Since several of the questions are based on opinion or personal experience, let’s move this over to IMHO.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
Asking “what is the total percentage of sex offenders that reoffend” is a little like asking “what is the total percentage of automobile drivers involved in automobile accidents”- it’s a very, very broad question which doesn’t tell you a lot without more analysis. Just like with any risk assessment, there are actuarial instruments, tables and risk factors which examine rates of sex offender reoffense across many categories and typologies of sex offenders based on age, number and types of offense, gender and age of victim, presence or absence of noncontact sexual offenses in the offending history, presence and length of adult live-in relationships outside of the offender’s sex offending history, etc. There is no one “typical” sex offender.
Forgot this:
God, no. Why? There’s nothing I or anyone could tell you that isn’t horrible. It’s actual real shit that happened to actual real people and there’s no entertainment value to any of it. It’s all just fucking awful.
Why discuss it? Read through the thread. Some percentage of people are labeled “Sex Offender” for doing nothing “fucking awful” to anyone.
I understand and appreciate that you know somebody who you feel should not be labeled a sex offender for what they have done, but my experience is on the far opposite end of the spectrum and there is absolutely nothing entertaining or worth repeating about any of it. My job deals with honest to God violent serial sex offenders, and when somebody asks me to entertain them with stories of violent serial sex offenders I have known my response is “God, no. Why? There’s nothing I or anyone could tell you that isn’t horrible. It’s actual real shit that happened to actual real people and there’s no entertainment value to any of it. It’s all just fucking awful.” Your experience may vary.
Well it just so happens that I work as a probation agent and specifically supervise sex offenders in my assigned county. I’ll answer these questions based on my experience as I don’t have my research on hand.
- The encompasses a range of offenses. A popular one now is getting busted for trying to hook up with who they think is a young teenager online and find out that it’s an undercover law enforcement officer from somewhere. I have a guy that resides east coast and was actually busted by some agency in Colorado pretending to be a 14 year old girl. The offender was 20 or so. I only know of one that was actually talking to a teenager.
Another popular one for folks under supervision is some fondling of a child or young teenager, usually a family member.
- What do you mean by nasty shit? I guess the worst I had was a guy that pretty violently raped a woman in the '80’s. Mind you I didn’t supervise him until he was released on supervised furlough this year. He was old as dirt and pretty handicapped. I have also supervised a guy that gave his sister gonerrea(sp?). The victim was 8 and he was like 17 at the time. I have also supervised a couple of dads that had some inappropriate relationships with their daughters. Now, with the exception of the first guy, I can’t think of any “violent” offenders or offenses that included violence. These offenses occur after some sort of relationship has been built with the victim or the guardian of the victim.
As far as guys that have been pegged for urinating in public and stuff. I don’t ever see that. Though I do have a guy that was convicted of having sex with a 13 year old when he was 18. He and some friends met up with a 20 year old female they knew and this 13 year old was there and supposedly said she was 18. I actually believe this kid here based on the incident report. I have another guy that was invited into a bedroom with a few 14 and 15 year olds specifically for sex when he was 18. I have another guy that is actually being supervised for a drug offense, but he has a sex offense from the 90’s that he claims stems from him having sex with his then 15 or 16 year old girlfriend when he was 17.
As far as urinating in public or flashing folks, I have had a couple, but never a guy that only ever did it once. They normally have multiple offenses. The one urinating in public also had a habit of masturbating and inappropriately touching bus drivers. These guys are actually the most annoying because they re-offend at very high rates.
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Most sex offenders are really normal looking guys (I’ve never had any chicks but the ones I’ve seen are WAY fucked up). Many claim to have had some sort of addiction or substance abuse issue and at the time they offended, they were report several areas of life stress (if you will). They were having employment issues, their intimate relationships weren’t going well and they have reported a host of other issues. They also develop something we call cognitive errors where then feel an oddly close connection with their daughter or that “14 year old” on the internet. Some are arrogant assholes that just think that they can do what ever they want. Some are very shy and closed off and don’t feel connected to anybody and thus are intimdated by adult relationships. And then you have the mildly retarded ones that are just on the same maturity level as the 10 year old they offended against. It’s really a mixed bag. You to determine the type of person you are dealing with to try to keep an eye out on what to look for.
