Sex Crimes Against Children

While the court may not have made a decision which began the legislative process changing a law, the Amber Hagerman case is still a landmark case because it is responsible for The Amber Alert system. Because the idea to quickly find Amber via the media and broadcast agencies was successful, the idea of using the media to locate a child became more routine. It is designed to locate and retrieve a child who has been kidnapped and or missing and in possible danger. The word Amber became an acronym for America’s Missing Broadcast Emergency Response.

There have been many federal acts passed in correspondence with sex offenses that illicit feat with the public. There are many different types of ways in which Levenson & colleagues’ (2007) describes the perceptions that the public has based on certain factors. For instance, in relation to the perception about the sex offender notification system, a survey produced results of around 80 percent in favor of these registries, because these individuals felt safer in their communities knowing who was in their neighborhood. Further, due to this fear that resonated in the early 1990’s communities do have tools such as residential restrictions, civil commitment, notification procedures, etc. that aid in the protection. However, there are myths associated with sex offenders, for example legislation often states that the reasoning for new laws and regulations is due to the high recidivism rates. However, sex offenders have significantly lower recidivism rates than believed. Also, there are countless people who do not believe that sex offenders can be assisted with techniques from a psychological standpoint. Most people think that these offenders cannot be treated, however, there is research being conducted that is promising. Finally, there is a common misconception that sex offenders kill their victims, especially children more often than other killers, however this is not true.

On 04/16/15, I received a call from Special Agent Scott Sutehall with Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) who is a member of the Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) task force. I am also a member of the ICAC task force and work with HSI frequently. Agent Sutehall has worked with me on several cases and was confident with my knowledge and understanding of child exploitation cases. Agent Sutehall informed me that between 02/19/15 and 03/01/15, while acting in an undercover capacity, he utilized a law enforcement version of eMule, a client software for the eDonkey2000 (eD2k) peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing network, to monitor for P2P users possessing and distributing image and video files depicting child pornography. During that time period, Agent Sutehall utilized the law enforcement version of eMule to establish connections with IP address Test and to download several files depicting child pornography from that IP address.

Sexual offenders are the most vilified type of offenders within public opinion and the criminal justice system. The American precedent cases of Jacob Wetterling, Pam Lyncher, Megan Kanka, and other notorious crimes perpetrated by sexual offenders with a prior history of conviction have demanded a response from the criminal justice system to increase public safety. In 1994, the Jacob Wetterling Crimes against Children and Sexually Violent Offender Registration Program was passed (Scholle, 2000), the first piece of legislation to advocate for the development of state-maintained registries of convicted sexual offenders. The legislation has been amended numerous times since then; in its present state, the law requires all states to maintain a registry, the mandatory registration of convicted sex offenders after release, community notification laws in place, and public access to the registry (Burchfield and Mingus, 2012; Lees and Tewksbury, 2006; Petrunik, Murphy, and Fedoroff, 2008; Scholle, 2000; Tewksbury and Lees, 2006; Wagner, 2011).

Additionaly, the Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act is seen as a positive as well by law enforcement, “…believing it leads to improved community surveillance of sex offenders and deters them from reoffending” (Lasher & McGrath 9). The downside to this concept is the cost of implementing the notifications. It is a concern for law enforcement that the public could overreact, which would result in the need to allocate funds due to harassment (Lasher & McGrath 9). It has an impact on the economic system because people believe it needs to be implemented to keep everyone safe, and do not take into consideration the large amounts of money needed to put this act in place. An article tiled, “Sex Offenders Registration and

It’s time to separate the child sex offender from the children being accused of sex offending unreasonably. There are many stories of teenagers 15, 16, 17, just trying on young love for the first time. What should be happy memories can be turned to shame, and they don’t even have to have actual intercourse for it to be called a “sex offense.” Here are some examples of needed changes to our laws:

Megan Kanka was raped and murdered by her neighbor in 1994. The Kanka’s were not aware that they had been living across from a sex offender. In order to make the public more aware, the Kanka’s started a movement to make “Megan’s Law”. Megan’s Law requires for sex offenders to register online so that the public is aware of their location. The rules for Megan’s Law varies among states, some are more lenient while others are strict. Megan’s Law came with several problems. There was an increase in the public’s anxiety over sex crimes which led to harassment and threats and sometimes even physical contact with the offenders. There is an extremely negative

The importance of protecting the safety of the public and most importantly, the children is a lot higher than the offenders right to privacy. According to a study done by Expert Law, the biggest raised concern is the fear of vigilantism. That is, “law enforcement undertaken without legal authority by a self-appointed group of people.” The fear was if neighbors learned about a sex offender’s presence in their neighborhood and decided to force them out or cause physical harm, which is illegal. Violent acts against offenders are uncommon.

Sex offenders have been a serious problem for our legal system at all levels, not to mention those who have been their victims. There are 43,000 inmates in prison for sexual offenses while each year in this country over 510,000 children are sexually assaulted(Oakes 99). The latter statistic, in its context, does not convey the severity of the situation. Each year 510,000 children have their childhood's destroyed, possibly on more than one occasion, and are faced with dealing with the assault for the rest of their lives. Sadly, many of those assaults are perpetrated by people who have already been through the correctional system only to victimize again. Sex offenders, as a class of criminals, are nine times more likely to repeat their

The PROTECT Act created the AMBER (America’s Missing: Broadcast Emergency Response) Alert system. (Reddaway, Jude, and Heather Keating).

Their next act in making it a more effective program is the Instant Amber. With Instant Amber, parents are able to have another tool to help them if they ever need it in an emergency such as a child goes missing because all the information is gathered beforehand as a preemptive strike. By 2005, a national alert system coordinated by the U.S Department of Justice extended all 50 states.

The number of registered sex offenders have increasingly grew over the years. Every day you see a man or women added to the registry for crimes against women and mostly children. The sex offender registries biggest and main focus is to keep the people in the community in each city and state informed and protected. ”Sex offenders and sex crimes provoke a great deal of anxiety in our society.” Baker, J, Brannon, Y, N., Fortney. , Levenson, J.S. (“Public Perceptions about Sex Offenders and Community Protection”). The sex offender registry is based solely on protecting the public from being a victim

Stories of sex offenders have been increasingly a focus of attention by the criminal justice system over the past years. By legal definition, a sex offender “is a person who is convicted of a sexual offense (Sex Offender Law & Legal Definition),” an act which is prohibited by the jurisdiction. What constitutes as a sex offense or normal/abnormal sexual behavior varies over time and place, meaning that it also varies by legal jurisdiction and culture. In the United States of America, for example, a person can be convicted of wide range of sexual behavior that includes prostitution, incest, sex with a minor, rape, and other sex offenses (Sex Offender Law & Legal Definition). As the nature of sex crimes have long held the

There are very few things that people agree on universally, however one of them is their attitude toward pedophiles. No other type of person elicits the same kind of reaction as those who prey on arguably our most vulnerable population. Pedophiles alone out of other sex offenders drive intense fear and anger into the public, so much so that they are the reason for Megan’s Law requiring sex offenders to register as such since 1994. More recently, the enactment of an “International Megan’s Law” that was voted on last year requires for all sex offenders to get their status added to their passports. The only issue with all of this is being a pedophile isn’t a sex crime.

Child pornography is a broadly defined term mainly because there is no internationally agreed upon definition. There are also some conflicting laws between different countries that further complicate the issue of child pornography. It can become difficult to prosecute with the increased use of computers and anonymous online networks. Both the offenders and the victims can come from a wide range of social and cultural backgrounds.