Image by Richard Kadrey / Kaos Beauty Klinik.
Look, sex offender laws are necessary. But they have to make sense. They are for people like this sick fuck — and the laws need to be reasonable, effective, and rehabilitative if that is possible (and if we can heal culturally from horrifying things). Most of all, they need to function and be applied correctly. Otherwise, they are useless. Ineffective. Otherwise, crime and life-destroying acts of sexual harm will continue (most of which overwhelmingly statistically happens *within families* and not by strangers, BTW). Every day I thank the moon and stars for Staci Haines, the one who makes survivors and heroes out of victims. Because the laws are doing more harm than help.
Here’s the thing. We need to talk about this as a society. Because it seems that legislators and lawmakers and questionably-motivated lobbyists are so afraid to even talk frankly and honestly about sex, let alone sex offenders, that really bad things are happening. Previously blogged here:
* naked pumpkin runners = sex offenders
* 20 years for manga?! Update: superb recent commentary on this by Neil Gaiman
* 15-year-old Ohio girl charged with felony child pornography for taking naked pictures of herself
* porn law follies (Indianapolis law that would potentially had sex toy / porn retailers pay fees and register with the state like sex offenders)
* New Jersey bars some sex offenders from Internet
* sex panics and the perils of protecting everyone from sex
* MySpace and the sex offenders
And now this — Joe Windish at The Moderate Voice has an excellent wrap of all coverage, click through for all links — GA Woman May Lose Home for Teenaged Sex With Classmate:
Radley Balko:
Wendy Whitaker, 29, has been on Georgia’s sex offender list for more than 12 years. Her crime? She performed oral sex on a high school classmate just after turning 17. The boy was just shy of his 16th birthday. Both were sophomores. Whitaker is now suing, claiming that given her crime, her sex offender status is cruel and unusual punishment.
After the international uproar associated with the Genarlow Wilson case (Wilson, you’ll remember, was convicted of a similar crime—having consensual oral sex with a 15-year-old while he was 17 [link]), Georgia’s legislature clarified state law to prevent these sorts of cases—what Whitaker did 12 years ago is no longer a crime in Georgia. But because some Georgia lawmakers stubbornly wanted to keep Wilson in jail, the legislature took a separate vote to keep the law from applying retroactively. Wilson and Whitaker are still convicted felons. Whitaker’s suit cites the Georgia Supreme Court’s ruling in Wilson’s case, which found that Wilson’s 10-year sentence and mandatory sex offender status amounted to cruel and unusual punishment.
It gets worse. Whitaker is being evicted from her home. A nearby church is running an unadvertised daycare service. Georgia’s law prevents sex offenders from living within 1,000 feet of schools, churches, swimming pools, school bus stops, day care centers, parks, recreation centers or skating rinks. At a November 13 hearing, U.S. District Judge Clarence Cooper declined to halt Whitaker’s eviction:
[The] law was truck down by the Georgia Supreme Court last year, giving Whitaker a brief reprieve. But Georgia’s legislature then passed a revised law earlier this year, one lawmakers apparently believed is in compliance with the state supreme court’s decision, but that still manages to rope in Whitaker. Last week, she was told she has to move out of her home by Thanksgiving. If that happens, she’ll likely have to foreclose.
Judge Cooper accepted the state’s contention that finding a new place to live represented an “inconvenience” for Whitaker rather than a banishment from her home county. The AJC says the real offender in this sex case is the Georgia law (…read more, themoderatevoice.com)
I also dislike the law that has unjustly confined Wendy Whitaker, but unlike Agile Cyborg, I think you should consider where the “save the children” campaign comes from. Remember it was the Janet Reno crowd who was involved in the infamous wrongful prosecutions of day care providers in Florida. There’s no indication in this article that the church is responsible for making Ms. Whitaker move.
Human sexuality and common sense are polar opposites in a climate dominated by fear of god and moral trespass.
Ratchet down the moral absolutism and this country might fucking be capable of evolving.