When you are listed on a sex offender registry, it's for life, a sanction that requires the offender to be in regular contact with the authorities, to allow searches of his home every 90 days and to live far from schools, parks and other public places. His probation will also require him to stay off the Internet, even though you may need it, for a job.
Being a Sex Offender means you are in
your own hell, for the rest of your life.
Until I met my friend, Jeff, I never knew anyone, who had been convicted of being a Sex Offender. After meeting him, I see all the things he has gone through and everything he has to put up with.
His offense involved sexual experimentation, as kids, when him and his younger brother were watching porn, on their mother's cable TV, when she fell asleep. They were able to not only view straight porn, but gay porn, which gave them the idea of experimenting. Jeff has said he only tried anal sex, on his younger brother a couple times, but his brother said it hurt, so he stopped.
I had asked him if his brother had to go to the hospital, but he said he didn't. They only did it a couple times and then stopped. Jeff was more interested in girls.
When he was about 6, a 19 yr old female babysitter had molested him. She took her clothes off and his and fondled him and let him touch her private areas. It may have been part of what got him interested in girls at such a young age.
Since he believed a lot of what he saw on TV, he thought when someone poured clear liquid on a cloth and held it over someones nose and mouth, making them pass out, it was rubbing alcohol. I told him it was probably some kind of anesthesia, like either.
In one of his foster homes, he had made friends, with a disabled boy, whom had a 13yr old girl watching him, until his parents got home, from work. Jeff became friends with him and the boy was always egging Jeff on, telling him the girl really liked him.
Jeff was going to try and put the girl to sleep, so he could have sex with her, but got scared and never went through with it, but someone saw him and called the police. They arrested him and he ended up in jail. When he went to court, the girl wouldn't press charges, she just wanted to see him get the help he needed. Even though the girl did not want to press charges, the State of Wisconsin did anyway.
While he was in treatment, the others in the group kept bringing up his brother's name, until Jeff finally realized they had found out what had happened a couple years before. He admitted he had done it, so now they had his confession and since he was older, they could charge him with a sex crime, since nothing worked out with the young girl.
Now began his nightmare of being convicted a Sex Offender and all the discrimination, which comes with it. The Sex Offender Registry was meant to keep violent sex offenders away from kids, but with their overreach, they included so many others, who really didn't deserve to be labeled a sex offender.
Some advocates and legal authorities see the overreach of sex offender registries, which gained favor in the 1990s as a tool for monitoring pedophiles
Nearly 800,000 people on registries in the United States go beyond adults who have sexually assaulted other adults or minors. Also listed are people found guilty of lesser offenses that run the gamut from urinating publicly to swapping lewd texts.
“Some think it’s utterly ridiculous to take teenage sex and make it a felony, especially since they are obviously not a pedophile.”
“Sex Offenders have to walk down the street every day and think: ‘Am I too close to a school? Is there a child who’s close to me?’ ”
While Jeff was helping me with the paper routes, he was paranoid. If a kid got too close to the car, he was afraid he would get arrested, even though he had done nothing or even thought of doing anything at all. He was even afraid, when we had to drive past the high school, doing the routes. They had it so ingrained in him, he had become paranoid.
In the hundreds of hours we spent together, he never once said, or acted like, he was interested in doing anything with a child. He was more interested in women and would brag about the different times he supposedly slept with a woman.
Jeff was convicted, in the early 2000's, and luckily be able to have the sex offender offense expunged, from his records in 2018, but he has to request it. Currently, once you are put on the Sex Offender Registry, it is for life. You can never get off and must put up with all the discrimination, which comes with it, for the rest of your life.
I really can't see how they can charge him with something like this and destroy his life. His biggest problem is finding a decent place to live, since so many towns have strict sex offender ordinances and won't even allow them in their town at all.
While I worked with him, I realized he was not only learning disabled, but had other mental problems too. I was sure he could get SSI, so I and a friend began the long arduous task of helping him get on SSI.
When you apply for Social Security Disability Income (SSDI) or Supplemental Security Income, (SSI), when they schedule you to see one of their doctors you go. If you don't, they will close the case right away.
Social Security had him see one of their doctors, who determined he had Post Traumatic Stress Disorder PTSD. When he was younger, he had gone through multiple foster homes, which he figured were over 30.
Many of the foster homes were good, but many of them were bad and abused him. One even locked him in a cage, in the basement, like a dog, making him eat out of a dog dish. Luckily someone alerted the authorities, who rescued him, charged those foster parents with child abuse and put them in jail.
His mother was learning disabled and unable to take care of him and his brother. There were no rules and she let them do what they wanted. For sex education, she bought them magazines, such as Playboy and Hustler.
His father was an alcoholic and beat his mother numerous times. He would come home drunk and when she refused to have sex with him, he would beat her.
Jeff saw all of this and one day, when his father came home drunk and passed out on the bed, Jeff tied him to the bed. He waited until his father woke up the next morning, wanting him to be fully aware of what he was going to do, then proceeded to beat the crap out of him., with a baseball bat.
If his mother had not called 911, he probably would have killed his father. The police arrived in time, arrested him and put him in a Juvenile Facility, since he was only about 9, at the time. Jeff also had a problem with anger management.
His father ended up in prison for several years, for his part, in a love triangle, where the woman ended up dead and he had helped the boyfriend get rid of the body. He was no kind of a father to Jeff, which is why Jeff ended up in the system and multiple foster homes.
When he saw the doctor Social Security wanted him to see, it was determined he had Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), which many men and women have, when they return home, from serving in the Military.
Since he was determined to have a disability he could have gotten SSDI, but he hadn't worked much, so didn't have a work record. He was, however, able to get SSI, but I needed to be his Payee, since they would not allow him to have the money himself.
