RICHMOND - A house subcommittee unanimously passed a bill which would require registered sex offenders to have public hearings before gaining access to Virginia schools.
The delegate behind the bill says its a step to protect children, but civil rights organizations say the bill goes too far.
"I certainly would like to know who is being granted access to these public school systems," said Delegate Jeff Campbell (R-6th) who is introducing the bill and is the parent of school-aged children. "I understand the concern about this, but it's really not an attack on the sex offender themselves."
HB1366 would require registered sex offenders to advertise their public hearing in the newspaper for two weeks. Anyone attending the hearing could testify against the request to gain access to the school. Some civil rights groups are already coming out against the bill saying it could lead to angry mobs.
"It's essentially an invitation to throw stones," said Claire Gastañaga with the ACLU of Virginia. "Having a public hearing before you can go to visit your child's teacher? Tell me, what's that supposed to accomplish? I don't see what it accomplishes, other than inviting an angry mob into the school."
Del. Campbell disagrees with that assessment.
"It is certainly not going to prohibit the offender from being able to petition the court and gain access," he said.
A jury has recommended four life sentences plus 30 years in prison for former Dumfries police officer Joseph Ruhren, convicted this week of 10 more felony charges for sexually assaulting a young boy.
Ruhren faced trial this week on six counts of taking indecent liberties with a minor and four counts of forcible sodomy. He was found guilty on all charges. The jury recommended four life terms in prison on the forcible sodomy charges and five years each on the indecent liberties charges.
The trial is Ruhren’s second on sexual assault charges involving underage boys. In August, a jury convicted Ruhren of four counts of carnal knowledge of a minor, two counts of taking indecent liberties with a minor and one count each of aggravated sexual battery and forcible sodomy. The jury recommended he serve 74 years in prison on those charges. Sentencing is set for Nov. 5.
Ruhren is set to stand trial three more times, on Nov. 12, Dec. 16 and Jan. 6. Each of his trials involves a different victim.
A sprawling central Virginian “sexting” ring was busted up by authorities after pictures of naked 14- and 15-year-olds sprang up on Instagram, cops say.
The disturbing investigation revealed more than 1,000 pictures, some videos and more than 100 involved teens through six different counties who may not realize sharing such photos of underage kids can be a felony, police told the Central Virginian.
"Out of those thousand images, there are some of them that are not sexually explicit, but are what we would call inappropriate or provocative — in their underwear,” Major Donald A. Lowe, chief deputy of the Louisa County Sheriff’s Office, told the newspaper. “It looks like the majority will be sexually explicit.”
A mother tipped off authorities last month after she noticed some scandalous photos on her child’s Instagram profile. Once police started digging, they found two different Instagram accounts that allowed teens to access them only if they shared a nude photo or scantily clad photo of themselves first.
Officers then learned teens from Louisa, Fluvanna, Orange, Goochland, Albemarle and Hanover counties were sharing photos of themselves either on the site or by sexting each other, the newspaper reported.
About 23 cellphones have been seized as authorities look into the massive ring.
Photos of naked underage teens is child pornography, a felony criminal charge in the state that could even lead to lifelong registration as a sex offender if convicted.
Police are still in the early stages of investigation, and no arrests have been made.
“I think if people thought for a minute and didn't do that, they'd save themselves a lot of grief … They're having fun but I can tell you colleges and universities, agencies who hire people, including us, look for those things and those are not going to be positive if they're found in a kids' past," Goochland Sheriff Jim Agnew told WWBT-TV.
Teens told the TV station sexting is a common occurrence — and parents said they put limits on their kid’s Internet access to prevent such pictures.
Lowe, the Louisa County Sheriff’s Office spokesman, said it starts with personal responsibility.
"We're trying to save these teens from themselves," he told the NBC affiliate.
_____ arrived at Norfolk Circuit Court on a cold December morning, guilty and worried.
On his mind was a pink slip buried in his mailbox for days - maybe weeks. The small piece of paper was a receipt for a registered letter from the state. His freedom depended on it.
_____, 68, is a convicted violent sex offender. The letter represented his remaining debt to Virginia. Every month, he is required to return it to the Virginia State Police with his fingerprints and signature.
For the past 14 years, his lawyer estimated, he met that responsibility 166 of 168 times. His failure to be perfect has earned him one thing - prison.
