Did they verify that these statements are correct?
Human Rights Watch Statement
(page 38) The only reason I am considered a sex offender is because I committed an offense that triggers registration. In any other context, my crime would never be considered a sex offense, and I would not be considered a threat to society.
—Trent B., a Pennsylvania registrant convicted of streaking
Family Watchdog's Conclusion (Response)
Pennsylvania law does not require registeration for streaking.
Background
There are a total of five individuals on the Pennsylvania registry convicted of Public Indecency. Their ages at time of conviction were 21, 31, 35, 45, and 55. The 21 year old, who would seem to be the move likely to have been streaking due to the other offender's ages, was convicted in Oklahoma in 1997 of 4 counts of public exposure, including 2 felony counts, for which he was incarcerated in state prison for 1 year.
Pennsylvania’s registry law does not make exposing one’s genitalia a registry offense. Out of state offenders are subject to the same registry requirements, so an out of state offender convicted for streaking who moves to Pennsylvania is not required to register under Pennsylvania law.
Pennsylvania is one of a number of states that places a single qualifying conviction on an offender’s record, so it is not possible to verify if any of these offenders, other than the 21 year old convicted in Oklahoma, have multiple convictions.
http://www.pameganslaw.state.pa.us/EntryPage.aspx
The Following by eAdvocate:
9-21-2007 Utah: Streaking student may face jail time
A Pleasant Grove teen may face jail time after streaking during the Pleasant Grove High School homecoming pageant.
An 18-year-old student at Pleasant Grove High school allegedly ran across the stage in the school's auditorium.
"We know who the suspect is," said Pleasant Grove police Capt. Cody Cullimore of the Pleasant Grove. "There are still a couple of witnesses we need to talk to. We plan to arrest him in the morning (Friday)."
The teen's name is not being released until an arrest has been made, Cullimore said. The man will be charged with lewdness in the presence of a minor, a class A misdemeanor, he said.
Cullimore said the charge of lewdness in the presence of a minor stems from the fact that many young children were present in the audience of roughly 800 people.
"Whoever did this was probably trying to be funny," he said. "It's still classified as a sexual offense."
Cullimore said if the teen is convicted, it is possible he will have to register as a sex offender because he is an adult. However, he said it will be up to the judge to determine the intent of the crime.
"Is this a sexual offense, or is it just a kid being stupid?" he said.
Haley Johnson, a senior at Pleasant Grove High, said she was performing her a capella skit when she saw the teen fall out from under the curtain.
"I turned around and just saw this naked body run past me out the door," she said. "His head was covered and he had sunglasses on, I think, but you could see everything."
The student probably streaked through the performance as a joke, she said, but she did not find much humor in the prank. The general reaction from her classmates Thursday was shock, Johnson said.
"I can see how someone would think it was funny, but it's kind of upsetting because we put so much work into this pageant," she said.
Johnson said she feels sorry for the suspect because he may have wanted to get a laugh, but could end up in serious trouble instead.
"I don't think he was thinking about the consequences at all," she said.
Jess Christen, principal of Pleasant Grove High, said the investigation is being left up to the police department, and the high school's staff will follow policy and procedure in disciplining the student.
"He was chased by an assistant principal and our drama teacher," Christen said.
Christen said he has not fully researched the disciplinary actions that can be taken against the student, and he does not know yet whether expulsion will be necessary.
A school resource officer is involved in the case and is working with Pleasant Grove police, Christen said. Disciplinary action will be taken once the culprit has been found.
"We'll allow him to do his work, and then we'll do ours," he said.
Christen said the school does not usually have major problems with pranks, and he does not recall any serious problems in the time he's been with the school. "I've been here nine years, and I think this is the first (streaker)," he said. "We have a pretty compliant, good group of kids." ..more.. by JANICE PETERSON - Daily Herald
'Sex offender' at Concord was merely a streaker: Imprecise categories on Pennsylvania Registry causes misunderstanding
2-2-2005 West Virginia:
.Concord University has a registered sex offender on the faculty, college officials confirmed Tuesday — but he’s actually just a streaker. James Edward Parker, 58, is listed on the Pennsylvania sex offender registry as having committed “indecent assault,” defined as sexual touching of a child under 13. But when Concord officials started looking into the matter, they discovered that their new hire had actually streaked through a park more than a decade ago, said Dean Turner, Concord’s academic dean.
