Mothers of sex offenders sharing the label

[believe09]

(CNN) --

Christine Smith will never forget the moment she watched her 21-year-old son being led out of a Florida courtroom in handcuffs. "This is not happening, this is not happening, this is not happening," she recalls thinking at the time. "Take me instead."
She sobbed because there was nothing she could do. Matthew, the second of her three children, was going to prison after pleading guilty to 10 counts of possession of child . A judge in Duval County sentenced him in April 2010 to 18 months in state prison and one year of probation, with the requirement that he register as a sex offender.


AND



"Moms often feel terrible that they didn't recognize the signs sooner or weren't able to provide a better environment for their kids to prevent whatever offense occurred," said Prescott, former president of the Association for the Treatment of Sexual Abusers and current clinical director of the Becket Programs of Maine, which provide treatment for troubled youth in Maine and New Hampshire.


http://www.cnn.com/2012/05/12/living/mothers-sex-offenders/index.html?hpt=us_c2


I had a conversation with someone about this very same subject not long ago. I am curious as to everyone's thoughts-we often judge parents in the situation incredibly harshly. Personally, I think in many ways these parents need compassion. They are victims too, imvho, exclusively of those who behaved in a criminal way to these children of course.

 

[Nova]

We have come to a point where we define "child sexual abuse" and "child " so broadly and punish violations so severely that I don't know how to have a reasonable conversation on the subject.

A shy and curious 19-year-old looked at a dozen or so images on-line? I have no idea whether that reflects a serious problem or adolescent curiosity. I certainly can't take the next step and start blaming his parents.

A 19-year-old boy has an affair with a 15-year-old girl? I don't like it; I'm not even saying it should be legal. But the same two kids would have been considered good marriage material just a few decades ago. Certainly, he made a stupid decision; but if stupid decisions by teens are the mark of sociopathy, we are all sociopaths. And do we blame parents for that?

 

[Trident]

I tend to believe some of our laws relating to kids and age, have devolved into the rhealm of the ridiculous.

 

[SkewedView]

Indeed. i personally have stopped looking up RSOs on the local registry, as irresponsible legislation, ofttimes overly aggressive prosecution, and out of control plea bargaining has made it useless, IMO. Gone are the days when RSO status was reserved for rapists, (true) child molesters & viewers of real CP.

Nope, now we have RSOs that peed in the wrong park, forgot to ID their date, sent pics of themselves to someone, wrote a story, looked at some drawings, or did some other thing that was considered a harmless or even amusing mistake (or even in some cases, normal if somewhat sleazy behavior) in the not too distant past.

We have dangerous offenders getting sweet plea deals that make them look harmless, and innocent people taking pleas because they can't afford to go into massive debt or won't risk lifetime imprisonment due to stacked charges, unfair rules of evidence that only apply in sex cases & the statistically biased Juries of such cases.

IMO, the RSO system is broken, and needs to be taken up at the Federal level again (the Walsh Act's tier system can't handle the overload of too many types of offenders being tossed into the RSO system, and at any rate it's voluntary on the part of the states) & streamlined so that it once more serves it's true purpose - giving the public fair warning of true threats, as opposed to functioning as a 'tough on crime' campaign tool & prosecutorial intimidation tactic.

All JMO

 

[impatientredhead]

Indeed. i personally have stopped looking up RSOs on the local registry, as irresponsible legislation, ofttimes overly aggressive prosecution, and out of control plea bargaining has made it useless, IMO. Gone are the days when RSO status was reserved for rapists, (true) child molesters & viewers of real CP.

Nope, now we have RSOs that peed in the wrong park, forgot to ID their date, sent pics of themselves to someone, wrote a story, looked at some drawings, or did some other thing that was considered a harmless or even amusing mistake in the not too distant past.

We have dangerous offenders getting sweet plea deals that make them look harmless, and innocent people taking pleas because they can't afford to go into massive debt or won't risk lifetime imprisonment due to stacked charges, unfair rules of evidence that only apply in sex cases & the statistically biased Juries of such cases.

