do you really know your neighbor?

[stephElf]

wow...I'm very impressed with your choice of the phrase "baby raper"....definitely doing yourself proud!

Well what else would you call a pedophile and/or sex offender? They are POSs that will most likely not be rehabilitated, so who cares what they are called.

well considering that the thread is about sex offenders, maybe you hould read up on how a person gets on that list....it can include rape, date rape, a 18 year-old having consensual sex with a 15 year-old, etc....many (maybe even most) are not pedophiles!

I have previously lived in an area with a high concentration of sex offenders and most of them are wastes of life! I stand by my comment. If that offends someone, too bad.  IMHO, some of our laws are too lenient! People get off and do the same freaking thing again.

And as far as the teenage scenario, they know the law, so tough-cookies. Hold out till your 18, esp. if you have crazy strict parents.

[nvrenuf]

Keep in mind that those are only the registered ones too. Not the ones that haven't been caught yet. Given some time maybe we can go through the 115 in our 1 square mile and determine if they were charged with assaulting someone under 12, that would rule out the 16 year old boy & his <16 year old girlfriend scenario. And while we are at it, we could compile a list of where they are living. Maybe there is a hotspot or two or three that we would then be able to make sure to give a very wide berth.

Well that's the friggin' problem, nvrenuf!

Nobody will break these figures down for you on these "offender" registries. I suspect the reason is that, if they did, the wind would be sucked out of the sails of this whole "not the CHILDREN!!!" response that people have with this issue. Who's going to give up an issue that gets people to the ballot box, and gets them to open their wallets?

Personally, I'm interested in finding out other stats on this issue. Like how many of Florida's alleged "offenders" still live with their own PARENTS? Or how many of them were prosecuted for "molesting" a consenting-in-fact but not-in-law victim whose age was, let's say, within a year or two of their own age? Without this kind of information (which you can't get), there's no way to know how many of these "sex offenses" are just a legal fiction.

I think the true stats would be shocking...

Again, if you would read before posting...I said "Given some time". I'm working on the list for Historic Springfield only, having to break it down from the overall 32206 zip. But I can tell you so far Evergreen and Brackland are heavy areas. And lots of these say under 16 and under 12 and yes I am looking at the date of adjudication compared to the offenders age. Over 20 is old enough to know not to go after a 12 year old. Wouldn't you agree?

Oh and when I get around to offering the list, cut me some slack (yah right like that would ever happen on this forum) if I went outside the boundaries by a few blocks.

[cindi]

Ah, so its "do you really know about your neighbors," i. e. digging up dirt; not actually meeting or establishing a rapport with them.  Gotcha.

wow, you went to the same lame mind reading class others have and are dead wrong. meet your neighbors, regardless of if they live in a rooming house, single family house or RV.  

[ChriswUfGator]

If you guys really want to see how utterly fukking ridiculous this stuff gets, let's just check some recent news...

Text-messaging Florida teen lands on sex offender registry:

http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/04/07/sexting.busts/index.html

Just unbelievable:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/10/us/10offender.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper

Let's not forget this national humiliation from a few years ago:

Going Down Down South: Fighting Absurd Sex Laws

Playboy

By Chuck Shepherd.

If Howard Fletcher, co-founder of the National Sexual Rights Council, has his way, spring-breakers will want to stay out of Florida this year. Too dangerous. Maybe they should head to Iowa. Or South Dakota. Surf's lame, but at least those states aren't weighed down by 19th century sex laws that turn sexually active tourists (and residents) into criminals.

Florida laws prohibit living together, sex outside of marriage and sodomy (defined as "any unnatural and lascivious act"). The sodomy statute also notes, inexplicably, that "a mother's breast-feeding of her baby does not violate this section."

The fact that the state of Florida included this exception suggests that any combination of mouth and breast not involving an infant violates the code. One wonders what law-abiding citizens do for foreplay in Florida.

Sodomy laws in Florida and in many other states are notoriously vague, a sign of the generally upright demeanor of sexually challenged lawmakers. An exception was the code in the District of Columbia, which showed the dangers of being too specific. Until recently it stipulated that carnal copulation was forbidden not only in the mouth and anus but in any opening of the body other than the vagina. So much for nostril sex or for inserting anything but a Q-Tip into your ear. Was such behavior a serious problem in the capital?

