Quote:
Originally Posted by golfing eagles
The last thing I want to do is make any statement in defense of sex offenders, but I think we have to be careful here. I don't think the law makes enough of a distinction between various categories of offenders. There is a huge difference between an 18 year old man dating a 15 year old for a year and then having consensual sexual relations, and a 60 year old man luring a 6 year old girl into his van with a puppy. But both could be branded a sex offender for life.
For example, my son had a friend when he lived in Colorado who had a 18 year old son that was just a bit "slow". As a result, he was frequently harassed by some "bullies" in his senior class. One afternoon he was cutting across the athletic fields of the high school that was a complex shared by a middle school and elementary school. He was attacked by 6 or 7 "bullies" who stripped him of all his clothing and took his cell phone, leaving him in the middle of the field naked. There wasn't even a fig tree to grab a leaf from, so he ran towards the school looking for help. He was seen by a group of 4th grade girls who started screaming, which gained the attention of school administration and the police were called. He was arrested, convicted of a sexual offense, and sentenced to 6 months in jail and 5 years probation, as well as being listed for life as a "sex offender". This highlights one of the problems with "zero tolerance" policies. I just don't see this as a sex offense, and since "intent" seems to be a new yardstick applied to the law, I don't see intent either. If anything the true offenders were the group of boys that stripped him. BTW, he named them, but no one was interested. The police "had their man", case closed. The DA had his conviction. Case closed.
Now the true sex offenders are pedophiles who prey on pre-teen children and those who commit non-consensual assault. I don't think two teenagers with poor judgement , and certainly not the boy described above should be branded for life
That being said, probably 90+% of those labeled as sex offenders truly deserve it, so be careful.
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Thanks for adding that GE. I have often found the law not only blind but also deaf and dumb in certain cases.
Context is crucial in getting fairness and that is often only allowed to the cases that have a rich defendant or some crusading lawyer involved.
Remember that I have been involved with victims' rights concerns since going into a public library in Reno, Nevada to help find something to assist my fellow Earl Wooster High School students deal with the 2-24-1976 murder of Michelle Mitchell. The daughter of our then remedial English teacher Barbara Mitchell. 2-24 is also my birthday.
Then I was a Student and then Student Attorney for Legal Assistance to Minnesota Prisoners and worked on pieces of maybe forty prisoners' cases mainly at Minnesota Correctional Facility--Stillwater. I did make sure that I really looked into their cases as carefully as I could. Had a know-it-all prison inmate who thought he was a lawyer on occasion. Someone who had a great deal of time on their hands and access to law books. The prison lawyer though often missed the context and just went for fancy tricks pulled by previous lawyers in their law cases.
Recall has much context the lawyer in the Casey Anthony case threw at us viewers! Probably even more at the jury that we were not allowed to see for some reason or another.