Good Video - Sex Offender

Here's a good video called, Sex Offender, By Brookes Fortune, http://vimeo.com/43919309

Stockton Evicts Homeless RSO's at Shanty Town

Parole agents rush to keep track of sex offenders after campsite eviction

Written by

Leigh Paynter for http://www.news10.net/

STOCKTON, CA - The Stockton city government had a highly publicized eviction of homeless squatters at a shanty town down in Mormon Slough last week.
However, further down the Slough, by Jefferson and A Streets, a different campsite was quietly dismantled; it was the long time home to dozens of sex offenders.
"All of them, the 20 that were there, couldn't find housing that was compliant with Jessica's Law," California State Parole Delta District Administrator Julie Kaplan said. "Homeless shelters they can't go to, because they're family shelters with children and women. Some found businesses that gave them permission to stay on private property."
Kaplan said when transient sex offenders are evicted, the parole agents have to scramble to keep tabs on them.
The California State Parole District in Stockton currently has 20 transient registered sex offenders under its watch. San Joaquin County Probation Department has seven homeless sex offenders. Both agencies track sex offenders with GPS ankle bracelets.
"We get five minute increments on a map that show exactly where that offender has been," SJC Probation Department Assist. Chief Stephanie James said. "We can also set up exclusion or inclusion zones and if the offender steps somewhere where he shouldn't be, his agent is notified immediately."
One homeless registered sex offender said the GPS device must kept charged.
"We're tracked. A computer tells them exactly where we're at and it sets off an alarm if you're violating," said the offender, who wished to remain anonymous.
Kaplan said a week after the city's eviction of Mormon Slough, many of the 20 registered sex offenders are now back at Mormon Slough. The campsite now sits further out of view from the above neighborhood on A Street.
"They let their parole agents know they were moving back or near that area," Kaplan said.
On Wednesday afternoon, a homeless sex offender registered at the probation department that he was now staying in Mormon Slough.
"We did verify that this morning that he was in fact at Mormon Slough yesterday," James said.
James had no probationary sex offenders staying in Mormon Slough prior to the city eviction last week.
While law enforcement agencies know where homeless sex offenders are at all times, citizens do not. The state sex offender online registry does not list the last known location of transient sex offenders.
"It's unnerving, because you don't know who's down there or how many," said a mother living in the neighborhood above Mormon Slough.
"We went down there to play on dirt bikes and saw a lot of tents," said 17-year-old Tracey Jenkins.
Jenkins found out sex offenders were living below her neighborhood after she and her friends stumbled onto their camp.
"Now I can't go anywhere by myself and I stay away from there. It freaks me out," Jenkins said.
A few neighbors in the neighborhood above Mormon Slough said they still feel safe in their neighborhood despite the sex offender campsite.
"They keep to themselves mostly," one mother said. "If they keep a good eye on them, then it's fine."
Homeless sex offenders on parole must register every 30 days at the nearest police station. Those on county probation report to their parole agent every Wednesday.

I'm Back !

     Yep, I'm back. Really went off the deep end for a few weeks. Came close a couple times to cutting this damn GPS Shackle off my leg and hitting the road again. Being a fugitive has long been second nature to me. Have rabbit in my blood. With the stress of complying with Jessica's Law and with the holidays I went nuts for awhile. My mother, father, grandmother, and sister all died within a span of a couple years. I miss them dearly and the holidays really bring out my heartache. I was a fugitive in 2008 and could not attend my sisters funeral. The Police/FBI would have been laying in wait. I will be moving from this Fleabag motel on New Years Day to another Fleabag motel down the street, but have been told I will only be allowed to live there for one month and will be forced to move again. My P.O. told me he doesn't care if I wind up living on the streets because I'm a sex offender. As always, I had to inform him I am not a sex offender. We got in a heated argument outside my current motel room that was heard by my neighbors. To make a long story short, I have gotten on medication to deal with this all. Jessica's Law was/is driving me crazy. How are we suppose to live under such conditions? It's pure insanity. Hopefully I can hang on until Oct. 23rd, 2013 and I can get the hell out of California. I have land in Alaska given to me by my tribe. I'm 1/2 Aleut (Alaskan Native). Was a commercial fisherman back in the day. Have you ever seen Deadliest Catch? I've done that. Worked out of a dozen ports in Alaska. I want to build myself a cabin and be left the hell alone. 22 months to go and I can tell California's Jessica's Law to shove it. Sorry about the flake out. 25 years of fighting this battle will drive anyone over the edge. The medication seems to be helping. I'm back on track. Thanks for being my friends. We need each other's support.

