As of early , Maya and her husband were living in Michigan with a two-year-old girl and a baby boy on the way. Officials in many jurisdictions have imposed residency and zoning restrictions on registered sex offenders, including children. Yet research on the effectiveness of residency restrictions imposed on adult sex offenders offers no indication that these laws achieve their intended goals of preventing abuse, protecting children, or reducing reoffending.
In , Iowa enacted a law that prohibits sex offenders from living within 2, feet of a school or daycare center. It makes great sense politically, but has no affect [sic] whatsoever on public safety. Because residency restrictions have such questionable utility in deterring offenses committed by adults, there is little reason to expect they would deter children from committing sex offenses. Meanwhile, sex offender residency restrictions have been shown to increase transience, homelessness, and instability. The duration of registration required of youth offenders convicted in adult court is, in most states, the same as that required of adults.
But children adjudicated delinquent are often subject to shorter requirements or may petition to be removed from the registry. The following are two examples of youth offenders subject to lifetime registration requirements:. Even when registration is limited in duration, youth offender registrants can experience severe difficulties and high costs in purging their information from the registry.
It is now and I am still on the state website and all those other registration sites. I feel like it will never end. Sex offender registration and notification laws impose harsh, sometimes debilitating, and often lifelong sanctions on children convicted or adjudicated guilty of sex offenses. Many of the individuals interviewed for this report described being placed in a juvenile facility for a few years after being found guilty of the underlying sex offense; those convicted as adults spend time in adult prison.
When they return to their communities as teenagers or young adults, they are already significantly behind their contemporaries in education, socialization, establishing stable family relations, and developing employment skills.
Movies on TV this week: Sunday, April 26, - Los Angeles Times
Yet, required to register as sex offenders, they soon learn they face further obstacles that may be nearly impossible to overcome. As we document below, youth placed on registries are often ostracized, threatened, and subject to strict residency requirements. Adolescence is a developmental period characterized by identity formation. These harms are compounded by the shame that comes with registration and notification, which often lacks an endpoint. Among the youth offenders and family members of 15 additional youth offenders interviewed for this report, most people, or Nearly a fifth of those interviewed 58 people, or Typically, children and adolescents have difficulty navigating close interpersonal relationships.
Now age 22, he is still on the registry and on sex offender parole, which means that anyone he wants to talk to, by phone or in person, is required to first fill out a form and obtain approval by his parole officer. No one cares if I am alive.
In fact, I think they would prefer me dead. The alienation that emerges from a system set up to regulate personal relationships can thwart healthy development in young people. Human Rights Watch found that, left with little hope of ever leading a normal life, some youth offenders on the registry opted for what they may have viewed as the only remaining route of escape—suicide.
I was just a kid. One child was adjudicated delinquent for a sex offense at age At the age of 17 he took his own life.
Foundations of the Anthropology of Gender
His picture, address and information on the Web…. Another young man who was placed on the registry at age 12 committed suicide at age 17, a few months after Michigan passed a law to remove offenders who were under 14 at the time of the offense from the registry. The mother of a former registrant told Human Rights Watch about the circumstances that led to her son, Carson E. Adjudicated delinquent at the age of 13 for rape, he successfully completed sex offender treatment and as a result was later removed from the public registry and subject to law-enforcement-only registration.
But nearly 10 years after his offense, he started facing serious difficulties. At the age of 25, and within weeks of graduating from college, Carson committed suicide.
Get a 30 day FREE TRIAL
His mother says she knows in her heart that he killed himself because upon graduation, he was going to look for professional work and knew his background would come up in every job interview. Dominic G. In , when he was 15 years old, Dominic was charged with having molested his sister when he was approximately 14 and she was approximately Dominic denied the allegations. In , after Dominic had spent over a year going back and forth between a psychiatric hospital and jail, his defense attorney told Dominic and his mother that if he did not admit to the allegations, he would be transferred to adult court and face up to 20 years in prison.
Grace N. While in detention, Dominic received honors and was known for his artistic skill. By the age of 17 he was granted special permission to attend college courses off campus. He was able to work and earn money. In April , at the age of 21, Dominic was released from detention and placed on parole under the jurisdiction of the adult criminal court until the year Dominic is subject to sex offender registration and notification requirements. During the pre-release meeting, Dominic also had to sign a Collateral Contact Form, which required him to identify a contact to assist in monitoring his behavior.
