By John . . . Oklahoma lawmakers spent most of an afternoon on a question the state has dodged for years: does the sex offender registry still do the job it was built for? The joint interim study hearing ran roughly three hours and heard from researchers, prosecutors, judges, treatment providers, police, defense attorneys and a survivor advocate.

Senate Majority Leader Julie Daniels (R-Bartlesville) says she came to the issue through a constituent who wanted a pardon. She was “quite surprised that we had something in place that did not allow any pardon or any removal.” Later came a panicked text from someone who feared a new bill would keep them from their grandchildren for another 10 years. That was when she started asking whether the state was “undermining public safety with the very broad net that we have cast.”

• Watch the hearing recording

Representative Suzanne Schrieber (D-Tulsa), her partner on the study, said the registry has been “layered on and layered on and layered on” since it was created to answer a fair question: how do you protect families from the most dangerous predators?

A far cry from the original registry

Daniels’s slides showed how far it has drifted. The 1989 act covered nine statutes, required registration for 10 years, shared information only with police, put no limits on where anyone could live, go or work, and treated noncompliance as a misdemeanor. Today it covers 27 statutes, with tiers of 15 years, 25 years or life. Names are online. Residency restrictions extend 2,000 feet, the second-highest in the country after Mississippi’s 3,000. Employment is restricted, and failing to comply can be a felony. The act has been amended 23 times. Of the 8,344 Oklahomans on the registry, 74% are on it for life.

Attorney Janice Bellucci, a California civil rights attorney and executive director of the Alliance for Constitutional Sex Offense Laws, testified about how the registry took shape. The first registry began in Los Angeles in 1947, she said, aimed only at gay men, and federal laws in 1994, 1996 and 2006 spread it nationwide. She highlighted the Supreme Court of the United States’ decision in Smith v. Doe (2003), in which the Court held that registration is not punishment. That ruling, she noted, leaned on a “frightening and high” reoffense claim from a Psychology Today article that put the rate as high as 80% with a promise that if the article’s author was allowed to “treat” people with sex offenses, he could cut the rate in half. She said the author later retracted his baseless claims, but the Court changed nothing. She shared that earlier this year, Michigan’s Supreme Court found registration is punishment, largely because of its collateral consequences.

How people get sorted matters just as much. Oklahoma sets a person’s tier by the offense of conviction. There is no individual risk assessment. A board created to develop one was dissolved without producing anything, and the statute says the assigned level can never be reduced by the level assignment committee, the Department of Corrections, or a court.

Brittany Gendron testified. She was the child victim in the case that put her mother on the registry. Her mother was convicted of a non-contact offense more than 25 years ago, served 15 days in county jail, and is now disabled with cognitive decline. Every 90 days, Gendron takes her to register. “Each visit feels less like accountability and more like watching a sentence renew itself,” she said. Residency restrictions keep her from bringing her mother home, and her mother’s status keeps blocking long-term care. “I was the child this system was supposed to protect. And today, I am the daughter left to navigate its consequences.”

“We have assessed a label”

Dr. Stephanie Jerstad, an assistant professor of criminology at Millersville University of Pennsylvania and a recent NARSOL Conference plenary speaker, studies aging and criminal justice and spoke about a group that rarely comes up in registry debates: people who are old, seriously ill, or cognitively impaired and still have to register. Her central point was short. “A conviction is part of a person’s history,” she said. “It is not by itself an assessment of the risk that person poses today.”

She pointed to the age-crime curve and to work by Dr. Karl Hanson that put the five-year sexual reoffending rate at around 3% for people in their 60s, with rates falling further after that. The average nursing home resident in the U.S. is about 81. Against that, she said, “we may be making placement decisions about someone in their 70s, 80s, or even 90s based primarily on a conviction that occurred decades earlier.”

Her sharpest line came when she described registry status standing in for a risk assessment: “If the decision begins and ends with ‘this person is on the registry,’ we have not actually assessed the individual that is standing in front of us. We have assessed a label.” Individualized review, she added, is not the soft option. “Using contemporary individualized information is not less protective of the public. It is more precise public safety decision-making.”

Her own research on long-term care found that facilities are reluctant to admit people with sexual offense histories, and that those decisions don’t always track medical need. When a facility says no, she said, “The person doesn’t stop needing nursing care. The responsibility moves.” It moves to hospitals that can’t discharge patients, to corrections when someone overstays a sentence because no facility will take them, and to relatives who end up handling dementia care, toileting, medication, and registry compliance “without any kind of skilled nursing training or medical training, without financial support.” The cost doesn’t disappear. It lands on another public system or on a family.

Jerstad shared that other states have built exits. Georgia lets courts consider relief for people in hospice, skilled nursing or elder care, or who are 80 and older under certain conditions. Virginia lets a guardian petition when a physical condition makes reoffending and registering impossible, with periodic review. Alabama offers relief from residency restrictions for terminal illness or permanent immobility, and Colorado recognizes severe disability. She did not ask Oklahoma to copy any of them. She noted that Oklahoma’s House Bill 3606, which would have allowed a petition in cases of permanent impairment, passed the House and then stalled in Senate Judiciary.

Pressed on liability, Jerstad said facilities already manage risk for every resident, and that people with dementia and no criminal history are more likely to act out sexually because of the disease. She cited a 2005 Government Accountability Office (GAO) study in which administrators said they worried more about residents with Alzheimer’s and dementia than about those with offense histories. Her answer was not to drop safeguards. “The solution is the right safeguards for the actual person,” she said, meaning individualized assessment, care planning, and supervision.

