Posted on 10/15/2006 10:39:53 AM PDT by NormsRevenge
His friends, the folks at his church in San Jose -- they know what "Alan" did in 1999 to that 11-year-old boy.
The boy had a troubled home life. Alan, then in his 40s, became a father figure. Then came the oral sex, a confession and five years at a men's colony.
That they know doesn't bother him, he said. It shields him.
"That's my best defense. I'm being held accountable. Where am I going to go without anybody knowing about it?" said Alan, who insisted on anonymity.
"Let's say I've got to move to Morgan Hill. My social circle isn't down there. People would treat me as a second-class citizen. I'm not going to tell them. Why should I? So I get spit in the face?"
That scenario, say critics of Proposition 83, illustrates the paradox in a November ballot measure that aims to crack down harder on sex criminals and to make the public feel safer.
It could, they say, make the public less safe by pushing dangerous offenders away from support, into dangerous isolation.
Among its provisions, Prop. 83, or "Jessica's Law," would bar registered sex offenders from living within 2,000 feet -- about four-tenths of a mile -- from schools or parks where children "regularly gather," a key and disputed phrase in the measure.
It also would force all felony sex offenders released from prison to wear global positioning satellite (GPS) tracking devices for life.
Measure mirrors laws
The measure also was written to do other things that law-and-order groups wanted most: impose tougher punishment and tighter parole supervision on many sex criminals, and beef up state controls over sexually violent predators.
The 2,000-foot rule may prove troublesome, some of those groups conceded, but said the benefits of Prop. 83 outweigh those concerns.
Since then, however, many of those get-tough measures have become law. Last month, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed legislation that mirrors most of them and adds others.
Prop. 83, and its domination in polls, pressured the Legislature to act, said David LaBahn, executive director of the California District Attorneys Association, which helped write it.
"If this was 2005 instead of 2006, if this had been the answer by the Legislature last year, then I don't think there'd be a Prop. 83," he said.
The difference now is that Prop. 83 hinges largely on its most controversial provisions: the 2,000-foot "offender free zones" and lifetime GPS for sex felons.
And that has fueled a rising chorus of concern, not only from defense lawyers and civil libertarians, but also from some sex crime prosecutors and victims advocates.
Concentrating parolees
Critics point to troubles in states with similar laws.
Prosecutors in Iowa, the first state to impose residency restrictions on sex offenders, say a 2,000-foot radius around schools and day care centers has pushed sex offenders into remote areas or homelessness, made sex crimes harder to prosecute and led to a sharp spike in the number of sex offenders who skip registering.
Although he supports Prop. 83, Livermore police Chief Steve Krull said he has seen areas in which the Iowa law "is creating more problems than it is solving." He said he doubts the 2,000-foot rule would lessen recidivism among sex offenders.
Recent studies in other states have found no link between where sex offenders live and their likelihood of re-offending.
"An offender is generally going to offend with whatever is available to them, wherever," said Krull, president of the California Police Chiefs Association and a member of the state's High Risk Sex Offender Task Force.
"Everyone just comes with this, 'Ship them out to a desert island' approach. It's going to push people off into the less-populated areas, and that's not the best way to manage these populations," he said.
Still, Krull remains behind the measure, for provisions that go beyond what Schwarzenegger signed.
Jessica's Law also would make more sex offenders eligible to be civilly committed to a state mental hospital after serving their sentences and would hand police stronger tools to investigate Internet luring cases.
Krull and other supporters say the Legislature can work out problems with the 2,000-foot rule later.
"We know this isn't perfect," he said, "but it offers us a way to help protect the community even further."
Assemblyman Joe Canciamilla, D-Pittsburg, said he doubted there is political will to rework Prop. 83 if it passes strongly, as expected.
"It's very dangerous to say, 'It's OK, we know it's got some problems, we'll fix it later,'" said Canciamilla, whose district includes several areas of East Contra Costa where sex offenders could live under Jessica's Law.
"When people start moving into Oakley and Brentwood and Antioch and Pittsburg and Bay Point and the neighbors start screaming bloody murder, they need to remember what was on the ballot."
Most-likely offenders
Maps produced by a state Senate demographer show that the impact on the Bay Area would be dramatic: Nearly all of San Francisco and the bulk of the urban East Bay would be off limits to sex offenders.
Some larger pockets of upscale areas such as Orinda and Danville lie outside the zones, though it's doubtful many sex convicts could afford to live there.
