Friday, December 16, 2011

Kent turns down expanding rules for sex offenders: Instead, City Council creates task force to probe community education about the issue

http://www.recordpub.com/news/article/5132930

Kyle McDonald
December 8, 2011

By Kyle McDonald | Staff Writer

Kent City Council established a task force to examine community education about sexual predators
Wednesday after rejecting an ordinance to impose living restrictions on sex offenders.

The task force, proposed by Councilman Garrett Ferrara, will create dialogue between the Kent’s Board of
Education, Safety Department and city administration to explore the effectiveness of current public education about sex offenders and if more can be done.

“I expect to hear positive results on what is being done already, but you have to send a message to people that it’s a concern and it’s a sensitive issue,” Ferrara said, adding that it will help raise awareness of the issue even current education of predators is found to be effective.

The proposed ordinance council considered, modeled after similar municipal ordinances across the country and offered by Kent Planning Commission member Anthony Catalano, suggested expanding on the state’s restrictions on where sex offenders can live.

Ohio law restricts sex offenders from living within 1,000 feet of a school or daycare center. Catalano suggested increasing that to 2,500 feet and expanding it to include parks, playgrounds and other areas where children gather under council’s discretion.

Kent Police Chief Michelle Lee and Law Director Jim Silver said the ordinance could create more problems than solutions.

Silver said expanding living restrictions up to 2,500 would not leave offenders many, if any, options, and could be considered unconstitutional housing discrimination.

“This type of ordinance could be subject to challenge in a lawsuit and have been challenged across the state and in other state,” he said.

Lee said her research found that similar ordinances can create “a false sense of security” and “studies don’t look good as far as its effectiveness.”

“I’m all for the protection of children and doing what we can do, I just don’t know if this is going to be what it takes,” she said, adding that enforcement would be difficult.
Lee also said that in most cases child sex offenders are known to the victims, with very few instances involving strangers.

Ferrara said the issue doesn’t seem like one that can simply be cured with legislation.

“It appears that education and awareness of the issue is the best defense,” he said.

Sex offenders are required to register with the sheriff’s department in the county where they reside. A full list of registered Portage County sex offenders and their addresses can be found at http://ohio.esorn.net/portage.>
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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.”