AZ - Arizona Boy, 5, Gets Accused Of ‘Sexual Misconduct’

Original Article

06/27/2014

By Lisa Fogarty

_____, a kindergartner at Ashton Ranch Elementary School in Surprise, Arizona, was recently forced to serve detention for an unusual offense: sexual misconduct.

The little boy was playing on his school’s playground when another child instructed him to pull his pants down “or else he would do it for him,” reports Daily Mail. The child did as he was told, pulling down both his pants and underwear in front of other students.

School administrators responded to this incident by taking _____ to the principal’s office and forcing him to sign a document that labeled his actions as "sexual misconduct," according to the child’s mother.
- So what about the bully who told him to do this?

_____ says the school did not contact her immediately after the incident and that she only learned about it after her son was told to sign the paper.

“He’s a 5-year-old,” _____ said. “He does not know right from wrong yet.”

_____ says she fears the label will follow her son throughout school and that he only signed the paper because he was forced to do so. When she tried to appeal the school’s actions and have the document removed from _____’s permanent record, she was told it couldn't be done.

“My son is not a sexualized minor,” _____ told AZ Family. “I’m just heartbroken. That’s not my son.”

Dysart Unified School District representatives insist the school’s administrators were simply following the proper protocol when they took disciplinary action against the young boy. Indecent exposure is considered a form of sexual misconduct, according to their rules, and parents are not required to be at the school during the meeting that follows the incident, unless the child asks for them.

MN - Big win for college coach wrongly accused of child porn

Original Article

Whatever happened to being innocent until proven guilty?

04/10/2014

MANKATO - An emotional saga that began with a child pornography accusation 18 months ago ended in final victory Thursday for the ex-football coach of Minnesota State University-Mankato who was fired even though the charges against him were found groundless and dismissed.

A state arbitrator ruled the university wrongfully terminated football coach Todd Hoffner last May for videos found on his school-issued cellphone of his nude and partially clothed young children acting playful after bathing at home.

The arbitrator ordered Hoffner’s reinstatement to his four-year contract along with back pay for lost earnings from his six-figure salary.

Hoffner was suspended in August 2012 when a school technician noticed the videos on his phone while repairing it. He was arrested four days later on child pornography charges, but three months later a judge threw out the charges, ruling the videos did not meet the legal definition of child pornography.

“The videos under consideration here contain nude images of defendant's minor children dancing and acting playful after a bath,” said Judge Krista Jass. “That is all they contain."

But Hoffner never regained his coaching job. Upon dismissal of the charges he was assigned to administrative duties in the athletic department, and then fired six months later. He was hired by Minot, N.D., State University as head football coach in January.

Hoffner insisted all along there was nothing inappropriate in the videos. He said his children – then ages 9, 8 and 5 – were simply acting silly. He said he was an innocent victim of authorities acting overzealously in the wake of the Jerry Sandusky sex abuse scandal at Penn State University.

Christopher Madel, Hoffner’s arbitration attorney, told the Minneapolis Star Tribune the overseers of the Mankato university should now “clean house” and remove those officials who pursued the pornography charges and then fired Hoffner.

Read the rest of the story

TX - Dallas County Schools Unveils the "School Bus of the Future," Complete with "Pedophile Finder"

Original Article

Sounds like they got this hair-brained idea from John Walsh and his pedophile bus surfing (Article, Video)

04/02/2014

By Eric Nicholson

Dallas County Schools - the local school district with no schools or students but lots and lots of school buses - sent word last Friday that it was preparing to unveil the "School Bus of the Future," and that this futuristic vehicle will "will revolutionize school bus transit and exponentially increase the safe passage of students to and from school." We were intrigued.

My money personally was on some sort of armored personnel carrier, which the Department of Defense is handing out like peppermints. Web editor Gavin Cleaver, a deeply cynical British man, speculated that it's "probably just some unemployed guy in a battered old Ford Galaxy," which would be more in keeping with tradition.

It turns out the School Bus of the Future looks very much like the school bus of the past, i.e. big, yellow and ungainly with a retractable stop sign.

That, Dallas County Schools explained today in a press release, is because the improvements are mostly invisible from the outside.

A brief glance won't tell you the new buses are equipped with voice-over-IP communication systems, or that they transmit data on speed, location and acceleration in real-time. The "Thumbs-Up!" thumbprint scanner, which keeps track of which kids are on the bus and whether they're supposed to be there, is also hard to see unless you're really pressing your face to the glass, as are the multiple interior security cameras.

Slightly easier to notice is the rear-facing camera, dubbed -- no joke -- the "Pedophile Finder."

"I wish we could have come up with a better name for it," says Dallas County Schools spokeswoman Allison Allison. (Yes, that's the correct name.) The camera, mounted on the top portion of the school bus and positioned to capture the license plate of tailing vehicles, isn't just to catch pedophiles. It could be a parent who lost custody of their child, or a kidnapper. But "Pedophile Finder" was the name that stuck.
- So if there is a vehicle behind the bus, how does it film their license plate that is on the back of their vehicle?

"The bus driver can't tell if somebody's tailing him but if they recognize a pattern of a car following a bus" based on video, they can take appropriate measures.

The whole setup is called BusGuard, which was developed by DCS and Louisiana-based Force Multiplier Solutions. DCS provides buses for all Dallas County school districts, serving some 425,000 students. All 1,900 buses will be outfitted with the equipment by the fall, Allison says.

A full list of specs can be found here, along with the comforting reminder that "in the event of a serious terrorist or hi-jacking emergency, the control of the management system can be transferred to the appropriate law enforcement agency."

AUSTRALIA - Support programs challenge community hatred

"It's Madness"

Original Article

This reporter posted the following question under the image on the article: "Is redemption possible for paedophiles?" Well of course it's possible! Not everybody who sexually abuses a child is a pedophile, by definition. Reporters need to stop misusing the terms "sex offender," and "pedophile" as if they mean the same thing, they do not.

03/29/2014

By Daniella Miletic

Barbara pulls a thick stack of handwritten notes from a cloth bag, places them on the table and starts talking in a voice that never rises above the softly conversational. On a warm Melbourne morning in a city cafe, she smiles comfortably but glances discreetly around, not wanting to be overheard. There are few topics, she says, that are more volatile than the one she is here to talk about.

She grips a small clump of her hair, saying it was fear that drained the pigment from these strands the day her husband told her his secret. The day she decided to leave. ''It caused instant menopause. I decided I was going to go,'' she says, and then stops. ''I love him. It's bloody hard.''

Even when pressed, she offers little more detail of that day, of that time, of the crime her husband revealed to her. ''The fact is, I knew he was in a bad place and I suppose my head didn't want to let the suspicions through. But once I knew, I told him what we had to do, and that was to hand himself in.''

