Retroactive Pardon Me?
January 21, 2008Why does anyone need immunity unless they are guilty of something?
One has to wonder what is happening here!
Archive for the ‘Criminal Justice’ Category
Lobby game exposed?
May 20, 2007The following article, although from October 2006, serves as PROOF that Sex Offender Legislation in particular the Adam Walsh Act is NOT ABOUT THE CHILDREN, IT IS ABOUT MONEY. Politicians would have you believe otherwise, to ingratiate themselves to voters. Read the article, see for yourself…
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Lobby game exposed?
Utah firm got language in federal bill to help sell its product
By Matt Canham
The Salt Lake Tribune
Article Last Updated:10/13/2006 02:04:02 AM MDT
Board of Pardons and Parole chairman Michael Sibbett is retiring after 15 years. Utah’s former Board of Pardons chairman tapped Sen. Orrin Hatch to help pass legislation virtually guaranteeing a multimillion-dollar windfall for a Sandy-based company that sells ankle monitors for parolees, according to a state court lawsuit.
The lawsuit claims to lay bare how the former pardons chairman, lobbyist Michael Sibbett, and other former public officials purportedly sought to secure no-bid federal and state contracts for their client through their congressional ties and their connections with Utah officials.
One of their main vehicles was a sex offender bill Hatch shepherded through Congress this summer. The bill included minimum requirements for ankle monitors taken “verbatim from a description” of Secure Alert’s product, TrackerPAL, according to the suit.
Sibbett and his partner Robin Riggs, who worked as legal counsel in former Gov. Mike Leavitt’s administration, wrote the language and pushed the product to Hatch and his staffers.
“TrackerPAL is to my knowledge the only company that can meet those minimum standards,” Sibbett said.
The bill creates a pilot program providing states with grants, but the money can only be spent on ankle monitors that meet the legislation’s requirements. And according to the suit, that means TrackerPAL. The bill appropriates $15 million over the next three years but also creates a path to increase the size of the program.
Sibbett stands behind his efforts, which he says will improve public safety and help decrease the costs of housing prisoners.
But Alex Knott, of the Center for Public Integrity, said Sibbett’s push undermines the free market system, where competition allows the public to “get the top amount of products or services for their tax dollars.”
“Circumventing” the competitive process drives up costs and depresses quality, said Knott, political editor for the center, a nonpartisan nonprofit organization.
Such provisions are often “written behind closed doors with a nod and a wink.”
Secure Alert’s efforts to secure contracts were brought to light after the Sandy company’s executives fired their lobbyists, who were working under the business name HGR Enterprises, because the company felt the contract provided too much compensation, according to court records. HGR is now seeking $1.3 billion in damages.
HGR’s Sibbett still backs the TrackerPAL device and said of the lawsuit, “I’m just disappointed it has finally got to this point.”
Secure Alert hired Sibbett and HGR in late January to promote TrackerPAL among politicians throughout the country.
Sibbett felt the new technology offered benefits to the criminal justice system that traditional ankle monitors couldn’t match.
Standard tracking devices rely on radio waves and phone lines to keep tabs of those on house arrest. TrackerPAL uses satellite transmitters and a built-in, two-way radio so that police officers not only know when someone left their home but also can talk to them when they do.
The upgrade in technology comes with a price. The units cost $6 each per day to operate.
The company wanted government contracts and was willing to pay its lobbyists 50 cents a day for every monitor worn by a parole or sex offender in Utah and 75 cents a day for those outside the state.
Sibbett started in Utah. He discussed the need for more ankle monitors with lawmakers who were worried about the state’s burgeoning prison population.
He persuaded state Rep. Eric Hutchings, R-Kearns, to propose intent language allowing the Department of Corrections to spend money on new tracking devices.
Sibbett then sold the TrackerPAL to his old colleagues in Corrections, who signed a contract on May 1.
The department promised to pay $173,000 for 50 ankle monitors as part of a test case, Corrections spokesman Jack Ford said.
Just two months later, the Adam Walsh Child Safety Act was signed by President Bush, giving Sibbett and Secure Alert a much bigger opportunity.
This bill, pushed by Hatch in the Senate and former Florida Rep. Mark Foley, among others, in the House, created a national sex offender registry and called for police to equip the worst sex offenders with an ankle monitor. The bill included “a single-source provision that only the TrackerPAL device can satisfy,” according to the lawsuit.
Before it was passed, Sibbett and Riggs say they recruited some high-profile supporters. Ed Smart and his daughter Elizabeth, who was famously kidnapped from her home in 2002 and found nine months later, appeared on television shows like “Good Morning America” and “America’s Most Wanted” to promote the bill. Ed Smart held up the TrackerPAL in one appearance, Hatch in the other. A picture from “America’s Most Wanted” now appears on Hatch’s Web site with the caption: “Hatch is holding an example of the ankle tracking device that will be attached to the worst of the worst convicted offenders.”
Hatch’s office declined to comment on HGR and Sibbett’s involvement in the sex offender bill.
Secure Alert has not yet signed any contracts as a result of the legislation but does promote that likelihood in materials it presents to investors.
Sibbett sees nothing wrong with his actions. He believes the device will help the criminal justice system so he pushed the connections he had to further its reach.
“We are not holding up banks or sticking a gun to somebody’s head saying, ‘You have to sign a contract,’ ” he said in an interview.
And of his effort to make hundreds of millions of dollars on its success, he says: “I don’t see anything wrong with it. That is kind of the American way, to go out and work hard, and I think I’ve worked hard.”
Lobbyists regularly use their political connections to help a specific company, said Massie Ritsch, spokesman for the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan Washington, D.C., group that tracks money in politics.
But the lawsuit allows a “rare look at how business often gets done in Washington,” Ritsch said. “They’re showing how the sausage is made and sometimes it stinks a little.”
http://vote.peteashdown.org/media/articles/sltrib20061013/
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While the politicians are manipulating the facts, using fear mongering rhetoric and lying to their constituents, women, and children continue to be abused. How is it parents and women continue to accept this from their elected officials? It is time to demand better or remove these rascals from office. Call your Representative and Senators, tell them you know what they are doing, and tell them either they fix this mess that they made or you will find someone who will. Do it today for the sake of all women and children.
Visit SOSNet for more information.
Politician Plays the Sex Offender Card - AGAIN
April 11, 2007
The Ithaca Journal - Ithaca, NY
By Monique Lewis
Gannett News Service
BINGHAMTON — U.S. Sen. Charles E. Schumer announced two proposed federal laws Monday aimed at eliminating Internet solicitation of children and youths for sexual acts.
Schumer, D-N.Y., stopped in Binghamton on Monday on a statewide campaign to promote the bills — the KIDS Act and SAFE Act, that combined via an enhanced Internet tracking system will thwart registered sex offenders and others from using the Web for transmitting child pornography and soliciting children.