I don't know what he would have done, for income, if he hadn't been able to get SSI. He had so many things going against him, even his family was unsupportive and claimed he was just lazy and didn't want to work. None of them realized everything he had going against him, which prevented him from working.
How are you going to find a job, without a high school diploma or at least a GED? He also had no driver's license, no car, no State ID, plus he had several felonies against him and the biggest problem was he had the Sex Offender label, so that eliminated many jobs, where children would gather, such as fast food places and retail stores.
I offered him a job, where he could help me deliver papers, I would pay him a little bit, so he at least had some spending money. One of his bad habits, was he smoked and had to beg his mother to buy him cigarettes.
The first time I paid him, I took him to get a notarized copy of his birth certificate, then I took him to the DMV, to apply for a State picture ID. The next time I paid him, he opened a savings account, at my bank, and got a Debit card, which he was thrilled with! Now he could be like everyone else and withdraw money from his account, at any ATM, using his Debit card.
The following pay period, he was able to get a prepaid Debit Card, with my bank, since he could not get a checking account, unless he worked and had money direct deposited to his account. He could use the Debit Card, like a Credit Card, to make purchases, even buy his own cigarettes.
When I first met him, he was somewhat childish, but by being around me and being encouraged to do good, he slowly became his own man, making many of his own decisions. It really hurt to see all the discrimination he must endure, because he is a Sex Offender.
The biggest problem is finding a decent place, for him to live. He had lived in this old run down rat infested trailer, in the country, for several months. Being in the country he needed propane, for heat, but could not afford it.
He had to use a wood stove, for heat, but it would not last through the night, unless you kept getting up, to fire it up. Many mornings he would wake up and it would only be 39 degrees in the living room.
Because of the heat situation, his water was froze up most of the time and I would bring milk jugs full of water, for him to use for cooking and drinking and for the dogs he had. There is no way I could put up with those conditions.
There are fledgling efforts in some states to change sex offender registries so that they do not include juveniles or those guilty of minor offenses.
Many sex offenders have ended up broke and homeless, living in clusters under freeways because they are routinely rejected by employers and landlords, and because they are banned from living in so many neighborhoods that contain public places like parks.
The other thing, which is bad, is only a certain number of sex offenders are only allowed to live together, in one residence and are limited, where they can live, in relation to other sex offenders. It makes it difficult to find a place to house several sex offenders at one time.
Even though many of them are not dangerous, they are all treated as if they are. No one seems to care about what they did, how old they were, how long ago it was or if they have re-offended. All they care about is seeing the sex offender's name on the Registry, then they avoid you like the plague.
People don't care if sex offenders have to live in a rat infested house, out in the country, after all, they deserve it, for what they did, even though people have no idea what the sex offender did.
People assume, since there is the registry, they have nothing to worry about. They forget about those, who may be part of the family, or a neighbor, who is a pedophile, but who has not gotten caught yet. Then there are the sex offenders, who go underground, because of all the discrimination they incur, so they can find a job or a place to live. They still run the chance of being found out and losing everything.
“Being on a registry becomes a liability for employers, no matter how minor the offense was. Other people will say: ‘I saw your employee on the Internet. He’s a sex offender, and I will not come to your establishment.’ ”
How does a sex offender get a job, when they are on the registry and anyone can look them up. It is hard enough to find a job, which is not near where children gather, but then you have the offenders, like my friend Jeff, who don't have a car, or even a driver's license.
They can't live in town, where there might be public transportation, so end up in the country or somewhere else, where they will need a car, to get to and from work. If they do find a job, the employer may or may not know he hired a sex offender, but if one of his customers finds out, he runs the risk of them boycotting his business. Some employers don't want to take the risk.
It would make more sense to spread sex offenders out, in town, where they had access to a job and transportation, since many of them don't have a car. Also it would make it a lot easier, for police to keep track of them.
“People talk about it, but when you actually try to introduce legislation, lawmakers start to get really nervous,” Ms. Jones said. “Because, oh, my God, we’re going to be soft on sex offenders.”
Some say, it seems to be part of our culture now.
Meet, hook up, have sex, sayonara. Totally inappropriate behavior. There is no excuse for this whatsoever.
One Judge said the law requires people to be responsible for determining the age of their sexual partners and if they get caught, the punishment seems appropriate.
How do you do this? Are you supposed to ask for a picture ID and assume it's not a fake, hoping the person is telling you the truth. I wonder what would happen, if someone had sex with someone, who had a fake ID and was a lot younger than they really looked like. After all many people look older than they actually are.
“There are lots of jobs that don’t involve computers,” someone said. “There are all sorts of trades. Truck drivers, welding. There are other opportunities.”
Considering the availability of jobs for the average person, who doesn't have as much going against them, I wonder where sex offenders, with limited education, limited transportation and limited places to live are going to find all these wonderful job opportunities?
My friend Jeff, is learning disabled, don't have a car and don't have a high school education. He was able to get a job working on a corporate dairy farm, where it is a lot of hard work and you don't get paid a whole lot, considering how difficult it is. Not only that, but you have to have a car or some way of getting there too.
Truck drivers not only need a driver's license, but need a CDL, in order to drive a truck and welding requires education, which many sex offenders are unable to get. Then there is the fact about whether or not it is something they would want to do or be qualified for.
Now, people have all these crazy apps where you can locate people in your vicinity where people want to have a relationship. You should be very careful.
No computer for five years, no smartphone? Sex Offenders aren't even allowed to have an email address! It's just wrong! That’s like taking away electricity or heat or gas to somebody, in today’s world.
A young person, makes one mistake and all of a sudden they’re classified as a loser for the rest of their life. This scenario should never result in jail time or a life of anxiety.