Barbara convinced her husband to confess and he went to jail. She chose to stand by him because of her love and her religious faith, she says. If anything else had been wrong with him, if he were schizophrenic, an alcoholic, she knows she would have tried to help him. ''People might hate these men, but God doesn't,'' she says. ''And one of the reasons Jesus got nailed on the cross was for mixing with the wrong kind of people. Back then it was prostitutes and lepers.''

Today, it is paedophiles.

But Barbara believes in redemption. When she was growing up, her father worked in prison reform, helping criminals, mainly men, restart their lives outside prison. Often, he would take them into the family home. ''They would live with us until they got work. They were my friends,'' says Barbara. ''We wouldn't talk about their crimes, most criminals don't want to talk about that, but we often talked about their lives when their lives were good. Their memories.''

Since her husband's release several years ago, Barbara has dedicated her own life to his rehabilitation, learning about paedophilia and its treatments and watching him to make sure he never does anything like it again. She read about a Canadian program that aims to prevent child abuse by creating a friendship group around sex offenders. She felt there were similarities to Alcoholics Anonymous and believed it might work for her husband. Besides, no other treatment program was on offer except a Salvation Army course for drug addiction, which he also took on, because his was an addiction of a kind.

She has been unofficially mimicking the program since he was released, with just her and a counsellor as his support group. For years she has also been campaigning, pleading - with police, politicians, church groups - for help to start a group to make the treatment available for all child sex offenders in Australia once they get out of jail.

Barbara says she had not prepared herself for the hatred, sometimes the violence, she would encounter. ''I am trying to make sense of the monster theory, the rock spider thing,'' she writes in a diary entry almost a decade old. ''I have discovered a wall of suspicion, and an overwhelming resistance to viewing sexual offending as anything but the worse kind of intentional evil …"

''The resistance is so great, that anyone who bears any other kind of message is viewed as naive at best, and plain evil at worst … The experts in this area stay very quiet for they also shrink from the hysterical reactions. Consequently most people do not doubt the monster model, and seem to prefer to believe that either these people are untreatable or that they don't deserve to be treated.''

This is why a treatment program like Circles of Support and Accountability, she says, one that carries the motto ''No More Victims'', can't seem to get off the ground here. ''It's madness,'' she says, shaking her head.

Read the rest of the story

UK - Even the innocent should worry about sex offender apps

Original Article

03/26/2014

By Sharif Mowlabocus

The average citizen may not feel that they have anything to fear from the rise of apps that promise to identify sex offenders in their area but they are part of a worrying trend that should act as a warning about what happens when personal data is flattened out and sliced up into apparently user-friendly services.

Sex-offender-locator apps proudly boast that they can help users find sex offenders in their local area. But they aren’t, of course, actually detecting anything. US federal law mandates that every state must collect information on convicted sex offenders and make it available to the public online. Sex offender locator apps take this freely available data and repurpose it.

After loading the app on your phone, you are presented with a map of your surrounding area and an icon, such as the commonly used blue dot, to show your own position. As you move around your neighbourhood, the app tracks your movements and the blue dot moves accordingly. At the same time other dots or pins also appear on the screen. These are most often coloured red and indicate the address of a registered sex offender. Clicking on a pin opens a profile containing an image of the sex offender, some personal data such as their age, sex, ethnicity, date of birth and address, and a list of convictions together with the date of those convictions.

At first sight these applications seem helpful. Many parents would want to know if there was a sex offender living next door for understandable reasons. And since SORNA mandates that local police forces should notify communities when sex offenders convicted of more serious crimes move into their neighbourhood they aren’t necessarily providing much more information than users would receive without an app.

There is a crucial difference though. As well as informing residents, SORNA also mandates that crime prevention teams work with local communities to explain how to keep children safe, how to talk to them about stranger danger and sexual abuse and how to deal with having an offender living in the local vicinity.

It is this contextualisation that is notably absent from the sex offender identification apps that are currently available. It is always good to know who we are living next to but without further resources such knowledge becomes at best meaningless and, at worst, the root of paranoia and fear.

The mapping illusion

Reoffending rates for sex offenders are far lower than many other crimes but these apps don’t give you that information. They might provide you with a sex offender’s last known address but fail to tell you that an alarmingly high percentage of convicted sex offenders have no fixed abode.

And it’s important to note that even though SORNA is a national law, different states have drastically different rules for which crimes will land you on the sex offender register. Few would argue that a violent child rapist should be included but in some states, you can end up on the register for having consensual sex in a public place or even urinating in an alleyway.

Then there is the mapping of sex offenders. Maps are amazing things. They tell us where things are – most of the time, when they work. Google Maps is only as accurate as the last time it was updated. The same can be said for these applications.

Worse still, the SORNA mandated databases are, frankly, a mess. There is no funding to implement SORNA and as a result, the information contained in them is often out of date and sometimes incorrect.

The mapping techniques employed by sex offender apps are therefore doubly illusory. The live tracking of our own movements by these apps belies the inaccuracies of the databases and suggests that what we are seeing is up to date, perhaps even being provided in real time, when in fact it isn’t.

Mapping us all

You may not feel concerned about this. You may think that sex offenders deserve what they get. But the prospects of people being affected in the same way, even if they’ve never committed a crime, are on the horizon.

In the UK, for example, discussions are ongoing about making patient records and data held by the NHS available to third parties. It has not yet been decided how these third parties will use this data but already companies have been found to be offering mapping services based on the information.

You may have been depressed in your teenage years. You may have even contemplated suicide. You may now be living a healthy, happy life and have long forgotten those anxious adolescent years. But if you reported it, if you sought help or advice from the NHS, then that record is still there.

And when data becomes compressed by third parties, when it gets flattened out into one single data stream, your present and your past collide with potentially huge ramifications for your future.

When it comes to personal data – of any kind – we not only need to consider what it will be used for but how that data will be represented, and what such representation might mean for us and others.

NM - San Juan County Sheriff's Office turn sex offender registration into a circus

Deputy Ed Madson

Original Article

This is just a sheriff, in our opinion, out trying to make a name for himself by exploiting ex-offenders and fear.

03/22/2014

By Ryan Boetel

Drawing attention: Publicized process attracts neighbors' attention during routine checks

AZTEC - San Juan County Sheriff's Office Deputy Robert Tallman slowly drove a truck — one with a sign that read "Sex Offender Registration Unit" on the tailgate and the side door — through a Crouch Mesa neighborhood on Wednesday.

Two deputies followed in cars with their police lights flashing.

The purpose of the visit was to verify sex offender registration information. The sign and the flashing lights are meant to draw attention to the convicted sex offenders and warn neighbors, Sheriff Ken Christesen said.

Christesen said he has ramped up the sex offender registration program since taking office in 2011. He said he has increased the number of registration checks, improved the program's technology and publicized the process.

"I'm not going to ever be soft on sex offenders," Christesen said. "I want to make sure everybody knows where they live. If the sex offenders don't like it, maybe they should move to a different state."

