Category Archives: Megan’s Law

Alabama Legislature Steps Up to Protect Kids!

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I have been part of an effort in California to legislate a Megan’s Law update by including internet identifiers as part of the registration process. Last year two bills carefully drafted to address this singular issue (AB 755 – SB 57) were killed in committee, meaning they never made it to the floor of the respective houses for an up and down vote. It makes one wonder why California’s lawmakers prioritize the privacy of registered sex offenders ahead of the safety of children? The Alabama State Legislature has no such compunctions. This afternoon I testified on behalf of the Alabamians Against Sexual Exploitation Act, which will bridge the gap between Megan’s Law and the 21stCentury, and do more. Much more!
“Mr. Chairman and members of the committee I want to thank you for affording me the opportunity to talk about this very important issue. Sometimes, when we get our priorities mixed up we need a reality check. The Alabamians Against Sexual Exploitation Act is that reality check.

Human trafficking is a criminal business that profits from enslaving people for sexual servitude and forced labor. It is the fastest growing and second largest criminal industry in the world today (second only to drug trafficking and tied with illegal arms). According to the Trafficking in Victims Protection Act, which was signed into law by President George Bush in 2000, human sex trafficking occurs when, ‘a commercial sex act is induced by force, fraud, or coercion, or in which the person induced to perform such act has not attained 18 years of age.’

Since 2000, we have learned that the U.S. is as much a supply country as it is a demand country. In fact, we are supplying much of our own demand. Every year between 1.6 and 2.8 million children run away annually in the U.S., half of those runaways are girls.  Within 48 hours of hitting the streets, one third of these children are lured or recruited into the underground world of prostitution or pornography. The average age at which girls first become victims of prostitution is 12-14. For boys, the entry age is 11-13. These kids are victims of human trafficking and each and every one is somebody’s child.

We glamorize pimp culture in music, on TV and at the movies. We create pimp celebrities and legitimize them in mainstream media. We photograph pimps at Players Balls and marvel at their ostentatious displays of wealth when we should be putting them in prison. Pimp-controlled commercial sexual exploitation of children is linked to escort and massage services, private dancing, drink and photographic clubs, major sporting and recreational events, major cultural events, conventions and tourist destination.

At the same time we criminalize kids who find themselves under the control of pimps. These kids are often portrayed as criminals, drug addled crack whores who are incarcerated rather than assisted once law enforcement brings them in off of the street. These kids are not criminals, they are victims. Many of them are missing. Many, but not all have run away or are throwaway children.

It is not so “Hard Out There for a Pimp”. Pimps are human traffickers and should be prosecuted as such. Under the Alabamians for Sexual Exploitation Act pimps will be prosecuted, imprisoned and forced to register as sex offenders. They will pay fines that will fund victim services for the children they have exploited.
But wait, there’s more. Sex offender registration and community notification, otherwise known as Megan’s Law was adopted by all 50-states in the late 90’s. Megan’s Law is based on the premise that convicted sex offenders pose a threat to society and that the public deserves to know when they are in the community. When Megan’s Law was enacted the Internet was not the ubiquitous presence that it is today. The Alabamians Against Sexual Exploitation Act will also allow Alabama to bridge Megan’s Law into the 21st Century.

We know who the registered sex offenders are in our neighborhoods and towns, but not in our virtual, online communities. The Alabamians Against Sexual Exploitation Act requires registered sex offenders to provide Internet email addresses, social networking profiles and other online identifiers so that social networking sites can scour relevant profiles from their online communities.

The concept of convicted sex offenders including their Internet identifiers as a component of the sex offender registration process was successfully legislated in New York in 2008 and has thus far been responsible for removing more than 24,000 sex offender profiles from social networking sites.

I urge the members of the committee to vote YES on The Alabamians Against Sexual Exploitation Act.”


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The News of the World is Not All Bad

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Like the rest of the world I was appalled at the recent revelations about the phone hacking and illegal wiretapping scandals that have caused Great Britain’s News of the World (NOTW) to shut its doors. Members of senior staff have been arrested for criminal conspiracy and corruption charges. Allegations of bribing police officials, anti-competitive practices, computer and phone hacking among other charges have been leveled at News Corporation and its iconic Chairman Rupert Murdoch. Cell phone messages from celebrities, politicians, and members of the royal family were illegally accessed, creating an atmosphere of fear and intimidation. However, the incident that really made my skin crawl was learning that thirteen-year-old kidnap and murder victim Milly Dowler’s cell phone account was manipulated by NOTW operatives leading her family and the police to believe that she was still alive. However, it is the NOTW response to another missing child case that I would like revisit.

On July 1, 2000, eight-year-old Sarah Payne disappeared from West Sussex, England. Seventeen days later Sarah’s remains were recovered from a cornfield about fifteen miles away in Pulborough. Convinced that their daughter had been the victim of a sex predator, Sarah’s parents Sara and Michael demanded changes that would be more protective of Great Britain’s children. The Payne’s then joined forces with leading tabloid newspaper News of the World to campaign for life-prison terms for child killers and public access to identifying information on Great Britain’s 110,000 registered sex offenders. The campaign became known as Sarah’s Law.

Utilizing its formidable resources and with broad public support, the newspaper launched a petition drive demanding public access to and longer sentences for convicted sex offenders. The NOTW then published the photographs and addresses of 50 known sex offenders. This action ignited vigilante reprisals despite appeals against violence.