The KIDS Act, or Keeping the Internet Devoid of Sexual-Predators Act, would require all levels of convicted sex offenders to provide their e-mail addresses, instant message screen-names and other Internet information to law enforcement for the National Sex Offender Registry. Violators will face significant jail time, Schumer said.
There are more than 900 registered sex offenders living in the Southern Tier, according to the New York State Department of Criminal Justice Services.
“That’s a lot,” Schumer said. “But that’s just the registered ones. There are some who don’t register and other (offenders) who come from out of state. The Internet is the method of choice with which they find their victims.”
Therefore, a second bill coined Securing Adolescents From Exploitation-Online Act (SAFE Act), would require Internet Service Providers to report any user who is engaging in online sexual activity aimed at locating children and youths to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, Schumer said.
The legislation will give law enforcement another avenue to fight the problem, Broome County District Attorney Gerald Mollen said.
Even if an Internet user or convicted sex offender changed their e-mail address and name with an ISP, or switched ISPs, they can still be caught because the legislation would require ISPs to report all illegal sexual activity aimed at children, according to Schumer’s office.
However, James Little, of Endicott, suggested the federal government mandate computer manufacturers install products that prevent children from accessing inappropriate Web sites and require parents to setup a password.
“There’s just a huge exposure to kids on the Internet and it’s going to be difficult to control that,” Little said. “It’s the parents that are going to have to prevent the trouble that their kids are getting into.”
But the government can’t fully rely parental responsibility, especially given the social atmosphere in which parents can’t be at home all the time to monitor their child’s Internet activity, Schumer said.
“The Internet companies who don’t cooperate get the book slammed on them too,” Schumer added.
ISPs who don’t report such activity would be fined $50,000 per incident per person for the first violation, and the fines increase per violation, Schumer said. ISPs will be absolved from any potential lawsuits, he said.
There would be federal funding issued to local law enforcement agencies to implement the law, he said.
Schumer said he expects Congress to approve both bills in the summer and be implemented by the fall.
http://www.theithacajournal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070410/NEWS01/704100338
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11 April, 2007
Dear Senator Schumer,
Again, we find politicians attempting to recover from falling approval ratings (Associated Press-Ipsos poll on public attitudes about Congress, conducted April 2-4; showed that 57% DISAPPROVE of the way Congress is handling its job) by playing the “tough on sex offender” card. Your proposed KIDS and SAFE Acts are nothing more than smoke and mirrors.
We believe you not only know this, you should apologize to your constituents. Like previous laws, this one is rooted in myths, and misconceptions in place of facts and truths. Americans, especially our children deserve better.
Chris Hansen of Dateline quotes “1 in 5 online teenagers are approached about sex.” However, he never tells you the truth. The survey, a DOJ study, he uses shows that in over 70% of the time, other teenagers, not adults trolling the internet for sex, are approaching each other.
Recently, an FBI report charged that reporters were distorting the facts with fear-driven stories about monsters preying on children. The FBI, in fact, insists that child abductions by strangers actually have declined. In the 1980s, the number of such child abductions averaged annually about 200 to 300, according to the FBI. In 2000, the number of cases dropped to 93 compared with 134 in 1999 and 115 in 1998, when the FBI first began tracking these statistics.
A report to the Unites States Senate Judiciary Committee by SOhopeful International stated, “It is because of these misunderstandings about the real nature of sex crimes, victims of sex crimes and sex offenders that Federal and some State governments are spending large sums for ineffective policies that do not increase public safety.” If registration is the answer, why do we see an eight percent increase in the registry each year? If safety zones (banishment) are the answer, why are children still being abused? These measures are only feel good legislation, which have proven ineffective, and are continued punishment, not regulation.
The public needs to be more concerned about high-risk sex offenders and absconders, not the low risk offenders who are working hard to comply with their probation and therapy guidelines or the former offenders who have finished their sentence and have remained offence free since. Additionally, hysteria created by media misinformation and political hyperbole has a devastating and demoralizing effect on the families of low-risk offenders, including the unintended practice of revealing the identity of victims of intra-familial abuse, traumatizing children a second time.
The National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, 2007 Report of the Sex Offender Policy Task Force states, “The recent wave of sex offender legislation is based upon emotion and myths about sex offenders which are not supported by valid research or evidence. Legislation in this area should be based upon facts and valid evidence. The NACDL encourages criminal defense lawyers, prosecutors, and legislators to oppose legislation based upon myth and public emotion. In doing so we can ensure both public safety and due process.”
Why are we all in deep denial about this problem? As long as citizens rely on uninformed politicians, the misinformed media and myths about sex offenders, all children remain at risk. We need to come to terms with our denial and seek real solutions, and we need to do it today. How many more Christopher’s, Jessica’s, Dylan’s, Megan’s, Polly’s, and Jacob’s have to die before we WAKE UP?
If you really want to make children safer, then take the lead and call for a National Sex Offender Policy Forum. Forums should include mental health professionals, jurists, law enforcement and corrections personnel, victims and their families, offenders and their families. Then Federal, state and local governments can better formulate workable, cost effective laws that protect the rights of all citizens.
What’s right is right and what’s wrong is wrong, in lieu of fostering a fearful witch-hunt mentality for votes, our elected officials should step up to this societal challenge. They should strive to dispel the myths and create the environment for policy and subsequent legislation to succeed, creating a safe society for all.
At the end of the day, we are all responsible; we are all involved in the safety of our families and have an investment in the outcome of this discussion. Educate yourself, protect your children, please have a staffer visit http://www.sosnet.pbwiki.com and report to you with their findings.
Sincerely yours,
The Sex Offender Solutions Network
Sex Offender Law Takes Beating in Court
April 4, 2007The following appeared in Creative Loafing Atlanta, written by Scott Henry, it echos many of the statements I have posted in this blog.
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Last week, opponents of Georgia’s harsh new sex offender law got a boost in the form of a federal judge’s ruling that will allow a court challenge of the law to go forward. But it’s the unusually strong wording of the opinion by U.S. District Court Judge Clarence Cooper that makes lawyers with the Southern Center for Human Rights most optimistic.
In pointing out that ex post facto laws are unconstitutional, Cooper writes: “Ex post facto laws impose retroactive punishment; in other words, they increase the punishment for criminal acts after they have been committed. Defendants [the state of Georgia] argue that the act [the sex offender law] is regulatory rather than punitive, precluding a finding that the act is an unconstitutional ex post facto law. This Court disagrees.”
Later on, the judge considers whether the law would have the effect of forcing sex offenders to leave Georgia – a process called banishment, and also illegal. “The act may be found to sufficiently resemble banishment so as to support a finding that it is punitive in effect,” he says.
Finally, Cooper acknowledges the criticism that the law may do more harm than good because sex offenders who are forced to move from their homes and families often slide into recidivism. “The Court finds that the act’s failure to … identify those sex offenders who are most likely to reoffend, when coupled with the fact that the instability created by the act may be harmful to the public, could support a finding that the act is excessive,” he writes.
