The mother of one of the people killed in the vigilante murders here in Maine in 2006 is profiled here. It's a sad and horrible story. Shirley Turner is one woman I would love to meet someday. I hope she knows that there are people who do care about what happened to her son and we are fighting to help make sure it never happens again.
From The Times
September 3, 2009
A sad lesson in ‘know thy neighbor’
Megan’s Law did not protect Jaycee Dugard. It helped create ghettos of abuse – and would do
Shirley Turner’s son was not a child rapist. He was a teenage boy madly in love with his girlfriend and three weeks before her 16th birthday they could wait no longer and made love in her bedroom while her parents were out at the movies. When her father returned and discovered them, he reported William to the police. He was charged with statutory rape, convicted, sent to jail and on his release his name was added to the sex offenders register under the version of Megan’s Law applied in his home state of Maine.
Shirley Turner’s stepfather, Brian, was a child rapist. He raped her at the age of 5. As Shirley approached her teens, her mother grew jealous of her husband’s apparent “preference” for her daughter. When she was 15, Brian took off, dragging Shirley with him and forcing her into marriage. William was her only child, fathered by her rapist.
When Stephen Marshall, a vigilante, started surfing Maine’s sex offenders register for child molesters to kill, it was William’s name he found, not Brian’s. Brian was never registered because Shirley never reported the crimes of the stepfather who became her husband. William is now dead, along with a more conventionally guilty paedophile in his town, both shot by Marshall. Brian is in jail, to Shirley’s relief, not for sex offences, but for attempting to murder her when she finally fled.
This was the tortured narrative I came across in Milo, northern Maine, in 2006, while looking for evidence of whether or not Megan’s Law worked. Shirley, a haunted shadow of a woman, wept warm tears on me as she told of the loss of her beloved son. She was one of the few people I connected with in this unsettling backwater where jaunty Stars and Stripes flying from clapboard houses disguised an underside of pure American Gothic.
I thought of Milo this week reading the latest soul-polluting details of the Jaycee Dugard case in Antioch, California, a place where the local Megan’s Law register recorded more than 100 registered sex offenders living in Phillip Garrido’s Zip code. In the small town of Milo, there were 42.
Jennifer Kale, the young mother who lived next door to Marshall’s second victim, had no idea she had a sex offender for a neighbour, despite having checked the register. She didn’t recognise the mug shot because she had never met him. “When I was little there was always some weird guy that your parents said to stay away from,” she said.
“You sort of knew. But it’s different now. Then you knew everyone but that’s all changed. You don’t know anyone anymore.”
Milo owes a number of its sex offenders to the introduction of Megan’s Law in neighbouring Massachusetts in 1999, three years before it was adopted in Maine. To escape registration there, many decamped north to Maine. Now Megan’s Law has been enacted across the United States, the migration has not stopped. Campaigners against the law argue it has driven many offenders underground or into hiding in plain sight; permanently transient to avoid registration or transplanting to neighbourhoods of the criminal underclasses where everyone minds their own business.
Garrido’s is such a neighbourhood, it is now emerging, where his neighbours built crack dens in their backyards and ignored the voices of children from the home of a man registered as a sex offender. Even there he was known as “Creepy Phil”. Megan’s Law did not exist when Jaycee was snatched but it would not have saved her. The Garridos travelled 150 miles to snatch her from her local bus stop. No internet search could have predicted that. Only one person ever reported the presence of children to the police, despite most neighbours admitting they knew that children lived there and that Garrido was on the register.
Every time a horrific child sex crime takes place in Britain, voices are raised in support of our own Megan’s Law. And yet there is no evidence that such a law has done anything to lower the level of child abuse. A 2008 federal-funded survey conducted in New Jersey, where Megan’s Law originated, concluded it had done nothing to deter the repeat offenders it is designed to target. It only made them easier to track down when they had reoffended.
Megan’s mother still defends the law named for her murdered daughter, saying she never intended it to deter offenders, only to “raise awareness”. But a register is a knee- jerk response to the cry of “something must be done,” and that done, we are all too happy to do nothing more. If a sex offender lives on our street, Megan’s Law gives us the means to hound them out to somewhere else — where they can prey on someone else’s kids.
