GA- The rape of intelligence

5-28-2008 Georgia:

THE SERIAL MOLESTER known as the Georgia General Assembly did it again, with Gov. Sonny Perdue acting as an enabler by not vetoing the measure. Their sex-offender residency restrictions slapped down by the state Supreme Court, the legislators removed the narrow cause of the court verdict and launched the thing once again.

Despite good intentions ruined by overly broad language that some assembly leaders concede is intended to make it impossible for sex offenders to live anywhere in Georgia, this is more than a civil-rights offense. It’s stupid and everyone, except the political grandstanders in an election year, knows it.

It’s bad enough when the “usual suspects” in filing rights lawsuits take the state to court — and win — but when they’re joined in the effort by organizations whose purpose is to end sexual assaults against women and children one would hope the light of day might creep into the dark recesses of some political minds.

THE REVAMPED measure once again bans sex offenders — which include teens who were caught getting oral sex from the young lady now their wife, among other follies — from living, working or loitering within 1,000 feet of where children might gather: schools, churches, parks, gyms, swimming pools or any of the state’s 150,000 school bus stops.

The only thing changed was what the justices struck down in the only limited portion of the first measure to reach them (more are pending, including the church restriction). Now a sex offender who owns his or her home will be allowed to remain there even if a facility where children gather later opens nearby. Such generosity!

Within 24 hours of the governor signing it, a new class-action lawsuit against the revised measure was filed, as well it should have been.

What really should have given legislators second thoughts (assuming they even had first ones on this measure) is the fact that now the groups most concerned with stopping the very thing the legislation purports to address are lining up against it. They argue it only creates the illusion of safety while putting women and children at even greater risk.

“We can scare people into believing that we are doing something, and that does nothing in my mind but endanger people by luring them into a false sense of security,” said Shawn Paul, president and CEO of the Georgia Network to End Sexual Assault, a coalition of sexual assault centers, speaking to the Athens newspaper.

NOTING THAT an estimated 94 percent of sexually abused children are the victims of their parents or other family members, he said the law provides no actual assurance children will be any safer. And, he added, most such assaults take place in the victim’s home, not that of a convicted sex offender nor at a church or school-bus stop.

Moreover, roughly 15,000 Georgians are on the registered sex-offender list, which is a lifetime proposition — meaning no number of decades of good behavior can get one off it and free of the restrictions. The offenses of most were not against children to boot, though this is the fear tool used to gain support for such draconian measures.

Actually, it is the state itself — and the General Assembly — that is at fault for the situation. If it actually believes these 15,000 pose a continuing and constant risk, and some few probably do, then why did it release them from incarceration and back onto the streets? Why are they not in secure treatment facilities, being rehabilitated ... or kept away from doing what they do? It can’t possibly be that state officials and politicians don’t want to spend money on protecting all those children and others they vow are at risk, can it? Do they really believe that fixing the state’s problems involves throwing them outside the state’s borders?

IF THAT’S THE CASE, then the water shortages in Atlanta could be solved by exiling all transplanted Yankees back to their native states, and deteriorating roads could be remedied by the simple measure of banning cars.

It is not only sex offenders, particularly those trying to reform themselves, who deserve better from the legislators. It is all of us. ..News Source.. Rome News Tribune Editorial