During initial hearings on the law last summer, Cooper was particularly interested in hearing the state defend a provision that bans registered sex offenders from living within 1,000 feet of a school bus stop. Given the tone of his opinion last week, it’s probably safe to assume that the death of the bus-stop provision will be the starting point when the legal challenge of the law begins in earnest.
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There are two FACTS we must consider. (1) The Georgia General Assembly DID NOT LISTEN to experts in therapy, law enforcement, or former sex offenders who spoke at Judiciary Committee hearing before they passed HB1059. (2) Also, many are now calling for reform in our sex offender laws, and with good reason.
Our current sex offender laws are NOT WORKING. The question we ask is how many more Christopher’s, Jessica’s, Dylan’s, Polly’s, Megan’s, and Jacob’s have to die before we WAKE UP?
Still not sure? Read our blog on a Policy Failure of Colossal Proportions.
Need more facts? Check out many of the resources and facts posted on the Sex Offender Solutions Network.
At the end of the day, only informed parents can keep their children safe, not the government or the media.
States rethink trying juveniles as adults
March 24, 2007
The following article speaks for itself. The only question we have is how did we get to this place in our society. On the one hand, we want to keep our children as children, and on the other, we treat them like adults when it suits us. Example, the young man in the article, Keith Pearl, was sentenced as an adult, however had he been a victim; he would have been treated as a child. What makes us think it is OK to have it both ways? Why are we one of the few countries in the world that take a juvenile, and put them in a prison system where they come out with a Masters Degree in Criminal Behavior? Do we not see the stupidity in this logic? Why did we start believing the lies politicians tell? How did we allow our society to move to a retributive justice model when all common sense tells us that Restorative Justice is the most efficient and effective solution. Is this not proof that our criminal justice system is dysfunctional at best or at worst, just plain broken? When are we going to find the will to fix this mess we have allowed our politicians to make?
From the Christian Science Monitor
March 22, 2007 edition
http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0322/p03s03-usju.html
States rethink trying juveniles as adults
Many minors in the adult correctional system aren’t violent offenders, a new report finds.
| Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
NEW YORK
Keith Pearl was with three friends when one of them allegedly stole two pairs of gym shoes, two T-shirts, and six pairs of socks from a classmate. He claims he had nothing to do with the robbery, but was just there when it happened. Still, under Illinois’s accountability law, Keith was charged with two counts of armed robbery and put in the Cook County Jail. That’s because the high school senior was 17, considered an adult by Illinois law. After serving several weeks in the adult facility, he was given probation and released.
Keith is one of an estimated 200,000 US juveniles under the age of 18 who ended up in the adult criminal justice system in 2006. That’s an increase of more than 200 percent since the 1990s, when states around the country began passing laws that required some juvenile offenders to be treated as adults.
The goal of such legislation was to ensure that the most egregious offenders – young murderers and rapists – were not released back into society when they aged out of the juvenile justice system at 18. But a report released Wednesday by the Campaign for Youth Justice, a nonprofit group advocating system reform, found that the majority of juveniles who are now being tried and jailed in the adult system are not violent offenders. A handful of states are reconsidering their laws on juvenile offenders, and others expect to this year.
“We now have children as young as 14 and 15, in their formative years, who are being housed with hardened criminals,” says Ned Loughran, executive director of the Council of Juvenile Correctional Administrators in Braintree, Mass. “And unless the youth has a life sentence, they’re going to be coming out sooner rather than later, and they’re going to be more of a threat to our public safety than if they’d been in the juvenile system where they can get services.”
Currently, 40 states have laws that allow juvenile offenders to be tried and sentenced as adults. In a few, including Connecticut, anyone over 15 is automatically treated as an adult, no matter what the offense. In other states, like Illinois, judges can decide whether to try juveniles as adults, although some violent offenses are automatically tried as adult crimes.
Many of these laws were passed when crime had ticked up to record highs in the early 1990s and conservative criminologists were talking about a new breed of “superpredator” youths. In most cases, legislatures acted after a particularly sensational case, such the attack on a Central Park jogger in 1989, when police said that a gang of roving kids raped and beat a woman almost to death. But in the ensuing years, crime has dropped significantly, and the superpredator theory has been discounted. And 13 years after five youths were convicted in the Central Park attack, an older serial rapist confessed to the crime.
New research has also shown that juveniles serving in adult facilities are at a much higher risk of being assaulted or abused. They also have significantly higher rates of recidivism compared with similar kids in the juvenile system.
“In fairness to the legislators, when they passed these laws, sometimes in haste, they didn’t have all the information that we have now,” says Liz Ryan, executive director of the Campaign for Youth Justice.
A handful of states have already revised some of their legislation. Others have set up commissions to study the issue. Ms. Ryan and other youth advocates are also pressing for Congress to amend legislation so that states are forbidden from housing any juvenile in an adult jail before trial.
But some conservative criminologists say the changes in the law in the 1990s have helped bring about the drop in crime. The laws are working as they should, they believe. “Usually, when a child is moved to the adult system, it’s a case where they have a long history of crime,” says David Muhlhausen, a senior policy analyst at the Heritage Foundation.
For his part, Keith went to night school to make up for the time he was in jail. He graduated and now intends to go to college. But because he has an adult felony conviction, his ability to get college loans will be limited.
Where are the “Child Saviors”
March 23, 2007We have to ask. Where is the outcry, where are the “child saviors,” why are politicians and the media not telling you about all the child neglect and fatality statistics?
What is truly amazing is that NO ONE and I mean NO ONE is screaming about the 2,600 some odd children that are killed each year as a result of firearm accidents. The fact that the United States leads the industrialized nations in the number of childhood deaths caused by accidents with over 7,453 per year, in front of Mexico with 5,949 per year (1) seems to be totally ignored by the mainstream media. Nor do I see anyone clamoring about the 2,223 deaths of teenagers in 2004 due to teenage drunk driving (2), or that in 2003, 2,136 children under 14 died as a result of drunk drivers (3).
The Child Welfare Information Gateway web site gives this summary of child abuse in 2004. “According to the National Child Abuse and Neglect Data System’s most current report, Child Maltreatment 2004, of the approximately 872,000 child abuse and neglect victims in 2004, the largest percentage of perpetrators (78.5 percent) were parents. Other relatives accounted for an additional 6.5 percent, residential facility staff for 0.2 percent, and childcare providers for 0.7 percent. Unmarried partners of parents accounted for 4.1 percent of perpetrators, while legal guardians accounted for 0.2 percent and foster parents accounted for 0.4 percent.
In 2004, 57.8 percent of child abuse and neglect perpetrators were females and 42.2 percent were males. For the most part, female perpetrators were younger than male perpetrators; of the women who were perpetrators, 44.4 percent of females were younger than 30 years of age, compared to 34.1 percent of males.
More than one-half (57.9%) of all perpetrators were found to have neglected one or more children in 2004. Slightly more than 10 percent (10.3%) of perpetrators physically abused children, and 6.9 percent sexually abused children. Fifteen percent (15.5%) of all perpetrators were associated with more than one type of maltreatment.
