OnceFallen.com's full statement to the US Dept. of Justice regarding public SORNA input

In case someone missed the announcements from other groups, the US Dept. of Justice is accepting open comments on SORNA rule changes. You can see the full announcement and make your own statement at https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2020/08/13/2020-15804/registration-requirements-under-the-sex-offender-registration-and-notification-act

So here is my full statement, but since the online form is capped at 5k characters, I shortened it then added this full statement as an attachment, and included writings from OnceFallen.com and my Crimes Against Registrants Database. 

(Note: I hate to shorten the intro on the Federal Register due to space limits, so I included it as an attachment; after a full month, it was published at https://beta.regulations.gov/comment/DOJ-OAG-2020-0003-0283)

PS: To anyone trying to critique what I wrote, it was already submitted so changes can't be made, so telling me of any minor typos is a waste of time at this point. 

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To: Regulations Docket Clerk

Office of Legal Policy

U.S. Department of Justice

950 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Room 4234

Washington, DC 20530

Re: Docket No. OAG 157

Statement from Derek W. Logue of OnceFallen.com on the US DoJ proposed changes to the “Registration Requirements Under the Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act”

My name is Derek W. Logue, a 43 year old Native American male currently residing in rural Nebraska, and founder of the registry information website OnceFallen.com. I have been a Registered Person since 2003 and will be on this government blacklist for the rest of my life. I am essentially serving a life sentence. Every day my face is on this registry, my life and the lives of my loved ones are in constant danger. Just this year alone, I’ve experienced multiple threats and experience constant harassment because of the registry. I have not held a formal job since 2006 and collect welfare to survive. There is no point in trying to become a productive citizen when few companies hire Registered Persons, and even if I can be hired, I can be too easy fired using my label as a convenient excuse. I live off $803 a month SSDI/ SSI, draw $15 a month in food stamps, and Medicaid/Medicare. 

I have no desire to look for a job so long as my name is on your government blacklist. I had two jobs but lost them both because the registry became a tool of oppression by my employer to silence any dissent. If I fell out of line, there’s a convenient excuse to terminate my employment. At least I have a stable income now and don’t have to consider doing something potentially illegal to survive. 

I’m not alone in this struggle; A 2016 Jobs and Welfare Survey of 307 registered citizens found registrants living in AWA-compliant states were MORE likely than those living in non-AWA states to report being currently homeless (4.05% AWA vs 2.6% non), being unemployed (47.97% AWA vs 36.36% non), being denied a job (61.86% AWA vs 54.61% non), being harassed at work (53.57% AWA vs 47.66% non), and being forced to rely on public assistance (57.43% AWA vs. 50% non). This study strongly suggests the Adam Walsh Act exacerbates the negative consequences of the public registry. Further studies would be needed to understand the impact of the Adam Walsh Act on registered citizens as compared to existing laws.

For the past 15 years, I’ve fought back against these oppressive laws. Victim advocates like Laura Ahearn from Parents For Megan’s Law and Florida State Senator Lauren Book have tried various methods for silencing me, including filing SLAPP Suits against me. Vigilante groups have disparaged my name and have threatened me; I have over a half-dozen websites dedicated to everything I do. I’ve been called many terrible things while being interviewed by the mainstream media. Still, I will continue to speak out because I already feel dead thanks to the Sex Offense Registry.

The Registry is a Weapon of Mass Destruction

On May 14, 2020, Omaha resident James Fairbanks, armed with a gun and information from both the Nebraska Sex Offense Registry and a Facebook group, broke into Matteio Condoluci’s home and murdered him in cold blood. Fairbanks has tried to blame the murder on his victim by claiming he looked too long at a child. This is but one of dozens of murders committed against registered persons since the federal sex offense registry law was established as part of the Omnibus Crime Bill of 1994. The misuse of the registry as a weapon of vengeance, however, is as old as the very concept of the registry. 

The modern sex offense registry originated in 1931 when Los Angeles County Prosecutor proposed a “convict registry” of people convicted of drug crimes or other offenses tied to organized crime. As fears of the likes of famous gangsters Al Capone and Baby Face Nelson gave way to fears of “Sexual Psychopaths” during the 1930s and 1940s, sex offenses became the focus of LA’s criminal registry. By 1947, the citywide registry became the first statewide registry in the United States. 

