As the Justice Department reports a two-year decline in the number of wiretap applications approved by a secret U.S. intelligence court, the workload of Justice Department lawyers assigned to request and oversee such sensitive surveillance activities appears to be growing, reports the Washington Post.
Because the Senate failed to confirm James Cole as deputy Attorney General, only Eric Holder or one other confirmed assistant is legally able to sign applications for wiretaps to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. In fiscal 2009, the court approved 1,320 applications, which "usually run 40 to 50 pages" each "The attorney general is feeling oppressed," said one associate with whom Holder spoke recently about the urgent need for a Senate vote. "He is in a bind. I think he's feeling that undertow."
Read full entry »Amazon is no longer selling a self-published guide for pedophiles, the Associated Press reports. It wasn't clear whether Amazon.com Inc. had pulled the item, or whether the author withdrew it. The author, Phillip R. Greaves II of Pueblo, Co., declined comment through a representative.
The availability of the book calls into question whether Amazon has any procedures -- or even an obligation -- to vet books before they are sold in its online stores. The book triggered has outrage from commenters on sites such as Twitter. Two petitions on Facebook alone won more than 13,500 supporters. Christopher Finan of the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression said Amazon has the right under the First Amendment to sell any book that is not child pornography or legally obscene. Finan said Greaves' book doesn't amount to either because it does not include illustrations.
Read full entry »A crackdown on child sex trafficking is being pushed by a growing movement of women's groups, celebrities, human rights activists and state officials, reports USA Today.This month, 22 state attorneys general called on Backpage.com, a classified-ad website, to close its adult-services ads after Craigslist was prodded to do so.In New York City last week, actors Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher announced their "Real Men Don't Buy Girls" campaign against child sex trafficking at the Clinton Global Initiative meeting.
In St. Louis, a lawsuit was filed against Backpage.com, claiming it helped a pimp prostitute a 14-year-old girl. The new efforts paint child prostitution as modern-day slavery, arguing it's a human rights issue rather than a free-speech one. The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children estimates that at least 100,000 American children are victimized each year, often beginning at ages 11 to 14, by criminal networks.
Four years after passage of the federal law creating a national sex offender registry, only a few states have complied.
It starts with the names: Jacob Wetterling, age 11; Megan Kanka, 7; Adam Walsh, 6. All were abducted, the latter two by men with histories of sex offenses.
Wetterling is still missing 21 years later; Kanka and Walsh were found murdered. Their tragic stories propelled enactment of federal laws that aim to prevent future sexual assaults against children.
Congress’ 1994 passage of the Jacob Wetterling Act mandated the creation of state sex offender registries that would be accessible to law enforcement agencies. Two years later, legislators enacted Megan’s Law, requiring states to share those same registries with the public.
Then in 2006, convinced that variation among state registries was allowing offenders to slip across state lines undetected, Congress passed the Adam Walsh Act. It required greater uniformity in state registries and set up a national registry linking them—the Dru Sjodin National Sex Offender Public Website, named for a 22-year-old woman raped and murdered by a convicted sex offender in 2003.
This much seems clear: the public is using the new national registry. For the first time, individuals can search all 50 state registries simultaneously. The site gets 17,000 visits a day, up from 13,000 daily last year.
But despite the registry’s popularity, states have been in near open revolt over the rules that accompanied its creation. National associations that represent state interests, such as the National Governors Association, have called for changes in those regulations or amendments to the law itself.
The issues at stake transcend the red-blue divide—it’s foremost a classic battle over states’ rights. “This law created a one-size-fits all approach to classifying, registering and, in some circumstances, sentencing sex offenders,” reads a policy statement by the National Conference of State Legislatures, which advocates on behalf of state lawmakers. “The provisions of the Adam Walsh Act were crafted without state input or consideration of current state practices.”
And given the condition of most state budgets, the timing couldn’t be worse. “I think all states are concerned about the fiscal impact,” says Elizabeth Pyke of the National Criminal Justice Association, which represents state governments on crime issues. “State budgets are pinched. . . . A large new mandate is the last thing they can take on right now.”
Only 3 States in Compliance
To date, the Department of Justice (DOJ) has determined that only three states have satisfied the law’s requirements: Ohio, Delaware and Florida. Under the statute, states that don’t comply are penalized. The remaining 47 must do so by July 2011 or face a 10 percent cut in their federal crime prevention funds.