There were variations in these overall patterns when the relationship of perpetrator to the child victim was considered. Of the parents who maltreated children in 2004, 2.6 percent committed sexual abuse, while 62.9 percent committed neglect. Of the perpetrators who were friends or neighbors, nearly three-quarters committed sexual abuse while 9.9 percent committed neglect.”(4)
Again, empirical evidence that in at least 90% of the cases, the child knew his or her perpetrator, be it a family member, friend, neighbor, or someone trusted by the child.
While these and other statistics are truly shocking, we should not be surprised that there is absolutely no coverage in the mainstream media. Our media has found it is easier to target sex offenders. We are in denial about the real problem of child abuse in America. At the end of the day, we are either the most ignorant people on the planet, or the most self-centered, or the least compassionate or all of the above.
(1) UNICEF
(2) MADD
(3) NHTSA
(4) CWIG Web Site
Why did Christopher Barrios Die?
March 19, 2007Christopher Barrios did not have to die, but he did, why? If we look at the events of the 2006 Georgia legislative session, we can find answers.
- Had the Georgia Representatives (led by Jerry Keen) and Senators (led by Eric Johnson) listened to Dr. Gene Able or Dr. James E Stark, and the other experts who spoke at the hearings last year, Christopher Barrios might still be alive today.
- Had they listened to the RSO’s who spoke at the hearings last year, Christopher Barrios might still be alive today.
- Had they implemented RISK ASSESSMENT and a risk level system for ALL the current RSO’s and not just the new ones after July 1, 2006, as was recommended to them, Christopher Barrios might still be alive today.
- Had they listened to the experts in Law Enforcement, and not forced Law Enforcement to spend all their resources on chasing LOW RISK offenders away from churches and employment, Christopher Barrios might still be alive today.
- ALL the Laws and Restrictions in the WORLD will NOT STOP someone who wants to offend, the Sex Offender Registry does not make children safer, and neither do SAFETY ZONES; however, THERAPY DOES. Offenders in therapy have the lowest recidivism rate. Had the legislators used common sense in place of political posturing, Christopher Barrios might still be alive today.
- Because they FAILED to LISTEN to the experts, because they FAILED to LISTEN to Law Enforcement, because they were looking for election year sound bites, they are JUST AS RESPONSIBLE for the death of Christopher Barrios as the perpetrator is.
Again, I ask the people of Georgia to LISTEN to the experts, and force their elected representatives to do the same. Within the past year, these experts have voiced their concern about the new laws, well-intentioned lawmakers are enacting. Here is what they are saying.
“What you’re doing is pushing people more underground, pushing them away from treatment and pushing them away from monitoring, you’re really not improving the safety, but you are giving people a false sense of safety.” – John Gruber, Executive Director of the Association for the Treatment of Sexual Abusers
“It may be time to do away with sex offender registration laws altogether. At the very least, the federal government should commission research to study the laws’ effectiveness. In the meantime, several changes should be made. States should differentiate between serious and non-serious offenders and only require registration of the most serious offenders. Next, public access to online sites should be dismantled, and registries should be kept at the local police stations. This would provide at least a minimal screening process to those seeking inquiries… Lastly, we should experiment with restorative justice models such as what has happened in Canada where sex offenders moving into a community meet with members of the community in a public forum facilitated by a trained mediator. This type of forum gives the community an opportunity to meet the offender face to face and express their concerns and for the offender to show the community that he is earnestly seeking to change his life.” – Rachel King, Professor of Law, Howard University School of Law, Washington, D.C.
“Though laudable in their intent, there is little evidence that recently enacted housing policies achieve their stated goals of reducing recidivistic sexual violence. In fact, there is little research at all evaluating the effectiveness of these policies. Furthermore, these policies are not evidence-based in their development or implementation, as they tend to capture the widely heterogeneous group of sex offenders rather than utilize risk assessment technology to identify those who pose a high danger to public safety.” – Jill S. Levenson, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Human Services, Lynn University
“I would rather have someone who has committed a sex offense be going to work every day, come home tired, have a sense of well-being that comes from having a regular paycheck and a safe home, as opposed to having a sex offender who has a lot of free time on his hands.” – Richard Hamill, President, New York State Alliance of Sex Offender Service Providers
“We’re not aware of any evidence that residency restrictions have prevented a child from being victimized.” – Carolyn Atwell-Davis, Director of Legislative Affairs, National Center for Missing and Exploited Children
“Therapy works for these people. Let them be punished for their crimes, let them out and let them get on with their lives. Let them work. Let them have stable homes and families and let them live in peace. Harassing them, making them move and continually punishing them does far more harm than good. A sex offender in therapy with a job and a place to live is less of a threat than one that is constantly harassed.” – Robert Shilling, Detective, Crimes Against Children Division, Seattle, WA
There is not a shred of evidence tough laws and residency restrictions have saved one child. There is however, corroboration from the experts, that Sex Offender Registries and “safety zones” are doing nothing more than giving the public a false sense of security.
Again, I call for a National Sex Offender Policy Forum. Georgia can pave the way by holding a Georgia Sex Offender Policy Forum. These forums would be comprised of treatment providers, law enforcement, jurist, victims, offenders, and their families. With the recommendations from the forum, legislators will know what laws need to be written, or amended in order to insure the safety of our children.
Why are we all in deep denial about this problem? As long as citizens rely on uninformed politicians, the misinformed media and myths about sex offenders, all children remain at risk. We need to come to terms with our denial and seek real solutions, and we need to do it today. How many more Christopher’s, Jessica’s, Dylan’s, Megan’s, Polly’s, and Jacob’s have to die before we WAKE UP?
At the end of the day, we are all responsible; we are all involved in the safety of our families and have an investment in the outcome of this discussion.
Misguided Measures
March 8, 2007Yet another report by the mainstream media, except this time there are subtle myths, and deception intertwined with the facts. A step in the right direction, but hardly a change in the way reporting on this issue will help solve the problem.
Example, the ABC News reporters use the term “creepy” and make it seem that Sheriff Zeller said it. What is creepy is the sloppy reporting and yellow journalism we are willing to accept.
Another example is the “interview” with RSO Mike Chalk. What the ABC News reporters leave out is his charge. The Iowa Sex Offender Registry shows: a conviction date of 10/25/2002 for Indecent Contact with a Child (0-13) and he is not requited to be Assessed as a risk. “Indecent Contact” does not necessarily mean Child Molestation. If he is 23 now, then he was most likely between 16 to 18 at the time of his offense. Perhaps, he is one of the 40% on the Sex Offender Registry who are, or were juveniles, at the time of their offense. Without meticulous reporting by the ABC News reporters, we will never know.
I will repeat the above statement so everyone understands what I am trying to say. “Indecent Contact” does not necessarily mean Child Molestation.
