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The following address was
given on
Good afternoon, thank
you for taking time out of your busy schedule
My name is Linda, and
you should know it has taken every ounce of courage come here and speak today,
as I am sure you have found the same courage to be here. I ask you to hold your questions until the
end of my remarks. I would prefer we
call this a heart to heart conversation or a dialog. I hope the
conversation we start will continue at your home and in your communities when
you leave here today. Let’s start out by
talking about how easy it is to dehumanize people. Sad to say, but dehumanizing is a dark side
of human nature. We do it because we can
then pretend an issue or idea does not touch us. When we allow this to happen, we are sadly
wrong, very, very wrong.
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Ask audience to count of every third woman and that woman to
stand. Do the same with the men except
every sixth man stand.
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You have just seen a
visual demonstration of the next fact.
According to the United Sates Department of Justice statistics, one out
of three girls will be victimized before the age of eighteen. The rate for boys is one out of six. The Department of Justice statistics also
show children are sexually abused by family members or by people, the family
knows or trusts in over 90 percent of the cases. This issue touches every zip code. The Bureau of Justice Statistics also shows
that predators represent around three percent of all sex offenders and child
killers are less than one percent of all offenders. There are now more than 300 Million people in
the
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Another thing you should
know is that, there is life after sexual abuse.
I am a member of a family that used restorative justice and family
re-unification techniques with the help of counselors and the courts to work through
the “unspeakable”. One of the most important things you should remember,
and take away with you is that there is NOT a sex offender lurking behind every
bush, or school bus stop or stalking playgrounds. Something else I hope you take home with you
is the collateral damage that has grown out of Sex Offender hysteria and panic
is staggering. Around fifty percent of
Sex offenders have wives, and half of those have children. Most of them have parents that are still
living and many have siblings. In other
words, families just like yours and mine.
Where are the laws that protect these wives, children, parents of
siblings? As stated, at present there
are over 600,000 Registered Sex Offenders.
Their innocent children, spouses, and family members are being harassed
and ridiculed on a daily basis. The fear
of some vigilante knocking on my door keeps me up at night. The pressure is almost too much to bear. Because of the lack of employment
opportunities, fathers can no longer support their children. Families are being forced from their homes
several times a year because of residency laws or BANISHMENT that do not work
and worse make no sense.
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The fourth thing that I
want to talk about is PREVENTION. These prevention tips actually do
work. I will go more into more detail
about these a little later.
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Believe it or not, each
one of you is at risk to be touched by this issue, in this hysteria-filled
atmosphere. Picture this. Your
teenage son or grandson has a girlfriend and they engage in sexual activity,
and the girls parents find out and call the police. Suddenly, there is an investigation, the
District Attorney sees another easy win and you wake up one morning and your
child or grandchild is now classified as a sex offender! Moreover, he will pay for that foolish act,
that moment of allowing passion to overcome his upbringing and common sense,
that momentary indiscretion, for THE REST OF HIS LIFE.
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Or, how about this...
You and your husband are out for a day in the park, he has to urinate,
and there is no bathroom available, so he ducks behind a tree or bush. As careful as he tried to be, a 12-year-old
girl walked by, saw him, and tells her mother.
That is now called indecent exposure and believe
it, or not, it is a registrable sex offense!
How about this ...You and your spouse are going through a divorce and
custody battle. Your
spouse accuses you of sexual abuse, the next thing you know, you’re a sex offender.
These things have and continue to happen to good, decent, god fearing,
and law-abiding people everyday.
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Today, when a child is
molested by a family member and the family is allowed to remain together, in
spite of the help of therapists and the courts, their ordeal is not over. This is the result of the irrational laws
passed by politicians, looking for election year sound bites; which cause that
child’s address to be on the internet! One out of five registrants report
harassment by neighbors, one in eight reports their children are harassed by
other neighborhood children; four out of ten are harassed at CHURCH and three
out of ten have received death threats.
Nevertheless, there is life after sexual abuse! I was molested as a child. I choose to be a survivor, not a professional
victim. I am not glossing over the
horrors of childhood sexual abuse. It
must be acknowledged and dealt with aggressively. Not every victim has the same
experience. Let US HEAL! How sad
it is our society, our media, and politicians are sending the message to our
children that they cannot heal. How sad
we keep pouring salt into their wounds.
True healing can take place. I am
on a quest to bring that same opportunity to my child. My child was molested by a family
member. We are successfully dealing with
it; in spite of the sex offender registry, which with the click of a mouse
button, old wounds can be reopened. However,
with a lot of help and the tenacity only a mother can have, I decided to fight
this horrifying and grave injustice to my family and myself. I believe any parent would do the same.
