completing their prison sentences.

Yet the initiative's vague wording left police unsure of how to implement it. It's "unlawful" for registered sex offenders to reside near schools and parks, yet the initiative doesn't specify whether such a violation should be charged as a misdemeanor or a felony. Numerous challenges to the law were filed in the courts, attempting to define for whom, exactly, it should be enforced. Anyone who has committed just about any sex-related crime — indecent exposure, pimping of a minor, rape, child molestation, possession of child pornography — must register. There are 88,000 registered sex offenders in California — more than could fit at one time in Candlestick Park — of whom 1,100 live in San Francisco. That would mean a lot of people in "unlawful" housing.

In February 2007, a federal judge limited the scope of the enforcement by ruling that the law could not be applied retroactively. Finally, in August 2007, nine months after voters passed Jessica's Law, CDCR sent out a memo that parole officers should begin enforcing it as a condition of parole for sex offenders released from prison after it had passed. This meant that residency limitations would apply even to those who committed their crimes before the law was enacted.

This wasn't the first time criminals had faced restrictions on where they could sleep. For years, "high-risk sex offenders" have been banned from living within half a mile of a school. Yet Jessica's Law blacked out nearly all of San Francisco other than Pier 80, AT&T Park, a couple of high-rent blocks in SOMA, and the empty Hunters Point Naval Shipyard. Parolees living anywhere else were served notices to move out in 45 days.

It's unclear whether the measure's author, state Senator George Runner (R-Lancaster), saw the storm coming. "I think we knew it would be difficult for individuals to find areas to live," he told SF Weekly. "We certainly knew San Francisco was going to be a more challenging issue." Yet the president of Crime Victims United of California, a group that strongly endorsed Jessica's Law, says Runner never addressed her warnings. "We raised concern with the senator about that," Harriet Salarno says. "We voiced, 'What are you going to do with people in San Francisco?'" It was an enormous oversight. According to CASOMB's report, the number of transient sex offenders jumped 800 percent across the state between when the law passed and June 2008.

Serna points to another of the law's flaws: Although Jessica's Law restricted sex offenders from living at a residence 2,000 feet from a park or school, it didn't prevent them from sleeping on a bench in the park (one sex offender told SF Weekly he sleeps in Golden Gate Park) or at the school's front door. CDCR representatives say parole conditions cover that loophole by banning sex offenders from parks and schools. Still, the irony is not lost on parolees, who know their parole agents don't track their whereabouts at all times.

"When I was living in Pacific Heights in a box, I was, like, a block away from a school," said one sex offender who asked not to be named. "I'm on GPS, but I could go rape a kid and they wouldn't know about it until three days later."

While people debate the efficacy of the residency rules, state law enforcement agencies are waiting to see whether the California Supreme Court throws those rules out. In October 2007, four unnamed parolees filed a habeas corpus writ asking to be exempted from the residency restrictions. Three of them faced having to move out of their homes within days or be arrested on parole violations; one of them was already homeless. One San Francisco petitioner, E.J., who lived with his wife and their four children under 12, had been denied a transfer by the parole department to another county where he could find housing.

The parolees' attorneys argue the law is unconstitutional and overly broad, since it excludes sex offenders from living in entire cities and keeps those whose crimes didn't involve children from living near schools and parks. Then there's the fact that many now subject to residency limitations are on parole for new, non-sex-related crimes, which is true of the petitioners in the case. For instance, S.P. was on parole for knowingly receiving stolen property, and K.T. had been most recently convicted of felony grand theft.

At a Supreme Court hearing on the case in November, Ernest Galvan, one of the attorneys representing the four petitioners, argued the law violates the ex post facto statute, which refers to the fact that no one can be punished by a law that didn't exist when they committed their crime. He argued that, at the most, the enforcement of the statute should be limited to those who had committed sex crimes after the law passed.

Ken Mennemeier, the lawyer for the CDCR, contends that the law is constitutional since it doesn't restrict whom the offenders can live with, merely where they can live. He argues that no federal authority has established the right of convicted sex offenders to live wherever they want. Moreover, he says the residency restrictions are a regulatory measure, not a punishment, so the ex post facto law doesn't even apply.

Galvan disagreed. He told SF Weekly that it seems like medieval banishment: "You're condemned to be a wraith walking the streets."