Access Denied
The form states that this person may be, for example, a roommate, employer, family member, spouse, significant other, pastor, sponsor, or friend. Dominic specified his maternal grandmother, Grace. But Grace was told that she can never have Dominic in her home because his sister, the victim, resides there. In early January , Dominic tried to commit suicide. The parole officers demanded that she bring Dominic from the car into the office so that he could sign the papers.
After a stressful few minutes, a parole officer came out and told Grace that she could take Dominic to the hospital. Laws that place youth offenders on sex offender registries expose them to vigilante attacks and are at odds with existing state laws that protect the confidentiality of juvenile records. Among the cases examined for this report, 52 percent youth offenders experienced violence or threats of violence against themselves or family members that they directly attributed to their registration. Family photos of two boys at ages 10 and 8 now adults in their late twenties who were subject to sex offender registration for offenses committed at ages 12 and Individuals aware of their registration have thrown molotov cocktails through the window of the family home, as well as threatened, insulted, and shouted profanities at all members of the family.
Weatherford, Texas, May 1, Other registrants experienced harassment as a result of their registration status. They thought I was not a virgin. I had to run inside. I wish I could kill you! Registration laws can have a severe impact on the families of registrants. Young people exiting custody in the juvenile justice system or adult prisons are often discharged back to families already struggling with domestic violence, substance abuse, mental health issues, unemployment, and poverty.
Children face unemployment, school enrollment challenges, and sometimes homelessness upon release. The impact may be more pronounced for families with children subject to sex offender registration requirements. Many registrants and family members told Human Rights Watch about the stresses placed on families as a result of registration. These include the following examples:.
Families also suffer as a result of the public stigma associated with the registration status of their loved one. Parents of registrants reported experiencing increased financial burdens from the moment their child was placed on the registry. Some family members of registrants lost their jobs as a result of the sex offender registration status of their family member.
I lost my job when the school district found out that I had a young child on the registry. The fees associated with registration can be prohibitively high for a young person. These expenses often fall on the family, especially when the individual on the registry is a dependent child. Jackson D. I was too young to work. He still lives with his mother. He struggles to keep jobs to help his mother prevent the house from going into foreclosure.
The effects of registration can touch later generations of children as well. Many of the individuals we spoke with were placed on the registry as children but are now married with children of their own.
Offender registration laws can have especially harmful impacts on the children of registrants. Additionally, 59 percent reported that other children at school treated them differently when it was discovered that they had a parent on the registry. Most youth offender registrants with children we spoke with had very young children who had not yet attained school age. We were able, however, to interview a few school-age children with a parent on the registry. Hunter E. Mark O. A year-old child, Cindy D. In Delaware, where they live, a child under 14 years of age cannot legally give consent.
We asked both non-registered and registered parents to describe ways that their children have been directly affected by sex offender registration laws. Individuals placed on the registry for offenses committed over a decade ago, when they were children, cannot even pick up their own children at school. Jerry M. I want to be involved in their lives but I also want them to be able to live free to be who they are without having to carry such a burden. One girl with a father on the sex offender registry wrote Human Rights Watch a letter about her life as a child of a registered sex offender.
Local lawmakers have passed municipal ordinances prohibiting individuals on sex offender registries from residing or traveling within close proximity to places where children commonly congregate. Given the large number of parks, schools, daycare centers, and playgrounds in some cities, there can be very few places where sex offenders can live. In one study, adult registrants cited difficulties in finding housing and being forced to move as the most common problems resulting from their registrant status.
Studies show that adolescents and young adults on sex offender registries have an even harder time securing housing than older adults on registries.
Aaron I. They keep us homeless. I am banned from living in a homeless shelter. It is impossible to meet these expectations. Currently I am homeless … for something that happened when I was 12 years old. The majority of parents with a child on the registry interviewed by Human Rights Watch reported having trouble providing shelter for their family due to residency restrictions requiring the child registrant to live a certain distance from schools, parks, playgrounds, daycare centers, or bus stops.