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Monday, March 27, 2006

The witch-hunt continues: House Bill 5523

CNBC's "The Big Idea" program tonight (9-10 p.m. central time) will deal with Illinois House Bill 5523, a bit of hysteria from state Republican lawmakers that, if enacted, would bar "a defendant, convicted of an offense that qualifies the defendant for the designation of `sex offender' or `sexual predator' under the Sex Offender Registration Act (from living) with or (having) custody or visitation with any minor children."

It may sound good at first. You don't want perverts living around prospective targets for their perversion, after all.

But, like the registration law upon which this is based, it  takes a sledgehammer to a problem that needs a scalpel. It lumps stomach-turning pedophiles into the same category as young men who had the (criminally) bad judgment to have sex with their under-aged girlfriends.

One guest on the program is scheduled to be Mark Perk, about whom I wrote last year (see columns posted below).

Perk, of Crestwood, is now married to and has a child with his victim, who was 14 when they began their sexual relationship in 1998.  Perk pleaded guilty to misdemeanor sex-abuse charges and began a 10-year period in which he has had to register as a child sex offender and stay away from places where children congregate.

If enacted, this bill, sponsored by Ill. Rep. Harry R. Ramey Jr. (R.-West Chicago), would prevent Perk from living with or even visiting his own toddler child, as though his original offense indicates that he's a child molester.

It would also, presumably, rip apart the family of the Oak Park man I wrote about who is now 30 but who, when he was 18, began dating a 13-year-old girl and had sex with her. Even though no force was involved, their respective ages alone made his offense a Class 2 felony.

He's now married and the father of three children under age 8.

Ramey has not returned my request for comment.

And I have no faith in our state's craven Democrats to put a stop to his proposal.

Let's separate the misguided from monsters
column published. Feb. 24, 2005

A concerned mother from Lake Zurich recently contacted me with a cautionary tale about teenagers, child pornography and the Internet.

In late 2002, she said, her son, then 15, went online with his new laptop computer and began searching for and downloading pictures of naked girls his own age.

Understandable, perhaps, but not good. Just how not good he learned after the laptop began malfunctioning and he sent it off for repairs.

Computer technicians found the images--law enforcement allows and in some places even encourages them to look for forbidden material and report it to authorities; the courts have admitted their findings into evidence--and police came to the family home to arrest him for soliciting and possessing child pornography.

The boy pleaded guilty and now must register as a child sex offender until he's 21.

There were some complicating wrinkles to this tale, the general outlines of which were confirmed by the family's attorney but could not be otherwise verified because the boy was charged as a juvenile. The main wrinkle is that in the course of downloading batches of pictures of teenage girls, the boy also mistakenly downloaded some "very, very bad" images of younger children, according to his mother.

The point here is not to excuse this kid, but to warn other kids and their parents: Trolling the Web for erotica can land you in real and long-lasting trouble.

The Illinois attorney general's office confirmed that tough state laws on child pornography do not make any exceptions when the offender is the same age as or even younger than the minors depicted, and they do not distinguish between forbidden images of 17-year-olds and forbidden images of 5-year-olds.

In other words, a teen may see himself as just a curious and hormone-addled adolescent, but the law sees him as a dangerous pervert.

The above story was one of many I received in response to last week's column (posted below) about a married 29-year-old Oak Park man whose wife and three kids are suffering because when he was 18 he had a sexual relationship with a 13-year-old girl, and the law still considers him a child sex offender.

I heard a somewhat similar tale from Kristin Perk of Crestwood, who said she was just shy of her 15th birthday in 1998 when she began a sexual relationship with her adult male guitar teacher.

"I pretty much came on to him," she said. "Then it turned into a real romance."

A real illegal romance, of course. Her parents found out and called police, who arrested the teacher, then 35. He pleaded guilty to misdemeanor sex-abuse charges and began a 10-year period in which he has had to register as a child sex offender and stay away from places where children congregate.

The teen's parents sent her to school in California, but she and the teacher kept in touch.

"Older people and younger people do fall in love," said the man, recalling that Elvis Presley's infatuation with his wife Priscilla began when she was 14 and that Jerry Lee Lewis' third wife was only 13.