What survivors actually need

Amber Vlangas, executive director of the Restorative Action Alliance and recent NARSOL Conference keynote speaker, joined as both an advocate and a survivor of institutional sexual violence as a child and of military sexual trauma. She opened with a warning: survivors are not a monolith, and many never get heard. Then she set two statements side by side. Sexual violence is a serious problem that “is not up for debate.” And “current sex offense policy doesn’t actually decrease sexual harm. And in fact, it creates some of the exact conditions that increase risks of violence.”

Her numbers run counter to the idea that the criminal system catches most harm. Of every 100 sexual assaults, she said, 27 are reported, five lead to an arrest, and fewer than three end in incarceration. About nine in 10 abused children are harmed by someone they or their family know and trust, often a relative. She argued that undercuts the idea that sexual violence is mostly committed by strangers.

On risk over time, she said each year offense-free lowers the odds of sexual reoffense by about 12%. After 10 to 15 years, most people with a sexual offense conviction are no more likely to commit a new sexual offense than someone with a nonsexual record.

She named four things that drive violence: exposure to violence, isolation, shame, and not being able to meet economic needs. Registries, she argued, feed all four through vigilante violence, unstable housing and work, and stigma that reaches whole families. They can also keep children quiet. Survivors often tell her group they didn’t report because they knew the person harming them would be removed from the home, sometimes the household’s main earner.

Residency restrictions drew particular criticism. She cited a 2015 Department of Justice SMART Office review that found they do not reduce recidivism and may raise risk, along with results from Jacksonville, Florida, and from Michigan and Missouri.

She also described what the registry hands survivors: information with no context. One person her group worked with learned that a neighbor was registered and wanted to sell their home, without knowing anything about that neighbor’s rehabilitation or actual risk. The result, she said, is “affecting survivors with information without context.” Meanwhile, the system “siphon[s] resources from services and support” toward punishment and control.

What do survivors want? To be believed, to have a say in what happens, to get answers, to be physically safe, and to get practical help like housing, job retraining, and culturally sensitive therapy. “The justice piece of it is a component, but it is not the whole pie,” she said.

She ended pointedly. “Asking survivors to carry the full weight of this policy analysis is unfair and it is not theirs to bear,” she told lawmakers. The loudest voices tend to be the most privileged, she said, and survivors harmed inside families lose out when only those voices are heard. “Survivors’ pain is being weaponized to create policy.” Her test for any bill is whether it ends cycles of sexual violence. “Honoring survivors means examining the evidence. It means weighing your outcomes.”

“A community problem”

The last extended remarks came from Jacqui Ford of the Oklahoma Criminal Defense Lawyers Association, a defense attorney and the group’s past president. She called the hearing “the bravest conversation I’ve heard happen in this building in a very, very long time,” then set the tone: “I do not think blame and shame are in any place in this. This is a community problem. It’s going to require a community solution. But we have to trust the science, and we have to trust the evidence.”

The detail she kept returning to was plea offers. “The same offer that I get when they first get arrested with prison time and lifetime registration is the exact same offer that I get after they’ve been in treatment for two and a half years and completely changed their lives and healed the underlying cause of what got them in the criminal justice system in the first place, which is oftentimes abuse and addiction and trauma.”

Part of the reason, she said, is pressure. Elected judges who “bank on the treatment working” risk a campaign from a “dark money PAC” claiming they went easy on sex offenders, and legislators face the same threat. What’s missing is a way out. “I know we have good judges who want to do it, and they just need to have a path. And I know we have good prosecutors who see the humanity, and they need a path. And DOC needs relief. They need money. They need tools. They need assessments. And it starts right here.”

Her examples were concrete. A client in Cleveland County was charged with failing to comply with registration after setting up tables for a church event before the children arrived. And then there are juveniles: “taking pictures of yourself is manufacturing child pornography and selling it is distributing it.” She has three teenage boys, she said, and the fear of them landing on a registry comes up at home all the time.

She also rejected the idea that sex crimes are a special category and urged lawmakers to look at defendants’ childhoods and at what they lack now. The task, she said, is to see that “people are more than the worst thing that they have ever done.” On people pushed into homelessness by residency rules: “What does a person who doesn’t have a house and doesn’t have a job and doesn’t have money do to eat? I’m going to suggest to you that they commit crimes.”

She finished on a plain fact. People on the registry come back to their neighborhoods, no matter what the legislature does. “We live amongst them,” she said, so the work has to be done “with integrity and compassion and humanity and for the victims.”

Law enforcement and treatment providers provide perspective

Even the more cautious voices agreed some cases need fixing. They disagreed on how much to change.

Ryan Stephenson, assistant executive coordinator of the District Attorneys Council, said the statutes also cover “the boyfriend who’s been preying on children while mom’s been at work for years.” He asked lawmakers to avoid fear-mongering but to remember “here there be monsters,” and he noted that the current system at least tells a defendant their level on sentencing day. Will Drake, the district attorney for District 11, said Gendron’s situation could be adjusted, though he worried about unintended consequences.

Brenda Carter, a counselor and member of the Association for the Treatment and Prevention of Sexual Abuse, has treated sex offenders since 2005 and once worked in the corrections treatment program. She called tools like the Static-99R well-validated and said, “sexual offending is a behavior. It’s not a person.” She put reoffense rates at roughly 3% to 11% and argued that restrictions pushing people into homelessness raise risk.

Nicole Dulany, who manages the Department of Corrections’ sex and violent offender registration unit, said her nine staffers track 11,341 active offenders and that the unit goes by what the statute says on paper, with no role in assessing anyone. Rockford Brown, a sex and violent offender investigator with the Payne County Sheriff’s Office, said removal “would be beneficial” for some people and pointed to Gendron’s case, but noted that recidivism figures only count the people who get caught.