Parker later moved to Pennsylvania, and because of his streaker past was required to register as a sex offender. But the closest thing Pennsylvania’s registry had to “indecent exposure” was the much grimmer “indecent assault,” Turner said. “He tried to get that changed for a long period of time,” Turner said. “But the State Police weren’t willing to do that. His employment was, in at least one instance, impacted by that.”
Secrecy has surrounded the story at Concord. At first, when Parker was hired in August, university officials didn’t know he was listed as a sex offender. Concord’s faculty employment application doesn’t ask. But “when he arrived in our part of the country, he went to the State Police and registered” as a sex offender, “as he is supposed to do,” Turner said. “The State Police notified our security department.”
Concord officials still didn’t know they were dealing with a streaker rather than a child molester. Their lawyer advised them that since Parker hadn’t misrepresented himself, they had no cause to fire him. Turner is still cautious when he talks about the matter, because laws protect registered sex offenders from harassment. “From what we understood, he didn’t seem to be a threat to the community, and the appropriate people in the community had been notified,” Turner said. That was the end of that, for a while. But the story was getting around. ..Source.. by TARA TUCKWILLER tara@wvgazette.com
He grabbed girl's arm -- now he's a sex offender
7-2-2005 Illinois:
Fitzroy Barnaby said he had to swerve to avoid hitting the 14-year-old Des Plaines girl who walked in front of his car. She said he yelled, "Come here, little girl," before getting out of his car and grabbing her by the arm. He said he simply lectured her. She said she broke free and ran, fearful of what he'd do next. In a Thursday ruling, the Appellate Court of Illinois said the 28-year-old Evanston man must register as a sex offender.
While acknowledging it might be "unfair for [Barnaby] to suffer the stigmatization of being labeled a sex offender when his crime was not sexually motivated," the court said his actions are the type that are "often a precursor" to a child being abducted or molested. Though Barnaby was acquitted of attempted kidnapping and child abduction charges stemming from the November 2002 incident, he was convicted of unlawful restraint of a minor -- which is a sex offense.
'Most stupid ruling'
Now, he will have to tell local police where he lives and won't be able to live near a park or school. "This is the most stupid ruling the appellate court has rendered in years," said Barnaby's Chicago attorney, Frederick Cohn. "If you see a 15-year-old beating up your 8-year-old and you grab that kid's hand and are found guilty of unlawful restraint, do you now have to register as a sex offender?"
But Cook County state's attorney spokesman Tom Stanton said Barnaby should have to register "because of the proclivity of offenders who restrain children to also commit sex acts or other crimes against them." In the criminal case against him, Cook County Judge Patrick Morse said that "it's more likely than not" Barnaby planned only "to chastise the girl" when he grabbed her, but "I can't read his mind."
"I don't really see the purpose of registration in this case. I really don't," Morse said. "But I feel that I am constrained by the statute." Recognizing the stigma that comes with being labeled as a sex offender, the appellate court said "it is [Barnaby's] actions which have caused him to be stigmatized, not the courts." ..Source.. by STEVE PATTERSON Staff Reporter
The Following from Sex Offender Issues:
Students question streaker penalty
17-year-old may have to register as sex offender, if convicted
9-28-2007 Colorado:
It's no official holiday, but a number of students at Boulder High School will be celebrating "Free Mason" day today.
Mason Lacy, a 17-year-old senior and the impromptu holiday's namesake, will not be in attendance.
Instead, he'll be at home doing manual labor for the fifth day in a row as punishment for his five-day suspension from school for attempting to streak naked across the football field during the annual Boulder High-Fairview game last week.
Lacy received a ticket for indecent exposure Sept. 20 after he attempted to sprint across the field wearing only racing flats and some purple body paint. His plan was foiled by security guards, who caught him hopping over the field's fence and held him until police arrived.
"I didn't think anyone would be able to catch me, or want to grab onto a naked person," Lacy said. "They proved me wrong."
After sitting in the back of a patrol car sporting a makeshift skirt officers fashioned from Scotch tape and napkins, Lacy was told that he may have to register as a sex offender.
