By Pat Pratt . . . A woman barred by her church from a marathon to fight hunger and a man who saw hatred spewed so often his daughter was forced to move and his wife took her own life — they and others are seeking removal from Missouri’s life-long sex offender registry, arguing it is unconstitutionally cruel. The children…
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By Sandy Rozek . . . “I’d like to talk to you about a situation involving a sex offender here in Georgia.” It was similar to dozens of calls I receive as communications director of NARSOL, and the soft voice explained what the situation was. A man in Cochran, Georgia, a man on that state’s sexual offense registry, was being…
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By Maggie Hall . . . Calls for public access to information about convicted child sex offenders occur often in Australia. It may seem like common sense that allowing the public to know the whereabouts of dangerous people should increase community safety. As in many areas of criminal justice, the real story is more complicated. . . . Child sex offenders are…
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By Michael M . . . Here in America, we like to think that people who are convicted of a crime will be punished by court decree and according to the laws of the land, not by roving bands of killers and arsonists. We also like to believe that it is only in tin-pot dictatorships like North Korea or in…
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By Sandy . . . “Hero punches pedophile.” That’s the name of a campaign on GoFundMe, a campaign designed to raise money for the defense and as a “thank you” for Kevin Smith, a man who, in best vigilante style, leapt across the courtroom at the sentencing of Donnie Briggs in Medford, Oregon, who was being sentenced on a conviction…
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By Jackie Mundry . . . In 2006, William Elliot was sought out and shot because he was a registered sex offender. On Sunday, he will be honored by the Maine chapter of Parents of Murdered Children. His mother, Shirley Turner, says he was on this list because he had consensual sex with an underage girlfriend. “But he was 19…
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By Michael M . . . It is easy for some people to feel that no matter how oppressive the hardships imposed upon former sex offenders may be, they probably deserved it. The most common refrain we see posted by unsympathetic social media commentators typically contains some variation of, “He (or she) should have thought of that before they committed…
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By Sandy . . . Each day’s emails and email alerts in my inbox always include at least one especially disturbing situation that threatens the ability of those on the registry to be allowed to resume a normal life, no matter how long ago the offense that caused the registration. The planets must have been in a particularly evil alignment when…
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By Josh Sweigart . . . Derek Logue is a member of one of the few groups it is socially acceptable for people to openly hate. He knows online comments on this story will likely refer to him in the most vulgar terms, and no one will come to his defense. But Logue said people like him are being unfairly…
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By Sandy . . . It has happened again. A person on the registry was shot and killed by a vigilante. According to the source, “A Las Vegas man told his neighbor he killed two homeless people behind a central-valley swap meet because one of them was a sex offender, court documents show.” The other person just happened to be there and,…
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