District Judge Leah Edwards of Judicial District 21 said any court-based change to a tier would need a statute giving courts that authority, plus funding and procedures for indigent defendants in rural counties. Another panelist called the 1997 Fields v. Vreel decision, which leaves people in corrections’ control once they are in custody, a separation-of-powers problem lawmakers can legislate around.

Lawmakers floated a few ideas: reassessing which crimes sit in which tier, using the factual statement in a plea instead of the statutory charge, and adding safety valves for specific situations. Stephenson confirmed the legislature has the authority to change tier assignments.

The discussion to continue…

Senator Daniels said the hearing “doesn’t end the discussion,” and Senator Brent Howard (R-Altus), the committee chair, closed by noting these statutes “weren’t built in one day.” The ideas that came up most were a petition path for aging and medically incapacitated registrants like the one in House Bill 3606, individualized risk assessment, court review of tiers over time, and a rethink of which offenses belong in which tier.

AI note: The author used an AI-generated transcript of the hearing to compose this article.

The post Oklahoma Lawmakers Take a Hard Look at the ‘Sex Offender’ Registry first appeared on NARSOL.

(Source: MIRS.news, Published 09/09/2026) The Michigan Supreme Court unanimously ruled today that Michigan’s current sex offender registry law cannot be applied to people whose registration-triggering crimes occurred before July 1, 2011, finding that doing so amounts to unconstitutional punishment imposed after the fact.

The ruling in People v. Eddie Lee Smith potentially affects an unknown number of longtime registrants whose underlying offenses predate the Legislature’s major 2011 rewrite of the Sex Offenders Registration Act (SORA). The Court also said the state cannot simply place those people under an older version of the registry law instead.

The case involved Eddie Lee Smith, whose crimes occurred in 1995 and 2010. Smith was nevertheless required to register under the version of SORA that took effect in 2021.

“The statutory requirements enacted after the commission of his crimes amount to punishment,” the Court wrote. Requiring Smith to comply with the 2021 law therefore constitutes “an ex post facto punishment” prohibited by both the U.S. and Michigan constitutions.

In plain English, the government cannot create additional criminal punishment years after someone commits an offense and then apply that new punishment backward.

The Court reversed a January 2025 Court of Appeals ruling against Smith, partially vacated a Kent Circuit Court decision and sent the case back to the trial court. More broadly, the justices held that the 2021 SORA “may not be retroactively applied” to registrants whose registration-triggering acts occurred before the 2011 amendments. The Court also rejected “severance or revival” of earlier versions of SORA as a solution.

That latter piece could create a larger issue for the Legislature. Unlike when the Supreme Court issued a similar ruling involving the 2011 registry in 2021, there is no newer replacement law already waiting to take its place for the people covered by Wednesday’s order. A press release from attorneys supporting Smith said anyone affected by the ruling has already been on the registry for at least 15 years.

Microphone off Wednesday’s ruling follows the Supreme Court’s December 2025 decision in People v Kardasz, which concluded that Michigan’s 2021 registry is punishment rather than merely a civil regulatory program. In Kardasz, the Court pointed to lifetime registration for some offenders, repeated in-person reporting requirements, publication of registrants’ information online and possible imprisonment for failing to comply.

The Kardasz ruling set up Wednesday’s constitutional question: If today’s SORA is punishment, can those requirements be imposed on someone who committed a crime before those punishments existed? The Court answered no.

“Mr. Smith served his sentence and completed his parole,” said Smith attorney Drew Walbeck. “The Michigan Supreme Court confirmed what both the federal and state constitutions have always guaranteed him: the government cannot impose a punishment that did not exist when the crime was committed.”

State Appellate Defender Office Deputy Director Jessica Zimbelman, who filed an amicus brief on behalf of the Criminal Defense Attorneys of Michigan, said the ruling follows the same approach the Court took in the 2021 People v Betts decision.

“Michigan’s Constitution does not let the state write a new punishment and then apply it backward to people who were sentenced years or decades earlier,” Zimbelman said.

The ruling does not affect people whose registration-triggering offenses occurred on or after July 1, 2011. Those registrants remain subject to the current SORA requirements.

The post Pre-2011 Sex Offenders To No Longer Appear On Michigan Registry first appeared on NARSOL.

By Sandy . . . What is going on at Pawleys Island Baptist Church and school in South Carolina? For anyone who follows the topics of interest to our community, it would have been impossible to miss the headlines and videos starting the week of July 13, 2026, and intensifying every day for, as of this writing, almost two weeks.

A teacher at the school checked the South Carolina sex offender registry and recognized the church and school custodian as a registered sex offender. Another teacher reported to the Georgetown County Sheriff’s Department that Warren Perry, the registrant in question, was working in a children’s school; the sheriff’s department investigated, verified that Mr. Perry was in violation of his probation conditions, and subsequently arrested him on July 14. Whether his status was that of volunteer or of employee is unclear.

Mr. Perry had started volunteering/working at the church and school in

2021, possibly as early as 2020, which was the same year he committed the crime for which he was charged and convicted in 2023. He was convicted of one count of third-degree sexual exploitation of a minor. In South Carolina, this offense translates to possessing or viewing child pornography, now called CSAM—child sexual abuse material. Generally. each count equals one picture or image. In South Carolina law, a minor is defined as anyone under 18 years of age.

Perry was on probation; his conditions specified that he was not allowed to be in the proximity of children, and he knew it. He had probation’s permission to be at the church, but “Triple P”—Parole, Probation, Pardon—did not know about the school—almost without doubt a deliberate deceit on Mr. Perry’s part.

