As so many have done recently, Josh Gravens wrote an open letter to Lena Dunham. It read, “Many children around the country did the same thing you did.” But this was not just another defense of Dunham’s childhood behavior as innocent exploration. The letter continued, “A 9-year-old in South Carolina is now on the sex offender registry for life, and he also must wear a GPS monitor everywhere he goes. In fact, many states have no minimum age to be placed on the sex offender registry,” he wrote. “I myself was placed on the Texas Sex Offender Registry for a choice made when I was 12 years old. I touched my 8-year-old sister twice.”…. Gravens only recently, at the age of 25, was removed from the public sex offender registry after being the subject of an excellent Texas Observer article and petitioning a judge.
Time was when the idea of a sex offender registry made sense. I mean, who would question the wisdom of a system designed to keep sexual predators from preying on women and children…right? There’s certainly value to society to be found in notifying people when a sex offender moves into their city or neighborhood. Protecting public safety is generally considered to be a good thing. Unfortunately, somewhere along the way state sex offender registries went completely off the rails and became something altogether different from their original intent.
Something is horribly, irretrievably wrong when a 9- or 12-year-old is placed on a sex offender registry. A child commits when in the adult world would be considered a sexual offense…and they’re branded for life. Make a childish, stupid, ill-informed choice, or engage in inappropriate sexual exploration…and you’re on a list that will follow you around and make your life a living Hell. For the rest of your life. Is that REALLY the appropriate use of a sex offender registry? Are we really OK with the idea of branding a child for life? Are we really that inhuman and unforgiving?
At some point, sex offender registries went from being reasonable, common sense tools for protecting public safety to a way to publicly shame and brand people with a mark they can never, ever hope to be rid of. No matter what they do for the rest of their life or how well they do it, they will always be defined by whatever their particular sexual indiscretion might have been. Even an innocent one may have lifelong consequences.
I don’t mean to imply that there aren’t those who shouldn’t be on a registry. There absolutely are predators who should be barred from normal human interaction because they’ve demonstrated themselves incapable of or unwilling to respect socially recognized sexual boundaries. That said, I can think of no conceivable public interest to can be served by putting a 12-year-old boy on a sex offender registry FOR THE REST OF HIS (OR HER) LIFE.
The registry is not a tool of education, it’s not a tool that helps reduce sexual assault, it doesn’t do anything except function as a modern day stockade.
Josh Gravens’ experience is something no minor child should have to endure. He went to prison for 3 1/2 years for something he did when he was 12. He grew up in a hyper-religious home where sex was never discussed…so how could he have been expected to understand even the most basic concepts of sexuality?
Sex offender registries are no longer about public safety. They’re about making people FEEL safe. They’re about branding people with a modern day scarlet letter, They’re about politicians scoring political points by claiming to be “tough on crime” and that they’re the “law and order” candidate. It’s not about public safety, and it’s certainly not about rehabilitation. It’s about marginalizing an entire class of people because we find them and their crimes morally objectionable and disgusting. While some of that fear and loathing may be justifiable in some cases, since when are we OK with the idea of tossing people aside like garbage? What incentive does a person have to be and do better when there’s no reward available for doing so?
Being on a sex offender registry can impact every aspect of a person’s life…from employment to housing to education to relationships and beyond. I would agree that there are some- the worst of the worst- whom should probably forever be denied membership in polite society…but what is right or justifiable about tossing a 12-year-old boy out with the trash?
We deserve better.
