The Ohio Sex Offense Registry is Broken Beyond Repair and Should Be Scrapped

On February 28, 2020, I was attacked in a news media article by some victim advocate. I wrote a counterpoint but it seems tis podunk Ohio rag is afraid of the truth. Since Melissa Martin is a coward, as most victim cultists are, I've posted my retort here:

The Ohio Sex Offense Registry is Broken Beyond Repair and Should be Scrapped
By Derek W. Logue of OnceFallen.com

In Melissa Martin’s February 28, 2020 opinion piece (“Ohio Sex Offender Registry needs to stay"), Martin saw fit to demean the registered person featured in a 2018 Dayton Daily News article. I am that man, and as both a registered person and an activist, I am angered and offended that Melissa Martin would attempt to use me to justify this useless, bloated and arbitrary public pillory.

My name is Derek Logue, and I am a Registered Person and an anti-registry activist. Since 2007, I have hosted OnceFallen.com, a website that offers information and support for registered persons and their loved ones. I have been featured on HLN, CNN, Russia Today, and numerous media outlets. I have not shied away from my past. However, I will not allow myself to be used as some kind of poster child for the registry, unless that poster is a discussion of why the registry is useless.

Martin knows nothing about my plight. In the seventeen years since my release from prison, I have endured homelessness, social ostracism, unemployment, and vigilante attacks. I advocate for the abolishment of the sex offense registry because I have experienced firsthand how the registry harms the registrant, their families, and society as a whole.

Martin failed to mention the complexities of Ohio’s confusing registry scheme. When I was released, I moved from Alabama, a state without a classification scheme, to Cincinnati to enter a program. Because Alabama makes every registrant languish on the list for life, I was wrongfully labeled a “Sexual Predator” by the local registry office two years after initially determining I was only a ‘sexually oriented offender.” Alabama never classified me as predatory. Other registrants who moved from Alabama have been given the same label automatically.

In 2008, Ohio switched from a risk-based classification system to an offense-based classification system to comply with the federal Adam Walsh Act; this increased the number of those placed in the “high risk” category tripled overnight because of the law. After spending $10 million dollars to defend this controversial law, the state Supreme Court determined the new law is punishment and cannot be applied retroactively. Interestingly, former Attorney General Marc Dann stated the state adopted federal law to collect bonus federal funds promised to those states adopting the Walsh Act; the actual bonus funds Ohio received for adoption of the Walsh Act was zero dollars.

I was forced to move because Ohio decided a GED school for adults qualified as a school for residency restriction law purposes. It took seven months and 131 phone calls to find a new residence. Once I moved, the city of Cincinnati tried passing further restrictions. I fought successfully to save my home on that occasion; the city passed the increased restrictions but added both a grandfather clause and removed parks from the ordinance. Ohio eventually determined that residency restriction laws are punitive and cannot be applied to anyone convicted before July 31, 2003. It was far easier to find housing the last time I needed to move within Ohio; it only took me one month and 34 phone calls to find a new apartment in 2015.

Finding work as a registered citizen is a herculean task. Despite having an undergraduate degree, my only jobs after prison were minimum-wage grocery store positions taken after months of unemployment. I was not hired because of my status. The Target Corporation even sent me a letter from corporate headquarters stating they have policies against hiring “sex offenders.” I’m not alone— based on a survey I conducted with over 300 Registered Persons, registrants were five times more likely to be unemployed, 50% less likely to have full-time employment, nearly twice as likely to collect SSI and food stamps, and nearly 20 times more likely to be homeless than someone not on the registry.

I have also experienced death threats and harassment due to my status, including from those who claim to be against sex offenses who have no problem describing fantasies about seeing me raped, among other nasty comments I have to endure over the years. Martin also believes that registered persons are somehow incapable of suffering from depression or anxiety. If the registry was not a cause for concern for those on it, why would a woman in Utah take a guilty plea to such a silly crime as walking around her own house topless in order to avoid 10 years on the public registry?

In the seventeen years since my release, I have never been accused of a sex offense, so apparently Ohio guessed wrong. Martin did not seem concerned with the amount of resources wasted on maintaining this blacklist. People convicted of sex offenses, even those labeled a “high risk” are far less likely to reoffend than any other crime type, a fact confirmed by numerous state and federal studies over a period of decades that have found rearrest/ reconviction rates below 1% annually. Indeed, most sex crimes are committed inside the home by someone known to the victim.. Most sex crime arrests are of those with no prior sex offense arrests. However, the registry was created with the extremely rare stranger kidnapping in mind.

The sex offense registry has nearly a million names, some as young as age nine. The registry does not discriminate between a prostitute, a man who drunkenly urinated behind a dumpster, a man who grabbed a teenager’s arm to chastise her for running into traffic, a teenager who had mutual relations with fellow teens or made nude pics of themselves, and more serious offenses.

Victim advocates like Martin like to say the registry is worth it if it saves one child, but how much are taxpayers willing to spend for the false sense of security supplied by the registry? Ohio spent $10 million in legal fees defending SB 10. Ohio spends over a half million annually to a private business (Offender Watch) for maintaining the registry. Hamilton County noted in 2008 they were already spending aver a quarter million every three months just on community notification. Then there’s the cost of compliance checks run by the US Marshals to the tune of $60 million annually, three times the amount the SMART Office offers to assist states to implement the Walsh Act. Registered persons and their loved ones are far more likely to be welfare dependent despite having higher education levels than those convicted of other offenses.

The sex offense registry is an expensive, useless, bloated blacklist of nearly a million names, and very few of those are any kind of danger to society. The registry is broken beyond repair and needs to be abolished, and I will gladly take Melissa Martin on in a public debate on this issue. I have nothing to hide; the facts are on my side, after all.