Defendant, believed to be a Proud Boys member, never responded to the lawsuit. 

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. – A man who spent months posting false allegations about the National Association for Rational Sexual Offense Laws (NARSOL) on Facebook, including a fabricated claim that the organization is linked to groups advocating child sexual abuse, was ordered last week to pay NARSOL $18,458.56 in damages by North Carolina Superior Court Judge Clayton Somers.

Ronald Creighton Davis, of Pierce County, Georgia, never answered the lawsuit. He didn’t file paperwork and didn’t appear in court; he did not contest anything. 

Davis participated in multiple campaigns aimed at preventing NARSOL from holding its annual conference. The first succeeded. In June 2025, a Hilton property in Grand Rapids canceled NARSOL’s conference contract after a pressure campaign that included online threats, doxxing of NARSOL leadership, in-person hotel pamphleting, and calls to Hilton’s corporate offices. Davis bragged in his posts that he helped make that happen, affiliating his actions with the Proud Boys, a Southern Poverty Law Center-designated hate group.

The second campaign targeted a Holiday Inn property in Atlanta that fall. The strategy was the same: flood the hotel with calls, manufacture a scandal, incite outrage by falsely associating NARSOL with child sexual abuse, dox hotel staff, and make it too costly for the venue to honor the contract. This campaign failed, and the conference was held as planned.

“We are an organization advocating for the modernization of obsolete laws that ‘sound tough’ but, in reality, have proven ineffective and often harmful,” said NARSOL Executive Director Brenda Jones. “We don’t advocate for harming children. We never have. And if you visit narsol.org, you can read exactly what we do and what we don’t do, in plain English.”

Davis’s false statements were not accidental. NARSOL counsel Paul Dubbeling, Esq. of P.M. Dubbeling PLLC in Chapel Hill, described it in court filings as a deliberate strategy to invoke public fear and disgust, to make ordinary people and hotel managers react emotionally before they had time to verify anything.

“This small group systematically lied about who we are and what we do. They used lies to drive a hotel out of a legal contract with us,” said Jones. “But then, they didn’t bother to respond to a lawsuit. We sued. We won.”

NARSOL filed the lawsuit on October 7, 2025. Davis was served but failed to respond within the required time. The court’s order was filed on May 18, 2026.

“With this ruling, the court sends a clear message,” added Jones. “You cannot harass a civil rights organization out of existence by loudly repeating lies.”

Case: NARSOL v. Ronald Creighton Davis et al., No. 25CV035559-910, Wake County Superior Court, North Carolina

Media contact: Brenda Jones, bjones@narsol.org | www.narsol.org

The post NEWS RELEASE: North Carolina Court Awards NARSOL $18,458 Against Man Who Spread False Claims first appeared on NARSOL.

The post Wisconsin sheriff stresses facts about sexual offending and registry first appeared on NARSOL.

By Sandy . . . Glenn Cummings, president of the University of Southern Maine, has recently created controversy in the art world by ordering the removal of three pieces of art from the university’s campus gallery. The gallery’s curator was incensed at the removal order but had no choice but to comply. It is not the subject of the art that made it fall victim to censorship but rather the artist himself.

Bruce Habowski is, or rather was, on Maine’s sex offense registry due to a conviction of unlawful sexual contact from two decades ago. The offense with which he was charged is a Tier I offense, requiring ten years on the registry. A search for his name on the registry today turns up nothing.

His work, part of a larger exhibit titled “Industrial Maine – Our Other Landscape,” consists of three canvasses portraying paper mills, trucks, and overpasses. 

Cummings had received a complaint from a relative of the victim and felt it appropriate to take action, saying that everyone had to pass by that display as it was at the main entrance, and “…the potential to trigger is very real. . . . In the end the requirement to provide a safe place for our students stands paramount.” 

Who is the “everyone” needing protection from pictures of trucks and abandoned paper mills?

Think about it. I am a college student who has been sexually molested in the past. On my way through the gallery, I see this cool picture of an old yellow truck. I freeze as memories of my molestation sweep over me.

Maybe if I had been molested in a yellow truck. Or even next to a yellow truck.

Or…how about this: On my way through the gallery on campus, I see some interesting artwork. I peer closer to see the artist’s name affixed to the canvasses. Oh my gosh! I recognize that name from the time I was idly browsing through the state sex offender registry ten years ago, when I was nine! He’s a registered sex offender! Being a victim of a sexual assault some years back, I am outraged – outraged! – that MY college would display the work of a REGISTERED SEX OFFENDER.

Let’s face it. This artist’s work was removed based on the complaint of one person speaking on behalf of the person who had been the victim in Mr. Habowski’s case twenty years ago. Is she a college student today, walking past Mr. Habowski’s oil paintings of underpasses, trucks, and old paper mill silos and being “triggered” by the sight of them? Possibly yes, but more likely not.