Making sex offenders' addresses readily available serves the public because sex offenders have a high rate of recidivism, Christesen said. If a child goes missing, police can quickly check people who live near the area and have committed a sex crime against a child, he said.
- As usual they are spreading lies.  The facts are that sex offenders have one of the lowest recidivism rates of all other criminals, except murderers.

But a sociologist who works with sex offenders locally said the registration list falls short because not everyone with a sex crime conviction is on the list, and friends and family members — not strangers — commit most of the sex crimes against children.

On Wednesday, there were 309 registered sex offenders living in San Juan County. Of those, 277 lived in the community and 32 were in jail or prison, Tallman said. About 80 percent of the sex offenders on the list were convicted of a crime involving a child, he said.

The list only includes registered sex offenders on the Navajo Nation if they are employed off the reservation, Tallman said.
- So is he discriminating against these people because they are Navajo?

Depending on their conviction, convicts are registered sex offenders for 10 years or life, Tallman said. Either each year or every 90 days, they must go to the sheriff's office and provide law enforcement with their address, place of work or school, vehicle and other personal information.

Each week, Tallman, the director of the sex offender registration unit, and other deputies randomly check the homes of several sex offenders to make sure the information they provided is accurate.
- That could be seen as excessive and basically harassment!

On Wednesday, there were four men on Tallman's list.

• _____, 40, who was convicted of manufacturing child pornography in 2011,
• _____, 29, who was convicted of criminal sexual penetration in 2004,
• _____, 46, who was convicted of attempted sexual battery in 2004, and
• _____, 33, who was convicted of three counts of possession of child pornography in 2011.

_____, _____ and _____ were all home, and Tallman met with them briefly.

_____ wasn't at his home, so Tallman left a note on his door asking him to call the sheriff's office. When a message left on a sex offender's door goes unreturned, it could mean the person isn't being truthful or is failing to register, which is a felony, Tallman said.
- It is your job to verify they live there, not their job to contact you if they are not home possibly at work, that doesn't mean they are being untruthful or failing to register!

Mike Castenell, a Farmington sociologist who works with sex offenders, said New Mexico's sex offender registry laws aren't as stringent as laws in several other states, which require sex offenders to send out fliers to nearby neighbors with their photos and information about their crimes. And New Mexico courts often allow people convicted of a crime that may land them on sex offender registration list to get off the list as part of a plea agreement, he said.

There are 12 crimes that can land a person on the registered sex offender list. Those crimes include criminal sexual penetration and contact, aggravated indecent exposure, sexual exploitation of children, possession or manufacturing or child pornography and kidnapping or false imprisonment against a minor, as long as the suspect isn't a parent.

Castenell said the convicted sex offenders he works with have come to expect sex offender registration checks. He said he hasn't heard of complaints the sheriff's office treats the convicts unfairly.

"When the guys I work with talk about (the sheriff's office) coming to their homes, they say it's routine," Castenell said. "It's something that my guys have come to expect."
- The Jews and others expected the Gestapo to come knocking down their doors as well, but that doesn't mean it was right or that they agreed with it!

_____, one of the sex offenders whose home deputies checked on Wednesday, said the registration checks are expected and no longer interfere with his life.

"It's all there for everybody to see. It's on the website. All you gotta do is look it up, and you can see where everybody is in the whole state or the country," he said of information on sex offenders.

_____ said the sex offender registration program is a good one. His only complaint was that all of the people on the list are treated the same, and the sex offender list doesn't do enough to differentiate among degrees of crimes.

"It's basically like being in jail, but you're not in jail," _____ said of being a registered sex offender. "Prison's a lot worst. But you're not like every other citizen walking around. And it doesn't matter what you did. You're all lumped together in one big, happy group. It doesn't matter what you did, how major or how minor, you're treated the same. But the way I see it, all sex crimes are serious."

He said the registration and routine checks haven't been what has stopped him from re-offending. He said he made a lifestyle change and hasn't had any legal problems since his conviction 10 years ago.

"It's probably a good program. My feeling is if you are (on the registration program) then you are not going to re-offend," _____ said. "The ones you got to worry about are the ones that aren't doing all that. Those are the ones that are going to cause you trouble. There's thousands of them around here that are lurking that people don't even know about."

CA - Grover Beach expands zones barring child molesters

Original Article

03/21/2014

By Mike Hodgson

Despite a threatened lawsuit, a resident’s plea and a councilman’s misgivings, Grover Beach effectively blocked any additional child molesters from living in the city.

The City Council voted 4-1, with Councilman Bill Nicolls dissenting, to approve the second reading of an ordinance expanding so-called “protected zones” to 2,000 feet around schools, preschools, day care centers and parks.

Previously, the distance was 1,000 feet.

Individuals convicted of sex crimes against children — younger than 18 — who are required to register as sex offenders are barred from moving into temporary or permanent residences within those zones.

Sex offenders who were already living in the city when they were convicted of crimes against children are “grandfathered in.”

However, it’s not clear in the ordinance whether they would be barred from moving into another protected zone within the city.

The ordinance also requires child sex offenders to obtain written permission before entering a school.

Thirteen schools, preschools, parks and day care centers listed inside Grover Beach result in overlapping protected zones that cover almost the entire city.

Only three small pockets at the far southwestern, northeastern and northwestern ends are not covered by a zone.

One pocket consists of mostly agricultural and industrial land east of South Fourth Street and south of Highland Way to the city limits.

Another pocket is made up of mostly vacant land south of El Camino Real, north of Atlantic City Avenue and east from the Laguna Court dead end across North Oak Park Boulevard to the city limits.

The third and smallest pocket is a triangular residential area near Estuary Way and North Second Street.

While state law already bars child molesters from living within 2,000 feet of schools, preschools, day care centers and parks, Police Chief Jim Copsey said it has no enforcement provisions.

The Grover Beach ordinance provides for a fine of $1,000 and/or imprisonment for up to one year for violations.

Resident Frank Lindsay, a board member of the nonprofit California Reform Sex Offender Laws, asked the council to reconsider expanding the protected zones.

“These folks have an incredibly difficult task in front of them in recovery,” he said of registered sex offenders. “We should not make it more complicated.”

He pointed out calling the zones “protected areas” gives community members a false sense of security, believing it makes them safe from sexual predators.

“When in fact we know that those that have offended in the past ... their likelihood of reoffense is 1.9 percent,” he said, citing statistics from the California Department of Corrections, adding the FBI puts the rate at almost 5 percent.

He said that is far less than the “hysteria” created by television claims that 100 percent of offenders will reoffend.

He noted the highest rate of new sexual offenses is among family members or those within a “family circle” who are not known as child molesters to law enforcement.

Lawyer Janice Bellucci, also a member of California Reform Sex Offender Laws, said Grover Beach’s revised ordinance may be unconstitutional because it would effectively banish sex offenders from the city.