IMO, the RSO system is broken, and needs to be taken up at the Federal level & streamlined so that it once more serves it's true purpose - giving the public fair warning, as opposed to functioning as a 'tough on crime' campaign tool & prosecutorial intimidation tactic.

All JMO

I suggest a more simple approach to solving this problem.
Stop releasing child rapists into the population.
Keep them locked up where they belong and then we can give up this charade that labeling people as "likely to reoffend" somehow protects anyone.

Likely to rape another child, that is what the experts tell us, and then we turn them loose.... while carrying on about how much we as a society value and protect our children.

 

[believe09]

I guess, just to incorporate the original post, we have a broad brush when it comes to sexual offenses and it puts the families of the offenders in a pretty isolated position. Imagine having your child in the RSO registry and trying to live your lives without the stigma associated with it? We inevitably look at the parents and other family members here on this board. We dissect them and judge them because most of us know from first hand experience how influential a parent can be, good or bad.

The thing is, they love their children. They deserve compassion, imo, as long as they were not active participants in the crime or instrumental in some other way to the crime. It reminds me of Ridgeway's wife being interviewed for various crime shows...can you imagine what it must be like to have the world looking at you with complete distaste because you were married to a prolific serial killer?

 

[SkewedView]

I suggest a more simple approach to solving this problem.
Stop releasing child rapists into the population.
Keep them locked up where they belong and then we can give up this charade that labeling people as "likely to reoffend" somehow protects anyone.

Likely to rape another child, that is what the experts tell us, and then we turn them loose.... while carrying on about how much we as a society value and protect our children.

If you want that to happen, we're going to need plea bargaining reforms - far too often, Prosecutors let the true rapists & molesters plea down to much less serious charges that wouldn't qualify for lifetime imprisonment in any sane Justice System. Meanwhile, they use stacked charges & the same Draconian sentencing guidlines as a cudgel to force the innocent or harmless to essentially 'plea up'.

Unfortunately, even that wouldn't solve the problems involving the ever accelerating criminalization of sexuality in the US, and the public's disastrous knee-jerk support of any & all sex crime legislation/prosecutions.

All JMO

 

[SkewedView]

I guess, just to incorporate the original post, we have a broad brush when it comes to sexual offenses and it puts the families of the offenders in a pretty isolated position. Imagine having your child in the RSO registry and trying to live your lives without the stigma associated with it? We inevitably look at the parents and other family members here on this board. We dissect them and judge them because most of us know from first hand experience how influential a parent can be, good or bad.

The thing is, they love their children. They deserve compassion, imo, as long as they were not active participants in the crime or instrumental in some other way to the crime. It reminds me of Ridgeway's wife being interviewed for various crime shows...can you imagine what it must be like to have the world looking at you with complete distaste because you were married to a prolific serial killer?

Indeed, well said.

Alas, it's hard enough to get the public to stop criticizing & judging the families of victims, let alone those of offenders. It's amazing, really, how little humans have changed in terms of group psychology from the ancient times. But at least now we don't have laws that directly punish families of offenders, like in times past, so that's a bit of progress.

All JMO

 

[AnaTeresa]

The sentencing guidelines are crazy - you should see how the federal guidelines are stacked. Using a computer adds points to your total calculation. In this day and age, who doesn't use a computer in viewing child ? While I am all for tough sentences on those who deserve it, our RSO mechanisms and sentencing guidelines are all out of whack.

I read this article the other day and I do feel for these mothers. I've seen it here at the office with a few clients, usually young, who have been watching on the internet. Some are more reprehensible than others. But for all of them, their mothers take it very hard. They wonder why they couldn't spot the problem. They wonder what they did wrong. It just about kills them when they find out how long their child will be in jail and worry what will happen after he is let out. They spend thousands of dollars trying to get them a good defense so they won't spend the rest of their lives in prison - but upon release, they're practically still in prison. It's a huge drain on an entire family, emotionally and financially.

I don't know what the answer is, but I really do feel for these moms.

 

[not_my_kids]

I agree that sentencing guidelines are crazy. There is so much in the way of technology related or assisted crime now, and our system is nearly archaic. It just can't keep up, it can't even get close. Don't even get me started on saddling people with a lifelong stigma for something that might be little more than a mistake. If my son goes out and gets drunk on his 21st birthday and moons his friend, does he really deserve the stigma of sex offender status? No. But he'd get it, more likely than not.