What the media is not getting, and what most Americans fail to understand is, when we use the terms “sex offender”, “child molester”, and “predator” interchangeably, we are not making children and women safer, we are in fact diluting the terms to the point they lose meaning and effectiveness.
On the surface, this article is a good start, at the core, it is more of the same, myths and misconceptions that are not doing anything to solve the problem. If and when the media becomes serious about solving this problem, they will step up, and demand a National Sex Offender Policy Forum. See my link to the Sex Offender Solutions Network for more info.
Misguided Measures
New Sex Offender Laws May Cause Bigger Problems Than They Prevent
By JIM AVILA, MARY HARRIS and CHRIS FRANCESCANI
ABC News Law & Justice Unit
March 7, 2007 —
Megan Kanka, Polly Klaas, Jessica Lunsford — the names break your heart at their very mention. All were victims of child sex predators.
But laws passed in their names may be making matters worse.
Across the nation, communities and legislators are enacting a wide variety of new laws to fight back against sex offenders. Some communities have set residency restrictions on sex offenders, others require GPS monitoring, and in Ohio there’s a proposal that would require registered sex offenders to put bright green license plates on their vehicles.
But a growing chorus of experts said that many laws targeting sex offenders have backfired. And the consequences could be far-reaching.
“In 2005, we had a series of very high-profile, very violent brutal sex crimes against children,” said Jill Levenson, a professor of human services at Lynn University in Florida. “And that really sparked a nationwide panic.”
‘Cluster’ Communities of Sex Offenders
Residency restriction laws are among the most common new legislative efforts to address community concerns. Many states have enacted laws that bar offenders from living within 2,000 feet of a school or day care center. In California, the required distance is a quarter mile.
But the not-in-my-backyard mentality that has understandably prompted much of this legislation may be producing the opposite effect.
In Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Sheriff Don Zeller said new residency restrictions are forcing offenders into rural parts of the county where they are far harder to keep track of — or worse, forcing them underground, where they can be lost track of completely.
“We’re finding that it’s almost impossible to keep track of individuals we have registered in the county,” Zeller told ABC News’ Law & Justice Unit. “Five years ago, we knew where about 95 percent of those individuals were. Now we’re lucky if we know where 50, 55 percent of them are.”
And paradoxically, Zeller said, the new restrictions are also creating creepy sex offender “clusters” — like the Ced-Rel Motel in Lynn County, where more than two dozen sex offenders lived at one time.
“What if some individual comes in there with a family and decides that they’re going to stay there overnight, not knowing that 26 sex offenders are living there? And what happens if then they expose their family because most families will send their kids down to get pop or ice and, unbeknown to them, there are 26 sex offenders living in that same complex?” Zeller said.
Polly Boland knows how that feels. Her family’s farm sits beside a sex offender cluster.
“We told our kids that if anything peculiar is going on, to go back to the house,” she said. “They’re really aware of it. Our dog Henry is a good watchdog. … We don’t feel unsafe, we wish they didn’t live there,” Boland said. “Other neighbors have thought about leaving, [but] we farm, and that’s not something we can do.”
On the Run
Worse still for Zeller are offenders who are driven underground by the sometimes draconian residency restrictions in some cities. Overlapping exclusion zones keep sex offenders from finding residence in most of downtown Tulsa, Okla., and Atlanta.
ABC News found Mike Chalk, a 23-year-old registered sex offender, living in an EconoLodge hotel room in Iowa with three other offenders.
“It’s a place to lay down and know that I’m out of the cold,” he said. “I know that the sheriff’s department knows that I’m off the street, and they don’t have to worry about me roaming the streets looking for a place to stay.”
But they are about to. Chalk said he can no longer afford the room, and that he’ll have to move out soon. Where to, he doesn’t yet know. He can’t find a job because of his offender status.
“What it’s done is driven people to — rather than come in and register and comply with the law — there’s no way they can find housing, so it forces them to be on the run or lie about where they are at,” Zeller said. “So that’s not creating a safe environment for the public at all.”
Paul Zandbergen, in the University of South Florida’s geography department, did a study in which he mapped the effects of residency restrictions in his state and found that “if you add up all the restrictions — almost nothing is left (that people can live in) fairly quickly.”
Low Recidivism Rate
One of Levenson’s aims is to dispel myths about sex offenders and base new legislation on research rather than reactionary politics.
“There is no research to suggest there there really is a relationship between where sex offenders live and whether or not they’ll repeat their crimes, and there also isn’t any evidence to demonstrate that these laws are really effective in preventing sexual crimes,” she said.
In fact, only 7 percent of sex crimes against kids are committed by strangers, according to Justice Department statistics.
Studies show that — contrary to popular belief — sex offenders have a lower recidivism rate than other types of criminals, re-offending in about 14 percent of cases.
“So, ironically, what happens with residency restrictions is that we end up creating exactly the types of risk factors that we know lead to higher recidivism rather than lower recidivism,” Levenson said. “In other words, we know that stability, social support and employment are really important factors to help criminals maintain a productive life and not resume a life of crime, so disrupting the stability of criminal offenders is not likely to be in the best interest of public safety.”
The ‘Stranger Danger’ Myth
Levenson said, the residency restrictions fail completely to address the 90 percent of sex offenders whose victims are children they already know.
“The myth of ’stranger danger’ is the idea that … sex offenders are lurking in parks and playgrounds,” she said. “And the unfortunate truth is that most children who are sexually molested are victimized by someone that they and their families know and trust — often family members [themselves].”
Danger Close to Home
Nancy Sabin is the executive director of the Jacob Wetterling Foundation, named for a Minnesota boy who was abducted at gunpoint in 1989 and never heard from again. The foundation spearheads preventive education programs aimed at protecting children from both stranger predators and sex offenders in their own communities or homes.
“Can you help me understand where all these sexual predators are coming from?” she asked rhetorically. “They’re coming from our homes!”
“Why do we pretend we don’t know where they are?” she asked, adding that Americans “need to see ourselves as part of the solution.”
Like Levenson and Zeller, Sabin is an unlikely opponent of sex offender residency restrictions.
“There’s not one case in the entire U.S. where a child or adult was not assaulted because of residency restrictions — it’s one of the largest wastes of resources and false sense of security things we’ve done yet,” she said.
Doomed to Failure?
Sheriff Zeller said he understood the intent behind residency restrictions and other enacted measures that target sex offenders. But he said we need to re-evaluate our strategies against sex offenders and come up with smarter solutions that are going to have better long-term impact on the problems.
While he said he’s certainly not an advocate for sex offenders, he does fear new laws make it tougher for them to walk the line.
“We’re taking their hope away,” he said. “We’re taking a place [to] stay and a [work]place they can become a productive part of. We are placing all kinds of restrictions on them. They are doomed to failure. … That’s the problem.”
