Living Near Sex Offenders

So a house we are looking at turns out to have a sex offender on the block.

Child molestation in the first degree.

Anne seems to pretty not bothered by it. According to her anytime you live around lots of people there is a high likelyhood some will be bad. You should be vigilant anyway. Plus people move in, people move out, can't really control that.

I'm not so sure. I've written SPD asking for more information.

What say you folks? Would you move into a neighborhood with a sex offender? Have you looked up your address in the sex offender database, would you move out if a child molester moved in?

Your wife is right. The guy could have peed in a park on an early morning jog.

The EEC offender list is so diluted it it worthless.

Have a plan to kill anyone who seriously harms your child and you'll be ok.

Don't have kids, so it wouldn't be a concern of mine.

Is there a way to know what kind of offense it was - e.g. 18-year-old with a 17-year-old vs 50-year-old with a 5-year-old?

Offenses
• Description: 9A.44.083 - Child molestation in the first degree.,
View this statute
• Date Convicted: 09/10/2001

RCW 9A.44.083
Child molestation in the first degree.

(1) A person is guilty of child molestation in the first degree when the person has, or knowingly causes another person under the age of eighteen to have, sexual contact with another who is less than twelve years old and not married to the perpetrator and the perpetrator is at least thirty-six months older than the victim.

(2) Child molestation in the first degree is a class A felony.


[1994 c 271 § 303; 1990 c 3 § 902; 1988 c 145 § 5.]

Just like peeing in a park on an early morning jog!.

I'm trying to figure out what the fuck that is in there for.

Probably to protect someone who married a minor who got married with parental permission.

Hard to believe that would happen with someone younger than 12 though.

I think it varies by state, but IIRC states used to have a huge number of statutory rape offenders on their registries. i.e. lots of 18 and 19 year olds having sex with 15 & 16 year olds.

That is not a good thing for the most part of course anyway but one wonders if they should be on a registry.

Go to the courthouse and look up the person's case file. Then you can find out what the charges were, how the case went, etc. (You do occasionally find cases where an ex-wife made something up as part of a nasty divorce, and a bad defense attorney convinced the guy to take a plea bargain. Of course, you also find cases where the dude actually got off easy. So who knows, but looking at the case file can give you more of an opinion.)

This is awfully bigoted and small-minded of you, Anc. He's paid his debt to society.

Volpone lives on your block? That sucks.

You may have little choice...it's difficult to find a place without any these days. Even in this state it seems every tiny town has at least one.

It will probably be okay as long as you keep yourself as informed at possible and be diligent about teaching your child safety and "stranger danger" and teach them not to wander around the neighborhood unsupervised.

Anne's right. You are showing your rural upbringing in this matter Ancalagon. The best way to protect your child is to monitor them when young, teach them awareness and safe practices as they get older. There's no harm in checking the lists. If need be, even show the perv's picture to your kid and warn against interaction with that person.

But fundamentally, you are always going to have all manner of good and bad people living near you. If you try to plan your life on the basis of non-exposure, best go join Albert in the cave.

Looks like Anc is gonna be pretty popular, being in his thirties but looking 16...

12 years ago...
do some basic math now using this guys age and we'll have a context.

then again, if it's been 12 years, I think you're pretty safe betting against him being a repeat offender.

in any case, what are your plans?
gonna try and live in a world without ex cons or simply rally the townspeople to ostracize and drive him out?

How old is the person now? If he's 26, then he was 14 when he screwed around with, possibly, an 11-year-old... a little odd, but not a sign of an adult pedophile, especially since girls are a couple of years ahead of boys through the teen years anyway. If he's 40 or 50, then he's a lot dicier.

Problem identified.

33.

So depending on how long it took for his case to go through the system he was likely 20 or 21.

so the better question here is what purpose does it serve to be stigmatizing ex cons with a scarlet letter for life?

if you choose not to move there, someone will claim he's bringing down property values (which in America is possibly the only thing worse than rape). Being identified with a criminal record, let alone being on the sex offender list, makes him all but unemployable and difficult to find housing.

I'm actually kind of disappointed that you'd even support this sort of thing by using it.

There's kind of a bizzaro gay marriage arguement here. First they register the convicted offenders, then they can go after the merely "offensive" and criminalize them...

But yeah, people should totally pack themselves into concentrated urban super-centers. More conducive to efficient mass transit in the glorious worker's paradise.

I cannot think of a single act more deserving of a life long branding than child rape.

It's an act of mercy that he wasn't fucking executed on the spot, and a kindness that he was ever released from prison.

And boo fucking hoo, now he'll have a hard life. You know how to avoid the difficulties associated with the sex offender registry? DON'T RAPE CHILDREN.

The problem is that a lot of people on the registry did not rape a child..

This guy did, so piss on him and his tragic circumstances.

Aye. People get put on there for 'exposure' which could just mean being drunk and peeing in an alley. Or statutory rape as others have pointed out.

However I'm seeing a hard way to get around Child Molestation in the first degree. Unless the RCW has changed since he was convicted (I'm no lawyer but if I am reading it correctly the last change to this section was in 1994), it seems pretty clear he did something really fucked up.

Yup, because the government run courts and cops are never wrong, let alone railroaded anyone... Summary execution is the most effective proof of that infallibility.

First, as Gul says, most folks aren't on there for being 50 with a five year old. Indeed, many are as Poodle suggests, there for pissing in a park or suntanning topless.

Second, dial society back 30+ years, you'd have gays eligible to be on there. A few more decades to 120 years, and what we consider reprehensible as child marriage with 14-15 year olds is accepted and expected in North America.

None of that matters though, I'm not here to discuss the morality or what constitutes child abuse. The question is whether it's right to effectively exile someone despite having served his sentence?

A child molester isn't your run of the mill ex con.

No one gets drunk with their buddies and decides to go rape a child. No one gets hooked on drugs and rapes a child to score enough cash for their next fix. No one finds their gf cheating on them with their best friend and decides to go rape a child. No one is down on their luck and decides to start child raping to make ends meet.

Child molestation is a special type of crime caused by a severe mental illness. So far the only known 'cure' with any effectiveness is sterilization, and even that is far from perfect. Aside from that there is treatment but it requires intense therapy (for life) and strict adherence to a drug regime (for life), and again even then it is far from perfect. Recidivism is VERY high.

It's very similar to homosexuality, yes. As Spaceturkey has said in the past.

I don't disagree with any of that, although you leave out the glaring commonality that most child abusers are indeed past victims of abuse themselves.

What I do disagree with is a blacklist subject to a wide and subjective range of inclusion.

It's worse than that. In some states, even after the sentence is served, release requires a follow-up trial in which the offender must convince a jury that s/he is not a risk for further sex crimes. As demonstrated in this thread, few believe reform is actually possible, so these people face indefinite incarceration.