Why harsh sex offender laws made Garrido’s crimes easier to commit
Image by kyz via Flickr
The case of Phillip Gariddo, accused of kidnapping then 11-year-old Jaycee Lee Dugard and holding her hostage for 18 years, sexually abusing her and fathering two children with her, has revealed the paradox at the center of America’s unusually tough sex offense laws. The harsher the laws get, the more people who are caught in the ever-expanding net of offenses, the easier it is for the real child abusers to go undetected.
Phillip Garrido is a case in point. Although forced to register as a sex offender, Garrido was just one of several living in his area. According to an article in today’s Times,
The sheer numbers of sex offenders on the registries in all 50 states — an estimated 674,000 across the country — are overwhelming to local police departments and, at times, to the public, who may not easily distinguish between those who must register because they have repeatedly raped children and those convicted of nonviolent or less serious crimes, like exposing themselves in public.
Abduction Case Shows Limits of Sex Offender Alert Programs – NYTimes.com.
This contradictory situation, where the harsher we are on sex offenders, the less likely we are to catch them, was the subject of an August 6th article in the Economist.
US laws are so incredibly harsh as to merit a plea from Amnesty International to rethink them. For instance, regardless of the act or whether it was consensual and between people of roughly the same age, once convicted of an offense, you’re on the registry and barred from ever being in a school, even if you have children. A recent Illinois law has barred sex offenders from social networking sites, like Facebook and LinkedIn. That might seem reasonable for someone like Garrido, but what about the 17 year old girl who becomes a “sexual predator” for having sex with her boyfriend who is very nearly 16? Or consider the fact that a Human Rights Watch report found
at least five states required men to register if they were caught visiting prostitutes. At least 13 required it for urinating in public (in two of which, only if a child was present). No fewer than 29 states required registration for teenagers who had consensual sex with another teenager. And 32 states registered flashers and streakers.
I have most certainly urinated in public (if national parks are public) with children, had sex as a teenager, and gone streaking (as a teenager). What that means is that even more of us could be registered sex offenders than the 675,000 Americans already on the registries. That means our photos could be on there, our addresses, we could be targeted for harassment, threats, and in a few recent cases, vigilante-style executions. Because so many offences require registration, the number of registered sex offenders in America has exploded.
According to the Economist article,
As a share of its population, America registers more than four times as many people as Britain, which is unusually harsh on sex offenders. America’s registers keep swelling, not least because in 17 states, registration is for life.
How did this happen? How did America become both so obsessed with “sexual predators” and simultaneously unable to make children safer? It no doubt started with the Victorians, as James Kincaid suggests in Erotic Innocence- the conflation of childishness with sexual innocence at the same time “ladies” were imagined as innocent as well- so that wanting a sexually innocent lady became entangled with a sexually innocent child.
But more recently, starting in the 1980s, with a Conservative Revolution that included all things sexual, Americans began to worry about “stranger danger.” Instead of focusing on where children are most likely to be abused (in the home, by someone they know), we began to focus on preschools as sites of mass violation of children’s innocence, the stranger behind the bush, and the internet as a site of particular danger.
Laws were passed (in fact, most states only got sex offender registries in the 1990s after the federal government threatened loss of funding if they weren’t established), TV shows and movies were made, educational programs were invented. The result was panic. Panic in Congress and state legislatures as everything from sex between teens to naked photos of one’s children were criminalized. Panic in schools as children were taught that they should worry about abduction all the time. Panic in the homes as parents chose “safety” over “health” and “well-being.”
Not only did it not work since most children are still abused by people they know and this issue wasn’t ever really addressed. But the net’s so big that too many people are being named sexual predators and too few actual sex criminals are being monitored. The latest expansion of this ridiculous net is about “sexting”- when consenting teens send naked photos of themselves to each other or post them on their Facebook page.
According to Judith Levine’s blog,(she’s the author of Harmful to Minors- a book that brilliantly exposes this panic), a proposed Massachusetts bill would make it illegal for minors AND for people 60 years and up to send or post naked photos. So if you’re 61, don’t send photos to your 62 year old lover. And if you’re 17, do not snap the photo of yourself nude for your 16 year old lover.
This sort of sexual panic is so ridiculous that it seems barely worth a comment. But the truth is, people get caught in this awful net and their lives are ruined for committing the most victimless of crimes. Worse, the real creeps, the ones like Garrido, can operate amidst the confusion with little chance of detection.
Oddly, the real lesson from the tragedy of the Jaycee Lee Dugard is that Americans need to lighten up on sex laws in order to keep the public safer from sexual predators.