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No, No and God No. Most that do find work find it through family contacts. Several attempt to start their own business, though they aren’t normally seen as the head of the business, as they are less likely to get researched. I always have several homeless on my caseload. Many of them have family they can live with, but they live too close to a school or something that makes the residence illegal. However they can only get into one homeless shelter in the winter time. The ones that are open in the other seasons are too close to schools and stuff. There is only a few half way house that will house them because if the half way house does, their insurance rates skyrocket from what many half way house managers have told me.
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What do you mean my re-offender? If you mean a new sexual charge or conviction, almost none and those have been the streakers. There is one on my case now that has just been released after re-offending against his daughter back in 2001. If you include any offenses, it’s still pretty low. If memory serves, offenders that re-offend sexually have about a 3-5% recidivism, all offenses about 25%. Astoundingly low considering the reoffense rate in general is supposedly over 50%.
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From my perspective, the registry causes more harm than good. Mainly because it’s available for the public to see and this results in these guys getting harrassed and discriminated against. Almost all of these guys have some neighbor that post flyers all over the place, including local gas stations and the sort. Many have had their homes or property vandalized. Of course finding work is near impossible, but more so for them. There was some research I saw that compared the effect of the registry before it was made public and when it was only available to law enforcement. More cases were resolved when the information was only available to law enforcement but when community notifcation was introduced, any benefits to the registry were stopped. It has been theorized that it is because people on this registry have not incentives to comply with the law, since there is some much social discord as the result of begin on it and here, it’s a life time sentence. There is no way to get off the registry. Also the registry is only effective against people that reoffender. Research has shown that it is not an effective deterrent for first time offenders and from what evidence that can concretely be gathered, sex offenders don’t re-offend at the same rates of non-sexual offenders.
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Man, I could go all day…
I’m interested in how you found out about what these guys did? In my state, it just list the statute they were convicted of, which depending on the offense, the victim’s willingness to participate, the effectiveness of the lawyer, tells you nothing.
I don’t deal with this sort and from what I can tell, these guys are rarely released from prison. Even if the complete their sentence, they go to the sexually violent predator’s program and are tied up in that until they die or are useless.
That is false. Colorado has a close in age exception to age of consent. 14 with a 13 year old is legal.
Not in my experience. We have several violent offenders. Most of the others involve extreme age differences. Not one of ours is a to catch a predator situation. None are for indecent exposure. None are 16 year olds who had sex with their 15 year old girlfriend (totally legal). Maybe the requirements are stricter in my state.
That’s interesting. What qualifies as a violent offender for you? By comparison, I see very few. I only have ever supervised on offender that was in the sexually violent predator unit in my state and he was there for 4 years. As far as the other stuff, definitely computer crimes are in the lead. Every state is different however. Also, there has to be a 3 year difference I believe for teenagers to be convicted and the “victim” has to be under the age or 14 to qualify as a statutory rape.
Questions 1 through 6 have so many variables.
I like the registry, I was amazed at how many sex offenders live in my area. When my son had his paper route I knew which houses that I needed to go with him to collect.
Question 7.
When I was a kid there was a boy down the road that we all considered ‘strange’ and we were never friends with him. He never fit in. Years later over half the houses in our and the neighboring community were being robbed. It was this kid (now grown up) and it turned out his father’s best friend (who we all thought was ‘creepy’) had been molesting him since he was a small boy as well as introducing him to drugs. Now grown he was a drug addict and really messed up mentally. I don’t know the outcome because once it all came out the family packed up and moved.