If it corrals them into ghettos to escape us, so much the better. At least it keeps them off our street. Job done, there is no need for us to look out for the other children in our “community” or bother to check why someone else’s young girls are playing in the creepy man’s yard.
Meanwhile, most of the abuse goes on where it always has: in homes like Shirley Turner’s, where neighbours fear to tread. Megan’s Law satisfies our desire to do something, and fast. And it saves us from facing the awful truth that we don’t know who our neighbours are, and as long as they don’t bother us, most of us don’t care.
Catherine Philp is diplomatic correspondent of The Times
An ever harsher approach is doing more harm than good, but it is being copied around the world
iStockphoto
IT IS an oft-told story, but it does not get any less horrific on repetition. Fifteen years ago, a paedophile enticed seven-year-old Megan Kanka into his home in New Jersey by offering to show her a puppy. He then raped her, killed her and dumped her body in a nearby park. The murderer, who had recently moved into the house across the street from his victim, had twice before been convicted of sexually assaulting a child. Yet Megan’s parents had no idea of this. Had they known he was a sex offender, they would have told their daughter to stay away from him.
In their grief, the parents started a petition, demanding that families should be told if a sexual predator moves nearby. Hundreds of thousands signed it. In no time at all, lawmakers in New Jersey granted their wish. And before long, “Megan’s laws” had spread to every American state.
America’s sex-offender laws are the strictest of any rich democracy. Convicted rapists and child-molesters are given long prison sentences. When released, they are put on sex-offender registries. In most states this means that their names, photographs and addresses are published online, so that fearful parents can check whether a child-molester lives nearby. Under the Adam Walsh Act of 2006, another law named after a murdered child, all states will soon be obliged to make their sex-offender registries public. Such rules are extremely popular. Most parents will support any law that promises to keep their children safe. Other countries are following America’s example, either importing Megan’s laws or increasing penalties: after two little girls were murdered by a school caretaker, Britain has imposed multiple conditions on who can visit schools.
Which makes it all the more important to ask whether America’s approach is the right one. In fact its sex-offender laws have grown self-defeatingly harsh (see article). They have been driven by a ratchet effect. Individual American politicians have great latitude to propose new laws. Stricter curbs on paedophiles win votes. And to sound severe, such curbs must be stronger than the laws in place, which in turn were proposed by politicians who wished to appear tough themselves. Few politicians dare to vote against such laws, because if they do, the attack ads practically write themselves.
In all, 674,000 Americans are on sex-offender registries—more than the population of Vermont, North Dakota or Wyoming. The number keeps growing partly because in several states registration is for life and partly because registries are not confined to the sort of murderer who ensnared Megan Kanka. According to Human Rights Watch, at least five states require registration for people who visit prostitutes, 29 require it for consensual sex between young teenagers and 32 require it for indecent exposure. Some prosecutors are now stretching the definition of “distributing child pornography” to include teens who text half-naked photos of themselves to their friends.
How dangerous are the people on the registries? A state review of one sample in Georgia found that two-thirds of them posed little risk. For example, Janet Allison was found guilty of being “party to the crime of child molestation” because she let her 15-year-old daughter have sex with a boyfriend. The young couple later married. But Ms Allison will spend the rest of her life publicly branded as a sex offender.
Several other countries have sex-offender registries, but these are typically held by the police and are hard to view. In America it takes only seconds to find out about a sex offender: some states have a “click to print” icon on their websites so that concerned citizens can put up posters with the offender’s mugshot on trees near his home. Small wonder most sex offenders report being harassed. A few have been murdered. Many are fired because someone at work has Googled them.
Registration is often just the start. Sometimes sex offenders are barred from living near places where children congregate. In Georgia no sex offender may live or work within 1,000 feet (300 metres) of a school, church, park, skating rink or swimming pool. In Miami an exclusion zone of 2,500 feet has helped create a camp of homeless offenders under a bridge.
There are three main arguments for reform. First, it is unfair to impose harsh penalties for small offences. Perhaps a third of American teenagers have sex before they are legally allowed to, and a staggering number have shared revealing photographs with each other. This is unwise, but hardly a reason for the law to ruin their lives. Second, America’s sex laws often punish not only the offender, but also his family. If a man who once slept with his 15-year-old girlfriend is barred for ever from taking his own children to a playground, those children suffer.