After dusk, the Jessica's Law wraiths start to settle on a shadowy street across from high-end condos a block from the Caltrain depot in SOMA. You could call it an encampment. On any given evening, up to a dozen sex offenders find it a safe place to sleep with minimal interference from law enforcement.

On a Tuesday night in mid-December, the men hung out before heading to sleep in their vans and tents: smoking cigarettes, one popping open a 24-ounce can of Steel Reserve. They grumbled about Jessica's Law, and one announced that his pee jug — an empty bottle many keep handy to take a leak without having to go in the street — had been stolen.

But the main topic of discussion that night was that Monroe had gone back to jail. He always slept in a sleeping bag under a blue tarp on the sidewalk, snuggling with a radio tuned to soft rock on KBLX to break up the solitude. His GPS unit had broken or fallen off — the story was unclear — and he hadn't immediately called his parole agent as the rules required.

It was an all-too-common cautionary tale about how easy it is to get locked up again. Jessica's Law is "inhuman," said one man who rolled a suitcase up to a rank-smelling van he said he was "renting" from another parolee who got sent back to jail. "But I'd rather be inhuman out here than human in there" — "there" meaning prison.

The men have learned to navigate the rules, and sometimes how to work around them. As one put it, "I gotta play the game with 'em [the parole department] to keep 'em happy." Another says he found a "loophole, but they're trying to close it on me." Since parolees are allowed to travel within a 50-mile radius of San Francisco, he sleeps at his wife's house in the East Bay for two nights, and returns to the city on the third. (Parole agents told SF Weekly that isn't allowed.)

The block these men are staying on is a loophole, too, though more of an official one. It's too close to a park or school for them to live indoors, but according to a parole department memo released in July, transient encampments, bridges, and bus stops are not "residences." The distance restrictions don't apply.

Still, the parole officers don't particularly like the offenders clustering here. One parolee said that he, like many others, had been told to move on. Technically, it's a violation for parolees to hang out together unless they are receiving social services. And they're definitely forbidden to live in the same residence (two sex offender parolees were busted this fall for sharing an RV). But they claim they've been given bizarre instructions on how to bend that rule as well. One parole agent told them to stay 6 or 7 feet away from the next guy. They don't always obey. They talk to each other face-to-face, and one transient said he and another man sleep at opposite ends of his 6-foot-wide tent.

Each morning, a cop walks by to tell the men on the sidewalk to move on. The ones with vans can keep them parked. One transient sweeps away cigarette butts and beer cans, and the men pack up and take off for the day, a band of nomads constantly on the move.

Many of the men at the encampment are well into or past middle age, having served sentences for serious sex offenses decades ago that, with few exceptions, they insist they didn't commit. But Jessica's Law has also netted people whose original crime was arguably minor — such as Rod (not his real name). A plump, gregarious middle-aged man, Rod prefers blazing around solo in his red Windstar instead of hunkering down with the other guys in the city. Usually. On a recent afternoon, his mother rode shotgun while complaining about her son getting arrested for oversleeping at his house.

Rod's record of petty offenses could wallpaper a bathroom. He has picked up a couple of harder convictions for drug possession, too. But the severity of his sex offense? According to the police, Rod strolled into a Shell gas station in South San Francisco at 7 a.m. in August 1995, "pulled out his penis, and raised his arms."

Rod remembers it somewhat differently and without shame: "I had a 60-inch waist. I'm really fat. So when I sit down, I unbuckle my pants." He says he walked into the gas station without remembering to zip back up, and "I don't wear underwear, so I guess my thing was hanging out." Even the California Department of Justice determined that the indecent exposure offense wasn't grave enough for Rod's mugshot to appear on the state's online sex offender registry. Though his face is spared a viewing at a mouse click, he does still have to register with the police. (The SFPD confirmed that this is for his indecent exposure case in 1995.) So when he missed a deadline to register, he was arrested and sent to San Quentin.

Released last year on parole, he was subject to Jessica's Law, just like hundreds of others across the state who aren't on parole for the crime that made them a sex offender in the first place. Rod's story gets even more improbable. Parolees are supposed to be returned to their county of last residence, which Rod says would mean San Mateo, where he still pays rent. He believes his parents' house there would be compliant with Jessica's Law. Yet a paperwork mixup prevents him from living with his folks. A document in his probation file showed a residential rehab program in San Francisco as a past address, and so he was paroled here. His efforts to get transferred back have failed so far.