She said she has sued several cities — including Cypress twice — over similar laws and won, and the cities had to pay her attorney fees.

“I strongly support some of the comments that were made,” Copsey responded, but he added he disagreed with others.

He said the expanded zones had been requested by and have strong support from city residents.
- Just because it's supported by residents doesn't mean it's right and constitutional!

“Some of it may be driven by fear,” Copsey said. “I don’t dispute that. Some of it is driven by, you know, the fact that they don’t want sex offenders living in their backyard or next-door to them.”
- So what if we don't want a politician living next to us, can we pass a law to prevent that as well?  Ex-felons live everywhere, what about those who are also dangerous to adults and children?

“But the fact still remains that there are some cases where offenders do reoffend in their neighborhoods, and that’s what we would like to prevent,” he continued.
- Putting up some magical buffer zone won't prevent anything!  It's just exploitation by politicians looking to better their careers in our opinion.

“And if we can prevent that 1.9 percent, that 5 percent or whatever percent it actually is, then we should do that.”

Still, Nicolls was concerned about the threat of a lawsuit.

“One of the things that concerns me, if anybody is opening themselves to litigation, by looking at the map, I think Grover Beach is doing so,” Nicolls said.

“If you’ll look at the map that was provided with the report, there is virtually no place in Grover Beach that (a child molester) can move or live. ...”

“I think we’re looking for trouble under those circumstances,” he added. “That bothers me.”

But Martin Koczanowicz, the city attorney, disagreed.

“It doesn't preclude residence in Grover Beach,” he said of the ordinance.

Other council members said they could appreciate Nicolls’ position.

But they pointed out the 2,000 feet is in keeping with state law, and there are a few places in the city not within a protected zone.

“It’s something residents want,” Councilman Glenn Marshall said.
- Hell residents want public hangings as well!  Are you going to give them that as well?

Parents, Stop Panicking About Sexual Predators Online

Original Article

03/17/2014

By Hanna Rosin

In a recent New York Times profile, Danah Boyd was described by one of her colleagues at NYU as our first anthropologist “who comes from the tribe she’s studying,” meaning that the 36-year-old researcher is a digital native who grew up immersed in the same online culture as the teenagers she now studies. “Danah Boyd often dresses like her youthful subjects,” reads the caption on a photo of her wearing a fuzzy animal beanie and striped knee-highs, suggesting that Boyd is an emissary from a new and unexplored terrain. But what’s most surprising about this lucid excerpt from Boyd’s new book, It’s Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens, is how little the dynamics between teenagers and their parents seem to have changed, and also how much online life resembles dynamics in the real world.

In 2007, as she was reporting the book, Boyd traveled to a suburb in Texas and met Sabrina, the 14-year-old daughter of military parents. Eventually their conversation turned to Sabrina’s fears about going online, the subject of Boyd’s research:

She liked to read messages in online communities, but she did not post messages or talk to anyone in online forums because “any person could be a forty-year-old man waiting to come and rape me or something. I’m really meticulous about that, because I’ve heard basically my whole life, don’t talk to people you don’t know online, ’cause they’ll come kill you.” Sabrina has never personally known any victims of such crimes, but she told me that she had seen episodes of Law and Order in which terrible things happened to people who talked to strangers online.

Sabrina is an extreme example of what Boyd finds everywhere—teenagers, but mostly their parents, gripped by fears of sexual predators and pedophiles lurking on the Internet. These are fears that are difficult to back up with any crime statistics but which nonetheless govern parental rules about Internet use. How to explain these fears, if they have no basis in reality? The explanation comes from much deeper shifts in parenting culture, which have affected not only kids’ Internet use but the entire way their lives are structured these days. Sabrina can’t roam freely online, but she can’t roam freely anywhere. Boyd notices immediately when she arrives in the Texas suburb that there are no teenagers in any of the public spaces—the parks, the malls, or the playgrounds. Although Sabrina’s parents have served in war zones, they perceive their own suburb as a grave danger to their daughter and don’t really let her go anywhere alone.

The norms of American parenting have changed dramatically in one generation. As I describe in an Atlantic story that will be published later this week, actions that used to be considered paranoid in the 1970s—walking third-graders to schools, holding your child in your lap going down a slide—have now become markers of responsible parenting. Just as parents are terrified of online predators, they routinely tell their children not to talk to strangers, even though a child has about as little a chance of being abducted by strangers today as he or she did in the 1970s. Boyd quotes geographer Gill Valentine's research on “moral panics,” specifically the stranger danger that took hold of us in the 1980s. As a result of that panic, Boyd points out, public spaces—meaning playgrounds but also the Internet—became demonized as places where kids could get hurt and face all kinds of sexual danger.

The most interesting thing Boyd does in her excerpt is narrow down exactly who is at risk of sexual abuse, and it’s not your average protected suburbanite. Most kids know what they’re doing. Alarmists often quote a study from the Crimes Against Children Research Center claiming 1 in 5 children has been sexually solicited online. But that study also found only 4 percent of solicitations came from people known to be older than 25 and that in 75 percent of the incidents reported, the teenagers said they were not upset or afraid. The kids vulnerable to predators are the same ones who are vulnerable in the real world: the ones who get drawn in, who participate all too willingly because they are neglected, or come from abusive homes, or are drug addicts, or starved in some way for adult attention. But because they are not the perfect victims, we don’t pay enough attention and instead scramble to build a fortress around the Sabrinas of the world. And in the case of the truly vulnerable kids, as Boyd writes, “fear is not the solution. Empathy is.”

See Also:

• How we were fooled into thinking that sexual predators lurk everywhere

MI - Concentration Camps, Mass Paranoia, and Mass Panic with author Shaun Webb

Original Article

03/14/2014

By Activist Central

Orwellian style novelist Shaun Webb, author of “Behind the Brick” is about a sex offender concentration camp – A futuristic political drama which also deals with the sex offender paranoia. Other books to his credit are “Motion for Innocence … And Justice for All?”, “Black Jacks” and “A Killer for the Queen”.

Mr. Webb is a full time writer and lives in mid-Northern Michigan with his Border Collie Cody. A Motion for Innocence has reached #1 on three Amazon charts: Perspectives of Law, Conflicts of Crime and Court systems.

He is currently working on a new 4 book series entitled Jody Madison. This work deals with young people and bullying. Characteristics include, but are not limited to, the supernatural, bullying (of course), an old oak tree and an entity that befriends the bullied Jody. The book will be released in 4 segments (serial). 2 books in 2014 and 2 in 2015. The work will cover each season of the year.

How we were fooled into thinking that sexual predators lurk everywhere

Original Article

This is a very long article but worth the read.

Creating a moral panic about social media didn’t protect teens—it left them vulnerable

This article is taken from It’s Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens, written by danah boyd, Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research, and published by Yale University Press.