In 1966, _____ was convicted in Chesapeake of attempted rape and assault of a woman. The 21-year-old was sentenced to life, served more than three decades and won parole in 1999. Except for twice failing to register with the state, he has no criminal record since his release.
His case highlights what some say is a shortcoming in Virginia's approach to aging offenders. Critics say state law captures _____ and others in a life of dependency, costing public money and resources to follow men who usually pose little threat to the community.
The General Assembly continues to support the state's approach. The proposed two-year state budget calls for an increase of nearly $1 million to supervise a growing number of sex offenders.
Inside the Norfolk courtroom, _____ stood and listened as his lawyer offered a guilty plea. After the hearing, he talked again about the mailbox and the pink slip.
_____ can't remember his own phone number and often loses his glasses and keys. Nearly four decades in prison has worn hard his body and mind.
But he remembered finding the pink slip, and cursing himself.
At the age of 22, Edgar Coker thinks it’s normal to go straight to work and then straight home every day to spend all of his free time hidden behind closed doors.
It’s a frame of reference the former North Stafford resident forged from living nearly one-third of his life with the undeserved label of rapist and having that information available to all via Virginia’s online Sex Offender Registry.
Juveniles on sex offender registries must continually re-register, are limited in where they can go and are publicly ostracized, all of which create a sense of imprisonment, Pittman said. - It's the same for adults as well.
“It’s almost an institutionalized feeling,” she said.
Like a prison without walls.
It took a team of attorneys five years of legal battles to correct the injustice that began in June 2007 when a 14-year-old girl told her mother that Coker raped her inside their Aquia Harbour home.
After he was sentenced, the girl admitted she lied to avoid getting in trouble for having sex with her friend.
The legal team’s efforts resulted in a Feb. 10 ruling by Judge Designate Jane Marum Roush, who vacated Coker’s convictions and ordered his name removed from the state’s Sex Offender Registry.
But nothing can erase the 19 months he was confined in juvenile detention, or the nearly seven years he and his family have endured harassment and the fear of making some misstep that leads to additional charges.
And while they celebrate the legal victory, neither Pittman nor Coker’s team expect he will ever recover from being labeled a rapist.
“That damage has been done,” Pittman said. “It’s sort of a lifelong sentence that will be with him.”
A ‘HAPPY-GO-LUCKY’ CHILD
Growing up in a household with five siblings, Edgar Coker was outgoing and “a little jokester,” his mother, Cherri Dulaney, said during an interview shortly after his exoneration.
A Stafford County judge has ordered a Virginia man’s name removed from the state’s sex offender registry and his conviction vacated after the court ruled that he received ineffective counsel from his attorney.
Edgar Coker Jr. was 15 in 2007 when his attorney, Denise Rafferty, advised him to plead guilty to raping a friend rather than risk being sentenced to years in an adult prison. Two months after he went into juvenile detention, the then-14-year-old girl recanted her accusation. Nonetheless, Coker spent 17 months in a juvenile prison and his name was added to the sex offender registry.
“It took a team of half a dozen attorneys, dozens of law students, a pro bono law firm, a legal aid justice center and two clinics at U-Va. law school,” said Matthew Engle, director of the Innocence Project at the University of Virginia School of Law, which helped Coker.
“And several private investigators,” added Deirdre Enright, the co-director of the clinic.
“It took that team six years,” Engle said, “to undo what happened in 15 minutes in juvenile court.”
Circuit Court Judge Jane Marum Roush ruled that Coker’s court-appointed attorney failed to give him effective assistance because she had done “little or no investigation of the facts of the case” before advising him to plead guilty. Roush cited concerns about Rafferty’s work, including not finding the taped interview with a detective in which Coker said that the girl had invited him into her house and that the sex was consensual and not investigating the accuser’s reputation for honesty.
“The court does not believe Ms. Rafferty’s testimony that [Coker] made a ‘full confession’ to her,” Roush wrote.
Rafferty did not return a call seeking comment. In a July hearing, she told the judge that the family had not cooperated with repeated requests for school records or people who would defend him.
Roush gave Stafford Commonwealth’s Attorney Eric Olsen 60 days to decide whether to re-prosecute Coker. A staff member at Olsen’s office said he had no comment on the case. The assistant attorney general and Coker’s attorneys have 21 days to file an objection to the ruling. A request for comment to the attorney general’s office was not immediately returned Wednesday afternoon.