I feel for the entire family of a sex offender. It's hard to be a mother or a wife, because when you are a mother of an SO, people think you caused their problems. When you are married to one, people think that you must have known. But it doesn't end there. If you're the sister of an SO, then people think you might be the same way, after all you were raised the same. When you're the daughter of a sex offender, people assume that you were sexually abused and that you share the same blood, so you might share the same sickness. I speak from experience. It literally becomes part of your identity, at least internally.

 

[concentric]

Moms are blamed for everything. Happy Mother's Day...not.

IMO, the that offenders view, and the way it messes with their minds, has a role in their aberrant behavior; however, they chose to let it enter their minds, and they can choose to abandon its influence.

 

[Steely Dan]

If you want that to happen, we're going to need plea bargaining reforms - far too often, Prosecutors let the true rapists & molesters plea down to much less serious charges that wouldn't qualify for lifetime imprisonment in any sane Justice System. Meanwhile, they use stacked charges & the same Draconian sentencing guidlines as a cudgel to force the innocent or harmless to essentially 'plea up'.

Unfortunately, even that wouldn't solve the problems involving the ever accelerating criminalization of sexuality in the US, and the public's disastrous knee-jerk support of any & all sex crime legislation/prosecutions.

All JMO

BBM

Often that is done because it avoids making the kids or rape victims have to testify in the trial. It's a tough problem.

I think that a teenager who has sex with another teenager, consensually, who are both over 16 shouldn't be a full blown RSO type crime. However, I think many others should be. I agree with Impatientredhead about not releasing physical abusers back into society.

I read this article and I have little sympathy for the mother. I feel horrible that she has to go through this, if she didn't abuse him herself, and understand her parental pain. However, her son viewed child on the web. How many times did I do that? None. Granted the internet wasn't around when I was in college, but I wouldn't have viewed it if somebody wanted to show me some. I would have called the police. Looking at it would have made me vomit.

I would have a lot more sympathy for her if her kid was one of the 17 year olds who have sex with their 15 year old girlfriend than I do a college kid viewing child . I don't think a 17 year old having consensual sex with a 15 year old girlfriend should make them an RSO. A college student viewing child ? Yeah, I think he should. I also agree with the close monitoring. A lot of these guys will eventually ramp up their fantasies with children to actual contact.

It's not like you can hit the wrong link and suddenly a child image appears on your computer. The guys who post images know the rules and change providers and web addresses frequently. IMO, you have to be deliberately looking for the stuff, and know how to find it for it to appear on your screen.

I know that love can be blinding, but it aggravates me when people commit heinous crimes and the evidence is inarguable and yet family members say that the perpetrator is a "good kid" or "good person". At the same time I don't think it helps someone released back into society to not have a family support system.

Putting the stigma on to brothers and sisters and other close family members isn't fair unless they were involved, people are different. Judge someone on what, you know about them and not another family member.

I guess to sum up I believe some sex offender laws need to be greatly tightened and others loosened. What this kid did isn't a crime I feel should be loosened. As I stated before it's not easy to find it. I've never looked for it, but I know you can't type it into a search engine to find it. IMO, it's like a secret society that you have to get into before you'll be given the web addresses and other things. You have to put some work into it before you can find it. JMO

 

[SkewedView]

BBM

Often that is done because it avoids making the kids or rape victims have to testify in the trial. It's a tough problem.

I think that a teenager who has sex with another teenager, consensually, who are both over 16 shouldn't be a full blown RSO type crime. However, I think many others should be. I agree with Impatientredhead about not releasing physical abusers back into society.

I read this article and I have little sympathy for the mother. I feel horrible that she has to go through this, if she didn't abuse him herself, and understand her parental pain. However, her son viewed child on the web. How many times did I do that? None. Granted the internet wasn't around when I was in college, but I wouldn't have viewed it if somebody wanted to show me some. I would have called the police. Looking at it would have made me vomit.

