Monday, March 7, 2011

Challenging the modern-day ‘scarlet letter’


By Zoe Sullivan

Forty percent of the people registered as sex offenders in Orleans Parish have not committed a violent crime or taken advantage of children, according to the Center for Consti­tutional Rights.

This group of people has been required to register as sex offenders because of a law dating from 1805 that prohibits the solicitation of oral or anal sex. This is called the Crimes Against Nature (CAN) law, and advocates say that it brands those convicted with a modern-day scarlet letter, which renders it almost impossible for them to move out of sex work and into the mainstream.

To fight this, Loyola University's Stuart H. Smith Law Clinic partnered with the Center for Constitutional Rights and Andrea Ritchie, filing a lawsuit to have the statute repealed.

Alexis Agathocleous, co-counsel for the Center for Constitutional Rights, said that he was "startled" when he learned the percentage of people registered as a result of the CAN law. "It just doesn't make any sense," he said. "The fact that about 75 percent of them are women, and 80 percent are African-American is deeply troubling." Agathocleous also pointed out that 97 percent of the women in Orleans Parish who are on the registry are on there because of a CAN conviction.

Women With a Vision is the New Orleans community organization that brought this issue to the attention of legal advocates. The group has been doing harm-reduction work related to HIV and others issues for 20 years. Deon Hay­wood is the Executive Director of Women with a Vision. She calls the impact of the Crimes Against Nature law "devastating."

One of the ways the law impacts registrants is by printing the words "SEX OFFENDER" in bright orange letters on the person's driver's license or ID card.

"If you think about...how hard it is in today's economy to find a job....I can't get a job because I have to show my ID. So a lot of doors are closed. It makes it hard for people to move from one place to another in society, if you think about how many times you use your ID." Haywood explained to the Weekly.

This "Scarlet letter" isn't the only way that registered sex offenders are affected by the law, however. Haywood says that grants for education are also denied to registered sex offenders, creating an additional barrier to someone who is trying to create a new life. Beyond this, some social services and housing facilities won't accept registered sex offenders, further restricting the supports available to those trying to take care of themselves.
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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:
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“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?”
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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:
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“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.”
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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.”