The flip side of the sex offender argument

[CatWoman]

I'm torn here between the rights of the abused children, and the rights of someone who has paid his debt to society.

Convicted sex offender commits suicide over neighborhood signs

The Associated Press
OCALA, Fla. -- A convicted sex offender apparently committed suicide in despair over signs posted in his neighborhood calling him a "child rapist."

Clovis Ivan Claxton was found dead by his father Thursday with one of the signs beside his body, less than a day after his release from a psychiatric hospital.

The Marion County Sheriff's Office is investigating, and autopsy was scheduled for Friday.

Claxton's death follows the high-profile arrests of sex offenders in the separate killings of two Florida girls less than seven weeks apart. State lawmakers have responded by passing a bill to require lifetime supervision of some child sex offenders.

Bright yellow, laminated signs displaying Claxton's picture, date of birth, address and the words "child rapist" appeared earlier this week on utility poles in his neighborhood after a county commissioner proposed posting such information in the community. The sheriff rejected the idea.

http://www.heraldtribune.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050422/APN/504220526

[rodeodance]

1. so am I

....I'm torn here between the rights of the abused children, and the rights of someone who has paid his debt to society.

[podnoi]

16. Even DUrs get hysteria - Here are FACTS - Most do not recommit

http://www.johnhoward.ab.ca/PUB/respaper/treatm02.htm

Seems like some science could be done to study and seperate risk from those who will likely rehabilitate.

[Pushed To The Left]

2. They need to indentify the real "sex offenders"

I've heard that somebody who urinates in public can be registered as a sex offender. If that is true, then I think they need to change the definition. Lumping a public urinator with a child molester is just a pure lack of common sense.

[coloradodem2005]

9. How is public urination a sex offense?

I am curious as to what the logic behind that is.

[Book Lover]

11. "Indecent exposure"

I don't agree, I'm just saying that's the logic.

[JHB]

12. It requires exposing the genitals in a public area...

...even if that "public area" is a dim corner behind a dumpster.

It may depend on the particulars of the local law, but such offenses will often include a chare of "indecent exposure", and thus a "sex offender" tag.

[readmoreoften]

21. I read an article in the Dallas Observer

about a young dumb guy who was drunk at a public swimming pool and pulled his trunks down on the diving board and did a little dance for his buddies. A 11 or 12 year old girl and her mother were in the vicinity and pressed charges.

He got 12 years in prison and has to register for life now. The article said that in therapy he was not doing well 'admitting' that he was a sex offender 'just like the others' (they were child rapists). He said that he hated the other patients and was nothing like them.

I felt very bad for this guy. It was inappropriate, but worthy of 12 years and a lifetime label as a pedophile? That demeans the word and the concept.

I think child rapists should never be let out on the street and guys peeing in bushes should be given a ticket. How 'bout some sanity...

[Dorian Gray]

27. It happens,

which is why I think that NY lists only level three offenders on it's Megan's Law site. (Those are the people who have committed serious crimes.)

I don't think that level one and two offenders are made public, though there are probably means to do so.

I feel sorry for this man, but if I had children, I would not want him to live in my neighborhood. I probably wouldn't have signs on my lawn about it, but the neighborhood didn't physically attack him, either.

[noamnety]

3. I don't understand the purpose of the signs

Shouldn't parents in general know not to leave their children unsupervised, because rapists - or potential rapists - could in theory be anywhere?


Are the posters meant to imply that every other stranger is okay to leave your kid around? I don't mean to be snippy, but I honestly don't see what good they good possibly do. If it's supposed to be a public awareness campaign, then a generic "child molestors live in this community; please watch your child" poster would be better. This appears to be aimed at generated hatred towards an individual rather than protecting anyone.

[hfojvt]

20. what is unsupervised?

What if you leave your child with another adult? A neighbor or a friend, someone you have known for 3 or 4 years. Except you never knew about that person's criminal record.

[noamnety]

22. So what if you do?

1. The implication by posting his face on posters is that every other person is safe. And that's just not true. It gives people a false sense of security. It's the local equivalent of "we'll fight the terrorists in Iraq instead of at home" - as if the one negates the existence of the other.