The Walsh Act, for example, requires states to classify an offender’s level of risk—and therefore how much time they spend on the registry—based on their offense. But up to 24 states base offenders’ risk not on their offense but on professionally conducted risk assessments, according to Alisa Klein of the Association for the Treatment of Sexual Abusers, an Oregon-based organization of professionals who treat sex offenders, often using such assessments.
These assessments consider a range of factors to develop an overall evaluation of a specific offender’s risk. “Sex offenders differ greatly . . .,” Bob Schilling, a police detective in Seattle’s Sex and Kidnapping Offender Department, told a U.S. House subcommittee last spring. “Assigning sex offender tiers based on crime of conviction tells us very little about who this sex offender is and what his or her risk for re-offense may be.”
Another of the law’s provisions may have onerous budget and legal implications. To ensure that state registries capture information on past offenders, police must conduct background checks on new arrestees to see if they have ever committed a sex offense—even if the offense occurred prior to the new law’s passage. In responses to a survey by the Council of State Governments last year, 20 states said that provision will result in expensive lawsuits and force them to hire more staff to do background checks.
Many states also object to a regulation that they include on their public registries juveniles as young as 14 who commit serious sex offenses. In part, that’s because state juvenile justice systems are set up to rehabilitate rather than punish—an idea that runs counter to placing sex offender teens on a registry.
And youthful offenders do not pose the same risks—recidivism rates for juvenile sex offenders are considerably lower than for other offenders, according to David Finkelhor, who directs the University of New Hampshire’s Crimes Against Children Research Center.
New Rules for Juvenile Offenders
The DOJ is trying to address that issue. On May 14, it proposed new rules permitting states to exempt those under 18 from their public registries. (States still will be required to put the most serious juvenile offenders on registries that are accessible by law enforcement.)
It’s unclear whether that change will be enough to get most states to sign on. Linda Baldwin, who directs the DOJ unit that oversees the Adam Walsh Act, says that “a number” of states have submitted compliance packages, though she declined to say how many.
But Andrew Harris, a University of Massachusetts researcher who has surveyed states about their plans to comply, says the “vast majority” are not moving toward compliance. “I think what states are hoping for at this point is that there might be some Congressional movement on the issue in the next year and that they might get some modifications to the law,” he says. (Two state attorneys general who have expressed objections to the law did not return calls for this story about their state’s plans.)
If Congress doesn’t amend the law, states will continue managing their registries their own way—but with less federal money than before. And they’ll continue to hear from parents of some of the most prominent victims, who have formed the Surviving Parents Coalition to lobby for stronger child protection legislation. One of them is Linda Walker, mother of the 2003 rape and murder victim Dru Sjodin. She says that by not complying with the Adam Walsh Act, states are “playing Russian Roulette with our children.”
That’s the kind of sentiment that can make governors and state legislators run for political cover. As a result, some may try to thread the needle: Harris knows of states that haven’t substantially changed their laws to accord with the Walsh Act but are applying for DOJ approval anyway. Harris says their message to the federal government is, “Look, this is what we’re doing. . .Either approve it or don’t.”
Steve Yoder is a freelance journalist based in Woodstock, New York.
Read full entry »St. Paul lawyer Jeff Anderson wants people who download child pornography to be scared, says the St. Paul Pioneer Press. He vows to hunt down and expose anyone who so much as peeks at computer images of child porn. Anderson said lawsuit he filed yesterday is the beginning of an initiative to stop the sexual exploitation of children at its source.
Defendants are former St. Paul schoolteacher and foster parent Gregg Alan Larsen and 100 as-yet-unnamed downloaders of child pornography. Larsen, 49, of Minneapolis was indicted in federal court and charged with production, distribution and possession of child porn involving, in one case, a child he was acquainted with through his own children. Anderson said the Larsen case will be the first in which he has taken advantage of the federal Masha's Law, which says anyone who produces, distributes or downloads child pornography can be held civilly liable for damages of not less than $150,000 per download. The law was named for a 5-year-old Russian orphan adopted by an American man who began abusing her the first night she spent with him. He created and distributed hundreds of pornographic images on the Internet.