More space opens up in Solano County, East Contra Costa, Livermore and farther east. Some Central Valley lawmakers complain that Prop. 83 would heave the burden of the state's sex offender population to them.
Although Prop. 83's supporters offer anecdotes that sex offenders seem to gravitate toward schools and parks when they leave parole or probation, no research is cited that they are more likely than others to re-offend.
Similar laws in other states are recent, and many sex crimes are not reported until years later. In any case, that misses the point, said a co-author of Jessica's Law.
"I'm not sure the issue of residency is tied to the idea, directly, of recidivism," said Sen. George Runner, R-Antelope Valley, who wrote Prop. 83 with his wife, Assemblywoman Sharon Runner.
"A part of the issue goes back to people's general feeling of their own family's safety and personal safety. .... The point of it is people in society feel like they are owed certain information and guarantees."
The new pariahs
Local cities may pass their own laws, adding restrictions, setting up zones around, say, theaters, public pools and school bus stops.
Critics fear a race to pass such laws would force sex offenders still farther away from family, community, treatment and police agencies with the ability to monitor compliance.
Concerns about creating sex offender "ghettos" do not worry Dave Gilliard, a Prop. 83 campaign consultant.
"Even if it does, so what? Our purpose is to keep them away from kids," he said. "If that means they all live next to each other on the outskirts of town, then we've accomplished our goal."
He and other supporters dispute the Senate maps, saying their own maps show more urban areas where sex offenders could live away from schools and parks.
They note that the Senate maps include all parks and greenbelts, not just those where children "regularly gather," a term that local cities and towns may define for themselves.
Opponents say that's part of the problem: The term is too vague to enforce.
Meaning of 'regularly'
"We don't know what that word 'regularly' is going to mean. How do you know if you're breaking the law?" asked Jake Goldenflame, a registered sex offender and advocate who lives in San Francisco's Tenderloin district.
Goldenflame said the 2,000-foot rule and lifetime GPS are a blanket approach that fails to account for risk factors among sex offenders, or even whether the victim was a child or adult.
His apartment sits around the corner from a park with swings and a jungle gym. The park lies directly across the street from a sex club that boasts "50 Naughty Hotties."
Goldenflame says his proximity to the park is no threat. The play area is for tikes. He was convicted of molesting his young daughter 20 years ago but he said his urges are for older boys.
"That park, that's meaningless to me," he said.
If Prop. 83 passes, California would become the 18th state to enact restrictions on where registered sex offenders can live, varying from 500 feet to 2,000 and more.
Legal challenges
Many of the restrictions face legal challenges. None has been overturned. Still, legal scholars see an eventual showdown at the U.S. Supreme Court as more territory becomes off limits and lower courts render differing opinions.
Dara Cashman, a sex crimes prosecutor for Contra Costa County, said she thinks it is inevitable.
"Maybe there's a thought that they'll all leave California. That'll be nice, but you come to a point where the courts are going to stop and say, 'Look guys, you can't put the scarlet letter on them and hound them to the point they can't live anywhere,'" said Cashman, a senior deputy district attorney.
"The (legislation) the governor signed is a little more realistic."
No one doubts Jessica's Law will pass.
A recent poll showed it leading 7-to-1 among voters. Most politicians, including Schwarzenegger and his Democratic challenger, Treasurer Phil Angelides, find it irresistible, at least in public.
Its most visible opponents -- sex offenders and those who defend and treat them -- stand on the far side of a yawning sympathy gap.
"It's one of those punching-bag scenarios. It's the easiest political point you can score," said New Jersey defense lawyer John Furlong, co-editor of "A Megan's Law Sourcebook" and an opponent of pedophile-free zones.
"The minute you say, 'I don't think parts of this law make sense,' somebody's going to shriek that you're trying to protect child molesters," said Canciamilla of the political climate around Prop. 83.
"Everybody's afraid of it."
Iowa's experience
Prosecutors in Iowa are pleading with the Legislature to change the state's 2,000-foot rule, enacted in 2002 but delayed by court appeals until last year.
"It works this way: People are told to move. They can't find places to go. They get very frustrated, so some people just choose to quit registering an address," said Corwin Ritchie, executive director of the Iowa County Attorneys Association.
"Then people start going out to the hinterlands to find places, then some of the little jurisdictions and a few counties decide to write their own local ordinances, too, and drive people further out into areas where no one knows where they live.
"You run into impossible situations -- people listing truck stops as their residence, or under a bridge on Seventh Street, a car parked in the Kmart parking lot."
