I know a guy that I graduated from highschool with who was convicted at the age of 22, of having sex with a 16 year old girl. He served six months and is on the sex offender registry. I recently saw him at a pick up basketball game and he said that he recently put in four applications at fast food restaurants all of which were turned down for his crime/status as a sex offender. On top of that he cannot live at his parents house because it is within a certain distance of the local high school. So what is this guy supposed to do? I’m all for punishing sex offenders, but are we not as a society putting these people in a position of having to commit further crimes just to eat? Where do you go when you can’t find a job at Wendy’s or McD’s? He actually told me that he was thinking about robbing a bank just so that he could go back to prison because at least there he had a bed, and food. If as a society we think that these crimes are so heinous perhaps we should just make them punishable by life in prison rather than pretending that these people can surivive on the outside. Maybe someone could start “sex offender colonies” so that these people would at least have some place to go.
Moving this from IMHO to Great Debates.
Yeah, those would be fun places to live.
On a more serious note, I agree with you. Living normally is virtually impossible for these people, so living abnormally is the only choice.
Committing statutory rape gets you put on the sex offender registry? That doesn’t sit very well with me.
That’s the trouble, I think, that in the collective unconscious and to a certain extent the eyes of the law, there’s just one big category ‘perverts’ - there’s a world of difference between the guy described in the OP* and, say, a sexual predator who abducts and abuses pre-teen children and cannot control his desire to do so.
In the latter case, it is quite understandable that people wouldn’t want to employ the individual, or have him living nearby; it’s a problem for which I don’t think there is a neat and tidy solution, but a 22-year-old who has sex with a 16-year-old is an entirely different kettle of fish - he made his mistake and served his time; subject perhaps to some kind of review, the slate should be wiped clean.
*(His act wouldn’t even be a crime where I live - the age of sexual consent is 16)
I hate to suggest this, but the best thing he could do is lie. Don’t put down that information, period. If they check anyway, all they can do is not hire him. If they find out later, they might have a civil liability case, but a big corp like McDonalds is likely to just sweep it under the rug and let him go…OR, if he’s a fast talker and really good at his job, he can talk them into keeping him on. I had a friend who did just this – he joined a start-up web company without telling them he’d done six months for drug dealing AND had skipped parole. Ten years later, he runs his own security business. (And finally did settle that legal problem, last I heard.)
These sex offender laws are so stupid, and it’s all the result of politicians who know they can get a lot of easy votes by seeming to appear “tough on crime” and don’t give one fucking damn about the actual children they pretend to protect. My God, did Victor Hugo and Nathaniel Hawthorne teach us nothing???
Nothing much to add to what Mangetout said - pit me if you will for saying this, but there’s definitely a sliding scale of sex offences, and his seems to figure pretty low on the spectrum: if she was 6 or 11, sure, throw away the key, but 16? What state does your friend live in, assuming you’re in the US? In NZ, the age of consent iis 16.
Agreement with the OP. The whole set of rules stinks. It’s just a cheesy morality play writ large for the nation, with no genuine expectation that it will prevent bad things from happening.
Rapists and pedophiles and whoever else all represent different problems with different solutions. Some of these people should be locked up in a benevolent fashion, since they really can’t control themselves and it’s not their fault. The Baroque Offender Rules won’t do much to stop them from getting their hands on a new victim, if their whole soul is invested in finding one.
Then there are people like the horny youngun in the OP who have nothing wrong with them, did nothing really wrong, and are now a sacrifice to the system.
Garbage, garbage.
Except for it can be. I have a buddy in the same situation as the OP, and while in MD the age of consent is 16, if there is something like 4 years difference in age the parents can press charges. So while the police can not do anything others can.
I think a lot of these lists are stupid and do hurt people like the OP or my friend. Why don’t we have a list for other things people have done? Maybe I want to know if the people around me have killed someone, or even put cookies on my door step.
Granted, although my point remains; there’s a whole world of difference between a rather young adult who has illegal sex with a Nearly-Adult and a 40-year-old freak who abducts and has sex with a five-year-old child - society needs protection from sexual predators, not so much horny twentysomethings.