The risk of harm being done to anyone viewing these art pieces is infinitesimal. This art was not removed based on a rational nor realistic need to protect students who had already been traumatized and were at risk of re-living their trauma due to the art. The campus is no more of a “safe space” without those three pieces than it was with them.

The art of Bruce Habowski was removed as a punitive measure by a man whose moral indignity was aroused at the thought of someone who had committed a sexual crime being given any positive recognition.

That would be an entirely appropriate judgment call for Mr. Cummings to make in choosing décor for his own home. It is an entirely inappropriate judgment call for him to make in regard to a university art gallery on a university campus over which he has total control. It is a serious abuse of power.

The post Eeek! A picture of an overpass! Protect me! first appeared on NARSOL.

By Michael M. . . . The headlines today are full of stories of righteous indignation over immigrant children being separated from their families. While that dilemma is certainly newsworthy, the American public seems largely unaware of the fact that tens of thousands of our own children are being taken from their families each year and tossed into a rapacious legal system that chews them up and spits them out as sex offenders   As hard as it may be to believe, The Department of Justice estimates that there are at least 89,000 children on the sex offender registry, and it should come as no surprise to anyone that it’s destroying their lives.

Imagine, for a moment, what it would be like to have your child listed publicly on the sex offender registry, complete with a photograph, home address, and even a description of the sex crime that resulted in his (or her) inclusion on the list.   Consider what kind of life your child would have if, because of sex offender restrictions, he couldn’t attend school, go to a park or swimming pool, or have a birthday party because other children will be there. Some states simultaneously have laws requiring minors to attend school while at the same time forbidding sex offenders from being anywhere near a school. 44% of sex offenders overall (and presumably juvenile sex offenders, as well) are unable to live with their supportive families due to residency restrictions. Many are forced into foster care, even as bills have been introduced to bar juvenile sex offenders from foster homes and other communal youth facilities.

Elizabeth Letourneau, PhD and professor at the Bloomberg School’s Department of Mental Health and director of the Moore Center for the Prevention of Child Sexual Abuse said, “Not only is this policy [of putting juveniles on the sex offender registry] stigmatizing and distressing, but it may make children vulnerable to unscrupulous or predatory adults who use the information to target registered children for sexual assault.” Letourneau’s findings in a 2018 study published in Psychology, Public Policy, and Law found that registered children are five times more likely to be approached by an adult for sex than non-registered child sex offenders and four times more likely to have suicidal thoughts.

Other wide-ranging unintended consequences of being a juvenile on the registry include harassment and violence. 52% of juvenile registrants have reported violence or threats of violence which they directly attributed to their inclusion on the registry.   Bruce W., whose two sons (aged 10 and 12) were placed on the registry for an offense against their 10-year old sister, reported that a man once held a shotgun to his 10-year old son’s head. In a 2012 Human Rights Watch interview, one female juvenile registrant said, “I was on the public registry at age 11 for the offense of unlawful sexual contact… Random men called my house wanting to ‘hook up’ with me.” Other HRW interviewees described beatings, drive-by shootings, and even beloved family pets being killed.

Without a doubt, some of the children on the sex offender registry are convicted of horrific crimes which led to appropriately harsh punishments. There are others, however, who end up convicted and branded as sex offenders for what has been characterized as fairly normative behavior for children or teens, such as playing doctor or engaging in sexual exploration. Teens who exchange sexy selfies shouldn’t be charged with creating child pornography. Having consensual sex at that age may be a very stupid thing to do, but it hardly rises to the level of sexual assault or predation.

At least 27 states and one territory require that juveniles must register if they commit a sex offense for which an adult in the same jurisdiction would be required to register.   37 states reserve registration for juveniles convicted of specific qualifying offenses. It is difficult to know exactly how many children have been placed on sex offender registries nationwide, however. Studies regarding children on the sex offender registry are relatively rare, and the states typically do not track information regarding the ages of offenders when they were added to the registry. Human Rights Watch attempted to obtain this information from each of the 50 states, but only two responded – and those with aggregate counts only. According to the U.S. Department of Justice, juvenile sex offenders comprise 25.8% of all sex offenders and 35.6% of sex offenders against juvenile victims. They estimate that in 2004 there were 89,000 juvenile sex offenders known to police.