Read full entry »Should there be a statute of limitations on sexual abuse? An effort by New York legislators to bring accountability for sexual abuse to the Catholic clergy has grown to cover people in other occupations, such as teachers. One proposal would allow people to file lawsuits as much as 40 years after alleged abuse. New York Times columnist Jim Dwyer writes, "It is a collision of powerful civic values: the need to provide justice to people who were outrageously injured as children and manipulated into silence, and the duty of courts to decide cases based on reliable evidence."
The proposed changes were not controversial when they applied only to the clergy. But after much debate, the bill was amended to include governments and their employees. "Suddenly," Dwyer writes, "lobbyists and advocates for school boards, counties and small towns spoke out." “Statutes of limitation exist for a reason,” said Bob Lowry, the deputy director of the New York State Council of School Superintendents. “How can anyone go back 40 years and ascertain what happened? Witnesses, responsible authorities, even the perpetrator himself or herself, may have passed away.”
Read full entry »California is paying about $2,000 a month in rent, utilities, food and water for a sexually violent predator to live in an unincorporated desert, and residents are not happy about it, reports USA Today. One resident said the offender, Steven Willett, 57, was "dumped in the desert." He has a criminal record that includes four felony convictions for sex crimes. After Willett's last prison stint ended in 1997, he was declared a sexually violent predator by a judge and committed to a state mental health hospital under California's Sexually Violent Predator Law, which allows for civil commitment for sex offenders found to pose extreme danger to society.
His relocation last September to housing in the remote area — after both a doctor and then a judge in 2007 determined Willett would not be a danger to others while under supervision and treatment in the community — has generated anger in the community and is an example of the issues states face as they pass or refine laws regarding released sex offenders and where they can live. California is one of 20 states to allow civil commitment of violent sexual offenders determined to have mental disorders likely to cause them to strike again.
Read full entry »A woman who became a star victim in the netherworld of child pornography when she was photographed and videotaped by her uncle is demanding that everyone convicted of possessing an image of her pay damages until her total claim of $3.4 million has been met, reports the New York Times. Images from the so-called "Misty series" often turn up in the collections of those arrrested for possessing illegal images. Some experts argue that forcing payment from people who do not produce such images but only possess them goes too far.
The issue is part of a larger debate over fairness in sentencing sex offenders. For years, lawmakers (and some voters) have reasoned that virtually no punishment was too severe for such criminals; even statutory limits on sentencing were often exceeded. Now some courts have begun to push back, saying these heavy sentences are improper, and a new emphasis has arisen on making sex offenders pay monetary damages for their crimes. If such damages become widespread, experts say, it may make it easier to reach a consensus on measured sentencing.
Read full entry »The California Supreme Court on Monday made sure the state's controversial Jessica's Law will remain clouded by legal uncertainties for the foreseeable future, even though it ruled that the state can continue restricting convicted sex offenders from living near parks, schools and other spots where children gather, says the San Jose Mercury News. In a 5-2 ruling, the Supreme Court dodged the central issue in a challenge to the 2006 law's residency restrictions. But the justices rejected several legal arguments against the measure, keeping the law in place for the time being.
The justices concluded that the law could apply to thousands of sex offenders who were on parole when Proposition 83 was adopted, even if their crimes and convictions predated passage of the law. The justices, however, did not rule on the most sweeping argument in the challenge to Jessica's Law: that it is so broad and intrusive, it violates the constitutional rights of convicted sex offenders. The court ordered further hearings on that issue because of the need to evaluate the factual claims of the four sex offenders represented in the case.
Read full entry »At any one time, some 750,000 pedophiles are prowling the Internet in a virtual epidemic of child pornography. To fight it, law enforcement officers from all over go to a building in South Florida for access to the most advanced technology for finding pedophiles, reports the St. Petersburg Times. But this isn't run by any government agency. The desks, computers and technology are provided free by Hank Asher, a former drug smuggler who has made a fortune collecting public records and combining them into databases that can be invaluable in locating people.
Asher's best-known product is Accurint. Now he is building a super computer and a database "a thousand times more powerful" than anything he has developed yet. It's a project that worries privacy-rights advocates and other critics. They wonder if Asher's real reason for donating some of his technology to government agencies is to get access to confidential data like firearms registries, tax information, even health records — information that could be a boon to businesses and an unprecedented intrusion into the lives of millions of Americans.
