ConstitutionalFights received this (edited) letter from a Mother of a Registered Sex Offender in Colorado. Click here to view the entire letter:
I am writing this to plead with congress, our state and house representatives and the President of the United States to spare my son and other boys like him. He is currently 17 years old and is serving up to 2 years at Lookout Mountain Youth Correctional Facility. Why is he there you might ask? No sugar coating why. When he was 14, his girlfriend (also 14) was going to summer school in June 2006. He was being a gentleman and walking her to school everyday, even though he wasn‘t going to summer school. On this particular day, she wanted to skip school but was afraid to get into trouble. She told my son that if she got caught she was going to tell her parents he kidnapped her and forced her from the school.
They were ‘making out’ behind a church and he tried to give her a hickie and touched her breast above her clothing (something they had done many times). She freaked out and went to a friends house. They called the police. A month later my son is being charged with attempted rape, assault in the 3rd degree, unlawful sexual contact, kidnapping, and threatening bodily harm if she tried to get away.
Charges were delivered just before his 15th birthday in November 2006. I quickly got him an attorney. My son plead guilty to Unlawful sexual contact and 3rd degree assault. He had to say he touched her breast and hit her. He had to plead, there was no choice. At that point in time he became a Sexual Offender for 2 years. After we went to the probation department, we found out he was being labeled a Violent Sexual Offender since they look at the original charges to determine his risk to the community.
Now enter the Adam Walsh Act. This is an abomination to my son’s present sentence. Why should his sentence be extended after he has finished and successfully completed his treatment? Why should he have to register ( or re-register) with pedophiles, rapists and murderers? He is not a violent sexual predator. If he is, then every male in our country could also be considered a sexual predator. He made a poor choice. He is being punished to the extreme when considering what he did. He is a child and I thought children needed to learn from their mistakes. Once he was placed on probation he wasn’t allowed to make ANY mistakes (not even minor ones). Learning stops when someone is in that position. I couldn’t punish him for back talking, not cleaning his room, bad grades, etc because he was already being punished to the point that nothing was left for me to restrict.
We don’t need a new law, we need to fix the old one. Take the registry we have and make it work like it was intended. To keep track of the real predators and sex offenders in our country and to warn families, schools, and the general public of the whereabouts of these people. I do feel that some information needs to be kept private from the public. These individuals still have rights and shouldn’t be harassed or stalked by vigilantes. Vigilantes use the SO websites to get their ‘mark’ and that is wrong, especially since so many of them shouldn‘t be on the SO list. We have state to state lists, there is no need for a national list. Once these individuals have served their time and paid their debt to society, by successfully completing the SO program, they should be allowed to be return as productive members of society again. Look at all the tax money we would be literally burning because we are watching the wrong people. They could get good jobs and generate tax dollars that our government could use to keep track of the re-offenders. But if they have to continue to register, chances are they are going to have low paying jobs that make little or no tax dollars for our government to use for all the projects it has. Making them repay and re-register is a crime in itself. At least murders and other career criminals get three strikes before they get treated as harshly as SO’s will be under AWA.
Sincerely,
Tressie T.
Mother of a Violent Sex Offender
Colorado Springs, CO