(PDF) Fred and Aaron, white fifteen-year-old friends living in suburban Texas, are avid gamers. When we first met in 2007, their mothers were present. I asked about their participation on social network sites, and they explained that they didn’t use those sites but loved sites like Runescape, a fantasy game with customizable avatars. Their mothers nodded, acknowledging their familiarity with Runescape before interrupting their children’s narrative to express how unsafe social network sites were. Something about Fred and Aaron’s gritted nod in response left me wondering how these teens really felt about MySpace and Facebook—sites that were all the rage with their peer group at the time. Later, almost immediately after I sat with the boys alone to talk with them in-depth, they offered a different story.

Aaron explained that he was active on MySpace but that his mother didn’t know. Since many of his friends were using Facebook, he would have liked to create an account there, too, but his mother had an account on Facebook for work and he feared she would accidentally stumble onto his profile. Out of deference to his mother, Fred had yet to create an account on either site, but he was struggling to decide whether to keep abiding by his mother’s restrictions going forward. Fred told me that his parents forbade him from Facebook and MySpace after seeing “all the stuff on the news.” He said that his parents were afraid that “if I get on it, I’ll be assaulted.” Aaron chimed in to sarcastically remark, “He’ll meet in real life with a lonely forty-year-old man.” They both laughed at this idea.

Neither Fred nor Aaron believed that joining MySpace would make them vulnerable to sexual predators, but they were still concerned about upsetting their mothers. Both felt that their mothers’ fears were ill founded, but they also acknowledged that this fear was coming from a genuine place of concern. Although their demeanor was lighthearted, their discussion of their mothers’ fears was solemn: they worried that their mothers worried.

Read the rest of the story

See Also:

• Parents, Stop Panicking About Sexual Predators Online

The Trial That Unleashed Hysteria Over Child Abuse - McMartin Preschool: Anatomy of a Panic

Original Article

03/09/2014

In 1984, news reports that hundreds of children had been abused at a California preschool helped spread panic across the nation. But the case was not all it seemed and its impact continues to be felt.

Early in the 19th century, two unmarried women who ran a school for girls in Edinburgh found themselves accused by a student of being lesbians. The charge, quite grave in that era, was baseless, and in time the women won a libel suit. But not before they had lost everything, including their school. If this story rings a bell, it may be because Lillian Hellman used it as a starting point for “The Children’s Hour,” her 1934 play about a couple of schoolteachers whose lives similarly come unraveled after a malicious student falsely accuses them of lesbianism.

It has long been said, in varying language, that a lie travels halfway around the world before the truth can get its boots on. You do not have to reach back 200 years to Scotland to find enduring wisdom in that adage. You need return only to the 1980s and to the subject of this week’s Retro Report documentary video, part of a series re-examining news stories from the past. This week’s subject is the notorious McMartin Preschool abuse trial.

Starting in 1983, with accusations from a mother whose mental instability later became an issue in the case, the operators of a day care center near Los Angeles were charged with raping and sodomizing dozens of small children. The trial dragged on for years, one of the longest and costliest in American history. In the end, as with the Scottish women, lives were undone. But no one was ever convicted of a single act of wrongdoing. Indeed, some of the early allegations were so fantastic as to make many people wonder later how anyone could have believed them in the first place. Really now, teachers chopped up animals, clubbed a horse to death with a baseball bat, sacrificed a baby in a church and made children drink the blood, dressed up as witches and flew in the air — and all this had been going on unnoticed for a good long while until a disturbed mother spoke up?

Still, McMartin unleashed nationwide hysteria about child abuse and Satanism in schools. One report after another told of horrific practices, with the Devil often literally in the details.

Criminal cases of dubious provenance abounded. One that received great attention involved Margaret Kelly Michaels, convicted in 1988 of rampant sexual abuse at the Wee Care Day Nursery in Maplewood, N.J., where children said she had sexually abused them with knives, spoons and forks, and had urinated in their mouths. None showed signs of injury. Six years later, Ms. Michaels’s conviction was overturned. Another prominent case from those days involved charges of rape and sodomy brought against the operators of the Little Rascals Day Care Center in Edenton, N.C. As with McMartin, there were bizarre allegations early on about babies being murdered and children thrown in with sharks. Though defendants were found guilty, their convictions were later overturned and charges were dropped.

Inevitably, perhaps, the mass frenzy over supposed Satanism and sexual predation invited comparisons to the Salem witch trials and to McCarthy-era excesses. Americans do seem prone episodically to this kind of fever. Witness the widespread panic a few decades ago when people around the country convinced themselves that evil neighbors were handing children poisoned Halloween candy and apples embedded with razor blades. Arthur Miller highlighted this phenomenon in his 1953 play, “The Crucible,” which invoked the Salem trials to comment on a contemporary abuse, the scattershot McCarthy hunt for Communists, much as Hellman had looked to the early 19th century for material about the power of a readily believed lie.

Often enough in these situations, news organizations share blame. In the McMartin case, they were far from innocent observers. A pack mentality set in after a local television journalist first reported the allegations. Across California and beyond, normal standards of fairness and reasoned skepticism were routinely thrown to the wind, with news gatherers scrambling to outdo one another in finding purported examples of monstrous behavior by the principal defendants: Peggy McMartin Buckey and her son, Raymond Buckey. (Ms. Buckey, daughter of the school’s founder, died at 74 in 2000. Raymond Buckey, now in his mid-50s, said years ago that he wanted simply “to be left alone,” and he did not acknowledge Retro Report requests for an interview.) It would be comforting to believe that mindlessly frenetic news coverage is a relic of the past. But who could make that claim with a straight face?

Did McMartin have any lasting effects? In some respects, yes. Teachers across America grew afraid to hug or touch their students, out of fear of being misunderstood and possibly being brought up on charges. A widely held notion that young children do not lie about such matters took a huge hit. Some are vulnerable to implanted memories. In the McMartin case, many jurors found that leading questions from therapists steered impressionable children toward some of the most macabre tales.

Of course, child abuse was then, and is now, an appalling reality in this country. So is false memory. The tricky part is sorting out which is which. If you have wondered whether it is possible that Woody Allen long ago sexually abused his and Mia Farrow’s adopted daughter, Dylan — and who has not wrestled with this explosive accusation and Mr. Allen’s insistent denial? — you readily appreciate the depth of the problem.

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The video with this article is part of a documentary series presented by The New York Times. The video project was started with a grant from Christopher Buck. Retro Report has a staff of 13 journalists and 10 contributors led by Kyra Darnton, a former “60 Minutes” producer. It is a nonprofit video news organization that aims to provide a thoughtful counterweight to today’s 24/7 news cycle. Previous Retro Report videos can be found here; and articles here.

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NY - New York State Exposed Follow Up: Sex offenders in group homes

Original Article

Just another example of the media stirring the pot just to get a news story? We call it Media Vigilantism!