Perhaps the guy could find at a job where there would be absolutely no chance of him coming into contact with children. I curretnly work at a retirement home where an employee is a convicted child molester :eek:
Count me in as one of the people who thinks people convicted of statutory rape in a case like at 20 year old screwing a 16 year old should not be lumped together with childmolesters and serial rapists.
Very well put sir.
I have a very hard time with a system that puts people in jail and then, when it lets them go, does not offer them true freedom, particularly because the crime has anything to do with sex. Oooh! The crime may have involved a penis!?!? Evil! Evil! The Power of Christ compells you to flee this land forever more!
It’s so unfair, the way that rapists, murderers, child-molesters and the like can’t just be left alone.
Crimes have consequences. You’re feeling sorry for the guy who raped a 16-year old? I’m wondering about the 16-year old. What happened to HER?
A 16 year old is mature enough to give consent in many states.
I am guessing this case was consensual. I think anyone can recognize the difference between mutual sexual intercourse between two consenting adults, and holding a razor to a girls throat while sodomizing her.
Yeah, 'cause it’s obvious that he snuck into her room, held a knife to ther throat and forcibly raped her. There is never consensual sex between a 16 year old and a 22 year old. Except in the states where the sixteen year olds are magically capable of making that choice. Unlike their neighbors across the state line.
I’d say a sizable chunk of the female population has had consensual sex at the age of 16 with someone over the age of 18. In fact, if I remember right 32 states and the District of Columbia have the age of consent set at 16. So basically it’s an accident of geography that this guy ended up in jail. I think you seriously overestimate the seriousness of this crime.
And two years later (or less, depending on the area), it magically wouldn’t have been “rape”. THAT’S what’s screwed up- calling something like that “rape” dilutes the meaning of the word.
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There is never consensual sex between a 16 year old and a 22 year old. Except in the states where the sixteen year olds are magically capable of making that choice.
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Well then, it seems there are cases where there is consensual sex between a 16 year old and a 22 year old.
I’m very much opposed to the sex offender registry- IMHO if someone does a crime and serves the sentence they are given, that should be that. Either that, or make all released prisoners register- I’d rather know where the viloent rapists and murderers are, personally.
If the sentence isn’t long enough and we really are worried that these people will reoffend, they shouldn’t be on the streets at all. You should either have freedom or be in prison, one or the other- not this half assed middleground where people punish you forever even though you’re techinically “free”.
If a man forcibly raped a 16-year-old, he should still be behind bars, unless he had been rehabilitated to the point that any reasonable person would have no problem having him on the street in full knowledge of what happened.
“Statutory rape” is an offensive characterization given to the crime of having consensual sex with a person under the legal age of consent, often regardless of what the circumstances are, how willing she was, how close together their ages may be, etc.
I have no problem with having the Category 3 offenders, those whose offense was repeated and abusive and beyond the bounds of public understanding, reported. But as currently administered in some states, the SOR and its notifications are about equivalent to you mandating that my permanent signature here be something like “Polycarp, who in February 2000 publicly called another member a troll” and that that be displayed at the foot of every post I make.
I’m acquainted on another board with a gay man who was 19 when he gave a blowjob to a 15-year-old neighbor, at the 15-year-old’s repeated request, was arrested at the complaint of the boy’s outraged mother, and who is now trying to relocate because, ten years later, he was outed by the SOR and lost the job he was working at and stands to be evicted from his apartment. He was trying to live a decent, law-abiding life until that happened, and wishes to move somewhere where he can continue to do so – though of course he’s outraged by what happened to him.
As for the victims of such offenses, when they were not willing accomplices in the commission of the crime, nearly everywhere has counseling services and group therapy. (And as someone who has counseled a young man who was molested as a child, I am very well aware of the scars that can leave on a young person’s soul.)
A degree of common-sense sense of proportion in applying the SOR classification and mercy to those who have served out their sentences and want to get on with their lives, does not conflict with deep compassion for the victims of real molestation.