Because of our work to legislate sex offender registration and community notification (Megan’s Law) in the United States, the NOTW contacted KlaasKids and invited us to Great Britain to help advocate on behalf of Sarah’s Law, and counter scathing governmental and conservative media condemnation. During a July, 2000 meeting with British Home Office Junior Secretary Paul Boateng, I was told that the government intervened and warned unsuspecting women only when incarcerated sex offenders place lonely heart ads trolling for single mothers of young children. However, the minister then condemned the NOTW ‘name and shame’ campaign. He stated that community notification was not an option because the government believed that ‘outing’ sex offenders would drive them underground, and that disclosing their addresses would promote vigilantism. I told the Secretary that suggesting that community notification will drive registered sex offenders underground belies the real problem. The offenders are already underground and community notification is a remedy, not a symptom.

The American example of Megan’s Law demonstrated that punitive penalties for failing to comply with the terms of sex offender registration did not force offenders underground: instead, they promoted compliance. Numerous studies also indicated that imposing prison penalty enhancement for individuals who misuse sex offender registration information to exact vigilante justice were effective as very few registered sex offenders had been publicly threatened.

On September 12, 2000 Sara and Michael Payne delivered 700,000 petition signatures to the British Home Office. On September 25, Violet and I returned to Great Britain to join Sara and Michael Payne in addressing the annual Labor Party convention. It was our fervent hope that the British Government, which now stood alone in opposition, would acknowledge the will of the people and replicate America’s bold and successful experiment with community notification.

Unfortunately, it was not to be so. In December 2001, recidivist sex offender Roy Whiting was convicted of murdering Sarah Payne and sentenced to 50-years in prison. In the end it took a more than decade to convince the government and the authorities that Sarah’s Law was sound policy. In April 2011, that the Home Office finally announced that Sarah’s Law would be implemented. Like Megan Kanka’s mother before her, Sara Payne’s belief that her daughter would be alive had she known that a sexual predator lived in her community forced a change in national policy. Now, parents can access information on registered sex offenders in their neighborhood and use the information to protect their children.

During our work on behalf of Sarah’s Law we befriended NOTW editor Rebekah Brooks and her successor Andy Coulson, both of whom now face serious criminal charges. They helped a grieving mother achieve her dream of protecting children through legislative change. Their benevolence seemed genuine as they asked for nothing in return. We were proud of our work on behalf of Sarah’s Law and grateful for the experience, as grueling as it ultimately became.

However,a few months ago it was revealed that the NOTW had also hacked into Sara Payne’s cell phone account. That, in turn, leads me to wonder if they did the same to me after insisting that I use one of their cell phones during our visits across the pond?
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DOA: Megan’s Law for the 21st Century

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John Gardner, the registered sex offender now serving a life sentence for killing Chelsea King and Amber Dubois, last logged into his MySpace account on Feb.24, 2010, the day before he murdered Chelsea King. An email account linked to Gardner’s profile was registered with MySpace; however the social networking website did not know who he was or what he had done, so they were unable to implement their zero tolerance policy toward registered sex offenders. This is because Megan’s Law does not require California’s 123,821 registered sex offenders to submit email addresses or other forms of Internet identification.
Megan’s Law is based on the premise that convicted sex offenders pose a threat to society and that the public deserves to know when they are in the community. Since Megan’s Law was signed into law and implemented in 1996, all 50-states have registered individuals convicted of felony sex crimes. Law enforcement collects personal, private and identifying information from the registered offenders. They then release some of that information to the public so that we can use it to protect ourselves from known threats in our neighborhoods. Law enforcement maintains all of the information collected from registered sex offenders in secure databases so that it can be used for investigative purposes.
This system served society well until communities expanded beyond our streets and neighborhoods to include Internet based social networking sites. Until social networking websites like Facebook and MySpace have an effective mechanism to monitor registered sex offenders they will continue to exploit the Internet’s anonymity and troll for victims in online communities.

California Senate Bill 57 (SB-57) would have updated Megan’s Law by requiring registered sex offenders to provide law enforcement with their email addresses and other Internet identifiers. Social networking websites would then be able to use that information to monitor or scrub registered sex offender profiles from their online communities.

SB-57 is based on legislation passed in New York in 2008. The Electronic Securing and Targeting of Online Predators Act (e-STOP), which was sponsored by New York Governor, then Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, has thus far successfully removed more than 24,000 social networking profiles belonging to registered sex offenders. SB 57 is also consistent with the federal KIDS Act of 2008, which requires sex offenders to provide email addresses as part of the state regulations.

Unfortunately, this important legislation was placed on the suspense file in the Assembly Committee on Appropriations where it died. The official reason that SB-57 was placed on suspense is that it was thought to be too costly for California to administer. However, in reality SB-57 only required a new form field to be entered onto an existing database. And, compared to the millions of children who would have been protected from the lurid advances of Internet predators like John Gardner who use social networking sites, minor administrative costs are inconsequential.

As has been demonstrated so many times in the past few years, government has failed us yet again. The fate of SB-57 was in the hands of Assembly Committee on Appropriations Chairman Felipe Fuentes (D-San Fernando Valley). Chairman Fuentes had the power to remove SB-57 from the suspense file and put it to the committee for a vote, where it surely would have passed, yet he failed to do so.

We have lost our opportunity to drag Megan’s Law into the 21st Century. Instead children who use social networking sites remain at risk of being victimized by known sexual predators. Our elected leaders have made a stark choice. The safety of California’s children is not a priority.

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