Third, harsh laws often do little to protect the innocent. The police complain that having so many petty sex offenders on registries makes it hard to keep track of the truly dangerous ones. Cash that might be spent on treating sex offenders—which sometimes works—is spent on huge indiscriminate registries. Public registers drive serious offenders underground, which makes them harder to track and more likely to reoffend. And registers give parents a false sense of security: most sex offenders are never even reported, let alone convicted.
It would not be hard to redesign America’s sex laws. Instead of lumping all sex offenders together on the same list for life, states should assess each person individually and include only real threats. Instead of posting everything on the internet, names could be held by the police, who would share them only with those, such as a school, who need to know. Laws that bar sex offenders from living in so many places should be repealed, because there is no evidence that they protect anyone: a predator can always travel. The money that a repeal saves could help pay for monitoring compulsive molesters more intrusively—through ankle bracelets and the like.
In America it may take years to unpick this. However practical and just the case for reform, it must overcome political cowardice, the tabloid media and parents’ understandable fears. Other countries, though, have no excuse for committing the same error. Sensible sex laws are better than vengeful ones.
I came across this article tonight. I thought I would post and hope that maybe the closed minded residents of Westbrook might read it and learn something? Doubtful but one must hope that somehow some reason might finally get through to them. Doubt cast on residency restrictions for sex offenders
Several studies have shown that laws restricting where convicted sex offenders can live don't make children safer.
People fear sexual of fenders, especially any whose offense is directed at children.
So it's maybe understandable to see why Middletown has joined a list of Pennsylvania communities that restrict where convicted sex offenders can live. The problem is that several studies seem to show such laws don't make children safer.
Lauren Taylor is executive director of the Sexual Offenders Assessment Board, which evaluates everyone accused of a sex crime to determine their risk to society. Taylor is no apologist for sex offenders and would not dictate to municipalities. But she visits municipalities considering such laws at their invitation to arm them with the facts she has gathered.
"Research shows there is no correlation between residency restrictions and reducing sex offenses against children or improving the safety of children," Taylor said.
"If you're going to do it, make an informed decision instead of letting emotions lead you to a decision that is meaningless in the goal you are trying to reach," she said.
Rodney Horton, president of Middletown Borough Council, said he has read those studies and understands the argument. But he believes Middletown's law, which keeps offenders 500 feet from places children gather, sends a message. The borough passed its law on Tuesday. It's like the laws some cities pass requiring gun owners to report lost or stolen guns, even though those laws are unlikely to stop gun violence, he said.
"We're sending a message that sex crime, especially toward children, is a major issue," he said. "When a community has endured many offenses like Middletown has, you can't sit idly by."
He particularly referred to the case of Charles Koons, 39, who is charged with molesting 13 boys ages 4 to 14 between 2002 and 2008.
Some argue that residency restrictions make people less safe, not more.
A study by the Iowa Department of Public Safety showed that the number of offenders unaccounted for doubled after a residency restriction law went into effect. Studies in Colorado, California and Minnesota showed residency restrictions have no effect on the chance that someone convicted of a sex crime might be arrested again.
State Police Lt. Douglas Grimes, who is in charge of Pennsylvania's Megan's Law Web site, said police officers "strive to know where the threats are," which becomes harder if sex offenders are forced to move or become homeless.
Probation officers can restrict where sex offenders live, but they base decisions on individual circumstances, he said.
Offenders who are in psychological treatment are nearly half as likely to offend again, according to the Center for Sex Offender Management. Residency restrictions can keep them from the family, employment and treatment that makes them less likely to break the law.
A federal judge overturned an Allegheny County law, saying it interfered with the state's obligation to try to rehabilitate offenders. His decision is under appeal.
Lemoyne Borough Council has a law that makes it unlawful for sexual offenders to live within 500 feet of any school, child care facility, common open space, community center, public park or recreational facility.
Harrisburg officials have considered similar restrictions but have not enacted any ordinances.
It's important not to lump all sex offenders together, Taylor said. Those the assessment board calls sexually violent predators make up only about 2 percent of those on the Megan's Law Web site. Others might be men who had a consensual relationship with a teenager or a single instance of indecent assault with an adult while drunk.