A more important question is: Do the punishments fit the crimes?

If convicted under Florida's antisex laws, which treat cohabitation, fornication and sodomy as misdemeanors, you could face up to 60 days in jail. By some standards, that's progressive. Thirteen states still consider sodomy a felony; some call it an "abominable and detestable crime against nature." Go down on your date in Michigan and you could spend 15 years up the river.

Howard Fletcher thinks all such laws are ridiculous. He could have chosen to make his case in any of the states that criminalize sodomy and fornication, but he chose Florida. If you are willing to go to jail for sex, better to do it in a state that can lock you up for only two months.

Last November, aided by a grant from Hugh Hefner, Fletcher flew from his hometown of Juneau, Alaska to Boca Raton. There he checked into a single-bed hotel suite with a female friend and performed with her a pleasurable variation of lewd and lascivious lovemaking. They broke all three antiquated laws almost before Fletcher's credit card number had cleared the hotel's computer.

On his third day in Boca Raton, Fletcher held a press conference. No, the sex hadn't been that newsworthy-- or at least Fletcher would not go into detail beyond specifying that oral sex took place. Instead he told invited members of the press that he was going to turn himself in to the local police, which he proceeded to do. (Yours truly did not.)

Despite Fletcher's full, written confession and several non-explicit photographs he made available, the Boca Raton police department said it would have to "conduct further investigation" before the state's attorney could decide whether to file charges. So far, no charges have been filed.

Actually, recalls Fletcher, the presiding detective, Guy DiBenedetto, was a "real professional." In the midst of a Kennedy-worthy array of local television cameras, "he kept a straight face and treated the entire process with dignity and respect. And he also said he'd have to be careful how he behaved with his wife."

The sleep-in became a teach-in. Fletcher carried out his act of civil disobedience self-effacingly, befitting his status as a 66-year-old great-grandfather who genially admits that he is occasionally unable, tumescently, to break as many consensual-sex laws as he would like.

With the National Sexual Rights Council, Fletcher has targeted the religious right as the source and defender of repressive sex laws. He describes the enemy as "bigoted, self-righteous, holier-than-thou, hypocritical, narrow-minded, power-hungry, inflexible, anal-retentive, prurient, nosy, reactionary, totally unchristian political terrorists."

Joining Fletcher at his postcoital news conference was the other half of the NSRC leadership, West Palm Beach attorney Elliot Shaw. As passionate on the topic as Fletcher is, Shaw warms to the subject of archaic sex laws.

These statutes "make criminals out of nearly everyone," Shaw told reporters. "Even you," he shouted at a female journalist who had confessed that she lives with her boyfriend. "The laws are based on the double-standard, Madonna/whore complex," he went on, "and they're simply not valid now, if they ever were." The steam in the room was palpable as Shaw plowed through a rack of Masters and Johnson statistics, evolutionary psychology theory ("We are programmed with a massive sex drive") and biblical history ("When Eve stretched out for knowledge beyond the garden, God gave her pain, enmity and total subservience"). He ended his rant sounding like he had just cooked up another agenda item: "These laws are almost something we should report to the human-rights people."

At the press conference, Fletcher explained why the council had chosen Florida. The sleep-in was the opening salvo of a three-pronged attack. Although Fletcher wasn't arrested, he and Shaw say they used his standing as an admitted criminal to file a federal lawsuit to prevent the state from prosecuting him (or anyone else on the same charges). In the suit they demand that the statutes be invalidated as violating the constitutional right of privacy. They hope to take their case to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The suit also seeks an order requiring the state to protect naive visitors, such as those spring-breakers, who may hop into bed unaware that they are breaking the law.

You have to love these guys.

On a second front, the NSRC is attempting to gather almost 500,000 signatures to place its Right of Intimate Privacy Initiative on a statewide ballot this year. The initiative would amend the state constitution to read: "No act of sexual intimacy committed in private between consenting persons above the age of majority shall be prohibited by law." That's a polite way of telling the state to butt out.

As its third initiative, the NSRC is pushing for repeal of the antisex statutes in the state legislature. The group is now lobbying to bring lawmakers on board. The NSRC counts on at least one of these three courses of action to succeed.

