11th Circuit weighs in on draconian AL law
Paul Dubbling, an outstanding attorney with whom NARSOL works, is representing a Person Forced to Register (PFR) in Alabama who simply wants to live under the same roof as his young son.
Alabama Code §15-20A-11(d)(4) states: “No adult sex offender shall reside or conduct an overnight visit with a minor,” including the offender’s own children if “the adult sex offender has been convicted of any sex offense involving a child.”
This Alabama law imposes, without a hearing, a lifetime, non-appealable ban on living with one’s own children.
Federal judges in the 11th Circuit (which covers Alabama, Georgia, and Florida) are weighing whether the law was narrowly tailored to prevent abuse.
In some ways, Alabama is a worse state than Florida is for PFR’s.
If someone convicted of a sex offense against a child, in Alabam’r, is the sole parent of a child (say 8 years old) who would live in the same house, and there’s no one willing or able to house the child, does the state just send the child to the child services department to live like an orphan? The kid can’t live alone, right?
That’s precisely what would happen. I was a ward of the state of Alabama from ages 14-19. The general rule is to place you with eligible family members as soon as possible, but they have to be approved. So the child in this instance would get sent to foster care, and if the child raises a fuss, they get labeled a delinquent and shipped off to camps. I ran away from a foster home and got sent to a series of juvenile internment camps. The system is pretty brutal there.
I spent a year in a hellhole called Eufaula Adolescent Center. That place was shut down for rampant abuses committed by the guards there.
@Derek
So sorry to hear that Derek. Many of us had rough childhoods. My Father was never around (Was fighting in Vietnam) and whenever he would come back from a tour (Before being shipped off somewhere else) my Mom would tell my Dad how bad I had been and I got a beaten with a belt, and one time almost got my teeth knocked out.
My Dad is still alive and almost 90. We rarely talk about the past but our childhood situations can really mess some of us up.