Below is the editorial that will be read on the air either tonight or tomorrow night.
Editorial:
In response to the February 17, 2014 article, “Stopping Near Sex Offenders.”
If we think about registered sex offenders at all, most of us fear them as monsters who have committed terrible sexual crimes against innocent children and are people who need to be carefully watched when released to make sure our children aren’t hurt again.
Nobody wants to protect children more than the members of Women Against Registry. Women Against Registry, or WAR, is the voice of millions of innocent women and children who are wrongly and unfairly punished because we have a family member who has completed their debt to society but now must face a life of unemployment, homelessness, and despair. As registered sex offenders they are targeted for harassment and abuse, can’t get a job, and many cases, can’t even rejoin their own homes. Too many of our husbands, fathers and sons are getting caught up in this registration hysteria even if the offense they committed was minor and years ago.
As the president of WAR, Vicki Henry, says, “In the vast majority of registration cases we’re talking about dumb childish mistakesundefinedoffenses like public urination, teen age consensual sex, sexting, lewd behavior, taking pictures of your own children in the bath tub, and clicking on the wrong link on a website. Less than two percent of violent sexual offenses are committed by perfect strangers. It is time to stop acting hysterically in the name of protecting children; it’s time stop public registration of sex offenders and to start treating this serious problem rationally.”