When it comes to sex crimes, Florida seems to be the geographic expression of a confused psychopath. Even on good days the police-blotter columns of the state's newspapers are filled with a disproportionately large number of paraphiliacs, both creative and mundane.

But just when observers realize that the best thing for the state might be for it to admit itself en masse to the Betty Ford Clinic, along come Fletcher and Shaw to reveal that Florida has even more perverts (hundreds of thousands, in fact), than previously known. It's not just the spring-breakers but also the senior citizens who buddy up out of convenience and occasional wildness. The criminal class includes swingers on baseball's world champion Marlins, and even the Goldie Hawns and Kurt Russells who drop in at Disney World or South Beach. (We have no idea if Goldie and Kurt have ever violated the laws of Florida. But if they bunk down in the same hotel room, they're at least guilty of cohabitation.)

For a nation whose church and state are supposed to have been separated, biblical admonitions and religious doctrine saturate our sex laws. Florida's fornication law, says Fletcher, originates with the notion that a daughter is the property of her father until marriage. (The government acts as if someone has broken into Dad's garage and ruined his power saw.) Similarly, allowing only marriage partners to have government-approved sex is based on biblical teachings that a woman escapes from her father's bonds only by becoming the chattel of her husband. Any man who slept with another man's wife, says Fletcher, "was in fact committing theft, much as joyriding is grand theft auto."

Despite Florida's take on it, the predominant view among Americans holds that marriage is merely a civil contract under which the parties are free, but not legally required, to commit to sexual exclusivity.

Prevention of sodomy--that abominable and detestable crime against nature-has a biblical basis as well, but Fletcher says it may also be grounded in the need for one tribe to outpopulate another. Hence, there can be no wasted seed. But Fletcher believes that the amount of thrill-ride sex today outstrips procreative sex by at least 1000 to 1 (which is good, if you believe the anti-population growth activists).

To be valid, according to the U.S. Supreme Court's familiar test of constitutionality, a law must serve a "legitimate" government interest, and if it infringes on a fundamental right, such as the right of privacy in intimate relations, it must have "compelling" justification. The NSRC says the three Florida laws that Fletcher violated and similar ones on the books in dozens of other states fail this "legitimate and compelling interest" test.

In fact, the only justification the government might muster is that it somehow has a duty to make everyone a biblically good citizen, just as some public high schools have SAT preparation courses to help students get into college, a lawmaker might argue, the purpose of these laws is to help people get into heaven. But it is done, in most cases, against our wills.

OK, the laws are stupid, but how big a priority is eliminating them? After all, asked one reporter, how often are they enforced?

"Every day," says Shaw.

He admits that the newspapers aren't filled with accounts of police officers breaking down doors to arrest fornicators. But the laws often crop up in other legal actions. Mary Albert was accused of forcible sodomy, but even had he proved that the act was consensual, he could still have faced up to five years in jail for it.

Most of the time the laws do damage in ways that are far more subtle. Last summer in Texas, for instance, a child-welfare official removed a baby from his foster mother's care because the woman was living in sin with another woman. The official contended that, as the state's sodomy laws criminalize homosexual sex, the foster mother was involved in an ongoing crime.

Lawmakers are notoriously unenlightened when it comes to revising sex laws. Letting the people decide through a referendum is a compelling idea. But getting on the ballot won't be easy. The NSRC will need those half a million signatures.

Still, says Shaw, the NSRC's campaign is a lot more realistic than waiting until a majority of Florida's lawmakers stand in the legislature to praise shacking up and lactation-free breast kissing.

So far, the demand for warnings to out-of-staters is the NSRC's most intriguing idea. The legislature might have to call on the good people of Sheraton and Hyatt and their stockholders to warn their guests and, more onerously, to check proof of matrimony before allowing two people to share a room.

Imagine if the state were compelled to display this warning at its borders:

WELCOME TO FLORIDA.
SPEED LIMIT 65 MPH.
CONJUGAL SEX ONLY.
(WE ID.)

(Reach the NSRC toll-free at 1-888-247-9413.)

Read the closing comments of one of the JSO Detectives investigating the Somer Thompson murder:

This is from the T-U just today:

http://jacksonville.com/news/metro/crime/2009-10-23/story/threat_posed_by_sex_offenders_varies_widely_in_jacksonville_area

Some offenders wouldn't fit most people's stereotypes. Mulligan said one man on the St. Johns roll was convicted at age 18 of having sex with a 17-year-old girl. Now in his 40s, the man is married to that woman but must still report his address to the authorities at regular intervals.