I would have a lot more sympathy for her if her kid was one of the 17 year olds who have sex with their 15 year old girlfriend than I do a college kid viewing child . I don't think a 17 year old having consensual sex with a 15 year old girlfriend should make them an RSO. A college student viewing child ? Yeah, I think he should. I also agree with the close monitoring. A lot of these guys will eventually ramp up their fantasies with children to actual contact.

It's not like you can hit the wrong link and suddenly a child image appears on your computer. The guys who post images know the rules and change providers and web addresses frequently. IMO, you have to be deliberately looking for the stuff, and know how to find it for it to appear on your screen.

I know that love can be blinding, but it aggravates me when people commit heinous crimes and the evidence is inarguable and yet family members say that the perpetrator is a "good kid" or "good person". At the same time I don't think it helps someone released back into society to not have a family support system.

Putting the stigma on to brothers and sisters and other close family members isn't fair unless they were involved, people are different. Judge someone on what, you know about them and not another family member.

I guess to sum up I believe some sex offender laws need to be greatly tightened and others loosened. What this kid did isn't a crime I feel should be loosened. As I stated before it's not easy to find it. I've never looked for it, but I know you can't type it into a search engine to find it. IMO, it's like a secret society that you have to get into before you'll be given the web addresses and other things. You have to put some work into it before you can find it. JMO

First, to stay at least a bit on the OP topic - remember this about the mothers of the accused - they are almost universally blindsided by these charges, given that sex offenders don't exactly go talking about their predilections around the dinner table. Add in the fact that yes, many or most of these guys are in fact quite friendly or charming or even admirable in their daily lives, and you have a scenario that is quite a bit more complicated & confusing for the parents than the media reports & their little snippets of bite size info would make the public believe.

Obviously the above does not apply to repeat offenders - those parents IMO are the ones that are much more deserving of scorn.

As for CP being something you have to look for to be charged with it...actually, according to various articles & studies, there's a plague of people winding up with CP charges who did nothing more than neglecting to secure their wireless router, or who got infected by downloader malware or other background running 'hijacker' programs. Some of them are able to go into massive debt to prove their innocence, most plea out & wind up RSOs & parriahs through no fault of their own, but all of them suffer persecution just because prosecutors aren't legally obligated to use their resources to check for innocence, aren't being held to their ethical obligation to seek the truth, and refuse to do so on their own through either blind zealotry or an obsession with keeping their conviction rates sky high.

Then there are the 'portal' sites, which look harmless, get lots of regular traffick, but have CP and/or secret links to CP invisible in the background. Those can wind up leaving CP in your cache, and gain the attention of LE as a potential CP viewer.

In addition, you also have people pleaing out to CP charges on things that just aren't, like stories & comic books or normal, harmless kid images (think casual family photos) that happen to be on the same hard drive as prejudicial material like extreme (but legal) (which many courts allow into evidence in sex crime trials, when they won't in other classifications of cases).

Oh, and I shouldn't forget those who are charged & then have the case dropped because it was bogus - you'll see their names splattered across the news with colorful LE commentary on the alleged materials, but not a word when they are freed - that happens way more often in sex & drug crime cases than you would believe, and leaves the falsely accused as social pariahs who often have google-related problems finding employment.

All of these make CP charges much less straightforward than the general public assumes (unless they happen to be Lifetime Television addicts, they've covered several aspects of the subject quite admirably, though they've still only scratched the surface). And these dirty little secrets of our Justice System are also what make the public RSO databases into bloated crap-shoots.

That's why I believe that CP laws need to be left as is (every time they try to make them broader in application or 'tougher' they get tossed as unconstitutional, as they should), but oversight & limitations on Prosecutors need to be greatly strengthened (really, in all cases, but sex, drug & contempt of cop cases would be a great place to start). Don't get me wrong, I admire the heck out of most prosecutors, but with the near unlimited powers & immunities that they enjoy at the moment, IMO even the best intentioned of them can wind up becoming persecutors instead.

All JMO

 

[not_my_kids]

Steely - It's not that hard to find child . I've made multiple reports on material that I wasn't looking for, but found anyway. On Facebook, through popup ads that I accidentally clicked, on Youtube, and sent directly to my email. The only way I have to protect myself is to make a report to NCMEC regarding the location and the type of material. If I didn't know enough to do that, I could end up in prison for clicking an email link.