One prosecutor in Iowa said sex criminals are now harder to convict. Often inclined to confess, many now fear the 2,000-foot rule and are refusing to give statements or agree to plea deals, said Christine Corken, a sex crime prosecutor for 29 years in Dubuque County, Iowa.
"It's a nightmare. We've been put in a position of deciding whether or not these kids can be put on the stand," she said. "We're just trying to get these guys prosecuted into the system, into treatment, off the streets. What this law is doing is tying our hands."
Family reticence
Tom Tobin, an Orinda psychologist and board member of the California Coalition Against Sexual Assault, said he thinks the law will discourage family members -- often the victims of sex crimes -- from reporting abuse.
A few states, including Minnesota and Colorado, have studied residency restrictions for sex offenders and dismissed them.
Colorado lawmakers rejected them in 2004 after a state study concluded that they "ironically ... may increase their risk of re-offending by forcing them to live in communities where safe support systems may not exist or in remote areas providing them with high degrees of anonymity."
Whether the 2,000-foot rule would apply to Alan and other existing Megan's Law registrants is unclear.
Its authors say they never meant it to apply to earlier offenders, and that courts will likely take that to heart. But some legal scholars think it could, if local cities decide to enforce it on some of the more than 65,000 registered sex offenders now living in communities, including more than 11,000 in the Bay Area.
Some states include grandfather clauses in similar laws. Prop. 83 doesn't.
Issue of uprooting
"Very, very possibly it's going to make some people uproot," said Sgt. Mike Jackson of the Contra Costa County sheriff's sexual assault team.
California already restricts where some parolee sex offenders live. Under a law that went into effect this year, certain high-risk parolees may not live within a half-mile of schools.
Parole agents have scrambled to find housing for those parolees, fearing they will drop out of sight. In the first three months of the year, the state spent $756,000 on housing assistance for high-risk sex offenders. In the next 41/2 months, it spent $2.9 million.
Low-rent hotels in Antioch, Pittsburg and Oakland have become home to clusters of registered sex offenders. More than a dozen have lived at the same time in at least one motel.
In Fairfield, the state has paid as much as $1,764 a month in rent for each of several sex offenders, according to state records the Times obtained under the state Public Records Act.
In one Pittsburg motel, several sex offenders said they were largely cut off from family, unfamiliar with the city and unable to find work.
According to the state legislative analyst, Jessica's Law costs would run hundreds of millions of dollars annually and would "grow significantly in the long term."
The invoice includes more mental hospital and prison beds, more parole agents and about $100 million a year to track all new sex felons by GPS.
Sen. Runner said the GPS provision solves the problem of losing track of sex offenders; those who fail to register can be tracked down easily. It also may come in handy as a crime-solving tool after a sex crime, supporters say.
Lifetime GPS for all sex felons removes an unneeded risk, said Prop. 83 spokeswoman Becky Warren.
"We've seen cases where people said to be low risk have done horrific crimes," said Warren. "Our concern, of course, is that the state shouldn't be in the business of deciding which child molester is more of a risk than another."
But Cashman, the Contra Costa County prosecutor, said the GPS program in Jessica's Law seems like an expensive tool for tracking down sex criminals after the fact.
"The sex offenders that have already committed the crime, finding them isn't usually the issue," she said.
One 2004 study of a GPS pilot program in the state of Washington found that sex offenders lost or intentionally damaged 6 percent of the electronic devices, and that signals were occasionally lost.
Still, the study found that GPS was a "valuable tool" in monitoring sex offenders and possibly solving crimes, except for the homeless, who might not be able to recharge the anklets.
California already has a GPS program for some paroled sex offenders who are deemed high risk. That program is slated to expand to 2,500 parolees within two years.
Alan said the idea that he would wear his GPS device for life seems absurd.
Deemed high risk, he wears two socks on his left foot. The first keeps the strap on his GPS unit, which resembles a bulky plastic cell phone, from chafing his ankle. The second covers it up.
For two hours a day, he hooks a charger to his leg and stays tethered to an extension cord. Home to the former Silicon Valley database analyst is a motel room looking out at Highway 101.
He says he supports GPS for parolees like himself who live under conditions that restrict where they can loiter. But after his parole ends in 2008, he doubts the purpose.
"What is the GPS unit doing? Once I get off parole, I can go wherever I want. What are they tracking? I don't see the point."
Prop. 83, like many sex offender laws, is named after a victim of a heinous crime. Jessica's Law commemorates Jessica Lunsford, a young Florida girl who was raped and murdered last year, allegedly by a sex offender staying nearby.