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One important aspect you’ve left out here is the ever increasing numbers of falsely accused and wrongly convicted ’sex offenders’.
The laws that were changed to make it easier to convict the guilty make it easier to convict the innocent.
For the first time in the history of mankind it has been decreed that Children Don’t Lie. Although it has been shown time and time again with the sacrifice of innocent lives that they can and do, when you enter a court of law as the accused you can rest assured – the little Virgin isn’t lying. It. Grew. Back.
Yes. It grew back the previous other times she accused, as well, but that is Rape Shield information and inadmissable. Medical Confidentiality laws bar any other medical facts that support ‘reasonable doubt’(my son’s accuser had a highly contagious bacterial infection at the time she accused. Inadmissable. She’d accused twice before, and had been in group sex abuse therapy since age 4. Inadmissable as well. “He MUST have done it! How ELSE could she know such things?”
My son passed polygraph after polygraph with high truthful scores saying he didn’t do it. He was jailed for being ‘in denial’.
In American we now require forced confessions to avoid imprisonment. If you are accused you did it, and you must confess or face ‘general population’ in prison.
He failed the forced confession polygraphs with strong ‘deception’ scores and was placed on an ankle monitor for ‘not cooperating’.
Being innocent is not an option.
His accuser and family fled the state to avoid testifying – refusing to return.
In America we no longer recognize the right to face one’s accuser. It may ‘retraumatize the victim’ to do so.
It very likely DOES re-traumatize true victims to recount their abuse, and could DEFINATELY
“traumatize” those who have to look into the face of the person they are lying about if they are not believed.
“Sexual abuse investigator Tom Plach opines that it is “extremely rare for someone to deliberately coach a child into reporting a false allegation.” This remark counters the evidence of increased false allegations amid rancorous divorce proceedings.” (Investigating Allegations of Child and Adolescent Sexual Abuse: An Overview for Professionals
By Tom Plach. Springfield, IL: Charles C Thomas Publisher, 2008. 180 pp. $29.95.
Reviewed by Emilie A. Becker, MD )
In America we only recognize false accusation in association with divorce or child custody – family feuds, or neighbor lady quarrels don’t enter into it — for now.
My son was placed on a sex offender registry at the age of 16. When his cousin wasn’t allowed to attend a party she claimed he raped her every day for two weeks. No ‘evidence’ could save him. Her word alone has placed him on a sex offender registry for the rest of his life.
If this can happen to my son it can happen to anyone’s son – or husband, teacher, or neighbor. Coach or babysitter.
As I said before –the laws that convict the guilty convict the innocent. There is no way to tell the difference.
Ms. Essig,
I have linked to your commentary.
http://smashedfrog.blogspot.com/2009/09/sex-offender-laws-perfect-storm.html
As someone who has a loved one effected by these laws, I have blogged the inadequacies of the sex offender laws for several years. It was just a matter of time before someone like Jaycee–already victimized via a kidnapping–became even more so by a system of laws created by politicians too worried by the effect on their own careers to take a second look and streamline the laws they themselves created.
I invite you to visit my blog, Smashed Frog. Take particular review of the post, “Chris Matthews Sucks”. As long misinformation continues to be cited by those who hold the bully pulpit, our children become less and less safe.
Links to research disputing Mr. Matthews is available through SF.
Thanks for connecting the dots.
Sunny/Smashed Frog
thank you, thank you , thank you for writing this article. long story short, my loved one had concensual intercourse with a 13 y/o while they were both high when he was 18/19. after 4 years in prison, he has never touched illegal substances since and 10 years since his initial arrest, we’ve been together for 5 years, with a child of our own now. but he’s still being haunted. can’t find a decent place for our family to rent. once the background check is done thats it. i moved a state over for work, but now i have to move back, because now he’s not allowed to even step foot over the border. and now hes getting a bracelet slapped on his ankle. 29 years old, no threat whatsoever (which isn’t just coming from me, he was required to speak with a psychologist in order to be with our daughter who said the same) it feels like he’s just being made an example of, the government is wasting their frigging money on the little piggy when the f’in big bad wolf is lurking around the corner. it makes me sooo mad that the friggin sheriff “didn’t even know the guy was an offender”. and he’s housing this poor girl for EIGHTEEN YEARS. i think it’s time this law got a much much much needed make over.
Had Garrido served his full sentence, Jaycee would of never been put in harms way of this predator. Here is a great blog you ought to read:
http://roarfortruth.blogspot.com/2009/08/open-letter-to-ron-book.html