2. A lot of states put a database online that you can check to see if there are sex offenders in the community. While it obviously infringes on a person's privacy also, it's a bit different in that it's more of a resource for research, that you could check before leaving a child with someone, rather than old west style WANTED posters designed to inflict themselves on every waking moment of a person's life and friendships.

[wakeme2008]

4. The guy that killed Jessica had told police after

his first conviction with a 5 yo that he could not control himself... The police blew him off. Jessica died because of that.

Also about the guy that killed himself..

"She said her son required constant care and recently relied on leg braces and a wheelchair."

[Eloriel]

5. I would be, but for one fact

there is NO "cure" for this type of sexual perversion. All child molesters (and indeed all rapists of adults) are serial child molesters. They are also not very good at not acting out on their perversions. Again, there is no cure.

Surely you have some idea of the lifetime of pain that being the victim of child sexual abuse causes, and the CYCLE of abuse being victiminzed fosters (child victims grow up to be perps or, if not, often the parent of other child victims).

I am heartbroken when anyone commits suicide -- I am also heartbroken that the person who felt driven to that length was once upon a time an innocent child himself who became a victim. But he's an adult now and responsible for his actions -- it's not as if he doesn't have the opportunity to have known that his fantasies and actions were wrong.

We must STOP the cycle of abuse. We must. I don't have all the answers, but I'll tip in favor of trying to protect today's children from being victimzed rather than trying to protect the rights of perpetrators -- edited to add: IF I'm forced to make a choice (and is it possible or could we arrange things so that it's a false choice??).

[G_j]

10. "Countdown" gave a slightly conflicting story to this

according to that story when he was twenty Claxton and the nine year old "exposed themselves" to each other. In eighteen years he had had no repeat offenses.

From the above article:
"Claxton was convicted in Washington state in 1991 of molesting a 9-year-old girl. He was 20 at the time, but his mother said he was developmentally much younger due to a brain injury."

Another point emphasized in the Countdown story was that the original signs were altered by someone to say "Child Rapist" something he had not been charged with.

[Occulus]

28. Eloriel, there is something about these laws you should know

The sex offender laws often lump in people who pee into a bush because they just can't hold it any longer with those who molest and otherwise sexually abuse children. Also, these laws are sometimes ridiculously ambiguous- in Michigan, for example, one form of "molestation" includes touching a child anywhere between the knee and the groin. No overt sex act is required.

Further, when we teach children that it's always bad for someone to touch them "down there", and we further teach them to tell an adult they trust and the problem will "go away", well, sometimes it makes them think, and think hard, about whether they could say the same about an adult who didn't touch them "down there", just to get rid of that adult. Think stepchildren who hate their new stepparent with a passion, and would do anything to make them leave, and you'll get an idea of where I'm going.

The problem with that is, once the child realizes that their little lie cost that person a whole lot, if they try to recant, all too often the state won't buy their recanted story at all. Even if the child comes forward moths or years later, the person they accused doesn't stand a chance at all most of the time to get their charges reversed. Even if the charges do get reversed, there's always the stigma of having been accused, and some people will not believe the child's new story.

I have very close personal knowledge of how damnably easy it is to get someone accused of a sex offense. The punishment for these crimes goes far, far beyond jail time, fines, and restitution. Try, for example, to get a job- any job- once you've been convicted of a sex offense.

My partner had the lightest sentence the lawyers we've spoken to have ever seen for a sex offense- he got three years probation, fines, and restitution, and he got to keep joint custody of his daughter with unsupervised visitation rights. It was only two years later that the sex offender registry came into being, and in spite of the registry not being part of his sentence, it was applied to all, even after their convictions and sentences were done and over with.

My partner fell asleep on the couch and his stepson crawled up onto the couch to lay next to him. While sleeping, the back of my partner's hand flopped over onto the kid's groin. THAT was the extent of my partner's "offense".

The "victim" testified to the fact that his stepfather was sleeping and the hand didn't move at all after it landed in his groin. In other words, my partner didn't have any knowledge that it had happened and in fact was not in control of any of his faculties at the time (since he was completely asleep).

