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Showing posts sorted by date for query Julia Tuttle. Sort by relevance Show all posts

October 11, 2009

Sex offender news roundup

Because my subscriber base is diverse, in my daily scans for blog topics I try to balance multiple areas of forensic practice. But these days, news pertaining to sex offender policy is so pervasive that I must consciously work to keep it from overwhelming the blog.

After all, even those of you who work with sex offenders probably want a diversion sometimes. When you initially trained for your profession, I'll bet you weren't thinking, "This will be so fantastic! I'll get to spend lots of quality time with sex offenders, absorbing all of the intimate details of their warped atrocities against women and children!"

No? I didn't think so.

But, sigh, that's the reality these days. Rare monsters in the United States and elsewhere -- such as John Couey in New Jersey and Earl Shriner in Washington State -- drive social policy. Aggrieved family members fire up a local community, politicians jump on an easy bandwagon, and -- voila -- the rest is history. As New York Times reporter Michael Cieply perceptively noted, in reference to the Roman Polanski case, the landscape has changed dramatically in the last three decades:
Manners, mores and law enforcement have become far less forgiving of sex crimes involving minors in the 31 years since Mr. Polanski ... fled rather than face what was to have been a 48-day sentence after he pleaded guilty to unlawful sex with a minor. But if he is extradited from Switzerland, Mr. Polanski could face a more severe punishment than he did in the 1970s, as a vigorous victims' rights movement, a family-values revival and revelations of child abuse by clergy members have all helped change the moral and legal framework regarding sex with the young.
Of course, we must guard against myopia. It is not just in the sex offender arena that we see zero tolerance policies gone wild. Look what is happening in the schools, for example. A 3rd-grade girl got expelled for a year because her grandmother sent a birthday cake to school for her. The problem wasn't the birthday cake, but the knife dear grandma sent to cut it with.

Anyway, on to this quick (I hope) roundup of sex offender-related developments.

Child victim decries conditions for sex offenders

Consequences of extreme social policies are so at odds with the original intents that even many who lobbied for the laws are having second thoughts. The Palm Beach (Florida) Post ran a remarkable story about a child sexual abuse victim whose victimization led to a legislative crusade against sex offenders. Lauren Book, whose child abuse saga began at age 11 at the hands of a caregiver, runs a nonprofit agency aimed at educating the public about child sexual abuse. Now, she is campaigning against the unintended consequences of the very residency restrictions that she helped inspire. Touring the sex offender encampment under the Julia Tuttle freeway in Florida, which I have previously blogged about, she said she has come to realize "that forcing predators to live in inhumane conditions will not protect children; in fact, she fears it may do the opposite":
"You can't really understand what it's like unless you go there. You can't capture it in words or pictures. Being there, hearing it, seeing it, smelling it - it's all part of understanding the situation…. It's a terrible situation under there, it is awful. I don't think them living under a bridge or absconding keeps children safe. I don't want them so desperate that they go out and find a child.''
The perils of a naked pumpkin

Elsewhere, legislators and judges are taking small steps to limit the consequences to youth of overinclusive sex offender registration requirements.

I mean, how would you feel if your kid was branded for life as a registered sex offender just because he had participated in Boulder, Colorado's popular "Naked Pumpkin Run" or "World Naked Bike Ride"?

To circumvent this scenario, Boulder is drafting a public nudity ordinance that would exclude arrests for nudity-related pranks from the registration laws. Commenting over at Grits for Breakfast, Scott Henson hopes this signals a growing public awareness that sex offender registries are too broad. "But a better fix would be for the legislature to remove indecent exposure and other petty crimes from the registry list. IMO we don't need more laws on this issue so much as better ones."

And in Michigan, a judge just ruled that putting a juvenile on the state's sex offender registry would constitute cruel and unusual punishment, prohibited by the U.S. Constitution.

The case involved "T.D.," a 15-year-old boy who touched the breast of a 15-year-old classmate in school. His name would have appeared on the registry for 25 years, until he was 43 years old. That would be unfair, ruled Judge Darlene A. O'Brien, because T.D.'s offense was "more akin to a juvenile prank than predatory, perverted, criminally deviant sexual conduct likely to be repeated." In her well-reasoned ruling, she too addresses the unintended consequences of the laws:

Requiring this rehabilitated juvenile offender to register for a total of 25 years upon reaching adulthood is likely to become a self-fulfilling prophesy -- if TD cannot get through school or get jobs because of community notification and public shunning, he is likely to become marginalized and, in fact, more likely to commit crimes as a result.

Prosecutors are appealing the decision, so an appellate court will get a chance to clarify whether juveniles must submit to public registration even when their offenses are mild and they present little risk of recidivism.