[stephElf]

Ps. I know a sex offender is not only a pedophile. I said and/or.

As far as I am concerned, anyone that gets convicted of rape can rot in jail for the rest of their life or suffer the death penalty.  We have too many nutjobs getting off or out of jail early. Period. End of story.

How many stories have their been of people having a long rap sheet. I'm sorry, but that just isn't acceptable to me.  A lot of our judicial systems, jails and "rehab" programs are a joke.

[ChriswUfGator]

And as far as the teenage scenario, they know the law, so tough-cookies.

You're part of the problem, then. It's an unjust law.

[stephElf]

Clearly, I don't think the majority of us are talking about this situation:

"Some offenders wouldn't fit most people's stereotypes. Mulligan said one man on the St. Johns roll was convicted at age 18 of having sex with a 17-year-old girl. Now in his 40s, the man is married to that woman but must still report his address to the authorities at regular intervals."

What percentage of sex offenders fit into the above type scenario that most of us would deem ridiculous?

The point of this thread is to be aware of your surroundings and realize maybe you don't know people like you think you do. And I'm sorry, but I tend to agree. I run with a tight circle of family and friends and don't trust many others. For a slew of reasons.... I think that is all the person was saying. I don't think they are on some crusade to bash people who are labeled as sex offenders that don't really deserve that label.

[stephElf]

And as far as the teenage scenario, they know the law, so tough-cookies.

You're part of the problem, then. It's an unjust law.

I never said it was a just-law. But it is the law none the less. I didn't create it.  I don't think jay-walking should be illegal but people are too stupid to look both ways, so it is.

[buckethead]

Theocrats writing laws that are retarded is the right thing to do!

[ChriswUfGator]

What percentage of sex offenders fit into the above type scenario that most of us would deem ridiculous?

Far more than you'd think. That's the problem.

[stephElf]

Well like I said, I have done my homework in the past when I lived in a semi-crappy hood and there are definitely some chester, chester child molesters over there.  It makes me sick that they even get to breathe fresh air.

I'm not talking about other said seemingly "innocent" situations...obviously.

[Dan B]

Im a big fan of the sexual predator living across the street from one of our local elementary schools.

http://offender.fdle.state.fl.us/offender/flyer.do?personId=13820

Or the one living right behind the same school

http://offender.fdle.state.fl.us/offender/flyer.do?personId=33386

Im sure the sexual battery Under 12 just means he REALLY loved this kid. It must suck being so misunderstood.

Or this guy two blocks from the same school

http://offender.fdle.state.fl.us/offender/flyer.do?personId=825

Lewd and lacivious under 16... but it happened in 96... that would make him only 40. I guess thats not too much of a gap....

Its too bad there isnt a law against living so close to schools... OH WAIT. There is!

Im all for taking it case by case. For instance, there is one about a block down from me who seems to fall into that wrong place/wrong time category, but most of them in our area seem like real gems.

[stephElf]

but most of them in our area seem like real gems.

exactly...

[ChriswUfGator]

Well like I said, I have done my homework in the past when I lived in a semi-crappy hood and there are definitely some chester, chester child molesters over there.  It makes me sick that they even get to breathe fresh air.

I'm not talking about other said seemingly "innocent" situations...obviously.

Right, but that's not what has happened.

Florida has a lengthy history of rallying behind over-broad categories of "offenses" that aren't really "offenses". It's really not that hard to write a law that punishes *actual* sex offenders and doesn't create a large category of "registered sex offenders" that exist only in pure legal fiction, but whose lives are nevertheless ruined by conviction for an "offense" that isn't offensive.

Florida has the 2nd or 3rd highest number of registered "sex offenders" in the entire COUNTRY, we're at or exceeding the numbers from states like California and New York who have much higher populations than Florida. Meanwhile, if you look at the wonderful top-tier bracket that we're in, you'll note that it includes such notable bible-belt states like Arkansas, Alabama, etc.

Why exactly do you think that is?

[buckethead]

Isn't it because the south is full of backwoods kiddie rapists?