To put it quick and easy, my partner was set up. His wife at the time came into the room and saw a lucrative divorce proceeding lying in her son's groin. And guess what? That's exactly what she got- everything. House, car, comic book collection worth several thousand dollars (which she foolishly burned), all the credit cards, and physical custody of the kids. Jackpot, and my partner has paid the price with his freedom, his dignity, and no small part of his very sanity.

My partner hates kids now. Won't go near them, ever. He hardly leaves the house at all because his photo is on the internet and all it would take is some crazy dickwad to ruin it all for him all over again- try defending yourself from such when you already have a felony record thanks to the sex offense... when he was on probation for that, he wasn't allowed to take any defensive action whatever if attacked- his probation officer told him any contact with the police would land him behind bars again. I was with him when his P.O. told him that, by the way; ?I know he's not making that one up! So, if he had been attacked for being a sex offender or for in fact any other reason, he would have had to either allow himself to be beaten to a pulp or swing his fist even once in self-defense and go straight back to jail.

Then there's employment. Temp agencies and even some fast food places wouldn't even consider him, both because of the felony he has thanks to all this and the nature of the felony. He's on disability now due to deep, untreatable clinical depression (the source of the depression- his felony status, completely undeserved, will never be dealt with because the law will not allow it). We can't even petition for his conviction to get reversed, since sex offenses are a "special case" and not eligible for reversal, no matter the circumstances or specifics of the case.

His ex wife could come forward and say she made it all up, say it directly to the judge who handled his case, say it to the prosecutor's office, hell, she could go on Oprah and tell the whole nation, and there wouldn't be a bat's dot we could do about it.

I'm sorry, but what happened to him tells me the handling of sex offense cases is arbitrary, often sloppy, and unjust at its base. For relatively small crimes- like peeing in a bush, or flopping around in your sleep- we are willing to inflict "justice" to such an extent that we often lose sight of whether there's really a victim at all.

While it is true that there are REAL sex offenders out there, my partner IS NOT one of them, yet gets exactly the same treatment as a child rapist- which he has been called before. I've come to the conclusion that it was the hysteria that got him more than anything else, the sex offender registries are wrong, and should not be public information to all comers, but should be held a zealously guarded by police. Any and all information about sex offenders should be kept behind glass and available only to those who can demonstrate that they in fact live in the area they are inquiring about. This information SHOULD NOT be online for all to see, and the convictions thamselves should NOT be an employment issue if no children are involved with the job.

I've seen too much undeserved "justice" on this issue for me to conclude that the registries are anything but a sort-of good idea gone horribly wrong. I am against the sex offender registries, and believe they should be abolished, or at least removed completely from pulic view.

[Misunderestimator]

33. Really, really good post!

And I am so sorry for the agonies you and your partner must endure because of all this.

[Az]

6. I pin the blame our vengence based justice system

The focus of our justice system is exacting revenge on criminals. As if doing something to them somehow balances the books somewhere. Nothing we ever do to these people will balance the books. Harm was done. For some people that harm will live on till the day they die. There is no righting the initial act.

But we can change the future. We can truly try to rehabilitate those that do crimes. Instead of exacting some false sense of vengence we can try to repair as much damage as possible. Educate these people or get them the treatment they need to return to society.

I suspect the notion of vengence holds strong to our minds because of part of how we learn. Our minds are wired to learn by copying our parents and guardians. Later after we begin to expand our awareness we start taking in other examples. One of the early concepts we pick up on is that when we are affected by something negative it is sometimes advantageous to return the effect to the one that gave it to us to show them what it felt like. In this way hopefully they will learn that they are harming others.

This is a childs view of crime and punishment. They are at a developmental level where they may not be aware of the harm they are causing when they hurt others. But as we grow and develop more complex understanding of things such vengence type responses don't work as effectively any more. Particularly for extreme criminal forms of behaviour (it may still be effective on small scale scenarios where another may not be aware of the harm they are causing).