Such "stranger danger" cases ignite the public, but treatment providers and victims advocates say they are rare; studies have shown that 80 percent to 90 percent of child victims know their molesters.
"The majority of children are actually victimized by someone with legitimate access to them -- family member, acquaintance, a coach, a teacher," said Carolyn Atwell-Davis, director of legislative affairs for the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.
"We are concerned that residency restrictions will not only give a false sense of security to the public but may not actually protect children. We think more effective might be prohibitions on activities or employment."
LaBahn of the California District Attorneys Association said critics ignore a basic question: How do sex criminals get to know their young victims?
"The fact they live across the street from a school or park, there does come a greater frequency of contact. It gives that individual a big advantage."
One prominent district attorney is dubious.
Among Prop. 83's earliest supporters, Los Angeles County District Attorney Steve Cooley has since grown cool to the 2,000-foot rule and the mandatory GPS for all sex felons.
Those provisions, he said, "were sort of thrown in by others, political types, after the heavy lifting was done on some very legitimate, long overdue issues."
Cooley says he still backs the law, but with reservations.
"I'm not seeing any studies of how this is going to work," he said.
"This could be something that's beyond brilliant. Or it could be just a feel-good provision that seems logical on its surface, which appeals to people and then actually does nothing when it comes to the real problem."
According to figures from the Department of Justice, crime rates are down even though prison populations continue to rise. Another paradox.
That they know doesn't bother him, he said. It shields him.
Why, of course! It was just a natural progression: A troubled 11 year-old, a 40-something father figure, and oral sex.
That his so-called support group knows doesn't bother this clymer because it doesn't bother him or them what he actually did. After all, the point of the article is how terrible it is what is being proposed to keep track of these cretins who never should see the light of day in the first place.
Let us not forget the "sex offender" can be an exceedingly broad term.
It is not just Pedophiles. It is the 20 year old who was seduced by the 15 year old.
And don't say it doesn't happen. Sex between young girls and young men a few years older is rampant. It is just that *most* of the time, charges are not brought.
Also, "sex abuse" is now one of the most commonly used "levers" in divorce cases. Attorney friends of mine have told me of cases where the accused went to jail, even when they had evidence that he could not have been at the place and time referred to in the accusation. The prosecutor simply said that the accuser must have been "confused".
Is this a threat or what?
I mean, what of the dangerous isolation that kid went under because liberals love the privacy allowing them to murder kids before and after they are born, with in between abuses of course.
"Pesky embarassing kid, all your good for is "this" and "there that"... and don't you dare put me in isolation!" <---- common statement by pedophile lawyers
""That's my best defense. I'm being held accountable. Where am I going to go without anybody knowing about it?" said Alan, who insisted on anonymity."
Then why insist on anonymity?
This is one of the votes I've been wondering about. On the surface it sounds like a good idea, after all - it IS for the children, right? On the other hand (a thumb and four fingers) - is this really going to prevent a relapse by the criminal, or make children safer. I kinda like the GPS idea, but are we setting a dangerous precedent?
The estimated cost of implementing this law, as stated on the ballot, is up to several hundred million dollars. That probably in real terms, means one billion dollars.
Personally, I feel that we have more than enough laws to last us through the 21st century, and unless a new law can be shown to be truly needed and beneficial, it should not be passed.
While I'm all in favor of protecting children from sexual predators, I don't get the sense that this proposition has the correct answers.
I'd appreciate your considered thoughts on this law.
~ Alan
I've decided--I'm voting no.
IMO, the residence restrictions will backfire and the GPS application is too widespread and therefore too costly. I also worry that GPS will give some a false sense of security and they'll start paroling more sex-offenders early, after all, our prisons are overcrowded, etc.
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." -Manuel II Paleologus
With all the restrictions on where they can live it is getting much like something I read about Puritan New England. If you commited a serious crime, after the punishment they would have the local constable/citzenry whip the offender to the village line, where the next constable/citizenry would whip him to the village line, etc., etc. Not sure if it is true....but as a solution?Works for me.
"They can't find places to go. They get very frustrated, so some people just choose to quit registering an address," said Corwin Ritchie."
And when they fail to register they are in violation and can then be picked up and returned to prison. Problem solved.
Agreed. Insisted on anonymity but arguing it's best for everyone to know who he is? Those are two positions completely at odds!
Not only that, but it is building the infrastructure for total tyranny.
Keep them in prison.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.