Rod has found one place where it's in the house's interest that he stay as long as possible: 24-hour card clubs. He says he sits down almost nightly to play Texas Hold 'Em until the early morning hours. He guesses he's gambled away tens of thousands of dollars in the last year of homelessness, and is plummeting into credit card debt. "I would leave [while I'm winning], if I had somewhere to go," he says. Recently, he's been sleeping in casino parking lots.

Oakland attorney Robert Beles wrote to Rod's parole agent, arguing that Rod should be exempt from Jessica's Law because Rod committed his offense more than 10 years prior to the law's passage. Parole officials' response can be best summed up in two words: shot down. Beles says he made the same request in a habeas corpus writ in Alameda County Superior Court. The judge, like others in the state considering similar pleas, put the case on hold, waiting for the state Supreme Court to decide.

While the opposing attorneys pushed their interpretations of the law at the November hearing, the Supreme Court justices asked about people like Rod, who were caught in the middle. Would enforcement be illegally retroactive if it applies to those who had long been discharged from parole for their sex offenses, but were on parole for new non-sex-related crimes?

Galvan says that for the ban on retroactivity to apply, the justices would have to determine that the residency restrictions are actually a punishment and not simply a civil regulation. The issue has divided the country's courts, he says, with a handful of state supreme courts ruling that it's a punishment, and the U.S. Supreme Court stretching in favor of a civil regulation.

At least one California Supreme Court justice seemed to agree with Galvan that the law puts offenders in an unfair predicament. Justice Carol Corrigan said that paroling people to a county where they couldn't live indoors "would be an absurd interpretation," and wondered whether they could be transferred to counties with more housing options. Galvan responded that the receiving counties would undoubtedly object; plus the move would require the justices to tinker with the legislation, when they usually just interpret it.

The question of who will continue to be affected by the law and who will not remains as the early February ruling approaches. Since California is home to the most sex offenders in the country, the ruling will certainly reverberate nationally.

But some of the greatest effects of the decision will be much more local — for the roughly 70 parolees here in the city who are currently living in a voter-inflicted paradox. "They don't want you to stay, but they don't want you to go," Bob H. says.

As for Mr. C, he isn't holding out much hope that the justices will let him move indoors. He assumes he'll just continue the routine he has established in his two months out of jail. He hangs out at a nonprofit during the day, or runs a few errands. As he ambles around San Francisco, he talks to keep himself company and turns down panhandlers who ask him for change: "Buddy, I'm as broke as you are." With just a sweatshirt on his back, he'll sometimes pretend to read brochures in the BART station to warm up. His pride keeps him from lying down.

When teenage girls get on the J-Church train, Mr. C can't help but notice how developed they are at young ages these days: "Big butts and boobs — like, dang, what did they put in their food?" But years of prison will kill your taste for such things, he says: "It's scary to think about it, even." As for the victim of his molestation, "It's not her fault. I hope she turned out normal."

Though being homeless embarrasses him, it also offers a comforting dose of anonymity. Peering into shop windows he passes, Mr. C avoids glimpsing his face, the disfigured reminder of his past. Out here, he can simply be the friendly old man who was delighted when a dog he'd petted earlier in Union Square followed him down Market Street. ("At least I know dogs still like me," he says, brightly.) To the teen selling light sabers outside Macy's, he's the rare passerby who actually answers his corny sales pitch: "Be a kid again!"

"I wish," Mr. C huffs.

"You don't have to wish," the kid calls after him. "It's six dollars!"

At the end of his evening's walk, Mr. C shuffles up to the shelter to take his post-prison place in the city, greeting another homeless man outside: "Hey, Bill."

"Wazzup, Pops?"

Mr. C considers the greeting, concludes, "I'm old," and walks inside to claim a hard seat.

Asked whether he's happy after surviving his suicide attempts, he answers, "I'm kind of in between. I'm hoping things will work out." He figures maybe he's got 15 years left, and he'd like to make them at least peaceful: a roof over his head, some welfare cash in his pocket, antidepressants in his system. With his history, he knows he'll be alone.

Did Jessica's Law kill a homeless sex offender?

2010-03-31T17:04:00.000-07:00

Better Off Dead?

Did Jessica's Law kill a homeless sex offender?

Earlier this month, Nicholas Chaykovsky failed to reregister with the police as a transient sex offender. He had a decent excuse.