02/22/2014

By Amanda Ciavarri

It's a story that's gotten so much attention since News10NBC first brought it to you last week. Convicted sex offenders are quietly being moved into group homes and residential areas.

Now, one area community is fighting back.

Hundreds of people were out in force Saturday, trying to get their message across.

That message is to keep those sex offenders out of the group homes and away from neighborhoods where they could pose a threat to families that live nearby.

News10NBC was at that rally in West Seneca Saturday.

Dozens of people in West Seneca came out to protest. They brought signs to the front of a group home where the state recently re-located seven convicted sex offenders. Now the community wants to know, why they weren't told and why the state is putting them in danger.

"Everyone was blindsided by this. I think that is what everyone is the most upset about. No one knew anything and now it is a matter of, okay, we have calmed down from the lack of notification, now we want action. We want these guys out of here, we want them moved out. We aren't going to be held prisoners in our own home,” said Tony Fischione, protest organizer.
- The only person that is holding you prisoner in your own home is yourself!

About 300 people met at Sunshine Park Saturday afternoon. It is a popular playground for neighborhood children, but now it is just a few yards away from where seven sex offenders are living.

“I don't feel safe, and my kids can't come here and play in this park anymore, because the houses back right up to this park. There are running trails in those woods, and I can't run those. I don't feel safe letting my kids around town anymore,” said Teri Bebak, resident and mother.

This group then started their peaceful march down the street and to the two homes where the sex offenders are living.

The seven sex offenders, all men, previously lived in the Monroe Developmental Center in Brighton. The state closed the facility in December, and that's when those men were moved in here.

Their convictions range from attempted rape to child sex abuse.

“I think Governor Cuomo made this decision as a political move, to save money. He did it very secretly, he did it very quietly, and he did it at the expense of our children, and that's not okay,” said Bebak.

Earlier this week News10NBC asked Governor Cuomo about the relocation and told him about the concerns of this community.

“How was it that one day they were in need of that type of security, and the next day they are able to live in these types of group homes?” asked News10NBC’s Brett Davidsen.

“If a person requires a secure facility, they require a secure facility. But the problem we’re having by in large is not a person who is in a secure facility. The problem we’re having are former sex offenders while released and return to the community, and people are saying ‘I don’t want to live next to a former sex offender.’ That’s the predominance of the problem,” said Gov. Cuomo.
- The problem is the online registry, community notification and residency laws!

But this group isn't so convinced that's true, and they hope Governor Cuomo, and Albany hear their message loud and clear.

“I intend to let them know, we aren't done here. We are watching them. We aren't leaving, they are leaving,” said Fischione.

Many people plan on protesting every weekend until the state moves the sex offenders out of this community. If that doesn't happen soon, they will also take the protest to Albany in April.

GA - Georgia Republican stands up for sex offenders’ access to schools and playgrounds

Rep. Sam Moore

Original Article

02/21/2014

By David Ferguson

A Georgia Republican state House member submitted a bill to the current legislative session that would remove restrictions on convicted sex offenders and allow them to go anywhere in the state they like, including schools.

According to the Cherokee Tribune, freshman Georgia Rep. Sam Moore (R-Macedonia) said that once they satisfy the terms of their parole, sex offenders have “done their time” and should be allowed to go forth unhindered by intrusive government supervision.

Moore’s HB 1033 would overturn the crime of loitering and loosen restrictions on convicted sex offenders, enabling them to go anywhere they like, including schools, church youth functions, parks and playgrounds. Moore said that the risk of recidivism is outweighed by the increase in freedom.

“I am OK with that,” he told the Tribune. “The reason I’m OK with that is the assumption is they have done their time. If they’re still a danger to society, they should not be free.”

“Am I saying it’s not creepy?” he asked. “It’s definitely creepy,” but worth it to avoid big government’s infringement on personal liberties.

“In my 34 years of law enforcement I have never heard of such an insane law having been introduced,” said Cherokee Sheriff Roger Garrison Friday. “Sexual predators are one of this country’s most violent (type of) offenders. If there’s any equal it would be an out-and-out serial killer.”
- So what about politicians who agree to wars that kill thousands or more?  Or what about drunk drivers who kill a while family?  Not all sex offenders are as dangerous as you make them all out to be, but hey, you cannot look soft on crime we understand that, got to protect your reputation!

Garrison said that to allow sexual predators to “once again lurk around our parks, around our schools, around our swimming pools” is unacceptable.
- How many sexual crimes can you show us that occurred at ANY of these places?

Cherokee Superintendent of Schools Dr. Frank Petruzielo told the Tribune by email, “The School District is strongly opposed to any legislation that would allow predators the opportunity to endanger our students, which it appears this bill would do.”

Anti-loitering laws are a key law enforcement tool in keeping adult sexual predators away from children, but Moore feels that they are unconstitutional in that they compel suspects to identify themselves to the police. HB 1033 would forbid police from forcing residents to identify themselves under any circumstances.

Moore said that he is protecting the Fifth Amendment, which protects citizens’ right to remain silent.

Sheriff Garrison blasted the bill’s potential to make law enforcement impossible.
- Oh come on, really?

“It’s insane,” he said. “If you can’t check them, how are you going to know who they are? They could be wanted for murder down the street.”
- So I guess you just want to eliminate the 5th amendment and let your Gestapo search anybody, anywhere, anytime you wish?

One of Moore’s fellow Republican lawmakers unloaded on him at the state House session on Friday morning.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution quoted Rep. John Pezold (R-Fortson) as saying, “I am shocked and appalled anyone would suggest that pedophiles should be allowed to loiter near day care centers, schools — the places where our children learn and play.”
- Not all ex-offenders are pedophiles and by saying so could be a form of defamation!

“If Mr. Moore’s mission was to come down to the state Capitol and alienate his colleagues by staking out positions that no one in their right mind could agree with,” Pezold continued, “he can now hang a ‘Mission Accomplished’ banner behind him because he has done just that.”

See Also:

• (02/28/2014) Rep. Sam Moore back tracks on his controversial bill
• (02/24/2014) Georgia lawmaker apologizes for bill scrapping sex offender loitering statute
• (02/21/2014) State representative’s sex offender bill receives fierce criticism (Video Available)

UT - Utah group homes fight paranoia and stigmas

Original Article

02/16/2014

By Mark Saal

MORGAN - Last summer, when Alpha Counseling & Treatment went before the city council here, seeking to put a youth group home into a residential neighborhood, you'd have thought they were asking to open a meth lab.

Mace Warren, clinical director for ACT, was seeking to house up to 12 boys in a six-bedroom home at 535 Derrick Circle. These were boys, according to Warren, exhibiting "moderate male behavioral disorder," including Asperger's syndrome, autism and other developmental disabilities.