That's because indecent exposure is a misdemeanor that carries a sentence of up to a year-and-a-half in jail and possible sex offender registration. That's not something Lacy or his parents ever expected to hear.
"If my son breaks a law, there are consequences," Gary Lacy said. "We don't want to be in the way of any fair sanctioning, but it just feels like maybe ... this seems a little bit out of balance compared to other things."
Gary Lacy said he learned that some students at the same game who were busted for fighting and being intoxicated were suspended for three days, as opposed to his son's week-long abeyance from classes.
"That seems a little out of whack," Gary Lacy said.
Students at the school also are blown away by the prospect that the annual tradition at the match-up between Boulder's rival high schools is such a serious crime.
"It was not at all sexually offensive to anyone," said Alena Heath, a 17-year-old senior at Boulder High. "If anyone was offended, it must have been a parent."
Phoebe Breed, a 17-year-old senior, chimed in: "Plus, they're so far away you can't see anything anyway."
Lacy's ticket and subsequent suspension has been a major topic of conversation in school hallways. A Facebook.com page dedicated to Lacy has attracted 220 members, many displaying their "Free Mason" T-shirts they plan to wear to school today.
"I think it's a little too extreme, and he got stopped at the fence so he didn't even do anything," said Andy Kearney, a 16-year-old junior.
As of June, of the 96 registered sex offenders in Boulder, there are 16 people who were convicted of indecent exposure.
Mark Langston, a local defense attorney with no ties to Lacy's case, said he is perplexed why lawmakers deemed indecent exposure — defined as when someone "knowingly exposes his genitals to the view of any person under circumstances in which such conduct is likely to cause affront or alarm to the other person" — to be a sexual offense.
"The word sex doesn't appear anywhere in the statute, and you don't have to engage in any conduct that is sexual or sexually motivated to not only be charged but convicted," Langston said. "And if convicted, you're a sex offender and classified the same as those who commit sex offenses."
Lacy, a 4.0 student and member of the cross-country team, will be in juvenile court on Oct. 19. The judge can waive the sex-offender registration requirement even if Lacy is convicted, because the law allows exceptions for indecent exposure charges if the defendant is younger than 18 and hasn't previously been charged with a criminal sexual behavior.
Janine D'Anniballe, executive director of Boulder's Moving to End Sexual Assault, said she doesn't believe the intent of the legislature was to have activities like streaking lumped together with sexual offenses.
"It's unfortunate really," D'Anniballe said. "I think, overall, the law to register as a sex offender and when people are found guilty of sex crimes is a good thing. ... I wouldn't want a case like this to dilute the bigger purpose." ..more.. by Christine Reid
Family says I-4 rage led to mooning
5-25-2007 Florida:
If convicted of flashing a teenager, the man could receive 15 years in prison and be a sex offender.
SANFORD - A family driving west on Interstate 4 in a silver Mercedes-Benz on Sunday evening made the men in the black Chevrolet Tahoe mad.
The Mercedes had cut them off, the Tahoe's driver later told a Seminole County deputy, so front-seat passenger John Thomas Taylor dropped his pants and mooned the family, including their 14-year-old son, according to a Sheriff's Office report.
Taylor, 21, was arrested and hauled to jail, accused of committing a lewd and lascivious act in the presence of a child younger than 16.
He was being held Monday evening without bail in the Seminole County Jail.
He was not eligible for bail because Taylor also was accused of violating probation. Last month, he was placed on 18 months of probation for driving without a valid license in Orange County.
He told deputies Sunday that he hadn't mooned anybody.
Two witnesses told deputies that Taylor had dropped his pants and hung his bottom out of the window, according to the Sheriff's Office report. One was the back-seat passenger in the Tahoe.
Deputies ordered the Tahoe to pull over after two callers phoned the Sheriff's Office to complain that the Tahoe was involved in a road-rage incident.
The family in the Mercedes told deputies the Tahoe had cut them off and was driving recklessly, and that Taylor had thrown something at them and mooned them.
The Tahoe's driver, Kyle Lee Donaldson, 18, of Orlando, told deputies that the Mercedes cut him off. His back-seat passenger, James Patrick Sears, 19, of Orlando, told deputies that Taylor had hung his bottom out of the window but had exposed only a small portion of it.