The girl returned here when she turned 18, and, in March of 2003, she and the man, Mark Perk, were married by the same Cook County circuit judge who had handled his criminal case.

The Perks now have a toddler. They lived in the city until last fall, when police found him living within 500 feet of an elementary school and ordered him to move.

Perk found extra legal trouble--and ended up in an unflattering WLS-Ch. 7 investigative story--when he protested his ongoing status as a child sex offender by wearing a disguise for a photograph that police posted to an Internet database.

He said he has lost five jobs and been repeatedly threatened by vigilantes who learn he's a child sex offender and lump him in with the molesters who haunt playgrounds.

To say that he doesn't belong there is not to say that he was right to have had sex with a girl who was so young, no matter who came on to whom.

It's to say that these stories show that we need to work harder to sort drooling pedophiles from the horndogs who break the law. There's already enough bad judgment out there without us adding to it.

When letter of law doesn't measure up
column published Feb.15, 2005     
At the six-corner intersection of hysteria, ignorance and bureaucratic rigidity, we find the sorry figure of Alan Meister of Oak Park.

Three weeks ago, Meister, 29, was at a repair shop having his car alarm serviced when Cook County sheriff's deputies showed up, handcuffed him and took him to jail.

Why? Because county officials determined that the property line at the house where Meister lives with his wife, their three small children and his parents is 460 feet from the property line of a Berwyn day-care center.

This matters because a 1998 law demands that child-sex offenders live at least 500 feet from schools or day-care centers, and Meister is a registered child-sex offender.

His crime? When he was 18, he began dating a 13-year-old girl and had sex with her. Even though no force was involved, their respective ages alone made his offense a Class 2 felony. He was arrested shortly after his 19th birthday, pleaded guilty and accepted a sentence of 30 months' probation.

Fast forward to today. Meister, who posted bail and faces his next court date Friday, is now married and the father of three children, ages 6, 4 and 1. Though he has had no similar run-ins with the law since his teen years, the label sex offender and ex-felon has hung heavy on his neck, he said, costing him numerous job opportunities and blocking him from getting a license to be a locksmith, his area of expertise, from the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation (which would not comment).

Resultant financial strains forced the family to move in with Meister's parents. The home is so close to the imaginary line that measurements taken by Oak Park officials said it was outside the 500-foot zone.

But close doesn't count in these modern-day witch hunts. And neither does common sense or scientific research.

Nothing in Meister's past suggests that he ever posed a threat to the preschool clients of the day-care center more than 150 yards from his front door.

"When you look at what we informally call `statutory rape,' the offenders tend to have quite different characteristics from the so-called `child molesters,'" said Canadian government psychologist R. Karl Hanson, one of North America's leading researchers on the re-offense rate among sex offenders.

Pedophiles have "deviant sexual interest in children without secondary sexual characteristics (such as breasts and pubic hair)" said Hanson. And that, he said, "is a major predictor of recidivism."

Hanson's work has led him to develop multifaceted risk-assessment measurements--similar to measurements developed by other researchers--that take into account many variables about an offender's life and his crime in an effort to help authorities make wise decisions in this sensitive area of public policy.

Roughly 25 states now use such risk-assessment measurements in their approaches to former sex offenders, said Scott Matson, research associate for the Justice Department's Center for Sex Offender Management. "The risk of re-offense is actually fairly low," he said. "But legislation on this issue is usually based on public outcry, not research."

Illinois' one-size-fits-all residency law is an example. During the recent sweep for violators, Meister was caught up in the same dragnet that nabbed a man who had spent 9 years in prison for sexually assaulting a 6-year-old boy.

In more than a dozen instances, Illinois' sex-crime laws call for harsher sanctions when a victim is 12 or under. But no such distinction is made in the residency laws--which are also forcing former congressman Mel Reynolds to move away from an elementary school even though his victim, a willing former campaign worker, was 16.

Meanwhile, knee-jerk legislation now making its way through the vaporous halls of the General Assembly would prevent more than one registered sex offender from living at the same address and effectively kill successful halfway-house treatment programs.

Maybe our lawmakers can explain to Meister's kids the good reasons why their dad can't coach T-ball or get a good job, why he might have to go to prison and why the family's going to have to move from Grandma and Grandpa's to, well, they don't have any idea where.