Even in the early days of the sex offense registry, the registry was utilized as a weapon. During the 1950s, it was used to harass homosexuals engaging in consensual sex, charging them with “sexual perversion.” In 1953, only about 150 rapists and 44 “other sex offenses” like molestation were included on the registry; over 2200 registered persons were homosexuals. Among those placed on the sex offense registry for “sexual perversion” was Bayard Rustin, who becam one of the leaders of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. However, it took a decade after Ruskin’s conviction to be restored within the Civil Rights Movement. 

Sexual Psychopath fears were replaced in part by the fear of violent inner-city minorities. The 1964, Kitty Genocese, a white 28-year-old was raped and murdered by a black man, which helped spark racial tensions in New York City and solidify the widely believed myth of the “black rapist.” Later that year, Barry Goldwater became the first Presidential candidate to run his campaign on the “War on Crime” platform; although his bid failed, Goldwater’s “War on Crime” would be taken up would be perfected by President Johnson. 

As the Cold War and Civil Rights era fears waned, America once again returned to Sex Offender panic in the form of fears of child abductions and Satanic Ritual Abuse. Americans became afraid to leave their homes, and victim advocates like John Walsh were testifying before Congress that America was “littered with mutilated, decapitated, raped, and strangled children.” By the time research discovered that what we believed about Satanic Ritual Abuse and “stereotypical kidnappings” to be false, the belief that Satanic underground pedophile networks fueled demands for stricter penalties for anyone convicted of a sex offense. 

After Jacob Wetterling’s abduction, a law enforcement officer gave Patty Wetterling the idea to advocate for a national registry. Washington had made headlines not long after Jacob’s disappearance by creating a modern sex offense registry. In the year before the Jacob Wetterling Act established a national registry, Joseph Gallardo was scheduled to move to a home near Lynnwood, WA after his release. The Snohomish County Sheriff's Office wrongfully claimed Gallardo murdered children and was sexually sadistic. Neighbors protested in front of the home and later set the house on fire, forcing Gallardo to flee to New Mexico to stay with a relative. After arriving in the small town of Deming, NM, a protest there forced both brothers to leave town. A Snohomish County Deputy Sheriff told reporters he planned on calling the Sheriff of the next county where Gallardo moved. Despite the story of extreme vigilante violence making national news, the Wetterling Act was passed with virtually opposition. 

The internet has made access and abuse of publicly registry information extremely easy. Most states list every registered person in their state. There is no differentiation between a teen who engaged in a sexual relationship with a classmate and a teen who forcefully raped a classmate.  

Here are a few key points to consider:

1. Most sex crimes occur at home by someone known to the victim, usually a family member or someone close to the family. The registry was designed with “stranger danger” in mind.

2. Most sex crimes are committed by first time offenders, not a Registered Person. This fact predates the advent of a national public registry and is not proven to be influenced by the registry. 

3. Sex offense recidivism has been extremely low even before the advent of the national public registry. The registry has not been proven to reduce re-offense. Numerous studies using actual numbers of US arrests or convictions have proven re-offense rates are extremely low. 

4. The registry is not often utilized as a public safety tool; on the contrary, it has been used for primarily salacious reasons, including the use by vigilantes to engage in murders, assaults, vandalism, and harassment. OnceFallen has documented nearly 200 murders of people directly tied to the public registry. Here are a few examples:

Stephen A. Marshall murdered two registered persons in Maine in 2006; one of his victims was William Elliott, who at age 19 had sex with a girlfriend two weeks before her 16th birthday.

In 2005, Michael Anthony Mullen used the registry to select his victims; he posed as an FBI agent to enter the home of two registered persons to kill them. While serving time in prison, he shared a cell with career criminal Patrick Drum, who would go on to murder two registered persons in 2012 using public registry information to choose his victims.

In 2013, a self-professed Neo-Nazi couple, Jeremy and Christine Moody, used the registry to murder a registered person and his wife; The Moodys had written a White Supremacist Manifesto (sold on Lulu.com) proclaiming, “The only cure for child abusers and molesters is to have every member of their immediate family killed.”

Murderers of registrants are heralded as heroes even after committing other heinous offenses. In 2014, Jay Maynor murdered a registered person connected with his family; within days, his family started a GoFundMe petition and a Biker Rally to raise funds for Maynor’s release and legal defense fund, receiving thousands of dollars in the process. But just minutes before Maynor murdered the registrant, he shot into a gas station where a children’s birthday party was being held because he was angry with his daughter’s boyfriend; one bullet hit only a few feet from one of the children in attendance. Even Jeremy and Christine Moody received support despite their direct ties to hate groups. 

