Proposed Kansas sex offender law gets bad review

   Proposals for keeping sex offenders from living close to schools or day care centers may appear attractive politically, but they won't protect children, Kansas state Sen. John Vratil of Leawood said Thursday.

   The assessment from Vratil, the Judiciary Committee Chairman, came a day after Iowa officials warned Kansas legislators against passing such restrictions, saying they actually put communities at greater risk.

   Vratil, a Republican, and other members of a committee studying judiciary issues this summer and fall had a hearing Wednesday on whether the state should prevent sex offenders from living within a certain distance - such as 1,000 feet or 1,500 feet - of schools and day care centers. The study committee took no action.

Posted by Keith Chrostowski

Comments

What they found out in Des Moines is that it groups all the offenders nto extremely small areas. This causes good communication amongst the perverts. They get together and talk to each other about their perverted dreams. They actually escaate each other and make it worse.

[Heylee]

hi. i dont.

escaate. Nice choice of words

Get a life beyond Nancy Grace and Dateline Predator.

[Nick]

Des Moines didn't find out squat. They just stated the obvious. These guys already know each other from doing time in the same cellhouses when their crimes carried 1 to 2 year sentences.
Like all other humans, these guys will always seek out those of like mind, and distance will do nothing more than to "spread the virus" ruining more and more decent neighborhoods.
Besides, I'd find anything John Vitral said highly suspicious in the first place. Perverts and baby rapers still have a voice in Topeka, and until they are weeded out of our government, there will be those that champion their cause.

[Mike Shaw]

Ha, if only Vratil were truly a Republican. I have absolutely no problem with Moderate Republicans (or Democrats for that matter) but Vratil has paraded himself around as a Republican for far too long. .... He's horrible for the party, and horrible for the state.

[John Prock]

Change the law to extermination of all convicted predators, an adjustment day for democracy.

[TheKansan]

Saying a person can't live within so many feet of a school won't stop anything. That person could walk into any neighborhoodand right up to a school if they wanted. Its not like there is a force field around the area. The only thing it does is prevents sex predators from sleeping near a school, not being near a school. Laws like this are idiotic.

What about those people who really are reformed? They are not repeat offenders and perhaps have lived for years without any additional problems. Do they deserve to be treated as less than human?

[I. Walter Jones]

All States should pass a law that any Sex Offender found guilty will spend the rest of his or her life behind bars without a chance to step back in any community.

How do you like those apples. There are others countries in the world don't play with Sex Offenders only in America.

IWJ

[Chuck]

Lets see, a law that keeps "sexual predators" from living close to schools...Boy, that'll stop em. As long as they live more than a 1,000 ft. from the schools, they'll never strike again...

Once again, another bad idea that doesn't make anyone actually safer, but gives the public the false impression that "something" is being done.

Hey! Here's another one. I bet ya if we build a fence along the border, it'll stop illegal immigration. No person on earth is smart enough to overcome the challenges of the "mighty fence."

[Edward Bull]

As an attorney who works in Des Moines, and successfully defeated our 2000 foot rule, I can tell you that the law absolutely does not work. It is impossible to enforce, and it doesnt make anyone safer. We have found that sex offenders can live in their homes or be at places, say hanging out in front a school as long as they sleep somewhere else. As a result most people simply head to a local rest stop on a highway to spend the night. The law doesn't protect anyone. I am all for making our communities safer, this law does just the opposite, it forces all sex offenders to live in one place. As our law is written, a person can never get off this list, so for example, a person is 18 has sex with a 15 yearold and as a result is convicted of Sex Abuse. It is now 20 years later, the person has had no run ins with the law, is married has 3 kids of their own. This guy now has to move himself and his family into an area that no one but sex offenders can live in. Placing his children at risk. This law is affecting the streaker at graduation, who now is a sex offender. Only the people that register are affected. The true result is that more and more people are simply disappearing. In Iowa, we know where less sex offenders are today then a year ago.
It would be nice if our legislatures would get smart on crime, instead of just looking tough on crime.