I can't think of one.

Here is a Webliography on the issue of child sex offenders.



Thanks to the modern soundbyte culture (and Tribune Company contributes to this through WGN "News" and Redeye, as well as the Tempo section), which reduces issues to one or two memorable lines and ignores detailed analysis, anyone who calls for common sense on this issue is automatically labled a monster and pro-child molester.

I pray that one day the U.S. Supreme Court declares that sex offenders are still human beings and therefore still have rights under the U.S. Constitution. Should a person be subject to a lifetime sentence (which constant registration and public release of your history really means) for statutory rape?

Hell, murderers aren't required to provide such information, once they're released. Gang bangers, who have an extremely high recidivist rate, aren't required to go through the lifelong scrutiny that a 20 year old man who sleeps with a 16 year old girl is subject to.

There needs to be more discretion for sexual abuse cases and some awareness that at some point, a person has served their sentence to society. Unfortunately, only an unelected body, such as the Supreme Court, is likely to have the guts to make such a declaration.

The sledgehammer/scalpel analogy is most apt. And craven just like the pols are most members of the press, who are shockingly silent on this matter. EZ, why are you the only one shining any significant amount of light on this? Surely you're not the only journalist with a backbone...

ZORN REPLY -- I thank the gentleman for his remarks. What happens here is not just that some horn-dog gets punished severely for a long-ago bad act, but that his spouse and his children are punished as well. Indeed the overall risks to children posed by this legilslation in its blanket form fafr outtweighs the theoretical risk that former statutory rapists would molest their own children. Common sense tells you that. Still no call back from Ramey.

Even more ridiculous is labelling as "sex offenders" people whose crimes had absolutely nothing to do with sex! Yes, it happens, because the legislature in its infinite wisdom has decided that violations of certain non-sexual offenses, if the victim is under 18, require "sex offender" registration.

One Appellate District has held the requirement unconstitutional as applied to a defendant whose acts had no sexual motive, but who knows if the Illinois Supreme Court will uphold that ruling.

It is also completely insane in my view to require juvenile offenders to register. Remember when it used to be called "playing doctor"? Now it gets you a delinquency adjudication and a registration requirement.

ZORN REPLY-- Please clarify the first portion of this comment...which offenses are you talking about?
As for "playing doctor," I've never heard that expression used in any situation where both the participants were older than, like, 5. Are you saying that kids under 10, say, are having to register? I don't follow all this that closely, but I think I would have heard of that.

It seems to me there was once a proposal that if the difference in age between a consenting pair was less than five years, it would be considered merely a misdemeanor - and the older partner would not have to file as a sexual predator, which he obviously is not. Couldn't officials take some sort of common-sense approach like that?

Besides the obvious injustice, a huge problem when you lump in relatively normal behavior in with genuinely frightening acts, it diminishes concern over the genuinely aberrant stuff. When people found that a lot of the "lost" children on milk cartons were actually with a non-custodial parent, it diminished the urgency to protect children who were severely at risk. Similarly when you start deeming 18-year-old boys who had sex with their 15-year-old girlfriends, it dilutes the very definition of sexual predators. Let's make our laws deal with real problems. When they cry wolf, it just enables the genuine monsters in our midst.

ZORN REPLY -- The law does neatly carve out some of these disttinctions when it comes to the severity of the sexual offense. The youth of the victim, the age gap and so on make a difference in the charge, the penalites, etc. For, as noted, common sense tells you the 40year old who molests a 9 year old is not by any means the same sort of deviant as the 19-year-old with his his 15-year-old partner.
When I've made this point in the past, I've been accused of minimizing the crime that we used tto call "statutory rape." My response is that one can put such a crime in its proper perspective without OK'ing it.
Back to the point, which I've wandered away from -- the registry laws are far more blunt as instruments that that actual sexual assault laws. They don't make these distinctions in a way that truly serves the interests of rehabilitiation, child safety, etc.

Specifically, Aggravated Kidnapping, Kidnapping, Unlawful Restraint and Aggravated Unlawful Restraint, and Murder. There is no statutory requirement that the offense be sexually motivated. The case I referred to is People v. Johnson and can be found at http://www.state.il.us/court/Opinions/AppellateCourt/2006/1stDistrict/January/Html/1041292.htm. The defendant and his co-defendant's kidnapped a woman and her 20-month-old granddaughter in order to demand a ransom.