Arguably, what is with a great deal of doubt is that the church’s minister, Pastor Don Williams, his wife Ginny, and former school director Jennifer Howard knew about and colluded with the deception. This is the contention of Sheriff Carter Weaver and Georgetown County solicitor Jimmy Richardson when they arrested them on the 20^th, along with Perry, and charged them with a barrage of offenses; it is also the contention of the multiple civil suits brought in the case.

Pastor Williams, his wife, and the school director resigned July 17.

The lawsuits started immediately, with the first, filed on the 17^th, being a class action suit asking for 25 million dollars. Three more were filed on the 21^st. They claim negligence, collusion, putting children at risk, and at least one claims a child was molested by Perry in 2022. There almost seems to be a domino effect in play.

This is not uncommon when a celebrity or person in a high position is arrested for a sexual crime; new victims come forth daily. When victims are adults, this is understandable. A lone victim could be reluctant to make such a charge against a movie star, a state senator, or even a local popular figure, but once someone else has had the courage to do so, other victims see that they are not alone. This is akin to what created the “me too” movement.

It is difficult however, is it not, to apply this to the molestation of children? If your child was the victim of such an assault, would you wait for others to come forward before you did? If a child was molested at the school in 2022 by Perry, why is this not part of the criminal charges against Perry? Why is it brought up only as the basis of a civil suit?

So what is going on at Pawley Island’s Baptist Church? It is still very much of an active investigation, but several factors are indisputable:

• Perry began volunteering or working around the church and school in 2020 or 2021.
• In 2023 he pled guilty to a sexual crime committed in 2020; he received a sentence of probation and was placed on the sex offender registry.
• The conditions of his probation expressly forbade his being in proximity of children.
• He did not tell his probation officer that the church included a day-school for pre-k and kindergarten age children.

What does this mean for our advocacy community? Whenever a registrant reoffends or violates the terms of probation, especially when it becomes a high-profile case, the risk is increased for negative consequences. Some one in our legal community opines that whatever progress registrants have made in gaining acceptance in in-person faith communities has been, not only wiped out, but set back twenty years due to this one situation.

Additionally, many bad bills have been proposed and quickly passed in the wake of circumstances such as this one. South Carolina advocates need to be prepared for proposed bad legislation related to this specific case come January 2027.

The post What is going on at Pawleys Island church? first appeared on NARSOL.

NARSOL’s 18^th conference hit the ground running Friday morning, June 26, and didn’t slow down for two and a half days.

With powerball speakers such as Catherine Carpender and Miriam Auckerman, the

deeply moving stories of Amber Vlangas and Shawn Barrera-Leaf, and the brave advocacies of Peter Dross and Grant Hill, the conference attendees met with inspiration and encouragement at every turn.

The workshops enhanced the major presentations, completing and reinforcing what came to be recognized as the unifying theme for this conference: It takes all of us, and together we can!

The Friday night awards banquet was a delight. The meal was  good southern-cooking; the space in which to relax and enjoy the evening and each other was needed and appreciated; speaker Amber Vlangas moved us to tears, and MC Robin Vanderwall kept the program moving, culminating in the presentation of the year’s awards and the drawings for the raffle prizes.

The winners of the NARSOL 2026 awards are:

NARSOL Advocate of the Year: Shawn Barrera-Leaf

Paul E. Shannon Lifetime Achievement Award: Cindy Prizio

Braveheart Award: Grant Hill

Hawthorne Award: Catherine Carpenter

Hawthorne Award: Guy Hamilton-Smith

NARSOL Excellence in Service Award: Craig McAlexander

NARSOL Excellence in Leadership Award: Stephen Herto

Most of all, NARSOL thanks our wonderful attendees without whom there would be no conference. We are appreciative of your loyalty, your advocacy, and your dedication. Thank you!

The post NARSOL’s 18th conference is a wrap first appeared on NARSOL.

Updated 4/23/2026; originally published 2/4/2025 at narsol.org as Sex offender residency restrictions: bad, bad public policy.”

By Sandy . . . Residency restrictions for persons required to register as sexual offenders are often enacted for no reason other than neighboring towns have implemented them. They spread like wildfire, and like that

destructive force, they wreak their own form of havoc, making it more and more difficult for registrants to find decent housing for themselves and their families. This, in turn, makes it more and more difficult for them to create the stability they need to become productive citizens, which, according to research, is what drives down recidivism.

What with adding more people to the registry and in some cases making the laws retroactive, the number of individuals caught up in this maelstrom of flame grows exponentially each year.

The spark that starts the blaze is one we all share, the drive to keep our children safe. Residency restrictions, however, are an inappropriate and contraindicated response to that desire. They are based on three assumptions that are contradicted by evidence:

Residency restrictions assume most child sexual abuse is committed by persons unknown or barely known to their random victims when in reality 93% or higher of cases involves someone well known to the children who have been specifically chosen.

The percentage of situations in which a prior relationship exists between an abuser and a child victim varies dependent on the age of the victim. A study done by the Office of Juvenile Justice found that for very young children, family members and very close acquaintances comprise close to 100% of their offenders while for teens, those categories make up 94.3%. The U.S. Department of Justice, in a mega study, found that overall, 93% of the offenders of children and teens were either family members or trusted acquaintances (p.10).

The policies presume offenders choose victims based on residential proximity, which is not supported by research.