He died.

Chaykovsky died on Feb. 18 at age 61. He was featured as "Mr. C" in our Dec. 30 cover story, "Perverting Justice," on how Jessica's Law forces nearly all sex offenders paroled to San Francisco into homelessness, because they are forbidden to live within 200 feet of a park or school.

The San Francisco Medical Examiner declared that Chaykovsky suffered a heart attack stemming from heart disease, and had an infection related to injuries from a suicide attempt 12 years ago.

But Chaykovsky's case managers and acquaintances say it was the constant stress of being homeless that killed him.

"Basically, he wasn't used to the street," said Ron Sanders, his case manager at the Transitions Clinic, a city program for parolees run from the Southeast Health Center. "He had almost three years left living [homeless on parole]; there's no way he would have made it. ... He didn't have any fight in him."

Chaykovsky was arrested in 1998 after making a videotape of a nude, 8-year-old girl, and was eventually convicted of continuous sexual abuse of a child and producing obscene material of a child. After being caught, he attempted suicide twice — he first shot himself in the mouth, which deformed his face, and later drank a glass of antifreeze. He served nine years in state prison before making parole in October.

Last month, the California Supreme Court upheld the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation's practice of forcing all San Francisco sex offenders paroled after the passage of Jessica's Law in November 2006 into de facto homelessness, while punting objections about the law's overall constitutionality back to the lower courts.

In a December interview, Chaykovsky said he expected to live about another 15 years, and wanted to follow his parole rules to the letter in order to avoid going back to prison. Asked about whether he was happy he survived his suicide attempts, he said, "I'm kind of in between. I'm hoping things will work out."

Obviously, they didn't.

Billie Percy, a case manager at the Northern California Service League who knew Chaykovsky, said his remains were cremated by the state. No funeral service was held.

Experts say the public has 'unrealistic expectations' about preventing sex crimes

2010-03-09T15:16:00.000-08:00

"You're more likely to get struck by lightning," he said, than to get raped and murdered by a stranger.

The arrest of a southwest Riverside County sex offender in the death of a 17-year-old San Diego County girl last week has stirred public anger over authorities' failure to prevent a known child molester from harming another teen.

In particular, the crime has raised questions about the effectiveness of the Megan's Law Web site, which is supposed to prevent sex crimes by helping police keep track of known offenders and making parents more aware of potential threats in their neighborhoods.

Outraged comments have filled Internet discussion boards -- including the Facebook page created by Chelsea King's family during last week's massive search for the Poway High School senior, whose body was found Tuesday.

But academics and law enforcement officials say the public has unrealistic expectations about the ability of tools like Megan's Law to prevent sex crimes -- especially the rare cases such as Chelsea's involving lethal attacks by strangers.

"There's no way to create a zero-risk universe for this," said Franklin Zimring, a professor at the UC Berkeley School of Law. "That's not merely hard, that's impossible."

What's more, there is no evidence to suggest that Megan's Law even reduces the incidence of sex crimes, said Richard Tewksbury, a professor of justice administration at the University of Louisville in Kentucky who has studied the effects of sex offender registries.
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3,400 SEX OFFENDERS

John Albert Gardner III, 30, is the man suspected of raping and murdering King. He also is charged with attempted rape in a December attack on a woman jogging in the same park where King disappeared and was convicted nearly 10 years ago of molesting a 13-year-old girl at his mother's home in Rancho Bernardo. The conviction landed his name, photograph and home address on the Megan's Law online listing of registered sex offenders.

Megan's Law, named for a 7-year-old New Jersey girl killed by a sex offender who moved to her neighborhood, was enacted in California in 1996 to give the public access to information about such offenders. The state Megan's Law Web site was launched in 2004. More than 63,000 sex offenders are listed on the site, which receives millions of hits each year.

Sex offenders are required to update their registrations at least annually, within five days of their birthday. Upon release from jail or prison, or moving to a new address, sex offenders must register at the local police agency.

As far as Riverside County authorities know, Gardner had met all the registration requirements when he reported to the Lake Elsinore sheriff's station in January to notify officials of his new address in the nearby community of Lakeland Village. Escondido police, too, say Gardner appears to have checked in regularly until he moved in January.

