Sex Offenders Part 2
THE UNTHINKABLE
Patty and Jerry Wetterling lived through a parent’s worst nightmare—the abduction of their child. In response, Patty became a national figure for establishing sex offender registries as a way to protect our children. But today, she says we were wrong. Patty didn’t change her mind because her child’s abduction had a happy ending. No, she and her family anguished—not knowing what had happened to their son Jacob—for 27 years before hearing the horrific details of how he was sexually molested, murdered and dumped in a shallow grave.
If anyone has a right to seek retributive justice on the world because of what this life has handed to her, it’s Patty. And yet, she has become one of the voices of reason asking hard questions about what sex offender notification and registry laws have really done for us as a society. The answer: they have failed to decrease sexual assault and they have failed to decrease stranger perpetrated child-abductions.
Instead, these registries have taken a particular class of crimes—for which we do NOT sentence people to life in prison, and instead, given this class of perpetrator a life of barriers and a life-long label. If this is the intent of sex offender registries, then we might as well sentence them to life in prison!
Patty now says we need to be more concerned about helping sexual perpetrators to heal and have successful lives, rather than punishing them. She says this approach will get us to the ultimate goal—fewer victims.
In Season 1, Episode 6 of the podcast In the Dark, she shares how she came to this change of heart and tells the story of meeting a 10-year-old boy who was being held in a juvenile detention facility for “experimenting” with a cousin. This little one will now be labeled as a sex offender for the rest of his life for doing what we called “playing doctor” when I was a kid. Back then, parents who discovered their children had been experimenting inappropriately, used it as an opportunity to guide, correct, and shape healthy boundaries in their youngsters' budding curiosity about sex. Today, we call the police.
WHO ARE THESE PEOPLE?
In the work we do at Remnant Initiatives to help our returning citizens to be successful, we run into a lot of registered sex offenders. We often hear the stories of how making a stupid mistake has cost them everything. Yes, from time to time, we will serve someone who has a serious problem with sexual behavior. These folks need vigilant community supervision and extensive treatment to heal compulsions that, they often say they hate within themselves, but struggle to control. But this group is rare. For the most part, we hear the stories of people whose “sex crimes” were the consequence of substance abuse and mental health related impulsivity—people who, once they enter recovery or get mental health treatment, are far from dangerous to the communities in which they live. People who, though they may go on to commit further addiction-driven, or mental health related crimes, never commit another sex crime.
“Having sex with a 17-year-old who was buying drugs from me has cost me everything. I try to do good but then the doors just keep slamming and it’s like, why should I try to do good when I can’t even get a decent place to live? Other drug addicts can get their life back on track. But, if you are on the registry, you are screwed.”
“I got drunk and slid my hand down this woman’s back onto her ass. I was trying to ‘hit on her’ in this bar and I was being a jerk. She got pissed and called the cops. I have a problem with alcohol for sure. I am an idiot when I am drunk, and I deserved to be arrested and charged. But they charged me with rape! I am not a rapist! I was so scared of being stuck in jail for a year while I waited for a trial, and if a jury didn’t believe me, I would be looking at a lot of years in prison. So, I took a plea deal for a misdemeanor charge. I spent 8 months in prison for it, but now, I can’t be around my own 2-year-old son. I live in a shelter because I can’t move back in with my wife. I have a problem with alcohol and am in AA, but it’s like I have a life sentence of being separated from the people I love. The shame of being a drunk, that sucks. The shame of being a registered sex offender is pretty much hopeless.”
But the stories that break my heart are the ones like Samuel, who got his 17 year-old girlfriend pregnant when he was 21. He says, they were living together and no one had a problem with it until a cousin, to whom Samuel owed money for pot, decided to turn him in—out of spite. Samuel admitted to being the baby’s father when he was initially questioned by police.
“I didn’t think I had done anything all that wrong.”
But then, he was convicted of statutory rape and his 17-year-old “baby mama” was stuck raising a child alone while Samuel was incarcerated for six years. After releasing in 2018, Samuel still can’t have contact with either of them.
Then there is the story of James, a 17-year-old high school senior with a 15-year-old girlfriend. The week he turned 18, her parents turned him in because they didn’t like it that the kids were having sex. Now James is on his way to prison instead of college.
SORTING IT OUT
None of these men are a sexual risk to our community. And, here in Oregon, we at least recognize that all registered offenders do not pose the same risk to the public. Since 2013, we use a notification system to classify offenders into risk levels. Level 1 is the lowest risk and Level 3 is the highest risk to sexually reoffend. What’s interesting, is that for those of the lowest risk level, the state will ONLY notify people living with the offender. Level 2’s require the state to notify neighbors and other more intimate populations living around the offender. But Level 3’s, who presently comprise only 793 of the state’s nearly 31,000 registered offenders, are the only ones who will be listed on the State Police Sex Offender website.
But, wait! Doesn’t federal law require states to keep a registry and share it far and wide? Well, yes, but it is extremely expensive for states to be compliant with the federal Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act (SORNA). So, many states have just refused to comply. Mostly, because the cost of compliance is far more than the federal grant money states will lose for failing to do so.
SOME PEOPLE WANT TO HELP… BUT CAN’T
I was in a conversation recently with a landlord who is committed to giving people second chances. She regularly rents to people with criminal records and shared with me, “I hate it that I can’t rent to registered sex offenders, they deserve a chance to turn their lives around like anybody else, but I would be raked over the coals if the other renters or the other neighbors in the area found out. I just can’t do it.” So, this public fear of “those people”—who everyone says they don’t want to live in their neighborhoods—renders them homeless instead.
Help me understand… how is having registered sex offenders on the street safer than having them in our neighborhoods where they have a bona fide address and where law enforcement can find them??? The bottom line is that this whole registry and notification thing has become a mess! It is not doing what it was designed to do. It’s expensive to maintain. It’s breaking up families, contributing to homelessness, and ultimately, making our neighborhoods less safe.
WHAT ABOUT THE VICTIMS?
Don’t get me wrong, I am a fierce feminist and a survivor of sexual assault myself. I believe that people who commit crimes against women and children should be held accountable. But what victim/survivors want most—is to heal. Sex offender registration and notification laws have done nothing to help us heal. They might make us feel safer, but the research shows they do not make us safe. They have done nothing to decrease sexual assault or stranger-perpetrated, child abductions. And, if Patty Wetterling—who by helping to establish these laws, probably found a bit of comfort and a sense of control in the most horrific season of her life—if she can let them go, then so should the rest of us.
There is a recovery proverb, common to 12-Step culture that says, “Doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result is insanity.”
It’s time to stop the insanity. Let’s make some changes to our laws that can help perpetrators heal so that we can begin to realize the dream of fewer victims. We don’t have these laws for any other class of crime and our collective paranoia isn’t doing anything to make us a healthier society. At this point, keeping this faulty system is just dumb.