Residency restrictions create zones around schools, daycare facilities, and often parks. These laws and policies, once begun, spread throughout a state with unstoppable ferocity. A two-state study, Michigan and Missouri, did not support the mistaken theory that living close to one of these was a factor in repeat sexual offenses against children. Another study examining several states found “. . . proximity to schools and daycares, with other risk factors being comparable, does not appear to contribute to sexual recidivism. These data do not support the widespread enactment of residential restrictions for sexual offenders” (introduction).

Residency restrictions assume that most sexual abuse is committed by repeat offenders, which research shows to be inaccurate.

On average, a significant majority of registered sex offenders are one-time, first-time-convicted offenders. A study in New York found that “. . . over 95% of all sexual offense arrests were committed by first-time sex offenders, casting doubt on the ability of laws that target repeat offenders to meaningfully reduce sexual offending” (abstract), and a study from the university of Tennessee had very similar findings. They report, “Another factor constraining [sex offender registries’] effectiveness is that past studies have shown that . . .‘94.1% of those arrested for child molestation were first-time sex offenders’ ” (conclusion of major findings).

Restrictions often force offenders away from support systems, treatment, stable housing, and employment opportunities, which are crucial for successful reintegration. These are the elements associated with remaining offense-free. Some areas are so encompassed by residency restrictions that homelessness has escalated, especially in states where residency restrictions are aggressively implemented, states as diverse as Wisconsin,  Florida, North Carolina, Illinois, and many more.

On the opposite end of the spectrum is the state of Kansas, which actually has a page on its DOC website about why residency restrictions do not work; the state passed legislation in 2006 prohibiting its  jurisdictions from implementing them.

What drives down reoffense? Housing and employment

stability, access to evidence-based treatment, amd family and community connectedness. What makes those things difficult, sometimes impossible? Residency restrictions.

Are there individuals for whom restrictions from a specific type of place is appropriate? Almost assuredly, and they should be handled on an individualized basis.

Creating “umbrella” laws that indiscriminately restrict everyone listed on a state’s registry, or everyone of a certain classification or tier, thus creating pockets of homeless registrants and acting as a barrier between registrant and rehabilitation, is more than just inappropriate and contraindicated.

It is unrestrained madness.

The post Sex offender residency restrictions–a harmful response first appeared on NARSOL.

By Sandy and John . . . Portez Smith arrived outside Jesse Grover’s duplex early on Sunday, November 17, 2024, yelling through the closed door, “Grover, you’re a f—ing pedophile,” and when Grover opened the door, Smith pulled out a gun and shot him to death. Jesse Grover was registered on Pennsylvania’s sex offender registry as a Tier I offender. This holiday season, Grover leaves behind his wife, parents, four siblings, four stepchildren, and numerous other family members. He is remembered for his sweet smile and gentleness and as a beloved family member, a good friend, and a lover of reading, cooking, and music.

Grover’s murder is not the first registrant to face such a fate. Gary Blanton was a young married father of two infant sons living in Washington State when, in 2012, Patrick Drum shot him to death for being on the Washington registry for a consensual sexual act with another minor from twelve years prior. Drum then went to the home of registrant Jerry Ray and killed him. With the Washington sex offender registry in hand, he was on the way to shoot a third registrant in another county when apprehended (https://archive.is/T5Zc5).

Charles and Gretchen Parker were at their South Carolina home when Jeremy and Christine Moody stopped in front of their house and raised the hood of their car. Charles was a mechanic and went outside to help. The Moodys entered their home and slaughtered both Charles, a South Carolina registrant, and his wife Gretchen, with a gun and knife. Like Drum, they already had targeted their next victim, another person on the sex offender registry, when they were apprehended. In the wake of these murders, the National Association for Rational Sexual Offense Laws asked then-governor Nikki Haley to have the home addresses of registrants removed from the public view of the online registry; the request was disregarded.

Portez Smith’s rant at Jesse Grover reveals almost as much about his beliefs as his senseless act of violence does. It is commonly believed that everyone on a registry has a sexual offense against a child: This is a fallacy. In every state, virtually every crime that can have a sexual component carries with it an obligation to register. In many states, non-sexual crimes require registration. And in some states, many of those required to register are minors. Blanton was the same age as his teenage girlfriend when he was convicted for consensual sex with her; her parents pushed for an arrest when they learned of the relationship. Statistics suggest that a third of the offenders against minors are themselves minors. Children have been put on a registry as young as eight.

The most disturbing factor about these murders is that a segment of the community views these vigilantes as heroes. Social media and online articles about these incidents further this perception by allowing ten or even twenty comments praising the vigilante for each one condemning the act of violence. Recently, the glorification of “predator catchers” has driven groups of gangs and teenagers to show up at registrants’ homes to “carry out justice.”  Numerous studies document various degrees of violence and harassment registrants and their family members face daily. 

Blanton’s wife publicly asked that Drum’s supporters stop the harassment of her and her children. According to CBS News, the judge at Drum’s hearing admonished those who were in the courtroom in support of Drum to cease their activity. Leslie said she and her family had been spat upon, had things thrown at their car, had their house targeted, and more.

So what is the answer? The first, quickest, and most straightforward answer is a “band-aid” measure that NARSOL asked South Carolina to take: remove the home and business addresses from public view. This will at least require vigilantes to work a little harder to achieve their goals. Supporters of the registry argue that knowing where registrants live protects their communities, but the USDOJ reports that more than 93% of the cases of sexual harm are committed by someone known to the victim, and 95% are not registrants. Additionally research shows that sex crimes have the lowest recidivism rates of any crime class tracked except murder.

