Friday, February 18, 2011

One-size-fits-all laws for sex offenders miss the mark

Original article: http://news.medill.northwestern.edu/chicago/news.aspx?id=178523


Justin Raxter Registered Sex Offender 1


Courtesy of Justin Raxter
Justin Raxter hoped to study computer programing before being convicted of criminal sexual abuse.  He is no longer allowed to create websites, as part of his parole, restricting him from pursuing his interests.

by Gina Harkins
Feb 15, 2011



Justin Raxter Registered Sex Offender Guitar
Courtesy of Justin Raxter
Justin Raxter no longer performs with bands because he cannot come into contact with anyone underage.

Justin Raxter is a 22-year-old college student. He plays guitar and writes and records his own music. He likes watching “The Office” and “Family Guy,” and will eat anything with bacon.
He is also a registered sex offender.

When he was 18, Raxter, of Loves Park, began dating a girl who was 15. The age difference of three years did not seem important at time. He’ll now spend more than three times that amount listed on the Illinois Sex Offender Registration.

A registry he said ruins people’s lives.

“I want to try to inform the public that not every sex offender is the same and not every sex offender should be treated the same,” Raxter said in a telephone interview.
Raxter said he has been unable to obtain employment since being charged with criminal sexual abuse, a misdemeanor in the state of Illinois for which he’s serving two years of probation. He also was charged with child pornography for photos and videos he had of the girl, charges that later were dropped, he said.

After they broke up and he was convicted at age 21, he had to register as a sex offender for 10 years. So, by the time Raxter gets off the registry, he’ll have spent about a third of his life with that label.

Amie Eipers, a licensed clinical social worker in Naperville who knows Raxter, and Catherine Wilson, a clinical psychologist in Chicago, have both worked with sex offenders.
“Society doesn’t want them to move forward,” Eipers said. “Society wants to punish them forever.”

“In any other crime, we’d call them an ex-offender,” Wilson said. “We don’t make murderers register.”

But while Sharmili Majmudar, executive director of Rape Victim Advocates in Chicago, acknowledges that the registry is not perfect, she said it serves a good purpose.

“What they did is illegal,” Majmudar said about newly turned adults having consensual sex with a minor. “People do want to know when someone has been convicted of a sexual offense in their community. While not a perfect tool, it certainly has provided some transparency around sex offenders.”

Raxter’s probation requires him to be employed or go to school. So Raxter takes classes at Rock Valley Community College.

But he’s not allowed to come in contact with anyone under the age of 18. Raxter said he was removed from an online course because a 17-year-old was in the class. And even though they were not physically meeting in the same classroom, it would have violated the terms of his probation.

Raxter also had to get a court order to see his nieces.

“Before I was convicted, my family would always throw huge dinners on the holiday,” Raxter said. “Unfortunately due to all the restrictions, such as no contact with children, we are no longer allowed to have most of the family over, and because of this holiday dinners haven't been the same since.”

Raxter used to play guitar in bands performing every weekend throughout the state and other parts of the Midwest. He also went to the movies so often that it was hard to even name a favorite. These are examples of things he can no longer do for fear that he would violate his probation.

“It is very hard to predict where a child may be present,” Raxter said.
Eipers,  Kyle Cushing, a licensed clinical psychologist in Rockford, and Robin McGinnis, a social worker in Mundelein, all offer therapy to sex offenders. And all said there should be different labels for someone in Raxter’s situation.

“I think the biggest misconception is that once they hit that registry, they’re viewed as pedophiles,” Cushing said. “There’s a hysteria, a not-in-my-backyard philosophy. People need to be more educated about what the specific offense was.”

McGinnis said that the “once a sex offender, always a sex offender” label is not accurate.
“In young adults, male brains don’t mature developmentally until 25,” McGinnis said. “So, some engage in dumb, risk-taking behaviors.” But that does not mean that they will always be a sex offender, she said.

All three agree that therapy and counseling can be useful in treating sexual offenders.
And counseling is part of Raxter’s probation requirements, a service the state does not pay for.

“Right now, I just do the group stuff,” Raxter said. “I’m paying $20 per week for that, and one-one-on would be more like $100 per week.”

Raxter said group therapy has helped with his personal life, but that he does not always 
identify with the other people in the group.

“The age range isn’t the same,” Raxter said, and it is difficult to hear about a 50-year-old trying to have sex with a 15-year-old.

Raxter is getting A’s and B’s in his classes for the first time ever. He said being labeled as a sex offender has made him want to excel in other areas of his life.

He is working with Illinois Voices, a group that is trying to reform state and federal laws on sex offenders from the one-size-fits-all policies. Raxter has visited Springfield to talk to lawmakers about legislation to get those charged with his misdemeanor removed from the registry. A bill introduced last week by state Rep. Robert Pritchard, R-70th, would 
accomplish that.

Also, MTV is now filming Raxter for an episode of “True Life” about his problems as a registered sex offender.

“It's hard to think how different my life was just a couple years ago,” Raxter said. “I am somewhat starting to get used it, but I don't think being sex offender for a consensual relationship is something anyone should be getting used to.”

1 comment:

  1. I saw Justin on True Life. He totally did not deserve this -- his crime (which really should not even be a crime) definitely doesn't warrant such an unduly harsh, interminable punishment. All he wants to do is move on with his life. I felt so awful watching him endure what he had to, and all because some hormonal little bitch got angry and wanted revenge. If he was charged, the ex-girlfriend should have been charged, as well. Especially because some of the original charges that were dropped pertained to child porn -- photos she sent to him herself!

    If a legal adult is to be charged with having sex with a minor who is four years younger (or less) , the punishment should fall within the realm of community service and perhaps probation -- or even just a warning. The girl he was in a relationship with was 15, not 5. She knew what he was doing and it was totally consensual.

    We want to protect our children as best we can, but in doing so, our (seriously flawed) legal system overreaches and innocent people end up facing unfair consequences. They are reduced to a label that is virtually impossible for them to escape, and they are considered part of the same group as child rapists and what I call "real sex offenders." I hope Congress passes legislation that will take people like Justin off the sex offender registry, and I hope it happens very soon.

    For goodness sake, I just caught a TL episode depicting a 16 year-old and a 21 year-old, and they were flaunting their relationship! Imagine how many more offenders there would be on the registries if all the "guilty ones" were caught? Maybe then, there would be more of an outcry.

    I understand it is impossible to achieve a flawless legal system, but it is blatantly obvious to me that targeting consenting teenage couples is ridiculous, benefits the community in no way shape or form, and does nothing but ruin lives that don't deserve it.

    Rant over.

    ReplyDelete

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"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.”