Do We Really Need Megan's Law ?

SANDY HINGSTON

Do We Really Need Megan’s Law? Maybe not, but what legislator would vote against a dead child? Posted on 10/3/2011 at 9:00AM

The Inquirer reported yesterday that a recent Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruling on an Allegheny County law is causing local municipalities to revise their Megan’s Laws. The sections of the law in question placed restrictions on where sex offenders could live, creating, the court said, “localized penal colonies” that increased the chances of recidivism by isolating offenders from jobs and support. Statutes in Doylestown and Hilltown townships and Hatboro Borough have already been rescinded, and Abington, Newtown and Lower Pottsgrove, the Inquirer reports, are among localities considering following suit.

Megan, you’ll recall, was seven-year-old Megan Kanka of Hamilton Township, New Jersey, who was raped and murdered by a sex-offender neighbor after he promised to show her a puppy. It was a cowardly, heinous crime, no doubt about it. And the flurry of laws enacted to “honor Megan’s memory” and prevent another such crime was well-meaning. Megan’s parents argued that had they known the neighbor was a sex offender, they would have kept a closer eye on their daughter.

It happens all the time—a terrible crime, a public outcry, and a hasty legislative attempt to prevent any similar crimes from taking place ever again. After Casey Anthony was acquitted in the death of her daughter Caylee, the cry went out to pass “Caylee’s Law,” a federal statute that would charge parents with a felony if they didn’t report a missing child within 24 hours or a child’s death within one hour. There are pushes and petitions for all sorts of laws based on a single, tragic instance: “Jessica’s Law,” “The Adam Walsh Act,” “Kyleigh’s Law,” “Tyler’s Law,” “Judy and Nikki’s Law.” We’re so outraged by the actions of one offender that we determine to punish all persons, down through the ages, who behave like that offender. They’re laws born of knee-jerk reactions, of the heart, not the head. They’re rarely effectual and rarely even used. But they satisfy our deep, primal urge for punishment and revenge.

More than a dozen years ago, the Los Angeles Times ran a terrific piece by Mark Fritz called “The Politics of Parental Grieving.” It’s more than worth a read. One statistic Fritz cited back in 1999 is especially telling: The American Bar Association reported that “40 percent of the federal criminal laws passed since the Civil War had come in just the last three decades, often ‘in patchwork response to newsworthy events’ rather than an ‘identifiable federal need.’”

Why do lawmakers pass them? Because they’re popular even when they’re irrational. Who could dare vote against a law named for a dead little girl? Fritz quotes a lobbyist who says, “Any time real emotion based on human tragedy enters the public policy arena, it becomes more difficult to enact policy that recognizes the limitations of the world we live in.” These laws named after dead kids are, as Fritz writes, the result of “a tragic tale, a family calamity transformed into arresting allegory, a freak occurrence offered up as a terrifying trend.” In fact, as the Inquirer points out, “stranger danger” crimes are exceedingly rare; 93 percent of all child victims know their assailants. What such laws do is create a false sense of security for parents; we know they’re in place, so we become less vigilant, not more. How many of us have ever actually gone to the trouble of checking the state registry for registered sex offenders in our neighborhoods?

I don’t begrudge any parents who have lost a child the right to set out on whatever crusades they feel the need to embark on. It’s impossible for me to say how I’d react if tragedy took one of my kids. But at the very least, by now we should have wised up enough to look with extra caution on laws that spring up out of the cauldron of parental grief, to make sure they meet rational needs and not just irrational ones.

How Soon Will RSO's Photos of RSO's Homes Published?