Challenges mounting on religious front

In at least the second pending case, a convicted sex offender in North Carolina is challenging a law that restricts his ability to attend church services. Police arrested James Nichols after he attended a Sunday service at a church that offers day care. As reported in the New York Times, "many of the three dozen states that establish zones where sex offenders cannot live or visit do not provide exemptions for churches." A similar lawsuit is pending in federal court in Georgia. Also in the South, in the city of Louisville, Kentucky, a Pentecostal church has snubbed its nose at the punitive climate against sex offenders by unapologetically ordaining a convicted sex offender as a pastor.

Voice stress analysis upheld

At the same time that these types of fissures are developing in the larger systems, other agencies are imposing additional restrictions on sex offenders. For example, a federal judge has ruled that sex offenders can be required to submit to computerized voice stress analysis as part of their post-release supervision, just as many are already required to undergo testing with polygraphs and penile plethysmography under the "containment approach" to recidivism.

The federal judge in the Northern District of New York ruled that debates about the scientific reliability of the technique do not "bear much on the therapeutic value of the tool" as a lie-detection incentive.

The attorney for Ethan Gjurovich, who was convicted of child pornography charges, said this is the first case he knows of in which a federal court has endorsed voice stress analysis requirement on a parolee. He likened it to the psychological pressure of a "lie-detecting dog" -- "If you don't tell the truth, he's going to bite you."

Paraphilic coercive disorder proposal critiqued

On a parting note, I encourage you to check out an interesting critique of the Paraphilic Coercive Disorder diagnosis being proposed for the DSM-V, over at the Asexual Explorations blog. The blog -- as its title implies -- is devoted to the emerging issue of asexuality. But its author was so astounded upon learning about some of the wacky diagnoses being proposed for the upcoming Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders that felt compelled to detour from his main topic.

. . . And, speaking of pumpkins, be sure to tune in for a repeat of the ever-popular Halloween post,
BEWARE THE HALLOWEEN BOGEYMAN.

June 26, 2009

Brits agog over U.S. sex offender practices

A spate of media coverage of wacky U.S. sex offender policies is encouraging a sense of smug superiority among the British public. From sex offenders dumped under bridges on one side of the country to those locked in high-tech prevention detention facilities on the other, it isn't the most flattering portrait of the Land of the Free.

Most recently, BBC aired a special report on the ongoing disaster under the Julia Tuttle Causeway in Florida (which I’ve blogged about several times over the past two years). The community living in squalid conditions in makeshift huts and tents under the bridge, with no running water, electricity or toilets, has hit about 70 and just keeps growing.

"Welcome to American justice," Dr. Pedro Jose Greer of Florida International University told the visiting European journalist. "This is the stupidest damn law I have ever seen…. We have people living together with mental and physical illnesses in an environment where people can't possibly sleep because of the cars going by overhead -- where you can smell the urine and see the trash mounting all around us."

If that dirty laundry isn't bad enough, the other recent coverage of U.S. sex offender policies is no more flattering to us Yanks.

Filmmaker Louis Theroux, a quirky British-American best known for his television series Louis Theroux's Weird Weekends, was granted unprecedented access to the infamous Coalinga State Hospital in California, home to about 800 men serving "indefinite sentence for offences that they haven't yet committed and might never," in the words of the review in the (London) Independent.

The resultant documentary aired on BBC, "A Place for Paedophiles," depicts "a Kafkaesque place" where not just the sex offenders but also many members of the staff look pretty darned "creepy," says the Independent.

A Sun profile of Theroux and his film took the opportunity to paint an even kookier picture for the British public:

"They have karaoke nights, put on plays, and on their birthday are thrown a party with cake, ice-cream and gifts…. [They] spend their days at the £268 million centre playing ping-pong or watching DVDs, and they even stage Coalinga Idol contests based on Simon Cowell's talent show American Idol."

After experiencing Coalinga up close and personal, Louis expressed doubt that the Americans know what they are doing when it comes to sex offenders:

"The British system is that when an offender finishes his sentence, he is released on the sex offenders' register. If he then puts a foot wrong he is hauled back to prison. It's a lot cheaper than a system like Coalinga -- and a little bit more realistic."

"Coalinga is the weirdest place I've ever been to," Theroux says in the film. "I can't quite believe it exists. In America this is the latest way of getting a handle on sex offenders…. You assume the people who run this place know what they are doing, but you do question it."

March 25, 2009

Gender twist on "post-apocalpytic trolls"

I've written previously about troll colonies. They are the exiled sex offenders living under bridges, including most famously the Julia Tuttle Causeway in Florida. Now, for perhaps the first time, a woman has been forced to join their ranks. Here is what one columnist had to say about this sad, and senseless, development in a world gone mad:

Woman joins sex-offender group
Guest essay by Fred Grimm, Miami Herald*

It's as if Voncel Johnson has been thrust into a bizarre social experiment.