In the case of behaviour that becomes criminal a simple act of vengence is not going to effect them sufficiently. In fact it may have the reverse effect in distancing them from the rest of society. Thus when they return to the streets they are alienated and removed from the interests of society and feel no compulsion to comply with its complex structures.

[KittyWampus]

30. Vengence Or Redemption. Which Is More Christian-like?

which is backed most forcefully by the GOP and Fundies?

[mike_c]

7. I'm not torn....

I still believe in the ideal that punishment is a debt to society, and that once paid, the convicted is due the same consideration as anyone else who is innocent until proven guilty of further crimes. Publicizing past crimes-- especially when done specifically to exploit the social stigma that accompanies some crimes-- is little different than shunning, or wearing a scarlet letter. It's antithetical to democratic justice, IMO.

The basis for this idea is that sex offenders do not rehabilitate well, if at all. If that's the case, then our justice system's methods for dealing with them are flawed. Making them pariahs after they serve their sentence certainly isn't going to help matters. I think it's fundamentally unfair to take that circumstance out on the offender when he/she has done their time and been released under the law.

[FloridaPat]

8. I saw one of those dumb afternoon talk shows once that had 6 of

those guys on it. They had been recently released from prison and they all said the same thing - they will never be cured. Ever. Since they can't be reformed, society is going to have to find another way to deal with these guys. Forget the "debt to society" guilt trip - they will strike again.

But then as others say, the definition is too broad. People who actually attack children should not be included with others who do not.

[northzax]

37. actually, knowing that they won't be 'cured' is the first step

it's like alcoholics or drug addicts, they will never be 'cured' of their disease, but they can learn to deal with it, to resist the temptation to relapse.

ask the people on this board who, every day, resist temptation from drugs or alcohol, it can be done.

[Cleita]

13. I don't think sex offenders should spend their lives in jail after they

paid their debt, but I think they should be institutionalized in a place that they can live out their lives in a productive way and AWAY FROM CHILDREN. The real ones (not the ones that are deemed sex offenders like the public urinator without being real sex offenders)can't change. They don't need to suffer the prison system all their lives but they shouldn't be in our neigborhoods.

In my county alone they are scattered throughout residential neighborhoods often living with a relative, but you know they come into contact with children everyday and that's not right. There are maps on the internet showing where these people live, but really, do we have to keep watching the guy in that house that's been designated as the residence of a sex offender?

Also, many sex offenders, the honest ones, will tell you they can't be trusted and to keep them away from children because they don't know if they will be able to resist the temptation. So why put ourselves and especially our children in that jeopardy.

[sandnsea]

19. That's what I think too

No need to humiliate them for the rest of their lives. But we certainly ought to be able to have some sort of regulated and very secure apartment project for them or something. It's just a sad situation, but we've got to protect our kids. The thing is, I think if somebody was truly "recovered", they'd actually understand society's response to the potential danger and not object.

[KittyWampus]

31. There Are Group Homes That've Worked. Like AA, They Are Able To

inter-relate and help one another keep on the path.

NPR had a show about a woman who ran such a group home for sex-offenders in a community.


It proved effective.

[Misunderestimator]

35. A brain-injured man who was developmentally much younger than his 20 years

at the time... and all we know is that it was "molestation," not rape... should he be institutionalized for life?

In that case, my brother should be institutionalized too, though he was younger, he was not developmentally disabled. There is too much gray here to unequivocally say that all "sex-offenders" should be insitutionalized for life and kept from children.

Those maps you talk about include the entire spectrum of sex-offenders, from statutory rape where the "victim" is barely under age and the "perpetrator" barely over, men peeing in public, and some innocent people who have pled their cases down since they can't afford the defense or the publicity, not realizing that they will be branded for life. Including all those numbers in with the ones who really are threats doesn't help anyone.

[Cleita]

38. My post particularly designates those that are

real sex offenders defined by clinicians, not politicians, meaning those who will molest and worse again if given the opportunity. I guess I should have been more specific. Thanks for making me explain.

Yes, and you did point out another problem with those maps, they stigmatize and invade the privacy of those who are not really clinical sexual predators and really they shouldn't exist from that point of view.