Since Gardner's arrest Feb. 28, news reports have revealed that in 2000, San Diego County prosecutors allowed Gardner to plead guilty to lesser charges in the attack on the 13-year-old, even though one of the psychiatrists who interviewed him said he posed a continuing threat to underage girls. Gardner served five years of a six-year prison sentence. He was released in September 2005 and completed his parole in September 2008.

Police now fear Gardner might have been involved in the disappearance of Escondido 14-year-old Amber Dubois in February 2009 and perhaps an attempted kidnapping of a 16-year-old Lake Elsinore girl in October.

Escondido police announced Sunday that skeletal remains found in a remote area of the Pala Indian Reservation on Saturday had been positively identified as those of Dubois, who had disappeared while walking to school.

Riverside County authorities said they had no reason to be more suspicious of Gardner than any of the other registered sex offenders in the area. When Gardner registered in Lake Elsinore, authorities checked his background for red flags and found none.

There are more than 3,400 registered sex offenders in Riverside County and another 2,700 in San Diego County, all of whom law enforcement view as having the potential to commit another sex crime, said Ron Garcia, director of a multi-agency Riverside County task force that targets sex offenders.

Until last week, authorities had no idea Gardner posed a heightened threat.

"How were we supposed to know that -- that this guy is a ticking time bomb?" Garcia asked.

NO PERFECT REMEDIES

Zimring said that after an extreme case like King's, "there is a tendency to say, 'What were we doing wrong?' "

Legislators and voters enact "expensive and extreme" measures such as Megan's Law or Jessica's Law, which limits where sex offenders can live and mandates monitoring of sex offenders with global-positioning system ankle bracelets such as the one Gardner wore while on parole.

"How does that prevent this crime?" Zimring asked. "You know where he is, but you don't know where the victim is or who the victim will be."

Others suggest locking up the dangerous sex offenders for life.

"That would be fine," Zimring said, "if we had a good way of predicting."

Tewksbury said the focus on cases such as Chelsea King's reinforces the misconception that sex offenders tend to target children they don't know and are more likely to be repeat offenders. In fact, more than 70 percent of children molested are victimized by close friends or relatives, he said. And most sex offenders do not re-offend.

"The majority are really not that dangerous to the public," Tewksbury said, but figuring out the small percentage who are is difficult.

Treatment programs and extremely close monitoring would be helpful in determining which sex offenders might commit more crimes, but it would be prohibitively expensive given the large number of people on sex offender registries, he said.

California already has strict laws targeting sex offenders and a network of county task forces that focus exclusively on sex offenders.

Garcia said the Riverside County task force he directs is one of the more aggressive task forces in the state and has 36 full-time team members drawn from local law enforcement agencies, including the Sheriff's Department, district attorney's office and county probation. Much of their time is spent making sure sex offenders comply with registration requirements. In 2009, the task force performed 4,600 compliance checks, Garcia said.

The Chelsea King case is not the first to raise concerns about sex offender monitoring.

For years until his arrest in August, registered sex offender Phillip Garrido managed to conceal from authorities the fact that Jaycee Dugard was being held captive in his Northern California backyard, along with the two children he had fathered with her. He is accused of kidnapping Dugard in 1991 when she was 11 years old.

Statistically speaking, it might make more sense to spend limited resources not on sex offender registries, but on public safety problems that are more preventable and affect greater numbers of people, such as highway safety, Zimring said.

"You're more likely to get struck by lightning," he said, than to get raped and murdered by a stranger.

"That doesn't make us any less horrified when this kind of worst case happens," Zimring said.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Protect the Children From Grandstanding D.A.'s

2010-03-04T16:40:00.000-08:00

Ed: If Kamala Harris took her mandate as San Francisco D.A. more seriously by, amongst other things, prosecuting actual murderers more effectively, she might have greater credibility in her other pursuits. In this matter, however, she is jumping on the "Bogeyman Bandwagon", essentially appealing to the ignorance of the California electorate, by championing a cause for which there is virtually NO demonstrated, ACTUAL, threat. If you were to pour over crime and child well being statistics, as I do, you would see that realistic dangers to children do not come into their computers when they are least suspecting.

They come from myriad, albeit substantially more pedestrian, sources, such as traffic accidents, head injuries from sports, emotional and physcial abuse having nothing to do with sex, prescriptions for Ritalin and other behavior-modifiers, armed gangsters down the street, no health coverage, etc., etc. Political opportunists such as Kamala Harris are beginning to be taken less seriously by a more informed electorate. Finally. We need to stop salivating on command when they begin to shout "save the children from these predators". And we need to do what we have to do to hasten them along their paths to political oblivion and not elect them to Attorney General of California, which is Kamala's ambition.