Chris White, chief of operations at the Seminole County State Attorney's Office, said his office had not yet decided what charge, if any, to file.
If convicted of the charge alleged by the Sheriff's Office, Taylor could face up to 15 years in prison and forever be identified as a sex offender.
White said his office might charge Taylor with exposing himself, a misdemeanor that would carry a maximum sentence of a few months in jail.
Taylor's family would not comment. ..more..
How a Photo Can Ruin Your Life
5-8-2007 New Jersey:
Your family photos could get you arrested. Just ask one New Jersey grandmother.
Three-year-old Sarah M. is either a toddler in her birthday suit playing in the garden, or a nude temptress with a sultry look who requires protection from the culprits who took this photograph -- her doting parents.
This is the fix we're in, now that computers have opened the barn door on kiddie porn. The FBI has issued blanket requests to photo processing labs and computer repair shops in some cities to be on the lookout for pictures of kids in compromising positions, urging them to call the authorities whether they're sure or not about a picture's legality. The big national chains that have photo processing labs -- Costco, CVS, Rite-Aid, and Wal-Mart -- have company policies that compel them to notify the police about any criminal activity they see in customers' photos. And when children are involved, they're more than willing to err on the side of caution.
"You can't have a blanket set of guidelines because pictures are subject to interpretation based on community standards," says Mike DeAngelis, a spokesman for CVS Pharmacy, with about 5,400 outlets nationwide. "But the store managers know it's up to law enforcement to decide what's criminal."
Tragically for a number of people all over the country, innocent family photos turned over to the police have led to financial ruin, divorce, debt, public humiliation, and lifelong scorn as a registered sex offender for mothers and fathers.
Some cases involved pictures much less provocative than Sarah M.'s. Based on the way prosecutors interpreted photos in a few of those cases -- Marian Rubin, a New Jersey grandmother charged for taking nude photos of her granddaughters, then aged 3 and 8; and Jeffrey B., a New York father who lost custody of his two daughters after he shot pictures of them mooning him -- it's possible to spot red flags where our innocence used to be.
Here's how a zealous prosecutor could view Sarah M.'s picture: Smoldering eyes; styled, tousled blond tresses; pouty, parted lips; splayed legs; an engorged navel. And that viscous liquid dripping from the wand onto her thigh? Money shot.
A blurry line
Just because they didn't shoot the picture for the purpose of sexual stimulation doesn't mean parents who just want to document their child's garden years can't get stuck in the sordid world of pedophilia.
Since there have been documented instances where photo lab employees have kept copies of sexually explicit pictures that were dropped off for development or printing, including from digital sources, imaginative authorities believe that it's possible for child pornography to be inadvertently made and unknowingly distributed. (Adult porn isn't illegal unless it's found to be obscene.)
This has led to a more proactive, better-safe-than-sorry approach to snooping into people's photo archives, which gives civil libertarians the jitters.
The claim has been made that we all have to view innocent photos through the eyes of a pedophile, for the good of the children. But, attorney Andrew McCullough argued before the Utah Supreme Court in a case involving allegedly arousing pictures of underage children, "lots of things are innocent enough and can be misused, but you can't be responsible for everybody's thoughts."
And in Honolulu, after the local FBI office started contacting computer repair shops about what they should be on the lookout for inside customers' computers, the ACLU Hawaii's executive director, Vanessa Chong, was quoted as saying that the G-men's fishing expedition "needlessly violates the privacy rights of honest consumers to find the guilty few."
The question of whether you surrender privacy rights when you hand over a computer full of personal information to a repair shop is still open. Cops say they're sensitive to these issues. Photo labs and computer repair shops "haven't sent us anything that wasn't clearly child pornography, or could reasonably be suspected," remarks Lt. C.L. Williams, in charge of the Crimes Against Children unit of the Dallas, TX, police department.
Lt. Williams acknowledges that there's a gray area when it comes to interpreting photos of children, and often the kids are taking pictures of each other without their parents' knowledge. His unit frequently determines that pictures referred to them are innocent artistic or family photos, "but there's very little artistic value in a crotch shot of a 6-year-old girl." He says his investigators are now seeing pictures of penetration on 2-year-olds.
