articles.orlandosentinel.com — Living in a perfect world is only a dream. Recently, I received a call from a neighbor. Sexual predators had moved in next to them. Not one, not two, but three were all living in the same house. Every city and county must take action to keep predators away from our children. Here's how our laws could be made tougher.
Nov 10, 2009 View in Crawl 4
Closed AccountNov 10, 2009
Someone should thank the author for reinforcing the female, SUV-driving soccer mom stereotype.
idiggyaNov 10, 2009
Agreed, it's ridiculous how generalized and easy it is to be put on the sex offenders list. Taking a piss in an alley? Bam. Sex with an underage person with age difference less than a year? Bam. Taking pictures while underaged? Bam. Bam bam bam!Anyways, that was oooooone long sentence. Phew!
blackinthmiddleNov 10, 2009
Agreed. My first thought when I read this was, geez, a guy can kill three people, pay his debt to society then move on with life. Basically, however, you're life is *over* if you ever get on a sex offender list.I remember one case where a man was forced to put large signs on three sides of his house (if memory serves) stating "INSIDE THIS HOUSE LIVES A SEX OFFENDER!" or something like that. If a judge decides to force you to do something like this, you're toast. Even if s/he doesn't, all you need is one person to check the sex offender list and let everyone else know, "Hey...he's a sex offender" and you're done.
leftsNov 10, 2009
THINK OF THE CHILDREN!!!*and the masses pour in their support*
duggtodeathNov 11, 2009
Yeah tougher laws sure helped the war on drugs! Oh wait...
entroperNov 11, 2009
Before we make sexual predator laws tougher, we need to redefine whom we consider to be sexual predators. Stop defining public urinators and teenage horndogs as "predators". And then we need to figure out just how the real offenders are supposed to live once they get out of prison.There was one city where registered offenders were not allowed to live within 1000 feet of a school bus stop. The sheriff got a map, located all the bus stops, and drew 1000-foot circles around them. The only place on the map that wasn't covered by one or more circles was the middle of a lake. This kind of bulls**t needs to stop. The penalties should be severe, but they should not eliminate all possibility for an offender to reform themselves once they've served their time.
amyvernonNov 11, 2009Submitter
Honestly, I agree with that. There are circumstances under which people are classified as a sex offender for having sex with their girlfriend who's closer in age to them than my parents were. And the zones can get out of hand - there was a guy in Rockland County, NY, who checked himself into the county mental ward temporarily and when it came time for his release, they couldn't actually release him because he couldn't find anywhere to live that he could afford anywhere in the county.And the county couldn't legally let him leave until he had a place to live. And this guy actually was a *real* sex offender and was unrepentant. But he'd served his time and now everyone was caught in this huge Catch-22 and the taxpayers ended up spending tens of thousands of dollars to house him while they tried to figure out what the hell to do.I have no idea what the solution is, but I can agree that the structure now is untenable. The thing I thought amazing about the case in this article, however, was that people with children who lived within spitting distance weren't notified because they were across an invisible county boundary that meant something legally but nothing practically.