Photos of Sex offenders Homes in CA

I’m from California, which, like many states, has a sex offender registry. It’s called Megan’s Law, and it allows users to enter their address and find the homes of nearby sex offenders. It even displays a picture of the offender, their crime, and any other pertinent information (tattoos, DOB, etc.). The way it works is not dissimilar from Yelp. These programs are fairly uncontroversial (no one wants to say things like “Hey, I think sex offenders should have an easier time!”), and they’re popular among voters. Still they creep me out/raise sort of unnerving questions about crime and punishment and recidivism and debts to society and haven’t you guys read The Scarlet Letter?
Anyway, one day I was visiting my parents in Southern California and I heard something about the registry and thought, “Hey, wouldn’t it be weird if someone went around and took pictures of these guys’ houses, and then captioned them with their crimes?” And then I said to myself: “You could be that someone.”
Most people I told about the project seemed simultaneously bored (because the pictures are of houses) and creeped out (because of everything else). Except my dad - he seemed pretty into it.
I like the pictures because they look like the worst real estate listings ever.

-Hanson O’Haver

Another Case of Romero And Juliet Branded for Life

Sex Offenders: Does Frank Rodriguez Belong on That List?

by Rayne Millaray Published: July 28, 2011

After 15 years of marriage and four children with the “victim” ... we'd say, “No.”

Frank Rodriguez has been a registered sex offender for 15 years. Though the sex was consensual, he pleaded guilty to charges of statutory rape in exchange for seven years probation and, by law, his name went on the list. Now, 15 years later, Rodriguez is married and has four children with Nikki, the woman he's said to have wronged.

The couple says that when Nikki, then 15, finally told her mother she had sex with Frank, 19, mom was so angry she marched Nikki down to the police station to report it. Nikki was forced to undergo a rape exam, though she told police the sex was consensual. Her mother recanted her accusation the next day, but because of Nikki's age (age of consent in Texas is 17), the DA had enough to charge Frank with statutory rape.

“I would say this is a mom who’s trying to use the legal system to parent instead of having a conversation,” said Robin Sax, a criminal defense attorney and former sex crimes prosecutor. “Once you open that Pandora’s box of the legal system, there are consequences, and the consequence here has been a scarlet letter that’s following him and a case where no one would expect someone in this situation to be registered.”

Frank has difficulty getting hired. He can't coach his daughters' sports teams. He has to notify police if he wants to leave the state. All because he had sex with a woman 15 years ago when she was underage, and he’s happily married to her. And he and his wife ask, “Isn't enough, enough?” For their full story, see “The Accidental Sex Offender” in this month's Marie Claire.

Texas is expected to amend its sex offender laws in September. The Rodriguezes hope their petition to have Frank removed from the list will be granted then.

Kids Horseplay = RSO for Life

2 N.J. teens labeled sex offenders for life after 'horseplay' incident

Published: Wednesday, July 20, 2011, 8:30 AM    By MaryAnn Spoto/The Star-Ledger The Star-Ledger

Ed Murray/The Star-LedgerJudge Victor Ashrafi, pictured in this file photo from 2004, is one of the three New Jersey appeals court judges who ruled that two young teenagers must register as sex offenders under Megan's Law for an incident the teens described as "horseplay."

SOMERSET COUNTY — Call it bullying or call it horseplay. Either way, a state appellate court panel says roughhousing with a sexual connotation by a pair of 14-year-old Somerset County boys was a crime that requires them to register as sex offenders for the rest of their lives.
In a decision handed down Monday, the three-judge panel acknowledged the severity of its decision, but said it was bound to uphold the law.
"We are keenly aware that our decision may have profound lifelong ramifications for these two boys as well as others similarly situated," Judge Jose Fuentes wrote.
One of the boys, whose case went to trial, said he had sat on the faces of a pair of 12-year-old schoolmates with his bare buttocks in November 2008 "cause I thought it was funny and I was trying to get my friends to laugh," he told a family court judge.
But an act is considered criminal sexual contact if it is done for sexual gratification or to degrade or humiliate the victim, and punishable by lifetime registration — even for juveniles — under Megan’s Law, which requires a person convicted of a sex crime against a child to notify police of changes of address or employment.
The trial judge concluded the teenager intended to humiliate or degrade his victims and found him guilty of criminal sexual contact. The second teenager who was implicated pleaded guilty to criminal sexual contact, and received the same penalty.