TN- Sex offender registry may list juveniles

1-11-2009 Tennessee:

When he was a young boy, he was sexually abused. At age 16, his parents learned, he'd molested a young girl himself.

He was criminally charged and convicted, and because of that, got treatment. But his name was never part of a public registry. Had that happened, his mother said, the boy might have forgone treatment and headed down a much darker path of abuse.

"This is something that just happens. If you are raised up in that culture, you will act out (sexually)," said the mother, a 52-year-old Williamson County woman. Her name and her son's name are being withheld because The Tennessean does not identify victims of sex crimes.

This year, state legislators will be asked to add juveniles convicted of sex crimes to Tennessee's public sex offender registries. The legislation would represent the last piece of a broad set of sex crime laws ordered up by the federal government to better shield children from sexual and violent crimes.

And if passed by an April deadline - which the state says is unlikely to be met - it would ensure Tennessee continues to get all the federal law enforcement funding coming to it.

A flurry of new Tennessee laws have brought the state closer to compliance to what's known as the Adam Walsh Act, named for a 6-year-old who was murdered in 1981.

No bill submitted yet
A proposal to complete the missing piece, adding offenders under age 18 to Tennessee's sex offender database, would be included in a package of proposals legislators will receive from the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation this year.

Even if Tennessee lawmakers receive it warmly, TBI spokeswoman Kristin Helm said, it is doubtful that the legislature would approve the registry change by the April deadline.

The state has asked for a one-year extension to get the last pieces of the law in place; without it, federal funding for law enforcement could be lost.

Though the federal government has pushed for the law, adding young offenders to public criminal databases has been controversial across the U.S.

Prosecutors back listing
A state prosecutors group says offenders under age 18 should show up on the registries if they are convicted of sex crimes.

"They are as much of a threat to the people of this state as an adult," said Wally Kirby, director of the Tennessee District Attorneys General Conference. "Most of the kids who commit crimes like this ... you are talking about kids 16, 17, 18 years old.

"I think, quite frankly, we've bent over backwards to protect juveniles," he said. "You have got to have some consequences."

Kids may not get help
Others say making young offenders' names public can impair treatment that could keep them from committing more serious crimes as adults, especially when the accused were once victims of abuse themselves.

"I can see why they want that law - everybody wants their child to be safe," said the Williamson County mother, who was herself the victim of sexual abuse at the hands of her ex-husband. She said the criminal charge got her son into a treatment program, and as an adult today he has a healthy family life.

"If that law had been in effect, it would have so stigmatized my son," perhaps to the point where he would have shunned counseling, the woman said.

Once publicly branded as sex offenders, young people may not reach out for help, said Rachel Freeman, vice president of clinical services for the Sexual Assault Center of Nashville.

"We'd hate to see a registry like this get in the way of treatment," Freeman said. "The stigma that can follow these kids, we don't want it to be there if it's not necessary." ..News Source.. by Written by Clay Carey, The Tennessean