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If you really want to
keep your children safe, take the time to educate yourself. Your government, the politicians cannot keep
your kids safe! The only thing these
registries or community notification and proximity or banishment laws are doing
is creating a false sense of security for families. Do your own research! We can provide
you with web sites that prove everything I am telling you. Remember, MOST sex offenses happen in the
family or the inner circle of the child.
According to the Association for the Treatment of Sexual Abusers, these
sex offender registries are having the opposite affect of what they were
intended for, they are putting children at risk. The registry grows
everyday. If the sex offender registries
were working, why are we seeing an 8% yearly growth? There are so many people, public urinateors, Romeo and Juliet lovers, and so on that are on
these registries, they are just plain useless.
Additionally, according to the Department of Justice’s own statistics,
around 40% of the folks on the Sex Offender Registry are juveniles themselves. Their offence was youthful inquisitiveness or
misguided youthful passion, nothing more.
What the registries do accomplish is to shame and humiliate the low risk
former offenders and their wives, children, parents and siblings. Let me restate this, the only children that
the sex offender registries are having an impact on are the children of the
600,000 sex offenders and former sex offenders who have paid their debt to
society, accomplished their therapy and are on the registry by law. Again, the collateral damage of these
registries is staggering. Name ONE child
that the Sex Offender Registry saved. I
can’t name one either! As far as proximity
or banishment laws, just let me quote a statement regarding the effectiveness
of Iowa's Sex Offender Registry and Proximity laws, by Sgt. Bryce Smith, who
has charge of monitoring the registry in Scott County (Iowa). He said; "If the 2,000-foot rule had
been in effect 10 years ago, I can’t think of a single case from our files that
would have been any different."
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The media is a
large part of the problem, intent on ratings and advertising dollars, they are
content with myths, and misconceptions in lieu of truth and facts. Here is just a quick example, their use of
the word pedophile to describe all sex crimes against those under 18. Pedophile means someone attracted to and
obsesses of pre-pubescent children.
Studies by the U.S Department of Health and Human Services show that
less than twenty-nine percent of sex offenses are against children under age
twelve. We are led to believe
investigative journalist actually do research, however night after night, myth
after myth, lie after lie, they fuel the sex offender panic. Here is an even more telling example. The media tell us that harsh sex offender
laws make us safer. However, according
to the United Nations Survey of Crime Trends in the industrialized nations,
women in the United Sates are twice more likely to suffer rape than in Sweden
or Denmark, and three times more likely than in Germany and around five times
more likely than in England. Can someone
please tell me how myths and misconceptions make our society safer?
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At the end of the day,
the original intent of the sex offender registry was designed to keep track of
the most violent and predatory offenders, not low-risk intra-familial offenders,
former offenders, or juveniles experimenting around. These registries are a very slippery slope
indeed. Somebody else is going to be
next, many states have started other types of registries, such as a meth
cookers registries, Do you know a legislator
in Ohio has proposes a registry of people who are just ACCUSED of a sex crime! A DUI
registry is just around the corner and some local jurisdictions already have
one. Do you really think that you and
your loved ones are safe from being on a registry or safe because of the
existence of one? Just think how we have allowed myths and misconceptions
to affect our thinking and beliefs.
Thanks to the media, we throw the word predator around so much now that
it has lost its meaning. Ask yourself,
are people that had a teen-age love affair and are now married to their
teen-age lover and are raising children a predator? When you leave here today, remember there are
children as young as 12 years old on the sex offender registry, is that the
legacy you want to leave to your children and grandchildren?
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Before I use up all my
time today, let me again thank you for taking time from your busy day, I would
like to open up the meeting for
questions. To start things off, I would
like to ask you, what do you think are the best prevention methods?
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In closing I ask you to
continue this conversation when you get home, continue this conversation
tomorrow and the next day. Continue this
conversation with you friends, co-workers, neighbors, and especially with your
elected representatives. Tell them the
citizens of this country deserve better than election year sound bites. We deserve better than myths, lies, and
misconceptions. We not only deserve the
facts and truths, we need them to make all families, all children safe and
secure in their own homes. Tell them you
are against the discrimination against the disenfranchisement of the wives,
children, parents, and siblings of former offenders, who are low risk. Tell them you want the Sex Offender Registry
returned to its original intent, to track the most violent and predatory
offenders and absconders. Tell them, it
is just plain wrong to treat everyone the same, we do not do it with people
convicted of property theft, we do not do it with drug and alcohol abusers, and
we should not do it with sex offenders.
What is right is right and what is wrong is wrong. It is just plain wrong to treat my family, my
child, the same as Couey, Edwards or Duncan.
It’s WRONG – period end of story.
Remember, what happened to my family can happen to yours, all it takes
in one accusation – true of false, or one moment of carelessness misread by a
mandatory reporter. Continue the
conversation, educate yourself, and protect your family. Thank you and God bless you and our country.
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