Opinion: Protect children from online predators
By Kamala D. Harris and Norma Torres

In 1994, Megan Kanka's parents thought their 7-year-old daughter was safe. After all, they were raising her in a quiet New Jersey town.

Her parents, Richard and Maureen, could have never predicted that on July 29, 1994, the neighbor living across the street — who was, without their knowledge, a registered sex offender — would lure Megan Kanka into his home, where he would sexually assault and murder her.

In the wake of this horrific crime, it became clear that the laws were not strong enough to protect our children from registered sex offenders. In 1996, Megan's Law was enacted, requiring every state in the country to notify the public when sex offenders are residing in their area.

The time has come again for us to band together. We must protect our kids from registered sex offenders trying to "friend" them online. That is why we joined forces to introduce the Child Cyber Safety Act of 2010. This legislation would make it a crime for registered sex offenders in California to use a social networking Internet site. Period. If they do, they go back to jail.

Social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace and Bebo are incredibly popular. Since 2007, the number of users has doubled. Social networking sites provide a new venue for sex offenders to establish relationships with children they will later assault.

Children no longer just play in their front yard, local playground or schoolyard?. Today's kids play online. And sex offenders know it.

In November 2009, 12-year-old Jane Doe's parents thought she was safe. Instead, their daughter met a 33-year-old man on MySpace who lured their child to an Anaheim hotel and sexually assaulted her. That same year, the parents of 14-year-old John Doe of Pomona did not realize that their son was in danger online. Instead, their son met a 47-year-old man online who later pleaded guilty to sodomizing him.

And the parents of more than 80 victims in Riverside from ages 11 to 17 did not know that a 32-year-old man was using a social networking site to manipulate their children into sending him nude photographs of themselves.

As the law is currently written, the defendants in these cases, if convicted, will be required to register as sex offenders in California. However, once they've served their sentences, there is nothing stopping them from jumping right back online and using social networking sites to locate new victims.

The man who murdered 7-year-old Megan Kanka in 1994 was similarly situated. Having served time for attacking a 5-year-old child and attempting to sexually assault a 7-year-old, nothing stopped this registered sex offender from living in anonymity, able to troll his neighborhood for child victims.

We are not interested in waiting until the next child is victimized. The Child Cyber Safety Act would make registered sex offenders trolling social networking sites a crime.

Other states such as New York and Connecticut have employed efforts to require sex offenders to register e-mail addresses with the state or notify the social networking sites of their status so those profiles can be purged. However, according to the National Criminal Intelligence Service, Internet pedophiles are becoming increasingly adept at employing counter -intelligence techniques to protect themselves. They register fake names, create multiple e-mail addresses and use technology in other ways to conceal their identity.

In California, the birthplace of the personal computer, we must stay ahead of the online predator. Let's pass the Child Cyber Safety Act to keep registered sex offenders from contacting our kids online.

KAMALA D. HARRIS is San Francisco"s district attorney and a candidate for state attorney general. NORMA TORRES (D-Paloma) represents the 61st District in the Assembly. They wrote this article for this newspaper.

18 Y.O. Sentenced to 34 Years For Sex When He Was 11-16

2010-03-02T18:57:00.000-08:00

Ed: Of course, in this article, they refer to him as a "man" even though the sex he was convicted of having occurred from when he was eleven until he was sixteen, a fact the writer fails to note. Was force or coercion elements in their commission? WHO KNOWS? And, you know what, there's no way to tell. It happened over a period of five years, has not gone on for several years, and prosecutors and therapists routinely lie and manipulate "victims".

Let there be no doubt that anyone can go to prison in this country if a child complainant says (or is MADE to say) that they were sexually abused. The fact that the alleged perpetrator was, himself, a kid, is all the more tragic and gives lie to the pretense that this hysterical, vicious, sex-hating movement is driven by a concern for children. The people who have brought upon our society this state of affairs should be deeply ashamed and, themselves, banished from the rest of us.

Bethlehem man faces 34 years in prison for sexually assaulting boy, girl

A Northampton County judge called a Bethlehem man "a sick individual" as the judge sentenced him to 34 years in state prison for sexually assaulting two children starting in 2003.