Copyright © 2007 ABC News Internet Ventures
Prisoners of Ideology
March 8, 2007The following article appeared online at CounterPunch. It has been seen on various Blogs, and I include it here to spark critical thought. I have highlighted important aspects and quotes. But first, my thoughts:
The failure of our Criminal Justice System is without a doubt the most important issue facing the citizens of the United States. Our decisions in the next couple of years will affect the future of our societal foundations of liberty and justice. In addition, by extension, it will affect our ability to provide health care, education, and infrastructure spending. As Mr. Gasper points out, we are throwing huge amounts of the public treasury down the black hole of knee-jerk, stupid laws.
In place of embracing proven Restorative justice, we embrace the failed model of RETRUBUTION.
Why? Because it make us feel superior? Perhaps because, it makes us feel safer? ON THE OTHER HAND, is it because we have lost the ability of critical thinking and are more interested in who won on American Idol or Survivor than on the real issues of our society?
Are we truly thinking about the next 50 years or just the next 50 days? Will history remember the Baby-Boomers of America as the most ignorant generation? Will we be remembered as the generation that were so consumed by our own safety and well being, that we sacrificed and abandoned the next generations and the future of the country?
Will we be remembered as a GENERATION OF LOOSERS?
Read the article and decide for yourself.
America’s Draconian Approach to Criminal Justice
Prisoners of Ideology
CounterPunch Magazine / March 2, 2007
By PHIL GASPER
For the past thirty years, the United States has been on an imprisonment binge unprecedented in world history. In 1980, the total number of people incarcerated in the U.S. was 500,000. Today the number stands at 2.2 million, with a further 4.8 million on probation or parole. The total U.S. prison budget increased from $9 billion in 1980 to $61 billion by 2003.
While the U.S. has less than 5 percent of the world’s population, it now has 25 percent of the world’s prisoners. In other words, the country that often proclaims itself the freest in the world, imprisons its population at a rate over six times higher than the rest of the planet. The U.S. incarceration rate stands at 737 per 100,000, over five times higher than Great Britain and over twelve times higher than Norway. The statistics for minority populations are even more shocking. For Latinos, the imprisonment rate is twice the national average. For Blacks it is four times the national average, with over one million African-American men in prison or jail. In 2002, 10.4 percent of all Black males between the ages of 25 and 29 were imprisoned, and the numbers have not improved since then.
In a report presented to Congress last year, the bipartisan Commission on Safety and Abuse in America’s Prisons concluded, “We should be astonished by the size of the prisoner population, troubled by the disproportionate incarceration of African-Americans and Latinos, and saddened by the waste of human potential.” The report found medical and mental health care in prisons to be grossly inadequate, and noted a “desperate need for the kind of productive activities that discourage violence and make rehabilitation possible.”
Another report, issued in February by the Public Safety Performance Project of The Pew Charitable Trusts, predicted that the prison population alone (not including jails, juvenile institutions, and other detention facilities) will rise by 13 percent, or another 192,000 people, over the next five years, at an increased cost of $27.5 billion. The report identified long mandatory minimum prison sentences, reduced use of parole, and harsh parole and probation rules, which often send people to prison for minor violations, as mainly responsible for the increase. “Every additional dollar spent on prisons,” it pointed out, “is one dollar less that can go for preparing for the next Hurricane Katrina, educating young people, providing health care to the elderly or repairing roads and bridges.”
Nowhere is the crisis worse than in California. In 1977, the state had fewer than 20,000 prisoners. Thirty years later the number stands at 173,000. In its first 130 years as a state, California built twelve prisons. Between 1980 and 2005 it added another twenty-one, at enormous cost. Today, California spends $35,000 a year for every prisoner, compared to $7,000 for K-12 students and only $4,500 in support for college and university students.
Yet despite billions spent on new facilities, California’s prisons and jails are bursting at the seams, with many crammed to twice their intended capacity. In nearly every state prison, the gym and every other available space is packed with triple bunk beds, squeezing out opportunities for recreation, education, and rehabilitation. Most California prisons are in a permanent state of lockdown, which confines prisoners to their cramped cells for all but an hour or two a day, while essential services are in a state of collapse. In 2005, a federal court put the California prison health care system under outside control because of its shocking level of deterioration.
While some states have experimented successfully with drug rehabilitation and parole diversion programs, California has failed to reform its parole system and has the highest recidivism rate in the country, with 70 percent returning to prison within three years, often for minor violations such as missing a court appearance. This revolving door costs the state $1.5 billion a year and makes the overcrowding problem even worse.
The situation is so bad, that last October Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger declared a state of emergency in the prisons, and began making arrangements to move thousands of inmates to private prisons in Arizona, Tennessee, and elsewhere. Prison wardens are screening a video trying to persuade prisoners to transfer voluntarily, although so far only a few hundred have agreed. The film includes interviews with prisoners who have already been moved. “They talk to us like humans [here],” says one, “not like animals.” In reality, the private prisons have their own long record of brutality and abuse.
The predictable result of massive overcrowding has been frequent violence and rioting, with Black and Latino prison gangs frequently pitted against each other. In 2006, for example, the Los Angeles County jails were rocked by a series of riots. “There’s no question this city has turned its back on incarcerated youth and turned our jails into a byproduct of such neglect,” said Lita Herron, director of Mothers on the March. “Now we’ve seen the consequences of what happens if we continue to do nothing about it.”
But the situation is similar in many other states. “The explosions of violence we are seeing in Los Angeles are systemic nationwide,” Terry Jungel, past president of the National Sheriffs Association told the media at the time. According to the Christian Science Monitor, Jungel blamed “Years of get-tough-on-crime policies [that] have emphasized rhetoric over funding, and strict confinement instead of programs to address prisoner problems or conditions.”
“Truth in sentencing, three strikes and you’re out-it looks great on paper, but try to make it work,” Connecticut state Representative Michael Lawlor, a former prosecutor, told the Associated Press.
The huge expansion of the U.S. prison population has little to do with the level of crime. According to the most reliable data, U.S. crime rates have been stable or in decline since the mid-1970s. With the notable exception of homicide, crime rates in the U.S. are comparable to those of other developed countries that imprison their inhabitants at a much lower rate. Moreover, public concern about crime is not closely correlated with the actual crime rate, but shifts in relation to the amount of attention given to crime in the media and to the level of political rhetoric.
Conservative politicians first began making crime a major political issue as part of a strategy to roll back the reforms won by social activists in the 1960s. The civil rights movement made it no longer respectable to make openly racist arguments, so political figures declared a war on crime to send a coded racial message to the voters. One of the first was Richard Nixon. In notes taken at an Oval Office meeting shortly after Nixon’s election, H.R. Haldeman, his chief of staff, wrote, “[the President] emphasized that you have to face the fact that the whole problem is really the Blacks. The key is to devise a system that recognizes this while not appearing to.” Ronald Reagan pushed these policies further in the 1980s. At a time when social spending was being slashed and inequality and poverty were increasing, conservatives blamed bad individuals rather than underlying social conditions for crime.