Enright said that Coker, 22 and living in Orange County, Va., has had trouble getting good jobs because his name is on the list and that his family moved repeatedly to avoid neighbors concerned that he might be a predator. After he was released from detention, he went to high school, where he was a track star. But when he returned to watch a football game after graduation, he was arrested because convicted sex offenders are not allowed on school grounds.
Michele Sousa, the mother of the girl who had accused Coker, said she was very happy “because there’s finally closure — this finally has come to an end.” When her daughter told her that she had lied, “I thought there was some sort of a way to just reverse everything, click the ‘undo’ button and — I didn’t expect to have to go through every court in Virginia and go on and on for years.”
When some of Coker’s attorneys reached him by phone to tell him about the judge’s ruling, he was relieved and pleased, Engle said. “This is all very overwhelming to him, and he is only just now beginning to understand . . . that he’s won, and the end is at least in sight.”
Nearly three years after the federal government issued guidelines for dealing with sexual misconduct on campus, administrators are meeting at the University of Virginia to discuss problems and progress. As Sandy Hausman of member station WVTF reports, leaders in higher education say they're struggling to understand and manage sexual assaults in the age of "hooking up."
Transcript
ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST: Educators from around the country have spent the last two days talking about sexual misconduct on college campuses. The conference that wrapped up today at the University of Virginia was billed as a first of its kind. It comes nearly three years after the government issued legal guidelines for universities to deal with such misconduct.
As Sandy Hausman of member station WVTF reports, attendees learned how to better support victims.
SANDY HAUSMAN, BYLINE: She didn't know what to expect, but the 250 spaces for college presidents, administrators, and student leaders quickly filled, and the school started a waiting list.
TERESA SULLIVAN: I think this is a genuine problem. It's not something that we can sweep under the rug. I don't think we should even try. And it seemed to me that every university was struggling on its own to try and figure out how to handle this problem. If we at least share ideas with each other, we've got a better chance of coming up with a good solution.
HAUSMAN: According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 25 percent of women report being sexually assaulted during college. Last month, President Obama set up a task force to protect college students and demanded a report in 90 days. He sent a message of support to the conference and asked the U.S. Department of Education's Catherine Lhamon to spell out government concerns.
CATHERINE LHAMON: We know that too many universities are still discouraging survivors from filing complaints. They are still delaying investigations for months or longer. They are still retaliating against students for speaking out about their assaults.
HAUSMAN: Princeton Vice Provost Michele Minter says pressure is also coming from students.
MICHELE MINTER: They've had bad, bad experiences. Victims have not been taken seriously, and I think they're finally just tired of it. Social media has made it much easier for them to connect and build networks, so I think that's really been a big part of why it's suddenly accelerating fast.
HAUSMAN: And, of course, parents are weighing in. The conference offered sessions on training students to intervene when they see trouble coming. There were talks about alcohol, drugs and their impact on sexual behavior, a crash course on what's known as sex without strings or hooking up, and an opportunity for students to advise administrators. UCLA student Savannah Badalich scolded those who implied drinking is the central problem.
SAVANNAH BADALICH: The conference seems to be really focused on student party culture, which is like hook-up culture, drinking, drug use. And I do think it's helpful to talk about these things, but I don't like talking about these things as causes or having major roles, since the only cause of sexual assault is an assaulter. So not victim blaming or even slut shaming, we really need to make sure we talk about the fact that someone is assaulting. That's the cause of assault.
HAUSMAN: But alcohol is one reason universities get involved in what might be a crime. Former New York prosecutor Linda Fairstein told the group district attorneys often walk away from sexual assaults on campus.
LINDA FAIRSTEIN: Many of these cases would not survive in the criminal justice system, especially if both parties have been using alcohol to the extent that they don't have a clear memory of what happened the night before.
HAUSMAN: Conference participants also described successful prevention programs, from an online course the University of Montana requires for students and staff to a Valentine's Day program planned at Georgetown entitled Cupcakes and Consent. They agreed to keep talking and scheduled a follow-up conference at Dartmouth in July. For NPR News, I'm Sandy Hausman in Charlottesville, Virginia.