“You have many rehabilitative needs,” Northampton County Judge Emil Giordano said to Josue Gonzalez this morning. “It is my hope that you will receive the treatment that you so desperately need.”

Giordano sentenced Gonzalez, 18, of the 600 block of Hess Street, to 11 years to 34 years in state prison for two counts each of felony sexual assault and indecent assault.

Gonzalez will have to register as a sex offender for the rest of his life under Pennsylvania’s version of Megan's Law.

Looking at the facts of the case, Giordano said he was astounded Gonzalez was not deemed a sexually violent predator. Assistant District Attorney Patricia Broscius said it was Gonzalez’s age that led to the board’s ruling, with which she also did not agree.

Gonzalez started assaulting the boy in 2003 when the victim was 6 years old and continued until the boy was 11, prosecutors said. The boy is now 12.

Bethlehem police interviewed the boy at school, and he said Gonzalez initially offered to play games with him if Gonzalez could have sex with him, prosecutors said.

When the boy refused, Gonzalez raped him, prosecutors said. The abuse continued over five years, and Gonzalez repeatedly raped the boy and forced him to perform sex acts, prosecutors alleged.

The girl told police Gonzalez started assaulting her around the time she was 6 years old in January 2007 at her home and Gonzalez’s home.

A worker from the county’s Children Youth and Families division said both victims are receiving intensive sexual abuse treatment.

Gonzalez sobbed as he apologized to his victims, who were not in the courtroom, and his family.

“I know what I did was wrong,” said Gonzalez, who was wearing a white plastic rosary and an orange prison jumpsuit.

Groups to oppose proposed Md. sex offender bills

2010-02-22T13:57:00.000-08:00

Ed: This will be an interesting case pitting reason against the forces of hysteria.

Sex offenders have been a hot topic in Annapolis this session, with a number of bills submitted and Gov. Martin O'Malley reactivating an advisory board. But several groups plan to oppose the bills Tuesday at a House of Delegates judiciary committee hearing. I'm ripping this straight from the press release I just recieved from the Justice Policy Institute:

Annapolis, MD – Representatives from the Justice Policy Institute (JPI); American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Maryland; the Maryland Office of the Public Defender; the National Juvenile Justice Network (NJJN), the Defender Association of Philadelphia and the Office of the Ohio Public Defender will testify Tuesday, February 23 before the Judicial Committee of the Maryland Assembly, as the Committee considers a host of bills aimed at increasing penalties and post-incarceration requirements for people convicted of sex offenses.

In particular, some bills will expand Maryland’s sex offender registries to come into compliance with the controversial federal Adam Walsh Act, which requires states to include many youth on registries. Other bills would limit employment, living, civic and other opportunities for people who have been convicted of a registerable offense.

WHAT: Hearing by the Judicial Committee of the Maryland Assembly on numerous bills related to sex offenses

WHO: Various experts on sex offense policies and Maryland advocates, including:
Amy Borror, Public Information Officer, Office of the Ohio Public Defender, to discuss the failure of Ohio’s sex offender policies and registries to improve public safety (while costing that state millions of dollars); Nicole Pittman, Esq., Juvenile Justice Policy Analyst attorney, Defender Association of Philadelphia, on the negative impacts of sex offender registries on youth;
Sarah Bryer, National Juvenile Justice Network, on developmentally appropriate responses to youth that have committed sex offenses; Tracy Velázquez, Justice Policy Institute, on the research around what policies are effective in promoting public safety, and collateral consequences to youth and adults of registration and other punitive policies; Cindy Boersma, ACLU of Maryland, on the threat of juvenile registries to public safety and the importance of focusing sex offender management on effective prevention and deterrence rather than stigmatization.

Laurel Albin, Esq., Maryland Office of the Public Defender, on the dangers of juvenile registries and importance of risk assessment-based sex offender supervision.

School Uses Secret Cameras To Record Teens In Bedrooms

2010-02-18T17:40:00.000-08:00

"...the government school district issued laptops to students and the district could activate the webcam and use it to spy on students anytime the computer was turned on".

"told by Assistant Principal that he "was engaged in improper behavior in his home." As proof of this improper behaviour the school showed him "a photograph from the webcam embedded in minor Plaintiff's personal laptop issued by the School District.""

read entire piece here