[Misunderestimator]

39. Sorry to misread you...

I normally agree with most of what you write... should have looked at the poster first. :hi:

I agree that as long as we can absolutely prove the crime, for those sorts of crimes, we should incarcerate them.

[Gyre]

14. In California, PC 290 registrants

are typically those who've been convicted of "serious or violent" felony assaults (like forcible rape or felony child molestation).

I feel more sorry for their victims than I do them.

Gyre

[Az]

15. How bout they clarify what is incurable and what isn't

The problem here is that they paint with too broad a brush. And as to incurable that is a misnomer as well. There are many ways of curing most extreme forms of sexual predation including such extremes as chemical castration.

And if a person is determined to be such a threat to society with no hope of ever being rehabilitated then why are they released back into society? If they are incurable then that suggests they should be somewhere where they can be safe and society can be safe from them.

I truly believe that there is a lot of misinformation concerning this issue running around in the media. It makes for good numbers. Anything that threatens children gets people's attention. They aren't going to tell you that there is nothing to worry about. They want to stoke the fear.

[OneBlueSky]

17. the leap from "controlling" sex offenders to similarly controlling

all "sexual deviants" (i.e. all gays and lesbians) is a short one indeed . . .

as is the subsequent leap to controlling ALL "deviants" -- sexual, religious, AND political . . .

think about it . . .

[noamnety]

23. you make a good point

and the posters on every telephone pole are the modern day equivalent of having to wear a star or a triangle on your clothes at all times.

[Ms. Toad]

24. As are laws currently proposed in Texas

(and on their way to introduction elsewhere) which prohibit gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and transgendered persons from adopting or fostering children, and which prohibit placement of a child in to a home for adoption or foster care in which any of the above individuals live.

[MsConduct]

18. Whether or not the person has "paid their debt to society" the

abused child will never recover. There is really no paid in full when it comes to child molesters. Just MHO.

[coffeenap]

25. Link to email mr. harris here

http://www.marioncountyfl.org/email_forms/webmail_form.asp?titleCode=Commissioner%20Harris

[hector459]

26. Now, if only ALL the child molesters in EVERYONE's family would only

step forward! I know you are out there. Some of you even attended the church Sunday and some were sitting in the group attending the Sunday fillibuster program. If you would come forward now, maybe you could get some much needed help.

[Egalitariat]

29. Clovis Claxton lived in my zip code. I'm glad he's gone

Of course, I would rather he moved than kill himself, but that would have just made him someone else's problem.

These people have no rights. They never pay their debt to society. If you molest a child, there is no way to repay that. The debt is too high.

I don't feel bad for them. Put an ankle bracelet and a scarlett letter on all of them.

[northzax]

40. how can any criminal repay society for his/her crime?

how can someone who steals return the feeling of safety to the victim? how can someone who destroys replace the irreplaceable? How can someone who maims replace the damaged limb?

Frankly, I think we should abolish the concept of rehabilitation totally. for all crimes, one strike and you're out. There is little street crime in Riyadh, thieves have their hand cut off. So let's do that. I don't think this particular crime is any more horrendous than serial crimes of other sorts, so I favour execution, immeidate and summary for all people convicted of crimes that have a high recividism rate. isn't that what you want here?

[Misunderestimator]

32. That is so sad... A COUNTY COMMISSIONER ordered the fliers?

That's incredible. We don't know a thing about this man, except that he was brain-injured at the time of the molestation and it happened when he was 20, with NO recidivism in 18 years, and he uses crutches and a WHEELCHAIR.

[Divameow77]

34. Level 3 sex offenders

are supposed to be considered most likely to reoffend, if that is the case how closely are they being monitored? Dru Sjodin's killer was not monitored closely enough to save her life.
When an 18 year old has sex with a 15 year old, does he have the sex offender label for the rest of his life? Yes he deserves to be punished for statutory rape but for the rest of his life?
People deserve to know information that will help them to protect their children, but do they have the right to ruin a persons life when they may not understand the true nature of that persons crime?

[Misunderestimator]

36. Yes, that 18 year old will be branded for life.