The public “sex offender” label has become an invitation for vigilantism. The risk to property, to innocent family members, and to the community is real. Combining the label with a person’s identity and location invites mob justice. Residences become targets. Families become collateral damage. Wives, husbands, children, parents, and neighbors all bear the consequences.

No other class of people is expected to live under the constant threat of a crowd outside their front door. We see it over and over, and over again. This label results in harassment, assaults, arson, murders, and countless cases of mistaken identity around the world. Public registries don’t simply “provide information”, they create targets and invite further harm.

The UK registry is not public – yet an online rumor led to this lynch mob. Here in the US, names, photos, addresses, and vehicle information are all publicly accessible.

The United States has now witnessed countless documented cases of people on the registry being harassed, assaulted, shot, beaten, set on fire, and even murdered simply because their names and addresses were made publicly available. Family members and innocent bystanders have also been threatened, harmed or killed as collateral damage..

At some point, can the government honestly continue to describe the registry as a “public safety tool”? The growing body of evidence suggests it’s a system that predictably facilitates violence. FAC suggests it’s a government-sponsored hit list.

END THE REGISTRY!

The post UK: This is what it means to live with the “sex offender” label. appeared first on Florida Action Committee (FAC).

Darien Lombrana is accused of using social media to “harass, annoy, alarm, abuse, torment, and embarrass” a registered sex offender, according to court records.

The sheriff’s office said she posted about the family “over and over” on social media sites and community pages. Additionally, court records show she posted their address online with the intent to cause harm.

The victims in the case admitted to ABC13 that the man is a registered sex offender, but said the alleged harassment has impacted the entire family. They tell ABC13 that it includes children who were born decades after the man was placed on the registry.

SOURCE

The post TX: Woman charged with harassing sex offender and his family, sheriff’s office says appeared first on Florida Action Committee (FAC).

The teen proceeded to travel around town, accosting and threatening people convicted of sex crimes, and occasionally shooting at them with the BB gun. On March 15, he was arrested on suspicion of brandishing a weapon and assault with a firearm, according to police and court records.

The alleged targeting of sex offenders is reminiscent of a more serious incident last year, in Fremont, where a 29-year-old man allegedly posed as an accountant, went to the home of a convicted child molester, and killed him, later allegedly bragging to police how good it felt to stab the victim.

In both cases, the sex offenders were targeted through Megan’s Law, a site that tracks people convicted of various sexual offenses and publicly lists their photographs and addresses.

SOURCE

The post CA: Walnut Creek boy set out to hunt sex offenders with his BB gun appeared first on Florida Action Committee (FAC).

It says a lot about our society when an individual charged with killing someone was able to attract widespread public sympathy, financial support, and a community willing to rally to his defense. Yet when people on the sex offender registry seek help rebuilding their lives, finding housing or a job, they are met with hostility, public shaming, and demands that they be permanently excluded from society. Where is the sympathy for the murder victim or his family?

Shameful!

SOURCE

The post Even the Accused Killer Gets More Sympathy appeared first on Florida Action Committee (FAC).

Police said that on June 9, someone reported that Neal “had told her that he had killed someone, but they were a rapist and missing, and that he disposed of the body,” the affidavit stated.

Detectives found traces of missing 56-year-old XXXXXXXXX’s DNA in Kian Andrew Neal’s vehicle, according to an affidavit from Collegedale
Police.

Authorities found Locke’s DNA in several areas of the vehicle, along with a knife, pillow and sawhorses. On June 12, the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation confirmed blood to be on one of the items from the vehicle.

According to the Tennessee Sex Offender Registry, the victim, XXXXXXXX, was a registered sex offender. He was convicted of child molestation in 2003.

SOURCE

The post OH: Knife, blood, sawhorses found in 18-year-old’s car; charged with homicide of sex offender appeared first on Florida Action Committee (FAC).

The stranger was not trying to be helpful. He sounded amused.

Mr. Singhania hung up and tried to call Akash, 25, who lived in Dallas but was visiting Los Angeles. He did not pick up.

The family had turned on location sharing on their iPhones, so Mr. Singhania could see where Akash was: Santa Ana, just south of Los Angeles. Mr. Singhania called the Santa Ana police department while his wife called their other son to get him searching, too.

