No one could argue that HRW has not covered issues faced by registered sex offenders in the new HRW report and I commend them for doing an excellent job.
However, since I was contacted when the research for this report began, and I did offer the HRW access, more than once, to the news articles about hundreds of cases of vigilantism and acts of violence against, persons previously convicted of sex offenses, and those who are newly accused, but for reasons unknown to this writer the HRW chose to not address those acts of violence, nor even review them. The majority of those news articles are now in blogs and indexed several ways.
Accordingly that portion of their report is severely understated, especially the portion which speaks to the maiming and murders of registered sex offenders and persons newly accused of sex offenses. Statistically this is a growing problem that is not being addressed by any legislation, nor by the Human Rights Report.
Folks will note that I have distinguished between a registered sex offender -and- a person newly accused of a sex offense. I do this because although one would consider them the same there are distinct differences in those groups.
One major difference is the number of suicides by persons newly accused of a sex offense, an extremely high number in the record that I have been keeping. At the present time I am converting my OLD RECORD of suicides to a newly created blog to be able to show other information about those cases and to separate them from murders.
HRW does cite "suicides" on page 81 of their report citing my Master List of Deaths (Suicides and Murders of sex offenders), but gives the wrong URL. They show http://www.geocities.com/eadvocate/issues/topic-pedophiles.html and it should be http://www.geocities.com/voicism/harm-master.html for the Master List.
The URL the Human Rights Report shows has to do with definitions (first created in 2002) and has been moved to The Confusing Words & Phrases in the realm of sex offenders.
These are the records of deaths that I keep:
1) The Master Listing of all deaths: CLICK
2) The blog showing the news story behind a suicide: CLICK
3) The blog showing the news story behind a murder: CLICK
Effectively the blogs are to keep the stories behind a death, whether it be a death of a registered sex offender, or a death of a person accussed of a sex offense, or the death of a person involved with a sex offender (i.e., murder-suicides and some other very odd cases).
Note: Because so many deaths have occurred compiling the news stories has been done on my home disk, and slowly I am getting them entered into the blogs for a permanent record which everyone can access. Accordingly, the blogs are not totally uptodate.
Again, I commend the Human Rights Watch for covering the topic of registered sex offenders. I do wish they would have covered sex offenders as a class with special needs, even though law today does not recognize sex offenders as a class. Registrants are likened to folks who suffer "Hate Crimes" which the government does keep special statistics of.
Special needs due to the laws forcing them to register and causing the harm they suffer today. Politicians claim regulation of a group with a high recidivism rate and refuse to recognize the fallacy of their claim as to former sex offenders. That political claim places former sex offenders in a false light before the public eye.
eAdvocate
With that said on to the HRW report:
Human Rights Watch:
Summary
The reality is that sex offenders are a great political target, but that doesn’t mean any law under the sun is appropriate.
—Illinois State Representative John Fritchey1
People want a silver bullet that will protect their children, [but] there is no silver bullet. There is no simple cure to the very complex problem of sexual violence.
—Patty Wetterling, child safety advocate whose son was abducted in 1989 and remains missing2
What happened to nine-year-old Jessica Lunsford is every parent’s worst nightmare. In February 2005 she was abducted from her home in Florida, raped, and buried alive by a stranger, a next-door neighbor who had been twice convicted of molesting children. Over the past decade, several horrific crimes like Jessica’s murder have captured massive media attention and fueled widespread fears that children are at high risk of assault by repeat sex offenders. Politicians have responded with a series of laws, including the sex offender registration, community notification, and residency restriction laws that are the subject of this report.
Federal law and the laws of all 50 states now require adults and some juveniles convicted of specified crimes that involve sexual conduct to register with law enforcement—regardless of whether the crimes involved children. So-called “Megan’s Laws” establish public access to registry information, primarily by mandating the creation of online registries that provide a former offender’s criminal history, current photograph, current address, and other information such as place of employment. In many states everyone who is required to register is included on the online registry. A growing number of states and municipalities have also prohibited registered offenders from living within a designated distance (typically 500 to 2,500 feet) of places where children gather—for example, schools, playgrounds, and daycare centers.
Human Rights Watch appreciates the sense of concern and urgency that has prompted these laws. They reflect a deep public yearning for safety in a world that seems increasingly threatening. Every child has the right to live free from violence and sexual abuse. Promoting public safety by holding offenders accountable and by instituting effective crime prevention measures is a core governmental obligation.
Unfortunately, our research reveals that sex offender registration, community notification, and residency restriction laws are ill-considered, poorly crafted, and may cause more harm than good:
The registration laws are overbroad in scope and overlong in duration, requiring people to register who pose no safety risk;
Under community notification laws, anyone anywhere can access online sex offender registries for purposes that may have nothing to do with public safety. Harassment of and violence against registrants have been the predictable result;
In many cases, residency restrictions have the effect of banishing registrants from entire urban areas and forcing them to live far from their homes and families.
The evidence is overwhelming, as detailed in this report, that these laws cause great harm to the people subject to them. On the other hand, proponents of these laws are not able to point to convincing evidence of public safety gains from them. Even assuming some public safety benefit, however, the laws can be reformed to reduce their adverse effects without compromising that benefit. Registration laws should be narrowed in scope and duration. Publicly accessible online registries should be eliminated, and community notification should be accomplished solely by law enforcement officials. Blanket residency restrictions should be abolished.
For access to the full report: CLICK by the Human Rights Watch
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