[Cool Rich]

To all of the non-thinkers out there, here is something that may fire a few atrophied neurons.
The Nazis had it right. Drive all "undesirables" into a single area. Build a wall around it. Put barbed wire on the wall. Post guards with automatic weapons. Give them little to no food. Build some "showers". Fire up the ovens.
Hell, it worked so well for them, I am sure you will like this idea.

I agree what about the people that were 18 or 19 and dated a 15 year old and then are stuck on the list and it never happened agian. that could be anyone of us or your son.

[Jason]

My question is, why is everyone so quick to pass judgement on al sex offenders? some sex offenders didn't rape nor did they molest a child. What about those who were teenagers having sex with teenagers the issue being the difference in age. I think this is unfair and inhumane. Yes, I agree rapist and child molestors need severe punishment.... Our children need to be protected. But somewhere we need to draw a line as to who the laws actually apply to.

[concerned citizen]

you know everyone talks about sex offenders. well lets about all the other offenders out there that are habitual offenders and still get put back on the street. if a sex offender is rehabilitated then he/she should have the right to live a life without bullshit all the time. but its people like yall that wont leave it alone. what if it were your child being young or old that done a sex crime, he/she got rehabilitated, i bet you wouldnt be wanting to put them off the face of the earth. now would you? no i didnt think so. some sex offenders do go to therapists and get their lives straightened out. LET IT GO IF THEIR TRYING TO LIVE A RIGHT LIFE. stop judging everyone, cause you will eventually get judged yourselves then you'll see what people like us have to go through on a daily basis. i have kids that i got custody back of because we are living a different and truthful life. we are trying to keep our lives straight but you people wont let us do that. the government wants to tell us where to live and that just doesnt work.

[concerned citizen]

drug dealers and people like that dont get punished near like they should. everything now a days is focused on "sex' offenders, not other offenders out there that think that they did no wrong, and look at the political people out there that are comminting sex crimes with boys and girls and all they get is a slap on the wrist. what about them?. they should have the same treatment as everyone else that does the same thing, but the government wants to put that under wraps so they dont look so bad, but hell there are as many "sex" offenders in the political field as there are in our communities, the thing is they just dont get caught at it cause noone pasy attention to them.

[Keith Richard Radford Jr]

Again and again, political proponents of SCHIP, like Andrew M. Grossman, Robert E. Moffit, and Kathleen Sebelius need desperately to expand there horizons as does most mushroom people who us old outdated information to create a law.
http://www.sosunite.com/Real%20Sex%20Offender%20Stats%202007.htm
The huge and destructive mistake made by the original therapist who said sex offenders are stuck in a rut of abuse have since been proven completely wrong and society only knows the lie.
When a government uses religious motives with inaccurate information we Americans look and sound like other countries who stone their young. No good can come from this nor will any country respect Americans who chose to tear down or harm it people. More damaging is the fact that the truth was hidden due to greed. That is not how people who want to best look out for our country and it people place priorities. Honest mistakes is how most get on the registry

[Keith Richard Radford Jr]

The 1,2,3's of sex offenders.
1. The recidivism rate of sex offenders is under 5%
2. 90% of all sex crimes are committed within the family.
3. 92% of all sex crimes are perpetrated by people not on the sex offender registry.
If the bulls eye is 5% of the target and the bulls eye scores no points, what justifies the billions of tax payer dollars for the project?