Akash’s brother found him. He sent his parents a link to a show on the livestreaming service Kick called “CATCHING CHILD PREDATORS!” Mr. Singhania’s wife slipped a nitroglycerin pill under her tongue because she felt as if she was going to have a heart attack.

Not long before, in a suburban park 1,500 miles away in Santa Ana, a half dozen people crouched behind a vine-covered wall, whispering and pumping themselves up for a confrontation. They were led by a man in a hooded sweatshirt named Vitaly who provided a running commentary to a camera, energy drink in hand. Akash was coming to the park to hook up with a woman he had met online. The woman had been texting Akash on a hookup app, but she was a decoy working with Vitaly and his crew, and told them that Akash thought she was 16.

Vitaly shadowboxed with a tree while waiting for Akash and the woman to walk past the hiding spot. As the minutes passed, the number of people watching the livestream ticked up to more than 24,000. Akash and the woman finally appeared and, as the woman peeled off, Vitaly sprung out of hiding. He rushed toward Akash, calling out “Mr. Mumbai” and dancing around him in a crude Bollywood style, singing in a bad Indian accent, “You want to rape a 16-year-old.”

READ HOW IT WINDS UP

The post NYT: They Tried to Catch a Predator. They Trapped Themselves Instead. appeared first on Florida Action Committee (FAC).

The sheriff’s office said these claims are fraudulent.

According to the sheriff’s office, anyone who receives a call like this:

Do not send money
Do not provide personal information
Hang up immediately
Report the incident to law enforcement

Anyone who was contacted by these scammers is asked to call the sheriff’s office.

SOURCE

The post GA: Scammers threatening to label victims as sex offenders unless they pay appeared first on Florida Action Committee (FAC).

“I thought, ‘You know what? I’m gonna reach out to you guys because … if I don’t do something, (what if) somebody else loses their life because I didn’t take action?’ the husband and father told Target 8 Monday.

He wasn’t willing to risk it.

“The other sex offenders that live in the area that don’t know (about what happened) could get attacked,” he explained.

READ MORE

The post MI: Sex offender reports confrontation, assault by kids appeared first on Florida Action Committee (FAC).

This week, however, the criminal charges against the embalmer were dismissed.

According to reports, prosecutors ultimately dismissed the charges after the woman took a “class”. A class?!?! The message sent to the public is that when the target is a registered sex offender, even grotesque acts of vigilantism are often met with shrugs, jokes, or outright approval.

If the victim had been anyone else, the outrage would be immediate and universal. But because the deceased person was on the registry, much of the public reaction instead bordered on celebration. Suggesting he “deserved it”.

This was a crime. Period! Once we begin excusing crimes because we dislike the victim, we erode the very principles that separate a lawful society from mob justice.

What makes this case concerning is how normalized these attitudes have become toward people on the registry. Society has increasingly accepted vigilantism, harassment, banishment, threats, unwarranted termination of employment, homelessness, and violence directed at registrants as somehow understandable or deserved. In most cases, crimes committed against registrants are not investigated, minimized, mocked, or treated as less serious because of who the victim was.

FAC has long warned about the dangers of dehumanization. Once society accepts the idea that certain people are no longer entitled to dignity, rights, or protection under the law, it becomes easier to justify increasingly extreme conduct against them. History repeatedly shows where that road leads.

The law must apply equally, or it ultimately protects no one at all.

The post Charges Dropped Against Embalmer Accused of Mutilating Sex Offender’s Corpse appeared first on Florida Action Committee (FAC).

Now, contrast that with what we’ve been reporting on this past week. Individuals on the registry are facing 10+ years in prison not for committing a new sex offense, but for technical, often unintentional registration violations. In one recent example, a person was hit with a staggering $950,000 bond simply for failing to register a storage unit they were reportedly sleeping in.

Let that sink in. On one hand, you have an intentional act with intentional and real risk to human life — met with a comparatively modest bond and a six-year sentence. On the other, you have paperwork-related offenses often rooted in confusion, poverty, or instability—being treated with a level of severity that rivals or exceeds serious felonies.

If hunting down a registrant and setting fire to their home draws less pretrial scrutiny and a shorter sentence than failing to properly document where you sleep, something in the balance seems… off.

The post Six Years for Arson, $20K Bond, But Forget to Update Your Registration and It’s a Whole Different Story appeared first on Florida Action Committee (FAC).