When it was all privately held pictures, secret videotapes, and a few deep underground magazines, then you had to look to find it. Now, anyone can find it, even if they aren't looking for it.

 

[Steely Dan]

First, to stay at least a bit on the OP topic - remember this about the mothers of the accused - they are almost universally blindsided by these charges, given that sex offenders don't exactly go talking about their predilections around the dinner table. Add in the fact that yes, many or most of these guys are in fact quite friendly or charming or even admirable in their daily lives, and you have a scenario that is quite a bit more complicated & confusing for the parents than the media reports & their little snippets of bite size info would make the public believe.

Obviously the above does not apply to repeat offenders - those parents IMO are the ones that are much more deserving of scorn.

As for CP being something you have to look for to be charged with it...actually, according to various articles & studies, there's a plague of people winding up with CP charges who did nothing more than neglecting to secure their wireless router, or who got infected by downloader malware or other background running 'hijacker' programs. Some of them are able to go into massive debt to prove their innocence, most plea out & wind up RSOs & parriahs through no fault of their own, but all of them suffer persecution just because prosecutors aren't legally obligated to use their resources to check for innocence, aren't being held to their ethical obligation to seek the truth, and refuse to do so on their own through either blind zealotry or an obsession with keeping their conviction rates sky high.

Then there are the 'portal' sites, which look harmless, get lots of regular traffick, but have CP and/or secret links to CP invisible in the background. Those can wind up leaving CP in your cache, and gain the attention of LE as a potential CP viewer.

In addition, you also have people pleaing out to CP charges on things that just aren't, like stories & comic books or normal, harmless kid images (think casual family photos) that happen to be on the same hard drive as prejudicial material like extreme (but legal) (which many courts allow into evidence in sex crime trials, when they won't in other classifications of cases).

Oh, and I shouldn't forget those who are charged & then have the case dropped because it was bogus - you'll see their names splattered across the news with colorful LE commentary on the alleged materials, but not a word when they are freed - that happens way more often in sex & drug crime cases than you would believe, and leaves the falsely accused as social pariahs who often have google-related problems finding employment.

All of these make CP charges much less straightforward than the general public assumes (unless they happen to be Lifetime Television addicts, they've covered several aspects of the subject quite admirably, though they've still only scratched the surface). And these dirty little secrets of our Justice System are also what make the public RSO databases into bloated crap-shoots.

That's why I believe that CP laws need to be left as is (every time they try to make them broader in application or 'tougher' they get tossed as unconstitutional, as they should), but oversight & limitations on Prosecutors need to be greatly strengthened (really, in all cases, but sex, drug & contempt of cop cases would be a great place to start). Don't get me wrong, I admire the heck out of most prosecutors, but with the near unlimited powers & immunities that they enjoy at the moment, IMO even the best intentioned of them can wind up becoming persecutors instead.

All JMO

I agree some cases shouldn't be prosecuted. I think there was an artist who took pictures of his 9 year old daughter playing and was arrested for child . The naked baby in the bathtub picture that every parent has could constitute child too. It's a very tough problem. It's one of the most heinous crimes that can be committed, IMO, and I hate the thought of letting someone off easy so they can commit the same crime again.

It's a problem that needs to be more precisely defined in order to weed out the true sex offenders from parental pictures and such. JMO

 

[Steely Dan]

Steely - It's not that hard to find child . I've made multiple reports on material that I wasn't looking for, but found anyway. On Facebook, through popup ads that I accidentally clicked, on Youtube, and sent directly to my email. The only way I have to protect myself is to make a report to NCMEC regarding the location and the type of material. If I didn't know enough to do that, I could end up in prison for clicking an email link.

When it was all privately held pictures, secret videotapes, and a few deep underground magazines, then you had to look to find it. Now, anyone can find it, even if they aren't looking for it.

I've never come across any child , of course I haven't looked either. If it is that easy to accidentally receive then there needs to be some more ways to determine that before a case goes to trial. Once again, I'll admit it's a very difficult issue. I just hate the idea of real offenders getting away. JMO

 

[Nova]

I suggest a more simple approach to solving this problem.
Stop releasing child rapists into the population.
Keep them locked up where they belong and then we can give up this charade that labeling people as "likely to reoffend" somehow protects anyone.