As for the overall age distribution of these juvenile offenders, there is very little data available. Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Kansas, Minnesota, Texas allow juvenile registration at 8-years old.   Massachusetts allows sex offender registration for kids as young as 7-years of age. In 2011, there were 639 children on Delaware’s sex offender registry, 55 of whom were under the age of 12.   In 2009, a study conducted by the Department of Justice discovered that nationwide, one in eight child sex offenders who committed crimes against other children was under the age of 12. Overall, according to the DOJ’s Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, “Known juvenile offenders who commit sex offenses against minors span a variety of ages. Five percent are younger than 9 years, and 16 percent are younger than 12 years. The rate rises sharply around age 12 and plateaus after age 14.”

Maya R. was arrested in Michigan at the age of 10 for play-acting sexual scenarios while fully clothed with her step-brothers, aged 5 and 8. She pled guilty to criminal sexual conduct and was required to register as a sex offender for 25 years. It is not unheard of for both children engaged together in sexual conduct to each be charged with a crime and simultaneously listed as the victim in the other’s case.

According to a 2013 Human Rights Watch report, the idiosyncrasies of the juvenile justice system can seriously compound the problems associated with how child offenders end up on the registry.   It is doubtful, for example, that they fully understand their rights to due process and against self-incrimination.   And we really don’t know if they fully comprehend the devastating (and sometimes forever) consequences of pleading guilty before they accept a plea bargain. Even adults can find the plea bargaining process confusing or coercive, even though this is how 94% of all criminal cases are resolved. Often, these juveniles are not informed that they will be subject to registration until after they have pled guilty, and sometimes not until they have finished serving out their juvenile detention or incarceration. The decisions made by a 10-year old should never have permanent ramifications that will impact them for the rest of their lives, yet, in many of these cases, they do.

The inclusion of juvenile sex offenders down to the age of 14 on the registry is mandated by SORNA (Sex Offender Registry and Notification Act) and has been a major bone of contention and non-compliance by the states since it was signed into law in 2006. In 2016, additional guidelines were issued to give states more flexibility in implementing laws regarding juveniles on the registry, but many states remain out of compliance and some of the states who are in compliance are being challenged in the courts. It is worth noting that the DOJ estimate of 89,000 juvenile sex offenders was in 2004, two years before SORNA began pushing the states to put juveniles on the registry. That number is probably much higher now.

The 2018 study in Psychology, Public Policy, and Law supports the legal challenges, finding that “…in combination with the available literature indicating that these policies do not improve public safety, the results of this study offer empirical support for the concerns expressed by those calling for the abolition of juvenile registration and notification policies.”

The abomination of having nearly a hundred thousand children on the sex offender registry is just one of the many reasons why these laws are unconstitutionally cruel and unusual and need to be repealed now.

The post How many kids are on the sex offender registry? first appeared on NARSOL.

By Tammy . . . Recently in my boredom I decided to look at my local Clerk of Courts public records online to see what it says about me. I have no criminal convictions. To my amazement, after having looked a few years ago and finding nothing except my divorce info, I discovered that traffic speeding tickets from the 1990s, some twenty-five years ago, are listed — as if this is vital information about who I am. Zooming along at 38mph in a 25mph speed zone in 1990 must be pertinent information to need be listed today. I suppose the fact that my driving record was less than squeaky clean in my late teens and early twenties must prove that I’m at risk to reoffend according to a society with a “Right to Know” addiction. It may very well have mattered for a brief part of my life. Today, not so much. The same can be said of anyone listed on registries and lists today.

In this state, as is the case in most states, minor traffic violations remain on your driving record for two years in most instances and can potentially affect your auto policy premiums for a three-year period according to the insurance companies. So I ask: What does this public information really have to do with my driving ability some twenty five years later?

Furthermore, not only are a couple of speeding tickets listed, but also my married name is provided in parentheses. I changed my maiden name to my husband’s last name in 2006. Even more invasive to me is that my current address is listed, not the address where I resided in the 1990’s. Is a person really being paid to update personal information for traffic violations almost thirty years later? Even if there is an existing computer program that automatically adds updated personal information, at what cost was this program and why would any department or agency pay to implement a tool that delved into such antiquated and insignificant minutiae?

One can only imagine the shock — based on all the “public” information that exists online due to overtly aggressive proponents who insist this makes us safer — when future generations discover their ancestors were heathens. It seems that Great Grandma driving record will be far more significant and exciting to learn of compared to her Kohl’s department store bridal registry or professional career.

I thought at one time that wrongdoings, no matter what they involved, were to become the past once whatever form of retribution was completed. Just because an ability to seek personal information about someone exists doesn’t make it a prudent choice. It seems this saturation of public information at our fingertips should cause as great a concern with unconstitutional repercussions as it does with our trying to figure out who the unlawful citizens complied on some list or registry are. But I guess that’s just too antiquated of a philosophy for today’s standards of public information sharing.

Me today, YOU tomorrow.

The post The age of public information saturation first appeared on NARSOL.