The policies that created the current crisis were pushed not just by Republicans, but by many Democrats too. In California, it was Democratic Governor Jerry Brown who in 1977 eliminated indeterminate sentencing laws, which had allowed parole boards the option of releasing prisoners after serving relatively short sentences. Soon afterwards, the Democratic-controlled legislature eliminated rehabilitation and treatment as goals of the prison system, and passed legislation defining its purpose as only punishment.
During the 1980s, the Democratic legislature in California passed over 1,000 laws increasing the length of mandatory prison terms. According to a study by the Stanford Criminal Justice Center, many of these changes were “enacted as knee-jerk responses by lawmakers to horrific, high-profile and frequently isolated crimes.” They laid the ground for the 1994 passage of Proposition 184, the most draconian “three strikes” law in the country, which mandates life sentences for offenders with two prior serious convictions. Hundreds of people in the state are now serving life sentences for offenses such as petty theft or filing a false DMV application.
The American ruling class is well aware that it needs to solve its major prison crisis, but it finds itself unable to abandon the ideological framework that it has relied on for over thirty years. Once again, California provides a clear example. When Schwarzenegger assumed office in late 2003, he set a goal of reducing California’s prison population by 15,000, renamed the state’s correction department the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, and set up a prison review panel headed by former Republican Governor George Deukmejian. “The key to reforming the system,’ the panel concluded, “lies in reducing the numbers.”
Within a few months, however, the new governor began to reverse himself. In 2004 he played a crucial role in defeating Proposition 66, which would have reformed California’s “three strikes” law to make the third strike a serious or violent crime. Last year, Schwarzenegger also backed Proposition 83, which increases sentences for sex offenders. Rehabilitation programs have been scaled back and as a result, instead of declining, the California prison population has risen by another 12,000.
When progressive reforms have been passed, they have not been given the funds to succeed fully. In 2000, California voters approved Proposition 36, which requires probation and treatment for first-time drug offenders, rather than prison. Researchers say that the law has saved hundreds of millions in incarceration costs since it was enacted, but lack of money means that demand far outruns availability, increasing the likelihood that participants will suffer a relapse while waiting for treatment.
Two-thirds of California’s prisoners read below a ninth-grade level, and over half are functionally illiterate. Despite the fact that education is one of the best ways of reducing recidivism, only 6 percent of prisoners are in academic classes and 5 percent in vocational training. Moreover, many of the work programs are a joke. According to the Washington Post, “they often consist of having an inmate sweep or mop a small section of a hall over and over and over, for six hours.”
In the first half of 2006, two successive secretaries of the corrections department appointed by Schwarzenegger resigned, saying that their attempts to introduce changes had been blocked. One of them, Jeanne Woodford (the former warden of San Quentin), testifying recently in federal court before a judge who is considering whether to put the whole system into receivership, said that her proposals for parole and sentencing reform were derailed by Schwarzenegger’s aides, who told him, “Governor, it’s an election year.” By the end of last year, Schwarzenegger was proposing to borrow almost $11 billion to build two new prisons and expand the capacity of California’s prisons and jails by 80,000. The Governor has proposed a commission to reexamine the state’s sentencing laws, but he also declared that he will oppose any changes to California’s “three strikes” law.
But in February, Schwarzenegger started swinging back in the opposite direction. The San Francisco Chronicle reported that the had “quietly dropped a call he made last year to build new prisons in the same style the state had built in the past,” and backed a plan to move thousands of prisoners to smaller facilities closer to the big cities, with increased resources to help them reenter society on their release. Whether these new plans will come to fruition, and whether they will be adequately funded, remains highly doubtful. More likely, in the next few months Schwarzenegger will again begin to feel the pull of the “tough on crime” ideology on which politicians in both major parties have come to rely.
Meanwhile, the human cost of these policies continues to mount. “It’s always prison, prison, prison. It just corrupts you more,” Rodolfo Salcido, a drug addict who has been in and out of jail for years, told the Los Angeles Times last Christmas. “We need help. We’re sick. It shouldn’t just be back to prison.”
Phil Gasper teaches philosophy at Notre Dame de Namur University in California and writes the bimonthly “Critical Thinking” column for International Socialist Review. He can be reached at pgasper@ndnu.edu
###
The Mainstream Media: A Reality Check
February 26, 2007
Background Information: The Media
In his book, Myths, Lies and Downright Stupidity, ABC reporter John Stossel tells us about “truths often distorted — or disregarded — by the media”. Mr. Stossel speaks to this on the his ABC News web page:
We know that the scarier and more bizarre the story, the more likely it is that our bosses will give us more air time or a front-page slot. The scary story, justified or not, will get higher ratings and sell more papers. Fear sells. That’s the reason for the insiders’ joke about local newscasts: “If it bleeds, it leads.”
What about child abuse stories, again we will let Mr. Stossel speak from his web page:
MYTH: “My teacher molested me.” Kids wouldn’t make up stuff like that!
TRUTH: Yes, they would.
This trendy media scare sent people to jail. Many were innocent of any crime, but they were convicted by the court of public opinion. The witnesses against them were children who testified to horrible events-events which, in many cases, never happened. But when the media express gets rolling, people get run over.
One victim was Kelly Michaels, a New Jersey preschool teacher convicted in 1988 of molesting twenty children in bizarre and sadistic ways. She spent five years in prison before an appeals court ruled that prosecutors had planted suggestions in the minds of the children who testified against her.
I don’t blame the kids; I blame the prosecutors and the media. Reporters’ imaginations and keyboards were fired up in 1983 by accusations of sodomy and satanic abuse at a California day-care center called the McMartin Preschool. The woman who started the barrage of charges was later discovered to be a paranoid schizophrenic. Her claims of devil-worship and sadism were outlandish on their face, but never mind: It was “good copy.” Headlines blared, prosecutors roared, and seven people were charged in a total of 135 criminal counts.
It was nonsense. But the defendants had their lives ruined. The case against them was cooked up by therapists and social workers who planted suggestions in the minds of impressionable children, who then told horrendous tales to prosecutors. The prosecutors also listened to the drumbeats of the media, which stirred a different witches’ brew for every news cycle.
Kids are highly impressionable. We know that, but psychology professor Stephen Ceci proved it in a study at Cornell University. He told me, “We are now discovering that if you put kids who were not abused through the same kind of highly leading, repetitive interview, some of those children will disclose events that seem credible but, in fact, are not borne out in actuality.”
Ceci set up an experiment where he and his researchers asked kids silly questions like:
RESEARCHER Have you ever had your finger caught in a mousetrap and had to go to the hospital?
GIRL No.
RESEARCHER No?
At first, the kids say no. Then, once a week for the next 10 weeks, the researchers ask the question again.
RESEARCHER You went to the hospital because your finger got caught in a mousetrap?
BOY And it- RESEARCHER Did that happen?
BOY Uh-huh.
By week four or six or ten, about half of the kids say, “Yes, it happened.” Many give such precise information that you’d think it must have happened.
RESEARCHER Did it hurt?
BOY Yeah.
RESEARCHER Yeah? Who took you to the hospital?