[Jason]

I agree that not all sex offenders are bad. Gosh do you realize if the law came to pass long ago how many sex offenders we would have? I know my grandparents who dated and got engaged at a young age my grandpa would be a sex offender. He has now been married for 54 years to my grandma but you know what if that same senario happened today they would brand the guy a sex offender and cast him in jail.
Its a sad fact that all the laws such as not living within a 1000 ft of a school and having the drivers license that states you are a registered offender and having a license plate that states your a registered offender is going to cause nothing but pain and more problems.

how come we prey on sex offenders but dont act like drug dealers and murders and burglers are just as bad. Sure there is the common thief but what about the guy who breaks into houses and one day someone just happens to be home and he kills everyone even though he did not go
to do that. Granted he will go to jail but my thing is this. We prey on sex offenders but we virtually never talk about any other criminals whos reoffense rate is much much higher.

also i have to agree what about the guy who was 18 or 19 or even 20 and was dating a young girl 15-16 or what if he sleeps with a girl who says shes 17. I know when i was in HS years ago girls did that all the time to be able to date older guys in college. SO they sleep with a girl who claims she is turning 18 in a few months. BUt she is really only 15 turning 16. So now he is branded a sex offender for life But the girl who lied and if she had been honest he would not have commited the crime gets off scott free onto her next "victom"

[Registry Fix Review, RegFix Registry Cleaner]

I don't know what law will keep sex offenders from preying on children. But if a law like that can be formulated I am all for it. This law if taken in the right spirit will atleast put some distance between these people and their innoccent victims.

[Tony]

Hello to all. I guess I should share my story as a "convicted sex offender" with you... When I was a senior in high school, I was madly in love with my girlfriend. We dated for close to 10 months(an eternity when your that age LOL). Problem was, she was only 15 and me being an old "pervert", as some uninformed idiot put it, didnt know it was ILLEGAL for an 18 year old to have a 15 year old girlfriend. So when confronted and questioned about it, I readily admitted to her being my girlfriend. I'm sure you can all imagine my shock,fear, and confusion when I was suddenly spun around right on my high school office and placed in hand cuffs and arrested, and was then proudly paraded around my highschool in hand cuffs. Sounds like fun right? Wait, it gets better! So off to jail I went. After spending FIVE YEARS!! in our lovley Kansas department of corrections, where I constantly was forced to fight for everything, I was released to serve ANOTHER five years "post release supervision". Forced to carry a "special" ID with sex offender pasted on it. Told where to live and what kind of work to do( or more truthfully where I can't live and where I can't work) its great, let me tell you. Sought out by, shall we say, "uninformed idiots" and harrassed. My wife( yes this "pervert" is married with a two year old son)is harrased, my parents, where I first lived when I got our of prison, are harrased. And why? Because of people that just don't know any better. The United States has had one witch hunt or another for as long as our country has been here. Did any of you get upset at the patriot act? Anyone remember the Salam witch trials? What do these strict(and unconstitunal) laws solve? NOTHING!! There are close too two MILLION "registered sex offenders" nationwide. My problem exists in the fact that there is no distinction between someone like me(roughly 40-45% of "sex offenders") and Chester the molster down the street. Am I a "threat" to my son? My wife? Hell no!! It is an absolute travisty that there are children that have had unspeakable things done to them. But with how the law is, how can I protect my child from the REALLY scarry people? The answer is I can't. Because there is no distinction. I recomend going to www.reformsexoffenderlaws.org and checking out how many people face discrimination because of a stupid( all be it uninformed) decision that was made when we ourselves were only children. Please do not missunderstand me. I'm not saying there aren't some real sick people out there. But not everyone that gets LABELED a "sex offender" is a petophile. It makes me sick to think about MY lost childhood, and all the damage that has been done to MY family. I hope that none of you, and none of your children EVER have to endure the PAIN AND SORROW my family and I have. I can only imagine that this is what it must have felt like to be an African American in the days of segregation...thanks for taking your time to read what this ole "baby raper pervert" had to say. I guess the bumperstickers right huh? "Kansas, as bigoted as you think."

[jason redhorn]

Thankfully, Kansas doesn't have a barrier restriction (yet). I am convinced if the sex offender can't live anywhere within the city limits, then they shouldn't be out of incarceration in the first place. The legislature needs to differentiate between the high risk offenders and the low risk offenders. I know that task wouldn't be easy, but if they can build a billion dollar satellite hovering around the earth's orbit, then they surely can distinguish the different sex crimes on a case by case basis.