Neighbors packed the small city council chambers, worried that the proposed home would bring violence, drugs, sex offenders and other troubles to their small community. When the city council finally -- reluctantly -- approved a conditional-use permit for the group home, tearful, angry residents in the neighborhood talked of selling their homes.

So, do they? Sell their homes, that is?

As it turns out: not usually.

There are plenty of residential group homes in Northern Utah -- some have been operating here for years. And generally, once the initial fuss dies down, neighbors are fairly accepting of group homes.

"I did worry at first, because I didn't know what to expect," said Paul Rohde, who lives next door to a group home in North Ogden. "But it was more a concern out of not knowing what it would be like."

The Rohdes have lived in their current home for seven years; the group home has been there about three. He says the residents of the group home have been no more trouble in the neighborhood than his own three children.

"They've been fine, we've had no issues," he said. "The first year they were here, they picked up all our leaves, and we've got a ton of trees. They raked our leaves again this year."

Rebecca Ostler, who lives on the other side of the group home, says the only problem she's had is that it was a bit of a disappointment to her own children.

"At first, it was kind of hard for my boys, because they saw boys there at the house and wanted to play with them," she said. But, Ostler says, the boys at the group home aren't allowed to interact with neighborhood children.

"They're kept away from the neighborhood, and have strict rules," she said. "They're friendly, they say hello, but they don't interact."

Other neighbors of this group home at 1217 E. 3100 North, in North Ogden, operated by Crossroads Academy, have similar tales to tell.

"I didn't know they were in until they were in," said neighbor Judy Howard. "But we've never had any problems with them."

A year ago, as the Howards were cleaning up following a windstorm, two young men from the house stopped by and asked, "Can we help you pick that up?"

"We've never had any cop cars there, or anything like that," Howard said. "And none of the neighbors say they've seen increased break-ins. They're very quiet, and the house is well-maintained."

And neighbor Betty King said: "They've not been any problem at all. I see them come sliding down the street on skateboard sometimes. But they're just like anybody else."

Read the rest of the article

CT - Sex Offenders at the Polls

Original Article

02/13/2014

By Len Besthoff

They have every right to be there in Connecticut once they have served their sentences. But some voting districts have raised concerns.

A state elections panel is investigating an incident that raises questions about the fine line between personal rights and public safety. _____ says he was so intimidated this past fall, that the Norwalk man left his polling place without exercising his right to vote…all because of his criminal past. He spoke with NBC Troubleshooters’ Chief Investigative Reporter Len Besthoff.

“I feel like they violated my rights, my voting rights.” You can sense the anger in _____’s voice as he describes what happened last September during a Democratic primary vote in Norwalk. “I felt intimidated. I felt like I was being stuck out, it was very humiliating, very embarrassing”

_____ is a registered sex offender. He was released from prison a decade ago, after serving five years for a sexual assault conviction involving a woman he knew. He turned down an offer to have the case dropped and charges erased after 13 months. He chose to go to trial.. and lost.

_____ says since prison, he started his own business, works with troubled teens…and has actively voted, until last fall…that’s when he says he was turned away at his polling station, the Columbus Elementary School in Norwalk...which was holding classes that day. “They said I would have to leave the grounds of the school immediately. I asked them why. They didn’t want to answer it. They called an officer over who escorted me off the school property.”

The registrar’s office sent _____ back to the polls, telling him he had the right to vote.

“_____: That’s when the officer shadowed me…it was shadowing, meaning real close. And it made anyone who was watching think that I was a danger to someone else. Besthoff: How close was he standing? _____: Real close. Besthoff: Like a foot? _____: Not even a foot. Less than that.”

_____ left Columbus Elementary without voting. “I was discouraged. I think that was the first time I hadn’t voted in the last 10 years”. So why did this happen to _____? Norwalk Democratic Registrar Stuart Wells asked police for printouts of all registered sex offenders in town that might be voting in the primary…and distributed them to poll moderators. “The schools had all expressed a considerable interest in increasing their security since Sandy Hook, for obvious reasons. We have…10 locations that are schools that we use for polling places.”

Problem was, no distinction was made between registered sex offenders like _____, whose conviction involved an adult, and others who may have had crimes involving children. “When we checked with his probation officer he said he had no restrictions on being near schools”
- If the person committed a crime against an adult or child what does it matter?  Aren't people there while he votes?  What's the big deal?  This is nothing but pure hysteria!

The poll moderator and police have a different version of what happened with _____. Neither will comment. The case file is sealed while it remains under investigation. The bigger question, is how to deal in the future with registered sex offenders, who, unlike _____, do have offenses involving children, when the polling stations are at schools? And according to the Secretary of the State’s office, roughly one third of all Connecticut public schools are open on Election Day.

People convicted of crimes involving children often are forbidden from going near schools. The state says those convicts are often subject to lengthy terms of supervision after their sentences, and arrangements can be made to allow them to vote at a school that is open…but Stuart Wells isn’t so sure.

“Besthoff: You don’t have a playbook for how to deal with this stuff! Wells: Correct, if there are, if they couldn’t go in the schools, and you don’t qualify for an absentee ballot, how’s the person supposed to exercise their constitutional right to vote? We’re concerned about that. We don’t want to impact the children, but we want everybody vote who’s entitled to do so, without getting arrested in the process.”
- Then stop holding voting in schools!

The state legislature is expected to deal with this issue…but not until next year. First a constitutional amendment must pass this fall allowing lawmakers to fine tune Connecticut’s election laws. In the meantime, Larry _____ just hopes his next vote at Columbus Elementary goes smoother.

“There’s a lot of votes on the street. A lot of votes. But if they see what’s happening, that happened to me, then people aren’t gonna want to show up.”

There is a possibility this could be dealt with sooner rather than later, with at least a temporary fix. A state elections panel is expected to discuss the issue soon, and we will let you know what progress it makes.

IL - Sex Offenders May Be Banned From Illinois County Fairs

Original Article

Fear monger much? Come on, what's next? An ex-offender cannot attend a restaurant because kids may be there, or a grocery story?

02/12/2014

By Angie Sharp

A bill under consideration would ban registered sex offenders from going to county fairs.

“There is a loophole in the current sex offender law that says you can’t work at the county fairs or you can’t be a vendor at the county fairs, but you can attend them,” Illinois State Representative Mike Smiddy told News 8′s Angie Sharp on Wednesday, February 12th, 2014.

State Rep. Smiddy heard about the loophole following the 2013 Whiteside County Fair. The State’s Attorney for Whiteside County called him and explained an instance where a Whiteside County Sheriff’s Deputy noticed a convicted sex offender around children at the fair. However, he wasn’t able to do anything, because it’s not against the law.

“When a state’s attorney comes to you and says this is a real issue for our kids and our county, you want to kind of listen and do what you think is right and a change in this law is the right thing to do,” says State Rep. Smiddy.