There was a child molester on the next street over from us. One day he was at the elementary school (where my son was going) and told a little girl there (who lives up the street) that her mother asked him to pick her up from school. He was early 20’s, she was 8. One of the school secretaries was looking out the window and recognized him from the offender site and called the police. His lawyer got him off, said he was just cutting across the school as a short cut. He was forced to move from this neighborhood.
I worked with a guy, an illegal immigrant who likes young girls. He married a woman who had 6 kids by 6 different men, 3 of them young daughters. This was a job where we could bring out kids to work with us and all the women in the place warned other women not to let him near their daughters. We would also warn any young women who came to work to stay away from him and let them know that he is married and has AIDS. Eventually he was caught with his 13 year old foster daughter, was arrested and sent to a jail in Texas. He was supposed to be deported, he’s illegal, a sex offender and has AIDS, but somehow he got out of jail and avoided deportation and is still here. Anytime he gets in trouble he pretends he can’t understand English but anybody who knows him knows he speaks and understand English quite well. Also, because he is Hispanic he has a hyphenated last name and he will switch back and forth between them so he uses one name for daily life and the other name when he gets arrested. He and his wife have a least two children together, something about they can wash his sperm so she doesn’t catch the HIV virus. Every time he would come to work with her daughters I would cringe. His wife knows what he is but she defends him saying that his actions are simply ‘misunderstood’ and that in his culture it’s normal for men to ‘play’ with young girls. He is on the registry but if you don’t know about his other last name you won’t find him.
That first story is sad. Poor kid never had a chance.
Now the illegal alien guy, if caught, would likely qualify for our sexually violent predators program. I’m not sure what you are saying about his sperm. Are you saying there is some sort of magical way to “wash” his sperm to protect his wife from AIDS. Why do you believe he has AIDS? Also, not sure what it is like in Texas, (from my experience, that is NOT the place to get in trouble) but you can contact the local sheriff’s department and inform them about his usage of his last name. I would imagine that given the hispanic population in Texas this is not an uncommon problem.
This is not quite true, although not entirely false.
Cite. IOW if you compare recidivism for child molestation against recidivism for non-child molesters for any offense, the highest risk child molesters (those who attacked victims outside their family, attacked boys, and/or had been previously convicted), re-offended 77% of the time, while non-child molestors re-offended (mostly for property crimes or non-sexual violence) 83.5% of the time. OTOH,
whereas the non-sexual criminals were convicted of sexual crime only 1.5% of the time.
Regards,
Shodan
What do you mean by the pedophile comment?
Also, I would be just a little wary of your source. Not the souce per se, but the time it was cunducted. I don’t have time to really see how they came to these stats but they seem over blown. I try to keep an eye out for more recent research just because it seems folks researching then were making it out to be a much bigger problem than it is. You can try this source. I know, I know, it’s wikapedia, but if the source if from US Department of Justice.
I don’t have the research I have used for work and school with me, but this is more in line with what I have read in the last few years.
I also track the sex offenders for my agency (amazing that there would be three of us on the SD). We don’t have a great many at any one time, but I’ve been tracking them for about 15 years and have seen quite a few.
The majority of the ones I’ve dealt with are for having sex with underage members of the opposite sex (only two of the people I supervised were women). Some were for far worse things, some really bad.
See above. NONE were for anything really minor like urinating in public. And, as Loach pointed out, for it to be a criminal act there has to be a fair bit of difference in the ages of the participants (it varies depending on the age of the younger person - here in Washington if she is 15, then the guy as to be at least four years older for it to be illegal).
As I’ve said, most were pretty minor. Among the worst I had was one who forcibly raped his 14-year old daughter, a man who molested his developmentally disabled granddaughter and his 7-year old great granddaughter (I was actually the arresting officer on that case), and one guy who repeatedly raped his younger brother.
About the same as most other convicted criminals, it seems. One guy I supervised had sex with an underage girl (she was clearly the instigator, but it was still illegal) and he lost his dream of coaching high school sports.
