There’s a law in North Carolina that bans registered sex offenders from using social media websites like Facebook. At face value, it seems to be a good law. Social media seems to be a place where alleged sex offenders can meet their victims.
But a Chapel Hill attorney says the law is too broad.
Attorney Glenn Gerding, who is representing convicted sex offender Christian Martin Johnson, argues that the law is too broad, and would prevent his client from using sites like Google or Amazon, since both platforms offer social networking features. “The regulation does not just keep a registered sex offender from engaging in obscene speech with a minor,” Gerding wrote, in a motion filed last month. “It prohibits any and all speech, however innocent, even if it’s a religious conversation between the offender and his priest, or a discussion of family matters between the offender and his mother.”
According the The Raleigh News & Observer:
Across the state last year, 75 offenders were charged under the law, which targets social networks such as MySpace and Facebook that allow minors as members.
And while lawyers representing sex offenders may find the law too broad and unfair, politicians say sex offenders can communicate without using the Internet and social media.
But Lt. Gov. Walter Dalton, who sponsored the law as a state senator, says there are other ways registered sex offenders can communicate.
“We do have the mail,” he said. “We do have telephone.”
Dalton said the Internet restriction is no different from a sex offender being prohibited from running a food vending cart on a school campus.
“When you are deemed to be a sexual predator, sometimes you do not have all the full rights of every citizen out there,” Dalton said. “It’s got a good public purpose. We don’t need sex offenders engaging with minors.”
This article appears in Mar 8-14, 2011.
xorcism and sex?
Let me tell you about my families setting me up for an exorcism and her need for money through political, and religious pandering concerning sex.
I remember living behind a church were Brian Lamb, and a bunch of these Cspan guys used too have a wood shop. At that place of residence my mom thought I needed an exorcist, after playing in the mud the way very young children will sometimes with my uncle who mixed a glass of this red clay in water and told me it was chocolate milk.
After drinking it as he would force me to do thing all the time like the time he made me cut off the limb I was sitting on and the device came out of my shoulder being more powerful and in control I broke out with ring worm all over my body and my mom told me it was writing that could not be understood so she had priests come in from the church.
I guess my Dad did not know that one of the people at the church was in line for being my new dad but that was not in the cards because I guess he felt I was in need of discipline after an accident in the wood shop. I had been check out on the band saw by my grandfather who was a millwright in Arkansas and to do some jobs the blade shield had to be removed. Some kids came in and wanted to use the saw, then got mad that I wanted to warn them to put the guard on and they told me they owned it all and I was not to tell them anything, and after this head strong kid cut his thumb off the other kids said they would tell their fathers it was all my fault, but it was not.
I had a fever of well over a hundred and I was a bloody mess with the infection. The priests came in with outer guys and one had a camera. The priests would throw me across the room well the other snapped a picture. I would fall on furniture and the floor and they would tell me get on the bed, don’t get off the bed very loud and when I would crawl back on the bed they would pick me up and throw me over and over again well the other priest would snap another picture and this went on till one guy said we have enough picture and they left me in the blood, mud, and bedding, then my aunt came in with some save that was for ring worm.
She spread the save and kidded me about dying when the rings got to my heart. After getting well I went back to the wood shop and the guys had made me a special shield and gave me my sword which were both made of wood and I had to fight one of the guys in my shorts because I did not want to remove them and the other guy was naked (he know who he is). I was still not up too speed and lost the battle. They then called me the bad guy and this group was supposed to be my gate keeper or something like that appointed by the priests. My Dad did not like them much also but that did not matter much because someone at the church was going to be my new dad till he said no, my mom cried allot, my dad was gone, I healed up, but I still have a case.
Please know that there is nothing any of you can do to make what you and the rest of the ones involved can do to make this my fault. See at the time I was about seven years old. Since then the church has made an effort to kill me, to the extent of trying to pass laws to kill sex offenders.
Come on, keep it up, keep pushing laws that you as a group of very said individuals know have no value. Take me too court so I can own a network. I have met with your staff members in private since along with military personal and others.
Now lets note when this happened I was only a small child being thrown around a room like a rag doll by people that started all this clear back in the late fifty’s and the steering by very bad people that think abusing kids to make laws to stop abuse, Ha! these laws are bogus and the fact that they can not kill gays anymore does not justify the use of laws too kill someone set up by them to create some worthless set of laws by a fusion of church and state is wrong and realty designed by them to harm us all.
My case was pragmatic but more than that I know what was done and who was involved making vendetta laws that really have no bases in truth, and are based in lies.
Keith Richard Radford Jr
PSS don’t be cowards, let me know you received this e-mail through a response.
It’s time to communicate
richard.radford@att.net
First off, this is freedom of speech and has many constitutional issues.
Not all sex offenders are using social media to look for kids to molest, a vast majority of them, I believe, are not.
Also, most government, businesses, etc have Facebook or MySpace accounts and by not allowing them on, then you are once again removing their rights to speak out to the legislatures and others.
If a person used a social media site to commit their crime, then I can understand not letting that person on, while on parole or probation.
http://sexoffenderissues.blogspot.com
Besides being unconstitutional, its ridiculous. You may as well just ban these people from ALL public places! Most sex offenses happen in the home, by someone known to the victim. The government reports that sex offenders have the lowest recidivism rate. Yet media hype and community ignorance will keep someone convicted of a sex crime on the bottom of the food change, the lowest of the low. How about the 18 year old convicted of having consensual sex with his 16 year old girlfriend? Or the man seen urinating behind a tree? Yeah, keep them off of facebook, they are so darned dangerous.
Pass your feelgood laws, and pretend they make people safer. Put them on a registry that states they are a sex offender. How does that keep anyone safe? I might know the sex offender who lives down the street, but if I shop just a few miles away, I don’t know who I am shopping next to. The registry doesn’t do me much good there.
It’s ok, because our tax dollars pay for all these useless laws. Law makers are getting rich off of the laws they pass, but that’s ok too. We feel better because we now know that a sex offender moved in 1 mile down the road. He used to be a doctor, but he had consentual sex with a minor. Now he can’t get a job.
I feel safer with the 1000 foot rule, too. No sex offender can live around us, so they live in the woods and under bridges. They sleep there at night when all the kids are home and in bed. Makes sense. Who care’s where they are during the day.
Get real people, these feelgood laws don’t do anything to protect anyone. They just hurt people who made a mistake.
Dangerous predators should be watched, but face it, the average sex offender isn’t a dangerous person. It’s a family member, a friend, someone close to the victim. And it’s a proven fact they won’t reoffend.
Nothing is impossible to a willing heart.
Every man has his price.
A friend in need is a friend indeed.
A friend is never known till a man has need.
Colour plus texture for the lips. Stands out on the runway. Simmers on the street! What made M·A·C famous.