The long-term fix is not an easy one. It involves changing hearts and minds toward a willingness to put aside emotional responses and adopt rational and logical facts. Several decades of evidence-based data show us the sex offender registry is ineffective at every level. It does not make communities safer, protect children from sexual abuse, help those who have caused harm, nor heal those who have been harmed. Instead, it puts families of registrants in harm’s way, impedes rehabilitation, destroys the opportunity to rebuild damaged lives, and costs taxpayers an enormous and ever-burgeoning amount of resources.

One bright spot on the horizon is the increasing prevalence of restorative justice programs. These alternatives to harsh punishment for offenders and nothing for those offended bring the two sides together—for those who choose it—to dialogue, understand each other better, express remorse and forgiveness, and pave the road for future reconciliation. Because the majority of sexual harm happens within families, this is an excellent choice. 

Policymakers need to abolish the secondary punishments accompanying registration. Special restrictions such as residence, proximity, and Halloween restrictions are statistically useless in furthering public safety and child protection. Abolishing them would save significant public funds that could be better used for evidence-based prevention measures.

Most legislators claim to be fiscally responsible, data-informed, and against unfunded mandates. Yet they seem to forget those words when it comes to tightening the plethora of laws and restrictions (such as residence, proximity, and Halloween restrictions) that affect persons required to register. Politicians wanting to project a “tough on crime” platform turn to sex crimes because society’s taboo on anything sexual combined with the visceral nature of sex crimes causes electors and officials to abandon rationality for emotionalism. 

Meaningful reform will begin when enough citizens protest the waste of human lives and public monies and when decision-makers at all levels adopt evidence-based solutions to preventing sexual harm and rehabilitating those with past sexual offenses.

* A version of this article also appeared in the December 20, 2024 issue of Merion West.

The post Vigilantism & Death: A Harsh Reality for Citizens on the ‘Sex Offender’ Registry first appeared on NARSOL.

Portions of this are written based on conversations with several registrants. No one is identified, and any reference to them is stated in general terms.

By Sandy and John D . . . The latest figure for persons registered as sex offenders in the United States is over 795,000 as of August 2024. A very high percentage of offending behavior was

for what has come to be known as CSAM, child sexual abuse material. (In the federal system, it is often still called child pornography.) For the first time, the percentage of those charged within this category exceeded 50% of the total.  The latest available data from 2024 shows that the percentage of sexual abuse offenders sentenced for charges related to child pornography increased to 52.8%.​ This includes behaviors ranging from viewing something accidentally, to seeking it out, to downloading, to sharing, to collecting, to production and selling.

The problem

Regardless of where one’s behavior falls along that line, there is a criminal charge and a corresponding sentence meted out. Any behavior that molests a child is and should be a matter for the criminal justice system, but isn’t that the end of the chain? Doesn’t it start with viewing, progress to downloading, to sharing, to collecting, and then, like most addictions that need more and more to achieve the same high, move on to production? Certainly, most who view, download, even share, progress no further, but doesn’t everyone who continues start with just looking?

A solution

What if, in those early stages, we treated sex addiction as we do its peer compulsions, like alcoholism or substance use disorder, rather than a crime ? Accountability could still be satisfied with the threat of prosecution if the treatment program was not completed. Could that result in fewer progressions to the hands-on behaviors that wreak the most harm?

We cannot know for sure, but we do know this: What we do now does not stop it or help prevent it. It increases every year.

Other addictive behaviors—alcoholism, substance abuse, gambling—are known for their prominent treatment and support programs. Additionally, there are a number of sex addiction 12-step programs such as Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous and Sex Addicts Anonymous. The International Institute for Trauma and Addictions Professionals credentials a variety of addiction treatment providers, including Certified Sex Addiction Therapists, all who are trained in trauma-informed care, including the cycle of sexual abuse and effective ways of treatment that are not shame-based.

Think of it this way: What would happen if someone at age 13 turned to drugs and alcohol to cope with their trauma? They would become an addict, possibly land in prison, be released, receive compassionate treatment at a drug rehab, and be celebrated and even awarded for overcoming their obstacles. Now, what if that same person turned to pornography and sex at age 13 — just when youth are discovering their sexuality? What if their journey took them, not  from alcohol to party drugs to hard methamphetamines but rather to porn, more risque porn, and finally to illegal materials? Society treats them as monsters, restricts their movement and rights, and puts them on a public list where they will be targeted with vigilantism and shame.

Sadly, the criminal legal system has yet to embrace, or often even consider, taking a trauma-informed, addiction-recovery focused model of harm prevention.

“Safe” phones

A large percentage of those in the first stages of this progression are teenage boys. Some parents, for the purpose of limiting their children’s exposure to the internet, only allow them phones that cannot access online sites. Phones made by Gabb are a popular brand. Advertised as “kid-safe phones,” parents like them because they protect their children from what is “out there.”

Jennifer Weeks, Ph.D., LPC, CAADC, CMAT, CSAT-S, a certified sex addiction therapist based in Eastern Pennsylvania, writes, “You can have a phone that looks like your peers’ so you can avoid the inevitable questions that come when you pull out a flip phone.”

Ironically, the same sorts of phones, even some of the same brands, are given by probation officers to some of the registered sex offenders they monitor, and for the same reason: to prevent them from accessing the internet. Registrants with a first offense of CSAM who are on probation speak of being thankful for the restraints. Prison doesn’t treat their addictions or their compulsions. They aren’t sure they trust themselves. Putting barriers to access is one tool individuals with sex and pornography addiction can use to help prevent them from relapsing into their compulsive behaviors, but it must be accompanied by honesty, openness, and willingness to change.