I can’t give you any statistics, but it does happen. Most of the ones I see only deal with later convictions for failing to register as a sex offender, or to notify us when they move.
I think that they are a pretty good tool and generally just. I have seen some (like that kid I mentioned above) who didn’t need to be listed as a sex offender, but I think it’s better to register too many than too few.
I live in Maryland but when he was arrested and convicted he was sent to Texas from what I heard to be deported from there. I don’t know if that is the way it is done or why he couldn’t be deported from here
He is said to have AIDS, neither he not his wife deny it. When she was trying to get pregnant some asked her why in the world she’d have unprotected sex with a man who is HIV positive and she said that the seman was collected and washed to remove the virus. Sounds like BS to me but I’m not a doctor. The last time I saw them he looked fine but she was skeletal, pale, going bald and looks miserable.
I wish I could say I feel sorry for her but I don’t. He was married with children when she pursued him. He was a liar and a cheat then, she knew what he was when she met him, she wanted him so badly now she has him. I feel sorry for the kids. I honestly don’t know how any woman, especially one with young daughters, could date or marry a man who is known to prey on children.
The OP was about sex offenders in general, but my post was in response to clairobscur’s post, which was about child molesters specifically.
What I meant to say was [list=A][li]that the rate of recidivism varies for pedophiles. Those who molest boys, those who have been convicted before, those who molest children outside the family, are very likely to re-offend. Others much less so.[*]that, in many cases, what is being discussed when recidivism is mentioned is how likely the offender is to commit the same sort of offense again. Therefore, when people ask how often child molesters re-offend, they don’t mean “how likely are they to steal a car”. They mean “how likely are they to molest another child”. [/list]IYSWIM.[/li]
I don’t think we are talking about exactly the same thing. I was talking about child molesters in specific, not sex offenders in general.
Regards,
Shodan
I’m not sure they distinguish between the 2 in your area (Canada? I got that from a source you left), but child molesters and pedophiles are not one in the same. Child molesters have sexually offended against a child in some way, but are not necessarily attracted or seek out children. Most of the ones I have supervised were either married or still are. They take advantage of an opportunity for what ever reason. Pedophiles are a group of people that meet diagnostic criteria for pedophilia:
Diagnostic Criteria for Pedophilia in DSM-IV-TR (2000)A. Over a period of at least 6 months, recurrent, intense
sexually arousing fantasies, sexual urges, or behaviors
involving sexual activity with a prepubescent child or
children (generally age 13 years or younger).
B. The person has acted on these sexual urges, or the sexual
urges or fantasies cause marked distress or interpersonal
difficulty.
C. The person is at least age 16 years and at least 5 years
older than the child or children in Criterion A.
Note: Do not include an individual in late adolescence involved
in an ongoing sexual relationship with a 12- or 13-
year-old.
Specify if:
Sexually Attracted to Males
Sexually Attracted to Females
Sexually Attracted to Both
Specify if:
Limited to Incest
Specify type:
Exclusive Type (attracted only to children)
I know it may not seem like to make much of a difference to some people, but basically, a pedophile is a child molester but a child molester may not be a pedophile.
This also opens up another scary consideration. The fact that some people could just possibly be born attracted to children. That’s their sexual orientation, if you will.
I disagree. It can be a good tool but it’s abused. The only reason it’s considered constitutional is because the law has defined it as a civil statute, so having to register for the rest of your life is not considered part of your sentence. People on this registry are getting treated horribly. It’s leading judges to not convict people of these offenses or allowing the plea to things that do not require the registry, which makes it difficult to track just how often then do re-offend. Also, it’s a money pit. It’s only a matter of time before counties just aren’t able to afford it. Also, there is no way off (at least in my state). This leads people to not comply with the law, ie. they don’t register, they lie about where they actually live or just fall off the face of the earth. Nevermind the difficulty it entails when looking for employment or housing. I think it should exist, but it should only be available to law enforcement or after a certain amount of time, the offender should be allowed to come off the public registry.