Likely to rape another child, that is what the experts tell us, and then we turn them loose.... while carrying on about how much we as a society value and protect our children.

If we adopt your approach, we need to do a better job of identifying "child rapists". An adult molesting a 10-year-old is one thing. A 19-year-old with a 15-year-old girlfriend is another (even though I don't like it).

 

[Nova]

I agree that sentencing guidelines are crazy. There is so much in the way of technology related or assisted crime now, and our system is nearly archaic. It just can't keep up, it can't even get close. Don't even get me started on saddling people with a lifelong stigma for something that might be little more than a mistake. If my son goes out and gets drunk on his 21st birthday and moons his friend, does he really deserve the stigma of sex offender status? No. But he'd get it, more likely than not.

I feel for the entire family of a sex offender. It's hard to be a mother or a wife, because when you are a mother of an SO, people think you caused their problems. When you are married to one, people think that you must have known. But it doesn't end there. If you're the sister of an SO, then people think you might be the same way, after all you were raised the same. When you're the daughter of a sex offender, people assume that you were sexually abused and that you share the same blood, so you might share the same sickness. I speak from experience. It literally becomes part of your identity, at least internally.

Exactly. We had a poster here some years ago whose daughter took a leak behind a bush after an on-campus rock concert when she couldn't find an unlocked bathroom. A campus security guard saw and detained her.

She was given a choice between a trial that might end with her being sentenced to years in prison or a plea bargain that would require her to register as an RSO for the rest of her life.

IIRC, the poster stopped posting and we never learned what the daughter decided to do.

 

[not_my_kids]

Hey, I've done stupid things online. At one point, two of my friends were going through a divorce/custody battle, and the mother of the kids involved, who is my friend on Facebook, posted a picture of her nearly 12 year old son, sitting on the couch, wearing a pair of lacy girls undies, and nothing else, with his legs spread open. I have no idea what the purpose of the picture was, or why she decided to post it to social media, but she did. Without even thinking, I took a screen shot so that I could send it to the boys father, because no matter what the reason, I thought that he deserved to know that she was putting things like that out there, as it wasn't very good parenting, and had to be embarrassing for the kid. It wasn't until after I had already saved the image that it hit me that for all rights and purposes, because the child's genitals were partially exposed, I had just downloaded and saved child , and was planning to distribute it (by sending it to the child's father). Of course, it was not my intention to commit multiple felonies, but through my own stupidity I did. I called my local PD and NCMEC and asked what I should do, but what if I didn't have the kind of faith in law enforcement? If I had been someone else that didn't trust the police or got freaked out when I realized what the law had to say about my actions, I might have ended up in serious trouble. For a mistake.

Of course, I am not saying that child in a little thing, or that people shouldn't be prosecuted. The guy with 500 images of children being sexually tortured, no that's not a mistake. The perv with 50 videos of his daughter being molested, no that's not a mistake. But a teen with a couple pictures of pretty generic child ? That's possible a mistake. The person that saw a disturbing image and screencapped it with the best of intentions? Mistake.

We really need to stop over-regulating everything. We don't want people walking around peeing in the bushes, and yes, someone doing that might inadvertently be seen by a child...but the child would see the same thing, essentially, walking in on someone in a bathroom...which is not considered a crime. That person is not a sex offender. They might be a complete idiot, but not a sex offender.

 

[Gardenlady]

Exactly. We had a poster here some years ago whose daughter took a leak behind a bush after an on-campus rock concert when she couldn't find an unlocked bathroom. A campus security guard saw and detained her.

She was given a choice between a trial that might end with her being sentenced to years in prison or a plea bargain that would require her to register as an RSO for the rest of her life.

IIRC, the poster stopped posting and we never learned what the daughter decided to do.

Good grief... I'm glad I did my boozy partying in the early 90s, or I'd have ended up in the same situation!

Eta - all those "keggers" out in the woods, or yes, locked or far away bathrooms ... Yikes...