"They run the gamut," she said. "And it's not the ones on the list you need to worry about" because most of the people arrested for sex crimes have no record. Authorities can keep a closer eye on those already on the list, she said.
A very good essay about what to do about dealing with Former Offenders and the laws that have been passed in spite of Constitutional and Human Rights Issues. The author of this piece is about to have a book on this subject publish and wrote this as a condensed summery. I am posting this with his written permission. Please respect his copyright and do not re post or blog this without his written permission, which can be obtained by writing to him at sowriter@yahoo.com
Another Shade of Gray
Some Surprising Truths about the Sex Offender Situation
How do we begin to address such an emotionally charged topic?A subject that by and large, is distasteful to most, and directly problematic to all too many. There are few social issues existing today that carry such widely impacting relevance, and are at the same time plagued by such an abundance of myth, misconception, misinformation, myopic motivations, outright lies, and above all – a critical shortage of accurate statistical data.
It would make the most sense to commence with some pertinent, probably somewhat surprising facts - real facts, based on true, complete, and accurate presentation of information revealed by the most extensive studies ever conducted on convicted sexual offenders.Ironically, the United States Department of Justice, the originator of the largest and most comprehensive study, would likely benefit much more by the results coming out, in effect, the opposite of what was revealed. Herein lies one of greatest intrinsic challenges in dealing with child sexual abuse – much of our perception, reaction, statute, and social viewpoint are based not on the truth, but on myth.As an example, it is widely accepted as fact that sex offenders are extremely likely to re-offend.In reality, with the singular exception of murderers (probably because they are usually imprisoned for life or executed,) individuals that have committed sexual crimes against children – once prosecuted, are the least likely group of criminals to commit a similar crime again.(See U.S. DOJ Study @ www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/abstract/rsorp94.htm.) Where much of the perceptive distortion may come from, is the actual fact that most offenders against children have committed multiple offenses prior to being caught the first time. This element of truth has routinely been twisted to serve the agendas of a host of entities and organizations that benefit greatly from the public maintaining a universal fear and revulsion of sex offenders.
In this case, it’s an insidious instance of “throwing out the baby with the bathwater.”By reacting legally and socially based on mistaken assumptions, we expend a hugely disproportionate amount of our efforts, energies, and resources on incarcerating, monitoring, supervising, and tracking a population that is relatively harmless.There is not a recognized, significant study instrument existing today, that indicates a recidivism (re-offense) rate higher than 5% among this group of criminals, and some come in as low as 3.4 %!Many will immediately contend that this still constitutes a high enough risk level to warrant the current policies, laws, rights violations, and overall hysteria, “to protect the children!!”Where the myopic rubber meets the road here, is that as sentences, regulations, restrictions, and monitoring have increased, so proportionately has the number of absconded (whereabouts unknown) offenders - and equally significantly, the number of dead and missing children.How is this helping anyone, in any way?
Most are aware that “Meagan’s Law” is the precedent for the majority of today’s sex offender registries, monitoring, and community notification structures nationwide.What may come as a surprise is that there is absolutely no empirical evidence whatsoever that Megan’s or other like-minded laws have prevented anything, or protected anyone, ever.Many law enforcement professionals have gone on record bearing this out.While it has occasionally assisted in the apprehension of a few of the 2 – 5 % of individuals that did choose to re-offend, it can also be argued that those same resources could be applied to better screening, therapy, and public awareness processes, in order to lower that number even more and better detect warning signs - rather than wasting money and punishing many undeserving individuals for the sins of the few.It is difficult to even conceptualize the depths of Mrs. Kanka’s (Megan’s mother) grief or the scope of her family’s loss, and one would hope that very few would ever have to experience that level of tragedy.What must nonetheless be said is this: Laws should never be initiated by grieving families of victims for the above reasons.Having no basis in statistical fact, a “good idea on paper” has turned out to be ineffective, often unconstitutionally restrictive, and in effect counter-productive to its intended purpose (recidivism rates are the same as they were prior to the enactment of any of these laws.)The federal government’s typically inept reaction to this abject failure has been to create “SORNA” (legislation also initiated by an impacted family,) which is just more of the same, on a larger, more comprehensive scale.It reminds one of the tale of the watermelon vendors, selling melons for half of what they paid for them.After a season of losses, they concluded that a larger truck was necessary, so they could make it up next year in increased sales volume!We will not further protect our children by enveloping them in a blanket of false security.Rather, we must face facts and change course drastically if we hope to achieve a real difference – the need is clear for more exhaustive research, and more fitting, productive responses based on truth, not special-interest-serving fear-mongering.