I suppose we can argue about my use of the phrase "playing doctor", which may conjure up different images to different people, but the point I was trying to make (albeit apparently unsuccessfully) is that juveniles who are adjudicated delinquent for any of the offenses for which an adult must register must also register as a sex offender. Which, if you think about, can lead to some pretty absurd results. It does not appear, for example, (and I've just read the synopsis and not the full bill so I could be wrong) that HB 5523 makes no exception for siblings. So if a 16-year-old has sex with his 13-year-old girl friend, does he have to move out of the house if he has minor siblings?

That 'witch hunt' is a direct result of the media sensationalizing sex crimes.

What do you expect when you are bombarded with such gory horror stories in the news? Understanding and forgiveness?

Tone down the sensationalism. For years its been all about 'sexual predators' that 'victimize the most helpless among us' 'putting us all at risk' and must be brutualized so 'they do not strike again'

Now which of those images does the media want to change?

Case in point: that trial of the passed out teen a few weeks ago. Lots of outcry at the horror. Where was the 'justice has been served' discussion once the defendant wasn't convicted? That needs to be part of a non-sensationalized, balanced discussion.

Thank you for speaking out on this unpopular subject. And you are right, it is a witch hunt. Illinois law paints sex offenders with the same brush. My son was convicted of aggravated criminal sexual abuse. His crime, consenual sex with a girl that was 16 and he was 22. She was 3 months from her 17th birthday, my son had been 22 for 3 months at the time. If you read the statue in the beginning it talks about bodily har, handicapped, and drugging the victim. You are guilty of this crime. Under C of the statue you commit this crime if: (d) he or she commits an act of sexual penetration or sexual conduct with a victim who was at least 13 but under 17 and the accused was at least 5 years older than the victim. That's where my son fell. For this he cannot see his kids until further notice. It's been an year now. He has to register as a sex offender for the rest of his life and by the Sex Offenders Registration Act he is a sexual predator. He did not know her age until later. His fault. She was the aggressor. That was testified to in court by her friend. Of course none of that makes any difference. He has to attend sex offenders group. He was even told in group if she had been 17 they probably would not have prosecuted him. For 3 months all of this. I know someone who is 16 and she married a guy who is 21. I know she had her parents permission, but if this is so bad how can her parents even give her permission. He's a sexual predator for the same thing. If it's against the law it's against the law.

Don't get me wrong, my son did something he shouldn't have. He has been told since he was 18 that his female companion had to be 18 and he needed to make sure. He assumed because her friends were 18 or over. Something he is going to pay for the rest of his life. Somehow that doesn't seem like just punishment for the crime. There are people out here that deserve this. Someone age 6 is different than someone 16. Age 22 is different than someone age 42. There are people in his group that he said he wouldn't want around his children.

He was suppose to be evaluated as to whether he can be around his children. That has never happened yet. We finally found someone that can do that and we paid for it ourselves. According to him he is considered normal for our society. So we have hired an attorney and are going to court to have his probation modified so he can see his children. The punishment needs to fit the crime. This effects so much with our family. He could not be with us for Christmas this year because of his neice and nephews. His brothers have a hard time seeing him because of their kids. They live out of state from us. It's just kind of broke up a family who were once very close. There are no family gatherings with our whole family anymore. There is no reason for it. Not all sex offenders are created equal.

I am an Ex-Felons I was involved in selling drugs when I was a young man. Now I no longer do anything illegal. All I want is a job for me and my family. Are there anyone out there who is willing to give me a chance to make it as a productive citizen in society.