Read full entry »In a closely watched test of a federal anti-child pornography law, a judge has refused to order a Texas man to pay nearly $3.4 million in restitution to a girl depicted in photos of child pornography he downloaded from the Internet, reports the Christian Science Monitor. Prosecutors urged the judge to order Doyle Paroline to pay full restitution for her injuries, including her sexual abuse by an uncle 12 years ago and the continued traffic in her photos on the web.
Paroline has been sentenced to serve two years for possession of child pornography. Based on federal law, prosecutors were seeking to impose the same high level of restitution as would be imposed against those who physically abused a child, photographed the abuse, and distributed the images. But U.S. District Judge Leonard Davis ruled the government had failed to prove the precise nature of the injuries caused by the man's possession of two images of the girl. Congress established tough sentences not only for production of such outlawed images but also possession of them, in an effort to address a thriving international market for child porn. The law includes a provision for mandatory payment of "the full amount of the victim's losses."
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A Q&A with former Los Angeles prosecutor Robin Sax
Child sexual predators are every parent’s worst nightmare, and the recent discovery of Jaycee Lee Dugard, the kidnapped California woman who had been kept for 18 years by a known sex offender sparked new fears about how well law enforcement is monitoring the most dangerous criminals among us. Sex crimes expert and former Los Angeles County Prosecutor Robin Sax and author of, “Predators and Child Molesters: What Every Parent Needs to Know to Keep Kids Safe” tells The Crime Report’s Cary Chu the raw truth about child molestation and what we can learn from the Dugard case.
The Crime Report: How can law enforcement help prevent In light of the Jaycee Lee Dugard case how can prosecution and probation prevent future cases?
Robin Sax: There needs to be more of a coordinated effort between the court and parole in terms of making sure what type of perpetrators are on parole. For example, a rape charge can be either for adult or child assault, and there needs to be a clear identification of whom and what the charges was the basis of conviction. Sometimes if there’s a plea bargain, if you only get a rape charge, you may not get the full exact story of what occurred.
In the Dugard case specifically, this is a case of parole dropping the ball. Their responsibility is to follow up and watch their parolees, know what they’re doing and making sure they’re not a threat to the community.
TCR: Would any sex offender legislation such as registration have helped?
Sax: He (Phillip Garrado) was registered [as a sex offender]. It’s frustrating because the anti-registration people are using this example of why registration doesn’t work. This was a lapse of intelligence in the responsibility of local agencies in gathering information about Garrado.
What also went wrong were the sexually violent predator (SVP) laws weren’t followed through. Under specific provisions, Garrado should have been in custody for life. He had two prior cases of kidnapping that would’ve justified a civil commitment. He shouldn’t have been out to begin with.
TCR: Most sex offender legislation involves registration. Is there anything that can be done to prevent first time offenders?
Sax: The best thing that could be done to deter offenders is to raise the awareness in victims. If you encouraged people to start coming forward to talk about it, then perpetrators wouldn’t have that power of silence over victims.
Discussed in the book:
Sexual abusers have a preexisting relationship with a child or children. Some of the things to watch out for are whether or the person has a history of sexually abusive behavior, or being abused, special access to children, and ability to isolate the child in one-on-one situations.
TCR: You mention in your book that most sexual abuse victims are assaulted by someone they know. How can prosecutors build a case with support of the family without damaging their relationship with the victim?
Sax: The key is, first of all, to treat the whole family as a victim of the crime. Someone who betrays the trust of a parent of the victim basically victimizes the whole family. We can get them to cooperate by making them understand they have also been victimized by the perpetrator.
The other thing is to recognize that sex crimes can be perpetrated by all kinds of people. There are people who seem kind, smart, and nice who are also perpetrators. If someone’s a good businessman, a nice woman, or a great teacher, it doesn’t mean that they can’t be abusing kids.
TCR: How likely is a guilty verdict for cases that reach trial?
Sax: The chances of a guilty verdict go down exponentially once there’s a trial, compared to cases that go to plea bargaining. Juries can be strange. You might have a jury come back with a guilty verdict on a particular charge and not guilty on another charge, with no rhyme or reasonable explanation. Juries are keenly aware of punishment and can have a difficult time sitting in judgment of other people.