BOY My daddy, my mommy, my brother.
RESEARCHER Where in your house is the mousetrap?
BOY It’s down in the basement.
RESEARCHER What is it next to in the basement?
BOY It’s next to the firewood.
By the time I met that boy, weeks after the experiment was over, he still “remembered” convincing details about things that never happened.
STOSSEL Was there a time when you got your finger caught in a mousetrap and had to go to the hospital?
BOY Uh-huh.
STOSSEL Who went with you to the hospital?
BOY My mom and my dad and my brother Colin, but not the baby. He was in my mom’s tummy.
What he told me was even more remarkable because just a few days before, his father discussed the experiment with him, explained that it was just a test, and that the mousetrap event never happened. The boy agreed-it was just in his imagination.
But when he talked to me, the boy denied the conversation with his father, and insisted the mousetrap story was true.
STOSSEL Did your father tell you something about the mousetrap finger story?
BOY No.
STOSSEL Is it true? Did it really happen?
BOY It wasn’t a story. It really happened.
STOSSEL This really happened? You really got your finger caught? This really happened?
BOY Yeah.
Why would the boy lie to me? I said to Professor Ceci that I assumed he wasn’t intentionally making up the story. Ceci said, “I think they’ve come to believe it. It is part of their belief system.”
Some molestation “experts” thought they’d come closer to the truth by giving kids anatomically correct dolls. With dolls, the social workers wouldn’t have to ask so many questions. They could just say, “Imagine you are the doll; what did the teacher touch?” Lawyers argued that kids “wouldn’t make up” what had been done to the doll. But Ceci’s colleague Dr. Maggie Bruck conducted tests that showed that they would.
Bruck had a pediatrician add some extra steps to his routine physical examination. He measured the child’s wrists with a ribbon, he put a little label on the child’s stomach, and he tickled the child’s foot with a stick. Never did the doctor go anywhere near the child’s private parts. Then, a few days after the exam, using an anatomically correct doll, Bruck and the child’s father asked leading questions about the doctor’s exam. We caught it on tape.
FATHER So what did he do?
GIRL He put a stick in my vagina.
FATHER He put a stick in your vagina?
GIRL Yeah.
[Then the girl claimed the doctor hammered the stick into her vagina. And she said the doctor examined her rectum.]
DR. BRUCk He was where?
GIRL In my hiney.
None of it was true. But when dolls were used, half the kids who’d never had their private parts touched claimed the doctor touched them. The tests made Dr. Bruck question her prior faith in the testimony of children. She told me she thinks dozens of innocent people are in jail.
Dr. Ceci told me their leading questions were mild compared to what the investigators asked: “What we do . . . doesn’t come close, for example, to what was done in the Kelly Michaels case.”
The appellate court decision that set Kelly Michaels free garnered just a smidgeon of the media attention her trial and conviction got. After she was freed, she told me about her nightmare.
MS. MICHAELS One day you’re getting ready for work and making coffee, minding your business, trying to get along as best you can, being a reasonable, decent, honorable citizen, and the next minute you are an accused child molester with the most bizarre - I’d never even heard of such things even being done.
STOSSEL They say you inserted objects, including Lego blocks, forks, spoons, serrated knives into their anuses, vaginas, penises- MS. MICHAELS And a sword. It was in there.
STOSSEL -and a sword-
MS. MICHAELS Yeah.
STOSSEL -that you made children drink your urine, that you made kids take their clothes off and licked peanut butter off them. It’s very hard to believe, yet the jury believed it and not you.
MS. MICHAELS No one was willing to doubt a child.
The media certainly wasn’t. Professional skepticism took a holiday in the face of “good copy.”
The media likes bad news, and tend to believe it.
http://abcnews.go.com/2020/print?id=1898820
Reality Check:
In the effort to increase readership or viewers, improve ratings and the bottom line, the media is in FACT making children less safe. We will say this again, so there is no mistake as to our position on this subject.
In the effort to increase readership or viewers, improve ratings and the bottom line, the media is in FACT making children less safe.
How is it that surveys showed most teen-agers are more afraid of the “imagined boogie-man” hiding in the bushes, than real dangers that could kill them, like riding in a car with a friend who is driving drunk.
Because of media myths and misinformation, fear-mongering, sensationalizing and trying the accused in the court of public opinion, the media has contributed significantly to children being less safe.
The simple fact is that children are more likely to be abused by a family member, a friend of the family, a trusted clergy member, or someone trusted by the child, like a teacher, or coach; than by a stranger. By focusing our children’s fears on imaginary dangers, we are leading them to believe the real dangers cannot hurt them. How is this making children safer?
Even a recent FBI report stated the problems with media myths and fear-mongering. However, it seems that corporate profits and Neilsen Ratings are more important in the boardrooms and management offices of today media outlets, than the safety of children.
The media continues their misguided concept of interchangeably using words like “sex offender”, “child molester”, “pedophile”, and “predator”. These are yet another way they are making children less safe.
A “sex offender “can be anyone who committed an offense, that state and now some federal laws, determine to be “sexual in nature”. This includes, urinating in public, mooning someone, consensual sex between teen-agers.
(This is the image the media wants you to have when you hear the word “sex offenders”.)
A “child molester” label is, in most states, now given to anyone who has sexual contact or has a sexual advance toward a person under 18, even teen-age consensual sex. In other words, a 17 year old boy, who has sex with a 15 year old girl is now charged and labeled a “child molester”.
A “pedophile” is someone who is attracted to a pre-pubescent child. Someone who has an attraction to a teen-ager is an Ephebophile, and it is not considered the same as pedophilia, by psychologists, unless it interferes with attraction to adults. Labeling all sex offenders as a “pedophile” misinforms parents and children, making the child less safe.
A true “predator” is someone who obtains or tries to obtain, sexual contact with another person, in a metaphorically predatory manner. Former Congressman Mark Foley’s actions could be described as “predatory”. Nevertheless, it would be very inaccurate to describe him as a “sexually violent predator”. When we ascribe “predator” and “sexual violent predator” to all forms of sexual abuse, we dilute their meaning, rendering the terms meaningless, again, we are making children less safe.
Why would the media do all this?
Follow the money trail and it will lead people with the most average of intelligence, to the same conclusion we draw here.
FEAR SELLS!
Here is the REALITY of the matter. NOT ALL SEX OFFENDERS ARE CHILD ABUSERS, SO IS YOUR CHILD REALLY SAFE by portraying this image to them? The FBI does not think so, Psychologist and other experts do not think so. Only media personalities like Nancy Grace, Glen Beck, Bill O’Reilly, or Chris Hansen think so!
Nevertheless, we have to remember, it is TELEVISION, and they are NOT JOURNALIST, EXPERTS or even currently involved in the day-to-day issues of prevention, treatment, and justice. Therefore, why would ANYONE put his or her CHILDREN AT RISK and pay attention to a media personality?
Parents, isn’t time for COMMON SENSE?