Several registrants, however, familiar with the Gabb and other similar phones, have expressed a concern. It has been discovered that some of these “safe” phones allow apps to be installed that open a “keyhole” to the internet. In fact, one of the Gabb phone models includes a disclaimer and warning to parents that while their phone does not have an internet browser installed, “. . . some third-party apps contain backdoor internet access through in-app web browsers.” Probation officers handing these phones out to registrants would do well to heed the warning also.

The bigger problem

And what of the broader warning? Unless we start managing addiction to child pornography the same as other recognized addictions, with treatment and support, what do we risk?

We risk more offenders progressing through all the steps to hands-on production and significant harm. An overwhelming majority of those convicted for CSAM/child pornography are males—99.8 percent. We risk the futures of the boys and young men who will find themselves making that first illegal mouse click, making them criminals rather than addicts in treatment and recovery. We will make them registered sex offenders with all it entails: reduced expectation of meaningful employment, damaged community acceptance, destroyed social status and support, often destroyed family connections and support.

NARSOL believes that this risk is too great to take. For several decades, people with addiction problems have been living lives shaped by the criminal system. This has a negative impact not only on each individual but also on society as a whole.

We can stop that now. No; we must stop it now. Offer the option of entering a treatment program to all CSAM users who have not committed hands-on offenses. The reduction in prison costs will offset the cost of proven treatment programs.

The reduction in the number of lives lost and the benefit to society will be incalculable.

If you or someone you care about is misusing sex or pornography and you’re worried they might have a problem, you can refer them to the following resources:

• B4UACT
• StopItNow.org
• The Moore Center for Child Sexual Abuse Prevention’s Prevention.Global
• Fellow Travelers Sex Addiction Recovery for Minor Attracted Persons
• Sexual Life and Legal Consequences

The post Our addiction to criminalizing addicts first appeared on NARSOL.

By Sandy . . . In the many years that we have been tracking Halloween, this one fits the pattern of the past few years.

There were the semi-frequent media and sheriff’s offices who were warning—and scaring—parents about people on sex offender registries grabbing trick-or-treaters, a danger that research indicates has never existed. But the days of Patch “red-dot” maps from coast to coast are gone. A couple of Patch editors in Illinois are hanging on with their “Halloween Safety Maps,” but the dots are blue now, and the articles mitigate some of the fearmongering with the inclusion of a few of the actual facts, such as, “Law enforcement officials and researchers caution that the registries can play only a limited role in preventing child sexual abuse and stress that most perpetrators are known to the child.”

For as many as possible, we responded to media articles and Facebook posts with this message:

Are you aware that any connection between persons on the registry and increased sexual harm to children at Halloween has been totally debunked.? It was an invented construct to begin with. Such a connection has never existed.

You are in a unique position to help make a difference. Instead of writing about something that has never—as far as we are able to determine–harmed any children, write about something that harms, even kills, children every Halloween.

Write about the need for law enforcement to double–and triple–down their foot patrols and crossing guards in high traffic and trick-or-treat areas rather than checking if registered individuals have their lights on. Write about the need for increased sobriety-check traffic stops on Halloween. Write about something that is a real problem, that could save lives, that could make a real difference.

We sent over a dozen emails to reporters and comments on Facebook pages. We received back one reply from a supervising editor wanting more information about our organization.

All of that is the good news.

The bad news is that a more sinister pattern also played out. Trick-or-treating children are several times more likely to be involved in an altercation with an automobile Halloween evening and night. When this occurs, the child seldom emerges unscathed.

In San Antonio, Texas, a truck driver jumped the curb and crashed into a parked vehicle, then striking a group of trick-or-treaters. According to the law enforcement officer on the scene, “By the grace of God, you know, this wasn’t a whole lot worse.” Most of the pedestrians jumped out of the way. A young child received minor injuries and was taken to the hospital with her mother who had more serious but non-life-threatening injuries. The driver fled the scene but was soon apprehended and determined to be intoxicated.

A juvenile was hit while trick-or-treating in Colonial Heights, Virginia. The child was crossing the street, where candy was seen scattered after he was taken to the hospital with non-life-threatening injuries. The driver stayed there.

Two young children were critically injured Halloween night while trick-or-treating in Tracey, California and remain critical Saturday morning. The driver remained at the scene.

Charlotte County, Florida, reports, “. . . a serious hit-and-run involving three people trick-or-treating on Friday night.” The injured pedestrians include a teenager and a child who were injured and taken to local hospitals. The driver fled the scene but was soon found and arrested. The area where this happened is described as a “. . . heavy trick-or-treat area.”

A trick-or-treating 13-year-old boy was struck by a car in Portland, Oregon. He sustained serious injuries, and as of the morning of November 1, his prognosis is unclear. The driver remained at the scene.

This is a mixed bag: The good news is that no children were killed outright. The bad news is that seven children were hit by automobiles while they were trick-or-treating and two or more remain in serious or critical condition.

Now the bad, bad news: Before Halloween, media and law enforcement  focus on persons required to register as the way to keep trick-or-treaters safe.

This is in spite of evidence showing zero trick-or-treating children harmed or killed by registrants. Ever. Anywhere.

Neither media nor law enforcement focus enough on a real, actual danger kids face Halloween evening and night across the nation: an increased risk of being hit by an automobile and injured or killed. Some media articles do. Fewer law enforcement offices do.

If this were an equation, in most states it would look like this:

Definite risk of children being harmed Halloween night = <10% allotment of resources; zero risk (based on past 40 years) of children being harmed Halloween night = >75% allotment of resources.