Ok alot of you have good points, but I see some things missing. First, not everyone on the list commited the crime. Some took plea bargains or were found guilty by a bleeding heart jury that "just wanted to play it safe". Second, who decides which offender is a higher risk than others? One guy might have commited one offense and is going to re-offend, another may not. Some people DO learn. Yes, even sex offenders. Third, That guy was right about witch hunts, but my question is: when are we going to have an internet list for domestic abuse? Murderers? Drug dealers? Prostitutes, etc etc. Im sure you see my point here. I would definitely say its unconstitutional to prey on one type of criminal and not others. Especially after theyve served their time, paid their dues. People can lash out and say stupid things like "we should set all offenders on fire" or "do like the nazis did" or "dont let them out of prison EVER" but if you, or a loved one wound up on that list, youd sing a different tune. If you had to choose between a violent drug-using murder living next to you, or a sex offender, its pretty obvious what most people with sense would choose. Lets keep life in perspective. S.O.'s should be monitored and treated, not told they cant live ANYWHERE or get get ANY JOB. Last but not least, sex crimes are already against the law. What makes anyone think another law will make a S.O.say "gosh I better not do that, its a crime".

[Eric Trivett]

Hello,
I am from Georgia, One of the strictest states on sex offenders next to florida. I am a registered sex offender I am married and have three kids, 16-17-and 18 plus a grand daughter, 4 months old. My children were about 8 years old when I was accused of my crime, which was a neighbors child viewing porn on my home computer, little did I know in Georgia a person nevers has to touch a child to be charged with Child Molestation, The state only has to prove intent, and children are being charged with child molestation as well here,true stuff. Georgia requires that sex offenders not live within 1000 ft of a school,church,day care, hotel, public pool, or any where children may gather, to include school bus stops. this also includes colleges. the law states that any one convicted of a sex offence can not volunteer at any church, which means going to Sunday School, etc. before this new law was passed the registration peroid was only 10 years, now no matter when the crime was commited it is life time registration. this has caused a great deal of harm to my children as they were coming up, and I will be dammned if I will go through it again with my grand daughter. How do these laws protect children? This is nothing more than a tar and feather or witch hunt. teachers are now being targeted as possiable offenders, and in Georgia if you are ever accused of a sex offence any lawyer will tell you that you are screwed. So who will be next. I never thought I would see the day when crack whores and drug dealers who sell more drugs to your children, and live across the street from their schools has more rights than me. What about the kids whos lives are being ruined by drug dealers, or have been killed by drug dealers. If the goverment was so concerned with the welfare of children then why don't they stop the violence in the public housing areas involving children/ I think we all know why.
People who are going to molest a child knows the child personally, friends chil relative etc. Sex offenders do not pick up strangers, do your home work, so why all these crazy laws. also how long do you think it will take before people like me say enough is enough and take matters into our own hands, thats thousands and thousands of pissed off people and their famlies who want their rights, the right to be left alone!
Eric T.
Columbus
Ga.

[anonymous]

The teens should not be put on the child molester list but they should be punished for not obeying the law. They may or may not get it. The list will be waiting for them later if they didn't get it. What we need to understand is that child molestation is mostly a man's temptation. It is very rare for women to do it. Men should not be left alone with children. Or all males working around children must be partnered with a female assistant. In the homes that's up to the parent and shamefully too many women are doing a rotten job of protecting their children from child molesters because they want to fantasize the child molester cares for them. What it tells me when we have crap laws for child molesters is the mostly male gov. are guilty of it. Parents have got to protect their kids 24/7 and kids have got to accept that parents must do this. And remember we have the old long haired, smoker with no teeth child molester and then we have the pediatricians that fly to Mexico and do it. And honestly I think there are too many parents that don't give a crap if their kid gets molested or worse dead. How many of us shake our heads no at the high numbers of children running around our neighborhoods unsupervised. Well, the child molesters are shaking their heads yes.