The Sex Offender Registry Fails Again: Sextortion Crimes Continue to Rise Across Tampa Bay Area
ABC Action News for Tampa Bay reports that sextortion crimes targeting children are up by 67% in the past year. And similar crimes against adults are up by 47%.
We note that this increase took place during a time when Florida had in place, the most robust, most draconian sex offender registration scheme it has ever had, viewed by some as the strictest such scheme in the country.
For lawmakers who create sex offender registries, and agencies and contractors that enforce them, the stated intention is prevention of sexual offenses. And sextortion— extorting someone for a nude picture— is clearly a sexual offense. We wonder how the registry’s proponents would account for the apparent discrepancy between record-high registration enforcement and record-high sextortion.
Who is committing these new crimes? The news outlet interviewed Detective Henry Snowden of the St. Petersburg Police Department, who identified the sextortion surge, discussed how sextortionists operate, and sextortionists’ typical profile. Wisely, not once did Det. Snowden suggest that any of these criminals could be found on the sex offender registry. When asked about sextortion prevention, Det. Snowden mentioned multiple measures, but he did not mention registry enforcement.
Where are these new crimes taking place? The news outlet reported these crimes to have taken place on Snapchat, dating apps, and gaming platforms. This surprised us, for two reasons. First, Florida law requires all persons that the state designates as sexual offenders, to register their Snapchat identities, dating app usernames, and (when used for direct user to user social communication) even gaming platform usernames, to local authorities, who forward this information to the FDLE. Second, many such platforms already have a policy of disabling any accounts belonging to registered sex offenders. With such apparently robust and overlapping policies in place, we question how it is that local authorities, state authorities, and multiple social apps, all combined, still failed to prevent a 67% increase in sextortion of children.
So how can we protect our children from sextortion? ABC Action News asked a therapist this question. And the therapist outlined multiple protective measures. But what the therapist did not identify as a protective measure, was checking the registry. This was not even mentioned, despite the fact that the registry is public and instantly available to all community members with an internet connection.
The sex offender registry does nothing to prevent sextortion. It is in no way a tool for prevention, and no amount of additional registry legislation or enforcement will be able to change that.
I feel like this article focuses to narrowly on sextortion that in emphasizing the registry absolutely useless scope of “preventing” sex crimes, it dilutes the emphasis all together. It doesn’t matter what sex crimes are committed, the registry is nothing more than a phantom horror story told to frighten the gullible and weak minded that want to believe that government can & does protect them. When the truth is the greatest threat to children arent on the Registry & actually reside in their very homes.
I know of a teen victim of this. When it was retorted to police, police said there was nothing they could do about it. They said the parents just needed to do a better job watching what their kid was doing online.
This was shocking to hear especially since they had conducted sting operations online to supposedly help protect kids online from “predators” who were targeting kids to exploit and abuse.
Turns out they don’t care about real cases of this. They only care about fake cases of this that they themselves create. This along with many more disturbing facts make it very clear that their sting operations and efforts have nothing to do with trying to save or protect kids online from any of this.
Aracely, real cases would require actual effort and real investigating on the part of the police. Far too much to expect from them. 🙄
Moat people on the registry are there for family related cases and very rarely for stranger danger cases.
I thought Snowden resides in Moscow now, not St. Petersburg.
(I could be wrong in any number of ways. 🤷🏻♂️)
This is not to mention the groups of men who recently exposed themselves to children during gay “pride” parades in the State of Washington. Many other men have been sent to prison and/or placed on registries for doing the same thing, but in private or public without the parade theme and modern politics.
Look at the comments under the article for the following:
The Sex Offender Registry Fails Again!
This increase took place during a time when Florida had in place, the most robust, most draconian sex offender registration scheme it has ever had, viewed by some as the strictest such scheme in the country.
These crimes have taken place on Snapchat, dating apps, and gaming platforms. This is surprising, for two reasons. First, Florida law requires all persons that the state designates as sexual offenders, to register their Snapchat identities, dating app usernames, and (when used for direct user to user social communication) even gaming platform usernames, to local authorities, who forward this information to the FDLE. Second, many such platforms already have a policy of disabling any accounts belonging to registered sex offenders (across the nation). With such robust and overlapping policies in place, the question is, how is it that local authorities, state authorities, and multiple social apps, all combined, still failed to prevent a 67% increase in sextortion of children.
How can we protect our children from sextortion? ABC Action News asked a therapist this question. And the therapist outlined multiple protective measures. But what the therapist did not identify as a protective measure, was checking the registry. This was not even mentioned, despite the fact that the registry is public and instantly available to all community members with an internet connection.
The sex offender registry does nothing to prevent sextortion or other crime
Ivan see why FL has the mist strict sex offender laws in America. It’s because they work, not!
New sex crimes are not committed by people on the registry; but by those not on the registry.
How can they get their eyes opened and get their heads out of the sand.