Another hugely unproductive myth is that of “Stranger Danger.”Whether it be in public places, like malls and parks, on the streets, at the movies, wherever – your children are almost 95% safer at any of these locations, than they are in your own home, and the company of family, friends, and others that you actually “know,” and believe to be relatively safe.The explanation is simple – the overwhelming majority of child-related sex offenses are committed by someone known to the parents and the child - not “strangers.”While no one would advocate neglecting safety measures while in public, this merely illustrates yet another dangerous, counter-productive fallacy, that by its very nature, is likely contributive to an ongoing failure in the prevention of offenses that would be less likely to occur in an environment of accurate information.
A Perfect Storm
It’s important to clarify exactly how and why there are so many misconceptions, so much irrational fear and hatred, and such an unhealthy overall climate, which unintentionally contributes to worsening the problem.Simply put, there is a self-perpetuating cycle of misinformation, fear-mongering, knee-jerk reactions, and “feel good” legislation - all of which combine to create an exceptionally ineffective environment on every front of this “war.”It begins and ends with the news media, and our society’s apparent misconceptions about their true purpose.If we keep in mind that most of the media’s actual primary goal is, and always has been, to sell advertising, the overall picture might make more sense.It should come as no surprise that society possesses a certain morbid cultural curiosity around subjects that generally have very little or no direct relevance to most of us.For example, there seems to be something about fire that attracts our collective attention.The same goes for natural disasters such as typhoons and earthquakes, half the globe away.We’re constantly subjected to comprehensive coverage of the horrific of every kind, even though it generally has absolutely no practical impact on any of us, and that we have no intention of doing anything for or about. This seems to be exceedingly apparent with sexually based offenses, especially those committed against children.Almost like peeking at a scary movie through our fingers, we sit transfixed, unable to turn away – despite the heinous and revolting nature of what we’re viewing.
This is preciselywhat much of the media want and expect of us, and creates the most value benefit for them, in the form of advertising dollars - generated in direct proportion to the size of their audiences.The media have no desire whatsoever to report on what’s most relevant, important, or beneficial to you.Make no mistake, it’s all about the money, and always has been.Increasingly sensational (and often disturbing) stories go hand in hand with larger revenue potentials from bigger audiences.
The evolution and emergence of such an unfortunate dynamic has directly resulted in a precariously misinformed public, having been deliberately misled for profit, at an almost unimaginably high price.Because we’re told to believe that convicted sex offenders are inherently dangerous people that should be watched, regulated, supervised, and avoided if possible, we’re not looking where we should be for danger – within our own circles of family, friends, caregivers, and acquaintances.Meanwhile, we ostracize, revile, demean and disenfranchise a statistically harmless group of human beings.
Thus, the cycle continues with ubiquitous, sensationalistic misinformation, nurturing largely irrational and generally unjustifiable fear, contempt, repugnance, and hatred, all of which results in a devastatingly wasteful misdirection of energies and resources.With the public kept in a constant mindless frenzy of emotional reactivity (often due to atypical but high profile, particularly gruesome incidents,) the stage stays set for grandstanding politicians to step up – spouting rhetoric all having the same ring, “sex offenders are bad people, and we MUST protect our children from them, at ANY COST!”
The glaring error in this is that the vast majority of new-victim sexual offenses are not, repeat, not committed by already convicted sex offenders.Consequently as stated earlier, valuable resources are wasted on a relatively non-dangerous population.Still, the pundits rant on for their own political gain, probably fully cognizant of the pointlessness of what they propose, in order to garner more votes, gain leverage, or trash more level-headed, civil-rights-minded opponents.This prompts generally useless, often Draconian legislation that protects no one, and prevents nothing, but indeed looks “tough on crime” in the media.Public misinformation is then further reinforced, because, surely the lawmakers must know what they’re doing, right?Wrong.The statistics here, while undeniably true, are almost astounding, simply because they appear so foreign from what the media, policies, attitudes and overall current climate would suggest.Figures don’t lie, but liars apparently do figure.