The strength of corroborating evidence (ex. forensic evidence such as DNA matching) affects the likelihood the jury will convict, which in turn affects what type of plea bargain will be offered.
TCR: How many of your sexual assault cases ended in plea bargains?
Sax: I would say 85 percent of my cases ended in plea bargaining. Plea bargains aren’t always a bad result for the victim and the public, as an example would be if someone who faces a life sentence plea out to 40 years would be considered a good result.
TCR: You mention how media coverage can affect individual child sex assault cases. What in particular hurts or helps a case?
Sax: Sometimes the media can help in terms of driving awareness and putting pressure on lawyers and judges in making sure that they’re properly handling these cases. It could also have the opposite effect as well, as pressure makes those involved in the case show off for the media, put additional pressure on a child victim, and make a victim not want to participate in trial.
TCR: Has the media ever hurt any of your cases?
Sax: They have not. I had a case where I thought the media had a good effect. It was a case of a child sexual assault by a teacher (Thomas Arthur Beltran) that the media picked up, and we ended up getting victims from all over the world contacting us, saying that they were victimized. It was the power of positive media coverage that encouraged people to come forward.
TCR: What solutions do you see for keeping sexual predators away from children?
Sax: A top priority for me would be to limit the amount of continuances that happen in cases, and to really make child sexual assault cases a priority by judges over other types of cases. I’ve had situations where judges say that their attention is on other cases. The penal code says that child sexual assault cases get priority, so it’s not a matter of law not having merit, but rather it not being followed through. If more people were educated and trained in these issues, they would have the power of the public to advocate. Sometimes bringing things to the public view shames the people of power to make change.
Cary Chu is the social media intern at The Crime Report.
Read full entry »"For a variety of reasons, few of them valid, the child-molester has become the pre-eminent domestic villain of our time," writes Mark Bowden in Vanity Fair. Bowden details a Philadelphia prosecution to explain the "murky world" of undercover cops' seeeking molesters on the Internet. A Justice Department program supports 59 investigative units around the nation; last year, they arrested more than 3,100 people. Still, the fear of online child predation has grown far out of proportion to the actual problem.
Supposedly, one in seven children have been approached by a sexual predator on the Internet, says the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children. Actually, at least half the solicitations are teens approaching other teens. Only 3 percent of contacts are adult strangers attempting to seduce a child. Sexual assaults on teens fell dramatically—by 52 percent—between 1993 and 2005, says the Justice Department’s National Crime Victimization Survey. Vanity Fair shows how prosecutions of men who may or may not have any record or real plans of molesting children are able to avoid defenses of entrapment.
Read full entry »Writing in Vanity Fair, journalist and author Mark Bowden looks into the world of online sex predators and those who pose as children to attempt to catch them. He writes he found a "gray area of thoughts, intentions and predispositions and "the equally murky realm of enticement and entrapment" where "the pursuer and the pursued grow entangled in a transaction that takes on a gruesome life of its own."
Bowden writes, "Entrapment has long been a factor in the enforcement of vice laws, which seek to punish behavior that is furtive and widespread...American courts have long recognized the right of police to invent ruses. Sting operations flourish in a climate of fear. Courts and lawmakers become less and less scrupulous about basic fairness. The more frightening and reprehensible the threat, the more license and latitude are given to the police. For a variety of reasons, few of them valid, the child-molester has become the pre-eminent domestic villain of our time."
Read full entry »California parole officials who oversaw the man now charged with Jaycee Dugard's abduction and years-long sexual bondage repeatedly missed chances to discover Jaycee and her girls, according to a scathing report by a state watchdog agency. The report by the Inspector General's Office chides parole officials who have repeatedly claimed that Garrido complied fully with his parole conditions, reports the Contra Costa Times. The review concluded that Garrido committed numerous parole violations.
Convicted in the 1976 kidnapping and rape of a South Lake Tahoe woman, Garrido spent more than a decade in federal prison. He was under federal parole supervision in the decade following his release in 1988 — the period when Dugard was abducted at age 11, taken to Antioch and gave birth to the two daughters authorities say Garrido fathered.
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