Excerpt from Sex-Crime and Punishment

In the U.S., sexual violence is widespread and deeply disturbing.  Perhaps most troubling, most incidents of sexual violence – be it rape, sexual assault or intimate partner violence – is woefully underreported.  No one really knows how widespread sexual violence is in America.

Nevertheless, sexual violence is an all-American indulgence, mostly perpetuated by males against females and children/youths.  Two decades ago, an apparent wave of sexual violence – often against children — led to a series of Congressional legislation that initiated what is best conceived as “the war on sex crimes.”  Not unlike the war on drugs, war on cancer and war on terror, this war was equally overplayed and did little to address the problem it was ostensibly intended to defeat.

The war on sex crimes was launched in 1994 when Pres. Bill Clinton signed the Jacob Wetterling Crimes Against Children and Sexually Violent Offender Registration Act.  (The bill was named after an 11-year-old boy, Jacob Wetterling, from St. Joseph, MN, kidnapped in 1989 and whose remains were recently discovered.)  Two years later, Congress added the “Megan’s Law” section to the Wetterling Law that required sex offenders to register with local law enforcement officials and gave the public access to previously private sex-offender information, including the person’s name, photograph and address.  (The law was named after Megan Kanka, a 7-year-old raped and murder by her Hamilton Township, NJ, neighbor, Jesse Timmendequas, a known sex offender.)

In 2006, the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act further toughened the original Wetterling Law, including requiring those registered to periodically visit their local police and adhere to the residence restriction requirements.  (Adam Walsh was a 7-year-old boy abducted from a Hollywood, FL, department store in July 1981 and whose dead body was found two weeks later in a drainage canal.)

According to one group of experts, “the United States has the most draconian sex registration laws in the world.”  Today, some 750,000 people are on the registered sex offenders.

The Wetterling Law – along with the follow-up legislation – is based on two questionable premises.  First, sex offenders were believed to be likely to reoffend; in effect, once a sex offender, always a sex offender. Second, sex offenders, especially those targeting children and young people, were thought to be unknown strangers.  Both premises have been shown to be false.

With regard to the first assumption, researcher at the University in Florida found that the 75 percent of general public believes sex offenders will reoffend.  However, sex offenders have a far lower rate of recidivism than average convicted felons.  According to a recent U.S. government study, “the average sexual recidivism rate found was 13.7 percent and the average overall recidivism rate was 36.9 percent, based on an average followup period of 5 to 6 year.”

With regard to the second assumption, in 2015, the National Sexual Violence Resource Center estimated that rape was widespread.  It found that nine out of 10 (91%) people who have been raped or suffered sexual assault were women and in eight out of 10 cases of rape, the victim knew the assailant, often an intimate partner. This is also the case of rape committed among young people.  A 2014 Bureau of Justice Statistics report found that while rape and sexual assault was slightly higher among nonstudents (7.6 per 1,000) than for students (6.1 per 1,000), four-fifths (80%) of the victims, both student and nonstudent, knew the perpetrator.

Two additional questions about the sex-offender registry pose equally challenging concerns.  First, should children be on a “sex offender” registry?; and, second, how can someone ever get off the registry?  Human Rights Watch (HRW) recently reported on the plight of Jacob C., an 11-year-old living in Michigan who was tried in juvenile court for touching, without penetrating, his sister’s genitals. Found guilty of one count of criminal sexual conduct,‪‪‪ Jacob was placed on Michigan’s sex offender registry and prevented by residency restriction laws from living near other children.

HRW warns, “the harm befalling youth sex offenders can be severe.”  It details some of the long-term consequences of being marked with the modern scarlet letters, “SO,” sex offender:

Youth sex offenders on the registry experience severe psychological harm. They are stigmatized, isolated, often depressed. Many consider suicide, and some succeed. They and their families have experienced harassment and physical violence. They are sometimes shot at, beaten, even murdered; many are repeatedly threatened with violence. Some young people have to post signs stating “sex offender lives here” in the windows of their homes; others have to carry drivers’ licenses with “sex offender” printed on them in bright orange capital letters.

Finally, how can a person who once committed a sex crime get off the registry?  It’s really difficulty.  In a detail analysis of the registry removal process, the Roberts Law Group notes: “Offenders do not become eligible to have their information removed until they have been on the registry for a minimum of 10 years. After this period of time, so long as the offender has not received another conviction for an offense requiring registration, the offender then may petition the superior court to have his or her registration terminated.”  All requested are not granted.

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