FAC’s Website – Growing Stronger and Informing More People about the Sex Offender Registry

Dear Members and Advocates,

Over the past few years, the Florida Action Committee website, www.floridaactioncommittee.org, has grown significantly. What started as a static website is now a news portal for important updates on matters impacting registrants. It is a resource for studies and articles on sex offender issues. It is also a forum to exchange information and ideas – a community for our organization to share thoughts in a welcoming environment.

Our site traffic has increased by seven hundred percent over the last three years. We currently have almost 2000 articles posted with over eleven thousand comments. We had more than eight thousand visits to our site last month, with 38.2% of those visits being from people finding us for the first time. As you can imagine, a lot of work goes into maintaining our site and posting relevant content. With the rapidly increasing traffic, we are working harder to ensure our site remains the useful resource it is intended to be.

Some of you may have noticed that certain of your comments have not been posted or were not posted in their entirety. That is because all of our comments go through a moderation process to ensure they are not spam, not harassing or abusive, adhere to our member code of conduct, do not contain information about anyone’s personal case and are relevant to the post to which the comment is addressed, among other factors.

Last week we had a commenter who posted some anti-registrant comments. We allowed some of his posts but not all and allowed some responses but not all. Reason being; anything abusive or containing a direct threat against an identifiable person is not tolerated. If someone makes a personal comment “I think all sex offenders should rot in hell”, it’s allowed. It is a freedom of speech issue and it invites other people to chime in with responses that will serve to educate the ignorant person. If some replies back “hey ___, why don’t you come here and say that so I can punch you in the face”, it’s likely not going to be allowed. Not only because it violates the Member Code of Conduct, but in the words of Michelle Obama, “when they go low, we go high.” As you saw from the Book/DeFede debate, someone can rant and rave all they want, but whey you shut them down with facts, they are the one to look like an idiot.

Another reason a comment might not be included is because it seeks legal advice on an individual’s personal case. FAC is NOT a law firm. We are not attorneys and we are not licensed nor qualified to provide legal advice. If you post a comment asking for advice about your personal legal issue or underlying criminal case, you are inviting opinions from lay people. We cannot tell you how many times someone has replied to such a post with very well-meaning, but very wrong information. The danger in allowing misinformation on our site is that people might rely on it. Even when a comment containing someone’s opinion on the interpretation of a statute or ordinance is allowed in, it is important to keep in mind that the comment is no substitute for proper legal advice from a licensed individual.

Comments are sometimes not put through if they are off-topic. When you are submitting a comment to a post, please make sure that your comment is relevant to the topic of the post. One of the roles of the moderator is to facilitate dialogue among our site’s visitors. Unrelated comments will divert the dialogue from the topic. If you feel there is an issue that is important to cover or you would like to submit a guest post, we would sincerely and truly welcome it! We occasionally post member contributions in the form of articles on our site and we would love to receive more. As you can imagine, writing content is not easy and contributions from our members are not only very helpful, but can also present a different point of view. Guest submissions should be sent to info@floridaactioncommittee.org.

For those who regularly visit and post comments on our website, thank you for your help in making it bigger and better!

Sincerely,

The Florida Action Committee

SOME HEADLINES FROM THIS WEEK

FAC Makes Public Information Request to Florida Senate Regarding Sex Offender Bill

This past legislative session, a bill passed the Florida legislature that will bring two significant changes to the sex offender registration statute. The first; it reduces the amount of time before a location is considered a “residence” from 5 to 3 days. That means;…

FAC Letter to FDLE concerning new registration requirements

As the change to the registration statute, reducing the number of days to register from 5 to 3, will undoubtedly increase the frequency of registration, we reached out to FDLE with questions about the enforcement. Previously, a brief get-a-way, like a family trip for…

REPORT: Deputy Peterson Accused Of ‘Covering Up’ Alleged Sexual Assault By Broward Sheriff’s Son

A local Miami news station released an explosive report on Thursday night about a “disturbing assault” that happened at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School four years to the day before the tragic shooting in February. The alleged incident involved one of the sons of…

Update: Miami-Dade Transients

In this week’s weekly update, written 3 days ago, we wrote, “In the coming days, communities will start objecting and registrants will be chased out, until they consolidate at the last location to complain and, from there, we’ll quickly be back to two-hundred seventy…