Friday, January 28, 2011

The Untouchables: The difficult lives of sex offenders



RTQuestion more
Go to main page   USA   The Untouchables: The difficult lives of sex offenders  

The Untouchables: The difficult lives of sex offenders

Published: 9 July, 2010, 03:15
Edited: 27 September, 2010, 12:57
In South Florida, redemption is hard to come by for sex offenders. Some have been forced to live under a bridge for the rest of their lives.
This is part one of an in-depth report on the lives of sex offenders after they have served their sentences.
The strict regulations on housing for sex offenders are the result of a confluence of what some consider as public paranoia, misguided laws and poor management, particularly in south Florida. Sun, surf, and sex appeal have drawn millions from the entire Western Hemisphere to this tropical wonderland.
But a few years ago, this tropical heaven was hell for children. No one knows why things worked out the way they did. For about 30 years, some of the highest-profile cases of sexual molestation of young children came from this area. Those cases had names: Jessica Lunsford, Jimmy Ryce, Adam Walsh. As a result, the city of Miami, Miami-Dade County and other nearby cities rushed to strengthen sex offender laws. At one point, sex offenders released from prison could not live within 1,000 feet of any school, church, playground, park, or mall—anywhere children could be. After another rash of violent sexual molestation cases involving children, city and county leaders strengthened those "residency restrictions" to 2,500 feet.
But there was a problem.
A major metropolitan area like Miami is full of schools, churches, playgrounds, parks and malls. Once the heftier residency restrictions were in place, there were only three places in all of Miami sex offenders could live: at the airport, in the Everglades or under a major thoroughfare called the Julia Tuttle Causeway.



And this is where probation officers told the sex offenders to live. According to the law, there was nowhere else for them to go.

By the summer of 2009, the population of “Sex Offender City” under the bridge had swelled to over 100. Tents were dwellings, patio table and chair sets were dining rooms, generators supplied electricity, and just about everyone living there sported a GPS unit around his ankle. Amenities and toiletries were luxury items and toilet paper became the de facto currency. It was hot, especially in the Miami sun, and these "monsters of Miami" had to live here forever.

A very strong argument can be made there was one man behind Sex Offender City, one man who caused the creation of this place. His name is Ron Book. Book has his reasons for creating the situation, and he disputes that he did, indeed, create it, but that story is for part two.

But there are others who are trying to help the sex offenders move on with their lives. One of them is Randy Young. He finds houses where sex offenders can live, leases them, then leases them back out to sex offenders. And finding rental property is not very difficult in south Florida, which has suffered dramatically in the ongoing economic crisis. By putting sex offenders back in society, he is changing the way people think about these men.

To be continued…
http://rt.com/usa/news/sex-offenders-deserve-redemption/print/
at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)

One To See Change Past Posts

One to See Change Blog List

"When an American says that he loves his country, he means not only that he loves the New England hills, the prairies glistening in the sun, the wide and rising plains, the great mountains, and the sea. He means that he loves an inner air, an inner light in which freedom lives and in which a man can draw the breath of self-respect."
~Adlia Stevenson U.S. Vice President (1893–1897) and Congressman (1879–1881)

On a Personal Note

Thanks for the opportunity to express my thoughts regarding the issue of citizens’ rights, particularly addressing certain sex offenders’ crimes that do not fit the devastating, inequitable and endless punishment given.


As you know, many young men and women lives across the nation are being destroyed by incarceration, life-time registry and restrictive laws that do more harm than good. For those individuals, there is no second chance.

Below is a personal letter to President Obama:
* * * *
“Dear President Obama,

I truly agree with your sentiments that individuals, such as ex-felons, should be able to receive a second chance at life. Since we all know that one can veer off that path of life and travel along rough, rocky terrain, sometimes running off and ending up in some ditch. We all have made our fill of mistakes and sometimes those held a costly consequence that changed life forever. So we lived through it, trying harder to make things right with family, friends and those around us, but what about those who aren’t able to make things right even if they tried…because they’re labeled as too dirty, a leper, a person who is rejected from society and home.

But what if they’re a seventeen year old and had sex with a fifteen year old, consensual at that? Or they’re a teen that had gotten so enraged after a breakup that he sent out naked pictures of his girlfriend on his cell phone or email? Or an individual urinates where someone just happens to see them?

All are wrong and a travesty but do they deserve the life of no second chance with a registry that ends all. They are labeled, no jobs, no where to live…they have been deemed a menace to society, a plague. These certain circumstances, and many other situations similar to these, I believe still deserve a second change.

Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution

Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

After my son’s early release and two years of prison, I thought I had handled that fact graciously knowing after serving his time he would be able to get that fresh start, that second chance. He was an exemplary inmate, GED, college courses and vocational classes. Little did I know that a second chance on the outside was the farthest from the truth? He now struggles and lives in a trailer park sharing a trailer with another and surrounded by others in the same rocking boat, one to float endlessly in shark infested waters. I see him little because of probation requirements (he couldn’t live with us because we were 800 feet near a school). My family is afraid of what would happen to them if he lived with them…vigilantism. My son has no other place to stay since others condemn him of his crime that is screamed from the highest rooftop. Sex offender, sex offender!

Not all sex offenders are pedophiles or predators but some are simply young kids that make one stupid and rash decision that eventually changes everything, and they have no idea what they’ve done until their life is never their own. Exactly, where is that second chance for those sex-offenders who are lumped together with pedophiles and predators? Now, it makes me sick to think of my son’s future and many like him that are on the registry and many with no second chance…ever. I am asking you as a mother and as another concerned citizen of the United States that these laws are looked at again and taken into serious consideration in what they are doing to the Constitution of the United States, not for sex offenders in general but the future rights of every citizen, before anymore are put into effect. They unjustly strip an offender of their rights and place them in a guillotine that can be easily set off by anyone and at anytime. Where is the second chance for ex-sex offenders in the present, pending and future laws?”
* * * *
What truly saddens me is the weakness and deterioration of what the sex offense issue is doing to our once, great nation. Across Europe, others are seeing the injustice and disregard of rights, but we ignore this problem and it makes me wonder where humanity is heading….

We have become a hysterical society in which our latest witch-hunt is a sex offender--no matter his/her crime.

Below is a email sent from a foreign advocate to a father of a sex offender:
* * * *
“The tragic story of your son's death is just so sad that it's difficult to explain how. It was very hard to read your letters. It seems almost unbelievable that this can take place in a democracy! From our point of view, there is no justice in this. Not in any way: not for you, your son, the former girl friend – or even the state.

It is an abusive legal system. It seems barbaric. And we are so very sorry that this takes place. That's why it's so important for us to try to neutralize the debate with this…, hopefully making some changes. ….. to show the every day life of the sex offenders, trying to show how they keep on being punished, even after served prison time…..But we will for sure tell the story of the injustice that your son has been exposed to.”
* * * *
I appreciate everyone's commitment and backing to protect everyone's civil rights, plainly as noted in the Constitution of the United States and is presupposed, giving ALL men are “life, liberty and pursuit of happiness.”