A picture is worth a thousand words…

First let me insert the disclaimer that sexual abuse is a serious crime. Victims of sexual assault are deserving of justice and offenders are deserving of a punishment that is commensurate with the crime they committed. This post is not intended to mitigate or excuse the offenses described, but merely to illustrate that a one-size-fits-all registry and long-term registration does not achieve the purpose of identifying dangerous offenders in our community.

If you were a teenage boy growing up in the United States, chances are you had a picture in your bedroom of some gorgeous actress or model that you fantasized about.

Depending on how liberal your parents were, it might have been a poster on your wall or a magazine cut out under your mattress. Depending on the decade you grew up in, it might have been Farrah Fawcett or Pamela Anderson.

In any case; chances are the debate amongst teenage boys is certainly more likely to be which part of their anatomy they would be willing to lose forever in exchange for having just one sexual encounter with one of these hotties, rather than how frightened they are that they will be assaulted by one.

Take for example this picture:

That’s a picture of one of Baltimore’s newest sex offenders. A former Ravens cheerleader who had sex with a 15 year old at a vacation home in Delaware.

Without knowing the circumstances of the crime it’s difficult to pass judgment, but by looking at this picture it makes you wonder ‘exactly how unwilling was the 15 year old in this encounter?’ Was the encounter something that he will be emotionally scarred by for years or smiling about for days?

Anyhow… my post isn’t necessarily about this case. It’s about a picture. You see a picture and you jump to conclusions.

The same way you see a picture on the registry and you jump to conclusions.

A fellow FAC member and activist recently shared two pictures with me; the first was his current picture on the FL registry and the second was the mugshot from his arrest.His was a Romeo and Juliet offense, he being over 18 and his girlfriend 15, but it was consensual.

From looking at his FDLE flier today you see a pudgy, balding guy pushing 40. Looking at his mugshot almost 20 years ago, you see a youthful, athletic kid! You put each picture above a caption that says ‘this guy had sex with a 15 year old’ and they tell completely different stories!

Unfortunately, on the FDLE Fliers, there is no opportunity to present a thousand words. No opportunity to explain that the relationship was consensual, that it happened 20 years ago, that you are not a middle-aged pervert but used to be a naive kid too who did something stupid and have done nothing wrong since.

In these cases, neither “sex offender” is likely the monster that parents are panicking about or 15 year-olds are are having nightmares over. Unfortunately, when the registry is loaded up with the majority of people who are not the ones we should be afraid of, it’s really hard to distinguish the ones we should be.