Articles written by NARSOL.
By Sandy . . . We are at an interesting crossroads in regard to the craze that started sweeping the country around 2008 (see http://with-justiceforall.blogspot.com/2014/11/sex-offenders-and-halloween-will-it.html). As with almost everything I write, I wake up around 5:30 or 6 with the opening text, or the heading, or a few times the ending, being written in my head. This morning it was…
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By Sandy . . . NARSOL and its affiliates make a special effort to keep abreast of trends as they pop up in various parts of the country and to evaluate them for the effects they will have on registered citizens. Not many states, for example, have actual state laws mandating Halloween restrictions for registrants, yet this past legislative session…
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Updated Oct. 2019: Some Patch editors, to give them credit, are, along with their red-dot — or blue-dot — maps, including some of the actual facts concerning Halloween and children and sexual crime and those on the registry, and a few are even re-running the letter of protest sent to Patch editors by us in 2017. Then, not so much…
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By Sandy . . . One of the issues that we keep high on our radar is that of business and social entities excluding persons who are listed on sexual offense registries. Nextdoor.com is one about which reports have come in periodically. Nextdoor bills itself as “the private social network for your neighborhood.” It’s like a limited Facebook: no charge…
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By Sandy . . . On September 12, NARSOL was asked to submit written testimony regarding damages done by the sexual offense registry, with emphasis on recommended changes. We were asked to focus on two issues: the harm caused by retroactive application of registry requirements to those who had established stable lives and the importance of providing a clear path…
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UPDATE: The school district has denied the details of the incident as reported in the article I linked and here. I am attempting to investigate further, but if I don’t get any further confirmation of the facts as they have been presented, I will remove the post. By Sandy . . . “That just has to be all.” One of…
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By Sandy . . . The Alpena News, in reporting about the situation in Michigan where deadlines for registry reform set by the court have been ignored by Michigan legislators, used the opportunity to “enlighten” the public with some statistics about persons on the registry. “Data released in May by the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics indicates sex offenders are…
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Names in quotation marks are pseudonyms; names with none are used with permission or are publicly known figures. By Sandy . . . “Evan” is 71 years old. He was charged with viewing illegal pornography, a federal internet crime. That was eight years ago. He did not come to trial for four years after being charged. He was sentenced to…
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By Sandy . . . Seventeen years ago in Grayson County, Virginia, a fourteen-year-old boy named David and a 26-year-old woman named Shelly set in motion events that would reverberate for months, years, and decades to come. The background story: David was a troubled youth. By fourteen he was intimately familiar with the juvenile justice system in Virginia. His legal…
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Reposted from August 14, 2018 By NARSOL . . . In view of recent developments in the case of Galen Baughman in Virginia, NARSOL restates its unequivocal opposition to the civil commitment process occurring in at least twenty states and in the federal system. Paul Shannon, NARSOL’s board chair, states, “NARSOL opposes the practice of civilly committing sexual offenders to…
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