We now come to the next insidious, cancer-like piece of this poisonous pie: The Criminal Justice System.More numerous and stricter laws equal more walls, more bars, more guards, more probation and parole officers - MORE MONEY.With over one million convicted sex offenders living and working among us, some very attractive opportunities present themselves to the ambitious in many professions.After all, who will come to the defense of a sex offender, even when it may involve his or her (the “her” contains a hypocrisy worthy of an entire additional article,) constitutional rights remaining intact?“They don’t deserve rights,” is a fairly common belief among many, largely due to the mass hypnosis continually perpetuated by the media and law enforcement, for their own benefits, not yours.Sex offenders, due to safety concerns, often require special, more expensive housing in jail and prison facilities, higher-priced custody situations for necessary segregation, and smaller scale, more expensive transport, for the same reasons.They often receive longer sentences, and are making up an ever-growing segment of today’s institutional populations.Again, more facilities, jobs, and money for everyone, at the taxpayers’ expense.So, why do the authorities continue to ignore relevant research and real facts?Because it’s profitable to do so.What price does this carry, beyond just dollars and sense?Our children, and many law abiding citizens pay it every day, in decreased safety, misplaced trust, and losses of freedoms.
And finally, we must consider the therapeutic sector’s impacts, interests and implications in this idiotic ideology.One might mistakenly assume that therapy providers would endeavor to act in society’s best interests in order to minimize recidivism rates.Wrong again.Here is yet another area where financial interests outweigh the greater good.Psychologists that treat sex offenders are generally contracted through states’ and counties’ criminal justice systems, and therefore subject not just to intense scrutiny from law enforcement such as probation and parole departments, but actually often must waive standard confidentiality procedures, and even conform their programs to requirements set by authorities.There have been numerous cases, some successful, some thrown out, of offenders being further prosecuted for disclosing additional victims or offenses in “private” therapy sessions.In return for sacrificing professional practices, experience, and ethics, treatment providers are rewarded with almost guaranteed success through lucrative contracts that provide them with a steady stream of long-term, compliant “customers.”So, the actual “customer” becomes the state or county, while offenders and taxpayers foot the bills for substandard, compromised – and consequentially less effective – “treatment.”All this is in seeming opposition to the standard mantra that “there is no cure,” so what actually is the point?It would appear to be an exemplary application of the Orwellian concept of “Double-think,” wherein government and society allow themselves to believe two directly conflicting ideas at the same time, in order to benefit financially and politically.The major costs, obviously, are that the safety and well-being of our children, as well as the constitutional rights of over a million Americans and counting, are being line by line sacrificed to get your vote and strengthen and grow already ineffective systems.
How Do We Fix It?
The solution is two-fold.From the perspective of society and for the victims’ well-being, it is necessary to develop better awareness programs, geared toward warning signs, trauma indicators, and common techniques and typical set scenarios used by offenders to “groom” their potential victims.The most widespread fallacies must be dispelled, such as that of “stranger danger,” vs. “next-door-neighbor danger,” and replaced with solid foundational information, that may actually help prevent offenses, and protect children.
With respect to convicted offenders themselves, more accurate and universal risk-assessment tools must be developed, based on empirical evidence that already does indeed exist, and has thus far just been ignored, or at best, not properly mined.Perhaps the greatest advancement we could make to help decrease the overall aggregate amount of child sexual abuse is to confront the general public with the facts – convicted sex offenders are not inherently dangerous, and their deviances can be successfully managed.This in turn will hopefully engender an environment wherein offenders can come forward to seek the help they need, because again and contrary to popular belief, most are not devoid of conscience, and struggle with deviant behaviors prior to being caught – and are simply not willing to be subjected to the current social branding and vilification that inevitably accompany such disclosures.Instead, they are almost forced to choose to try to deal with their problems on their own, and are consequently likely to commit many more offenses then they would with proper treatment.
It is not being suggested that all be forgiven, and no consequences come to bear, but rather we endeavor to balance them with solution-oriented results in mind, as opposed to the current atmosphere of utter contempt and hatred.We stand at a critical crossroads right now, both socially and legally – we had best tread carefully.
