News & Updates

A question for our local elected officials: Who wants to be seen as pro-sex offender? Anyone? Anyone? Here’s the latest politicized push that could accomplish little and maybe even do some harm: local governments looking to all but ban sex offenders from living in our midst. And no, this doesn’t sound like a bad idea, until you consider the actual

A Motion for Preliminary Injunction was filed on February 19 asking the U.S. District Court to stop implementation of International Megan’s Law (formerly HR 515 and now Public Law 114-119). If granted, the motion would temporarily prohibit the federal government from both adding a conspicuous, unique identifier to the passports of registrants and notifying foreign countries of registrants’ plans to

By Lenore Skenazy One day after Pres. Obama signed legislation that will brand the passports of sex offenders last week, a federal court challenge was filed against it. The International Megan’s Law is supposedly a way to alert foreign countries to sex offenders who may be traveling there for sex tourism or trafficking purposes. Of course, who isn’t against sex

Ten years ago videographer/photographer Max Schulte and I did a project about sex offenders in Monroe County. The project — the first largely video project at the Democrat and Chronicle — focused on how state lawmakers created laws that greatly increased the number of sex offenders on public registries, but the state provided little in the way of additional resources for police and

[FAC COMMENTARY INSERTED]   TAMPA — There are so few places for newly registered sex offenders to live in Pasco County that Hillsborough County officials worry they’ll start moving here. The solution? Make it as hard for them to live in Hillsborough as it is to live in Pasco. [SO THIS ‘SOLUTION’ DOES NOT SOLVE THE PROBLEM OF SEXUAL OFFENDING,

When police arrived at her house to arrest her on May 8, 2013, Tammy Bond turned to her niece and said: “Aunt Tammy did something wrong.” At age 45, she had a sexual relationship with a 16-year-old. She was convicted of aggravated criminal sexual abuse and, like 26,000 others in Illinois, required to register as a sex offender for the