As an ironic sidenote, just as the message is everywhere that there is no connection between persons on sex offender registries and increased risk of sexual harm to children at Halloween, a legislator in Kentucky is proposing that persons on the state registry be forbidden from participating in Halloween activities. Whenever I hear nonsense like this, I remember a question I was asked a long time ago by a registrant. “Why is it that it is fine if I bob for apples with my grandchildren on October 30^th and on November 1^st,” he asked, “but if I do it on October 31^st, I am breaking the law and could go to prison?”

I could not answer his question then, and I cannot answer it now.

The post A good news, bad news Halloween first appeared on NARSOL.

NARSOL has completed its 2025 conference, its 17^th consecutive one. It was a wonderful conference. So many thanks go to our conference committees; our attendees, both in-person and livestream; our speakers and workshop presenters; the hotel and its staff; our law enforcement and security teams; and our opposition, who have given us the opportunity to show what we are made of and that we will NOT go away!

Speeches and presentations were of the high quality that is expected at

NARSOL conferences, beginning with Guy Hamilton-Smith’s kick-off speech on Friday morning, through Joshua Hoe’s Saturday night awards banquet speech, concluding with Danielle Bailey’s brilliant presentation Sunday morning.

Conference attendees—both in-person and livestream—may watch any presentation given in the main room again by using your original identification. As soon as possible, those presentations and also many of the others will be available to everyone for viewing on NARSOL’s YouTube channel.

At the awards banquet, the most prestigious award, the Paul Shannon Lifetime Achievement Award, went to Pat Borden of AZRSOL. Pat graciously accepted it on behalf of not only herself but also her family and the Arizona organization.

This successfully completed conference sends a message: We are here; we are still here; we will continue to be here.

NARSOL not only stands for National Association for Rational Sexual Offense Laws. NARSOL stands for an organization that expects those who have caused harm to accept responsibility for that harm. NARSOL then stands with them as they navigate life on a sex offender registry.   We will fight:

• for their dignity and respectful treatment;
• that their constitutional rights are not violated by law enforcement or legislation;
• for their protection from vigilantism, both physical violence and online intimidation;
• for removal of impediments to their rehabilitation;
• for policy and legislative decisions that are grounded in solid research.

This 2025 conference in Atlanta has been a “second chance” conference,

and in summing up what NARSOL stands for and what it fights for on behalf of those we represent, is that not it?

Both the ability and the right to seek and to be granted an attainable second chance.

The post Another successful NARSOL conference completed first appeared on NARSOL.

By Ronald . . .  Like every other inmate being released at Missouri’s Farmington Correctional Center, I received a voter registration card and instructions on how to restore voting rights as a felon. The instructions said, “The right to vote is automatically restored upon release” unless convicted of a crime connected to the exercise of the right to vote.

Being released in June of 2024, I knew there was plenty of time to re-register to vote before the November presidential election. But when I began the process later in the summer, things took a decidedly different course.

I showed up to vote in the August primary with my ID and voter registration card

from before I was incarcerated, but the election clerk could not find my name on the voter rolls. A phone call to the election commission offices verified that my voting status was suspended because I had been incarcerated as a felon. I would need to come to the main election board with my discharge papers to renew my voting status.

When I appeared at the St. Louis County Board of Elections office, the clerk was courteous and efficient in reviewing my discharge papers and verifying my identity. But one thing caught her attention: the “lifetime supervision” notation on my discharge. She was hesitant to register me on the spot and said she would make copies of all my documentation and give it to her supervisor (who was out of the office at the time) to review. They would call me with their decision.

This was the first indication of a problem with registering to vote.

Two days later, Cindy, the election board office supervisor, called and told me I could not be registered to vote because I was disqualified since I was on lifetime supervision. (In Missouri, lifetime supervision is applicable only to those with sexual offense convictions.) I explained to her that Missouri law was quite clear in stating the only disqualifications in restoring the right to vote for felons was “probation, parole, or a crime connected with voting.” But she was firm in her decision: I could not register to vote.

The next day I called my attorney’s office and explained my dilemma. The receptionist assured me that one of the attorneys in the office would get back to me with an opinion.  Some time went by and I heard nothing from my attorney. Periodic follow-up calls and reminders—even a letter—did not engender a response.

When I re-read the paperwork on restoring voting rights, I noticed a paragraph at the bottom that said, “If you believe you are eligible to vote and encounter difficulty registering, please contact the Election Division of the Missouri Secretary of State” with the contact information included. I called.

In this day of “press one for …” I was surprised to be immediately connected to a live person. I explained my situation and received a sympathetic response. I was told definitively that I was in the right, and that “lifetime supervision” was not a disqualification for a felon to register to vote. They would call Cindy, the St. Louis Board of Elections supervisor, and instruct her to register me to vote.

The next day I received a call from Eric, the Election Board chair, who reviewed my situation with me and then cited RSMo 559.106 as the basis for his decision that I could not be registered to vote. When I questioned him further, he stated that, in the opinion of the board’s attorney, “lifetime supervision” was a form of probation—thereby a disqualification to being registered to vote. Even though he got a direct order from the office of the Secretary of State, he said, he was going to abide by the decision of their own attorney.

Not so automatic!

So, at the time of this writing, here I sit, four days from the registration deadline, caught between two interpretations of the law. What it shows is that restoration of

voting rights for a felon may not only vary state-by-state, but within a state like Missouri, may even vary from county to county.

The only way to resolve this problem is the hard way—through legal action—by suing the county election commission. And that is exactly what I will be doing, not only for my case, but for all those who come after me or who are currently facing the same challenge in Missouri.

Ronald is a registrant in the state of Missouri.  He has filed a petition with the Missouri Probation and Parole Board to be removed from lifetime supervision.

The post Restored voter’s rights in Missouri: not so automatic first appeared on NARSOL.