"We're not trying to pry into people's lives," he says. "I wouldn't want the government sticking its nose into my photography, and I don't want to be the one doing it to someone else. But when a picture crosses the line into child abuse, then it's my business."
The wages of sin?
In May 2006 in Lackawana, NY, the FBI arrested William D. Baker, 63, for possession of child pornography after getting a tip from a computer repair technician. (His case was still pending as we went to press.) Technicians finding questionable material also have led to arrests in Seattle, WA; Collier County, FL; and Odessa, TX.
It isn't just porn. Also in May 2006, an east Georgia man was arrested when he went to pick up pictures of his marijuana crop at a drugstore photo counter. And the snooping doesn't have to involve anything obviously illegal: In October 2005, a student in North Carolina got a visit from the Secret Service at his high school after the Kitty Hawk Wal-Mart photo lab called the police. As a classroom civics assignment to photographically illustrate the Bill of Rights, he'd cut out a magazine photo of President George W. Bush, tacked it to a wall with a red thumbtack through the head, made a thumb's down sign next to it, and snapped a picture. Lesson learned.
Images of children, though, have the power to stir passionate forces. And the smallest photographic detail can send the shooter into a waking nightmare.
Jeffrey B. (he requested his last name not be printed to protect his daughters) was divorced and had custody of his two girls, then aged 4 and 7, until a Genovese drugstore photo lab in the New York City borough of Queens inserted a note into a packet of his prints that said several shots had been turned over to police. Seven years later -- after four weekends in jail, three years on probation, mandated therapy, losing custody of his daughters, contemplating suicide, and incurring about $300,000 in lawyer's fees and loss of income -- he's a registered sex offender and has no contact with his children.
He declined an interview, but the lawyer who handled his appeal, Joseph Klempner, who also wrote Irreparable Damage, a novel based on the case, says Jeffrey B. is "destroyed," and has not taken a single picture in seven years. "I'd stake my life on the fact that all he was doing was taking cute photos of his kids," says Klempner, who saw the offending pictures.
According to Klempner, the prosecutor said she found the silk sheets on the bed where the 7-year-old's picture was taken "very telling." The girl had mooned her father, and he snapped a picture from across the room. "It would take the Hubble Telescope" to see her unmentionables, relates Klempner.
In the other offending photo, the girls are shot from below, sans bathing suit bottoms, as they pretend to read books. A crucial fact in Jeffrey's conviction: One girl testified that Daddy posed them.
'Granny Busted'
In early 2000, Marian Rubin's granddaughters, Amy, then 8, and Kayla, then 3, were dancing naked on her bed before bath time, strutting their best Britney and Christina moves. In still photos, they must have looked posed.
Rubin is the basis of an urban legend, the 65-year-old granny taken to jail for snapping innocent bathtub pictures of her beloved grandkids. Except her case was real, and the headlines in the Trentonian screamed, "Granny Busted/Cops Think She's a Perv."
The night that she was arrested, after picking up the nude pictures of the girls at a local MotoPhoto outlet -- Rubin, an experienced and award-winning art and children's photographer, insists that she never intended to publish these photos -- Montclair, NJ, police went to the girls' home and had their parents wake them up.
"They asked totally inappropriate questions," says Rubin, who is now 72. "'Did Granny get undressed, too? Did Granny touch you? Did Granny touch herself?' They threatened my son and daughter that, if they didn't cooperate, the kids would be taken away."
Rubin wrote a book, Naked Truths (www.naked-truths.com), detailing her outrage at what she calls vigilante film processors, and she excoriates cops and prosecutors for being unable to admit they'd made a mistake.
On her lawyer's advice, she took a deal called a "Pretrial Intervention" that amounted to conditional probation but left her with no criminal record. She now regrets not taking the case to trial. Even though a federal judge later found the pictures to be "totally inoffensive," Rubin is still paying off the $30,000 debt.
"I haven't taken a nude picture since," says Rubin, who has won awards for nude bodyscape photography. "Portraiture was my thing. They took away my innocence, constricted my vision, brainwashed me into seeing things differently. They definitely changed my pictures of children." ..more.. Here for the original picture in question
Family Watchdog!
0 comments:
Post a Comment