Forcing so many men to live like post-apocalyptic trolls beneath a bridge in the middle of Biscayne Bay wasn't quite mad enough. Now they've added a woman.


For two years, a colony of convicted sex offenders under the Julia Tuttle Causeway has lived in a public health travesty, without water or toilets or electrical service. They sleep in tents, shacks, the back seats of cars in the last realistic address in metropolitan Miami unaffected by city and county sex-offender residency laws.

The numbers have been growing steadily as more convicted sex offenders emerge from prison and are consigned to finish out their wretched lives under a bridge.

T
he population was up to 52 men Monday. And Voncel Johnson.

Gender equity

In a peculiar nod to gender equity, the Florida Department of Corrections informed her last week that she too had only one residency option in Miami-Dade County -- the Tuttle. ''They just give me a blanket and a pillow and sent me . . . here?'' she asked, talking over the incessant thump-thump-thump of the freeway traffic overhead. "I just broke down.''

A community backward enough to create a subterranean de-facto prison camp of male sex offenders thrusts a single woman into the mix -- just to see what happens.

I
t's an ironic setting for Voncel Johnson. The 43-year-old woman, who grew up in poverty and neglect in the Brownsville section of Miami, told me she was sexually molested at age 6 and gang-raped at 16. ''I have a hard time trusting men,'' she said.

In 2004, Johnson pleaded guilty to a charge of lewd and lascivious exhibition (without physical contact) with a minor. She claimed Monday the charge was unfounded but at the time a plea offer with one year probation and no prison time seemed prudent. Except she twice failed to meet sex-offender registration requirements. Her probation was revoked. She did 10 months at Broward Correctional Institute.


Common refrain


She repeated a common refrain -- sometimes delusional -- among the bridge outcasts. "I never would have done that plea deal if I'd known they'd send me here. I could've fought those charges.''

But offender laws leave the state Department of Corrections no options for a sex offender. Voncel Johnson's parole officer did find her a motel room for three days last week. And she was offered a slot in a residential offender program in another county. But Johnson refused to leave Miami. "All my family lives here. I've never been any place but Miami.''

It was probably a foolish decision, but Johnson harbors some vague notion about gutting it out beneath the Tuttle until her parole ends May 5. ''Then I can find some place to live.'' She seems unable to grasp that residency restrictions are forever.

M
eanwhile, the men beneath the Tuttle gave her a battered old camper trailer. ''We watch out for her,'' insisted Juan Carlos Martin, who has been under the bridge so long that the address on his driver's license reads ''Julia Tuttle Causeway Bridge.'' He said it was as if city, county and state officials purposely cram more and more men into an unliveable, hopeless, crowded space, knowing that eventually something awful might happen. And now they add a woman.

M
artin said, "They need to get her out of here.''

*From today's Miami Herald, posted with the written permission of columnist Fred Grimm. More columns by Fred Grimm are
HERE.

Related blog posts:

December 13, 2007

Exiles in the promised land

Sex offenders living as trolls under Miami bridge

The New Times of Miami has an amazing update on the exile colony of sex offenders living under the Julia Tuttle freeway in Miami (a community I blogged about back in April); there's a companion slide show that is worth checking out. The story begins like this:
Another one showed up last night. Around 10 — just before curfew — a car rolled in under the bridge and the newcomer got out with his wife. She hugged and kissed him goodbye, pulled the car out along the road, and disappeared into a sea of headlights. . . . Until last week, "Big Man" was serving a four-year sentence for cocaine possession. . . . He was looking forward to leaving prison and reuniting with his wife, until he got the news: Instead of going home, he'd be living under a bridge, a parole commission officer told him. That's because 23 years ago, when he was 19 years old, Big Man was charged with sexual assault on a minor. (He claims the victim was his girlfriend and that it was consensual.)
The story continues here. The companion slide show is here. Also see my September post on how this relates to the history of banishment in Western culture.

April 16, 2007

Sex offenders must live as trolls

A judge has ordered five convicted sex offenders to live under a bridge near Miami because no other housing can be found for them. Under new residency restrictions, they are banned from living near schools, parks, and other places where children congregate, and even homeless shelters have refused them entry.

The judge ordered the men to stay under the bridge from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. Their probation officers come by nightly to check that they are there.

Their address is listed on the Florida sexual predator Web site as “Julia Tuttle Causeway.”

One of the five, Kevin Morales, asked a judge on April 12 if he could go back to jail instead of living under the bridge. The judge said no.

Laws restricting where sex offenders can live have swept the nation since the first ones were enacted in Iowa five years ago. Iowa has seen mounting criticism of the laws, largely due to their unintended side effects. Rather than protecting children, the laws may actually endanger them more by making it harder to track and rehabilitate offenders. The laws also do nothing to protect the large proportion of sexually abused children whose assailants are family members or acquaintances, many with no prior convictions for sex offenses.