“If it stops one person, done deal,” says Bob Fox, Director of the Great Mississippi Valley Fair.

Fox says the law – if passed – could act as a deterrent for sex offenders who may want to go to an event that’s supposed to be focused on families.

“Under my watch, I don’t want anything to happen to anybody,” he tells News 8′s Angie Sharp. “You always have to think out of the box because what’s out of the box happens here.”

Fox and his team found that out in 2011, when a registered sex offender dressed up as Cookie Monster and walked around the fair passing out flyers.

“It was weird,” Fox says. “It was very strange.”

Police arrested the man for trying to work at the fair. Fox says it was a lesson learned.

“Now we know what’s abnormal and what’s not. We really do.”

Fox says it is unrealistic to check every single person who walks through the front gate. Representative Smiddy agrees. However, both say if that loophole can become law, police will have more power and fairs can go back to being fun.

In Illinois, the law only applies to county fairs.

In Iowa, a law states that registered sex offenders are not allowed to work or be a vendor at any city, county, or state fair or carnival when open. Unless told by their Parole Officer, they can attend a fair. Iowa State Representative Phyllis Thede tells News 8′s Angie Sharp that it’s not something they’re considering changing in the 2014 legislative session.

See Also:

• Illinois tries to tighten sex-offender law, but will it make people safer?

NY - Town boards of Newstead, West Seneca hear concerns about sex offenders at group homes

Original Article

This is pure hysteria! Ex-offenders get old as well and they need a place to stay when they cannot take care of themselves.

02/10/2014

By Janice Habuda

Two town boards – Newstead and West Seneca – addressed concerns Monday night about newly opened group homes where registered sex offenders are among the residents.

In West Seneca, town officials said Monday night at least seven convicted sex offenders who had been living in the Monroe Developmental Center in suburban Rochester have turned up in group homes in a West Seneca neighborhood.

“It is extremely concerning to me,” Town Supervisor Sheila M. Meegan said at Monday’s West Seneca Town Board meeting.

“The predators are from Monroe County and they brought them here; they did it at night,” said Meegan, who noted that she’s been in contact with State Sen. Patrick M. Gallivan, R-Elma, about the lack of notification to public officials and the fact the men are being housed in unsecured facilities.

“I immediately reached out to the senator and he agrees 100 percent,” Meegan said.

According to public records, the men are living at two addresses on Leydecker Road, on the former site of the West Seneca Developmental Center, which closed in 2011.

Classified as moderate- or high-risk offenders, four of the men were convicted of sexual crimes involving children younger than 10 years old. Six were convicted of crimes in Niagara, Erie or Chautauqua counties; the seventh was convicted in Monroe County.

The men were placed in the homes after the state closed the Monroe facility at the end of December, as part of a statewide effort to save money and de-institutionalize those with severe developmental disabilities.

In Newstead, a large crowd of residents living near two homes run by People Inc. attended the town board meeting.

Mark Outten, who lives across from the home on Rapids Road, asked board members why they never gave the public notice of the homes when People Inc. first let the board know that they were looking at two sites in Newstead in May 2013.

Supervisor David Cummings apologized and took responsibility for the board not notifying the public, but said that they did not have the information they have now.

“We went with the information we had at that point in time,” he said. “We went with the mentality of what we had dealt with in the past and shame on us for that. We can’t change the past, but we can move forward and make as many corrections to what’s there as we can legally going forward.”

Councilwoman Marybeth Whiting, who serves with Councilman Justin Rooney on the committee set up to look into the two recently opened group homes, said it was important to deal with reality when trying to figure out a solution to the issues surrounding the homes.

“We really, really want to deal with facts,” she said. “Not what you’ve heard, and not what you’re thinking, but facts…Really try to focus on facts.”
- Really?  Then you will know that sex offenders have one of the lowest recidivism rates of all other ex-criminals and that most who sexually abuse someone, it's someone in their own family, not some stranger!

The committee was set to meet with officials from People Inc. and the state on Wednesday.

Rhonda I. Frederick, chief operating officer of People Inc. and Kevin Penberthy, a deputy director from the Office for People with Developmental Disabilities, were scheduled to meet with the group at 6 p.m. at Newstead Town Hall.

A meeting with the community is planned at 7 p.m. Wednesday, Feb. 19 with Frederick and a director from the Office for People With Developmental Disabilities. That meeting is slated to be held in the new Cultural Center, located in the basement of the Newstead Public Library, 33 Main St. in the Village of Akron.

The committee met Monday night before the Town Board meeting, and developed a list of questions for Frederick and Penberthy, said Newstead resident Kevin Borth, who is one of six residents serving on the committee.

“We’re trying to figure out who’s responsible for what,” he said. “Who’s responsible for the sex offender in there? Who does oversight?”

The committee is trying to get as much information as possible from the people who make decisions regarding the group homes on Rapids Road and Buckwheat Road, Borth said.

“Knowledge is power on this,” he said.

NY - So should all businesses be forced to get community approval before opening their doors?

Original Article

02/09/2014

By Michael Canfield

When the neighbors of a recently opened group home for people with developmental disabilities on Rapids Road in Newstead first heard about the facility opening, they were receptive to having the human services agency in the neighborhood.

Just over a month later, however, neighbors have changed their position.

Problems with cars parking on the side of the road, several emergency calls to the home and news that a convicted sex offender was living in the home have all created tensions. Combine that with worries about declining property values, and residents near the home are less than happy with People Inc., which sponsors the home.

People Inc. “just force-fed it down our throats without talking to us about it,” said Joseph M. Dugan, a 23-year Army veteran who lives next door to the home with his wife and family.
- Why should a business have to come get your approval before they open?

While many on the rural stretch of road knew that a group home was going into the house, neighbors said, they had no idea that a sex offender would be among the residents. Now they have become worried about what other residents of the six-bedroom home might be a cause for concern.
- So if the ex-offender didn't live there, would it be okay then?

“This is something we’ve never had to worry about,” Dugan said. “We don’t know who’s in there.”
- Why don't you go over there and ask them?  Get a tour of the place!

Michael J. Adymy, who also lives next to the home with his family, had moved to Newstead to live in the country and get away from the problems found in more populated areas. He’s starting to see those problems crop up now.

“We’re uncomfortable,” Adymy said. “We moved out here to get away from it all.”

Mark P. Outten, who lives across the street from the home, said he isn’t against People Inc., just how the organization went about putting the group home in.

“I’m not saying that People Inc. is all bad,” Outten said. “They do have some fantastic stuff going, but I think they did us way wrong. They didn’t care about us at all when they did this.”

Residents living near the home shouldn’t worry about safety, said Rhonda I. Frederick, chief operating officer of People Inc., noting that the home is staffed “24 hours a day, seven days a week.”

“Each resident has an individual service plan, and we provide the supports they need,” she said.

Read the rest of the article