Enrico Harris
773-870-7529 message#

The sex offender registry should only put real child molestors and rapists on its profile,not the 90% of consensual,stupid cases on there. Lisa Madigan and her sex offender goon squad are only politically posturing when they do ther tough on sex ofeender laws. Its all politics,it solves nothing and registered sex offenders will just find a new way to get on my space. The real solution is to remove the bogus statutory/juvenille cases and only register real pedophiles. But when someone from the public wants to use the registry they have to sign in all their personal info. There have been several shootings of sex offenders. Imagine you are a small child,your parent is a registered sex offender(probably for something minor in the past) and some nut comes into your home and shoots your parent. Some vigilantie ,not even having the right info,kills your parent. Its happened and it will happen again. The public cannot be trusted with this registry. Sorry,a 22 year old who dates a 16 year old is neither sick,a threat and certainly not a sex offender.A person on the registry ,just like that,was shot and killed this year in his trailer by a vigilantie.It was in the news. I didnt hear one Attorney General anywhere comment on how dangerous that scenario was. All these states attorneys/attorney generals want is a road paved to higher politics ,they dont care at all about the impact and ramifications of the laws they pass have on the public. Shame on them,they are the real offenders!!!!!!

The whole sex offender registry is botched. Only 4% of guys /gals on the registry are true molestors/rapists. The registry is filled with consensual/ statutory cases and juvenille cases(19 year olds with 16 year olds).Lisa Madigan just tries to pump up her ratings by pumping up public hysteria, yet the registry is outdated,profiles to many cases that are harmless and is just a whipping post for polititcans. Was Elvis Presley,Jerry lee Lewis, Jimmy Page,Humphrey Bogart, Charlie Chaplin and Jake Lomatta all "sex offenders" for dating/marrying teenage girls as men? Come on really,how about all our grandfathers from the old country marrying our grandmothers as teens,are they all"sex Offenders"?.Time to grow up,put the age of consent at 15 like europe and Canada and lets get onto the real criminals.

This whole sex offender issue is like the marijuanna issue,its the big elephant in the room no one really wants to discuss. Any moron in this day and age should know that there are millions of casual mariuanna smokers in this country who are not gangsters,meth lab runners or even criminal. Yet we allow our justice system to terrorize, incarcerate and arrest people for smoking a herb that has been proven time and time again not to be addicting or even dangerous. Yet alchohol is legal. Sex offenders are the same way; any idiot who thinks that adolescents who date each other is a "sex offense" has lost their mind in some kind of puritan madness. Even a 30 year old man who dates a 16 year old consensually---who cares!!!! If a 15 year old girl goes to an older mans house repeatedly for consensual sex,sorry she is not being raped.(unless she is mentally retarded).Europe and Canada are way ahead of us on this,theve set the consent age at 14,if parents dont like it,to bad. Try controlling a teenager,good luck. Im tired of this christianized hysteria over drugs and sex. the real pedophiles can get away with what theyre doing because the police are to busy monitoring statutory -consensual cases in the thousands on the sex registry. Sorry, the police cannot be everywhere. Where do you want them the most?;in front of a child molestors house or sitting in front of a guys house like Elvis Presley ,who married a teenager. Think about it!!!!!!!!!
This last letter is wacko wacko!!!! ! teenagers are young adults not "children". Even the court system recognizes that. If a 15 year old committs murder you can bet the justice system will try them as full adults with full mental capacity. Yet a 15 year old who sleeps with an adult is suddenly a rape victim. HOGWASH!!!!!! How come at 14 and 15 a teens parents can sign the papers to allow the teenager to be married yet if that same teen date someone over 18 suddenly the adult is a sex offender. Humphrey Bogart was courting Lauren Bacal when he was in his 40s and she was 15/16. Nobodys ever called him a sex offender!!! He late married her. Under our current laws ,hed have to register as a sex offender. Obviously it wasnt "rape of a child". the media loves hyped up,hysterical headlines but reality is what it is.Prison should only be for hardened criminals who are an imminent threat to society,not a wharehouse for every fickle law passed by puritan ,right wing america. Jesus hung with Mary Magdeline a supposed prostitute(he probably slept with her too) According to Illinois law, he is a sex offender for propositioning a prostitute. Joseph ,his father,is also a sex offender for being with Mary,who was accordingly only 13. That should be the next headline in the news: LISA MADIGAN,ILLINOIS ATTORNEY GENERAL, DECALRES JESUS,GOD, AND FATHER JOSEPH SEX OFFENDERS !!!!!!!! (Even if "God" did immaculetly impregnate Mary at 13,then" God" is the supreme "sex offender")..

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