I have enclosed my Crimes Against Registrants Database (CARD) as evidence the registry has been used as a weapon of hatred. And these are merely the crimes that have been reported by the media; other surveys of Registered Persons have found nearly have been victimized by vigilante violence. 

The registry has never been proven to protect the public; in fact, there is evidence the registry and the laws fueled by the registry may actually increase the likelihood of recidivism. So why are we spending millions on this bloated, useless, ineffective registry? What purpose does it truly serve? The registry has merely propagated the same tired myths that have been thoroughly debunked years ago. We are now seeing a resurgence of these same tired myths; the QAnon conspiracy theory is in part a revival of the Satanic Panic myths of the 1980s. 

The Adam Walsh Act is a Recipe for Disaster

The Adam Walsh Act (AWA) was a culmination of various bad public policies. There is a very reason that only a third of the states have adopted this controversial law in the 14 years since it was signed. This law is a complex mess. 

There are numerous problems with the law, including:

1. The AWA utilizes an offense-based classification scheme. In Ohio, the number of Registered Persons listed as a Tier III (the so-called “high risk” category) tripled from 18% to 54% between 12/31/2007 and 1/1/2008. There were no new charges, just a change in the classification scheme. 

2. The AWA does not differentiate between a 16 year old who engaged in consensual sex with a classmate and a 16 year old who raped a classmate. Both are given the same classification under the AWA. 

3. The AWA costs millions more to implement and enforce than most existing state laws; Texas refused to adopt the AWA because they found that it would cost them $39 million just to implement the law (not including maintenance) while only costing $2 million to pay the fee for not adopting the law. The AWA only awards about $20 million annually in various grants to state, territories, and Indigenous nations to adopt AWA guidelines. Native tribes have been faced with an ultimatum to adopt the registry or lose tribal sovereignty. 

4. Despite the SMART Office claims, the AWA still requires states to place juveniles as young as 14 on the public registry. 

5. The AWA is obviously a form of punishment and is thus unconstitutionally applied retroactively. In State v. Williams, 129 Ohio St.3d 344, 2011-Ohio-3374, The Ohio Supreme Court ruled, “Based on these significant changes to the statutory scheme governing sex offenders, we are no longer convinced that R.C. Chapter 2950 is remedial, even though some elements of it remain remedial…No one change compels our conclusion that S.B. 10 is punitive… It is a matter of degree whether a statute is so punitive that its retroactive application is unconstitutional. When we consider all the changes enacted by S.B. 10 in aggregate, we conclude that imposing the current registration requirements on a sex offender whose crime was committed prior to the enactment of S.B. 10 is punitive.” (SB 10 was Ohio’s version of the AWA.) Similar rulings have been made in Millard v. Rankin, 265 F.Supp.3d 1211 (U.S. Dist., Colorado 2017), Does v. Snyder, 834 F.3d 699 (6th Cir. 2016), and Commonwealth v. Muniz, 164 A.3d 1189 (Pa. 2017). 

6. The right to travel and to marry a foreign spouse has been impeded by the AWA policies: No thanks to the controversial passport marks of infamy (a policy used previously only by Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany), Registered Persons are routinely denied international travel for legitimate business or recreation. Furthermore, AWA is routinely used to deny Registered Persons the right to bring their families into the country to live no matter where they are from, according to the USCIS. An article posted at ACSOL on Nov. 13, 2016 noted the USCIS expects to reject over 4000 petitions by 2017. "For years after its enactment, the USCIS has either outright denied or intentionally stalled thousands of family petitions that it determined to fall within its own AWA policy. By 2011, after several years of long delays, the USCIS denied virtually all AWA applications held at the agency for review since 2008. The agency reports that it receives 400-600 AWA application per year and boosts that it has denied 99% of all AWA family petitions received."

The SMART Office should be abolished

The SMART Office is a worthless bureaucracy with a sordid history that exemplifies the incompetence of the past three administrations on matters of sex offense treatment and rehabilitation. The SMART Office once had in their mission statement their intent was to place Registered Persons into a series of  “restrictions, regulations and INTERNMENT.” In the past, the SMART Office has been staffed by people who are not experts in the field. Ex-Director Linda Baldwin was a city planner and real estate attorney with little experience in criminal law. 

The SMART Office is rife with biased individuals with a vested interest in promoting sex offense myths. I met many of them in person at last year’s SMART Office symposium in Chicago. There was a severe animus and a gamut of misinformation presented by speakers at the symposium and by attendees there. Perhaps one of the most offensive moments during my participation at the SMART Office was one of the slides shown during a presentation on “Using Analytical Data to Assist With ‘Sex Offender’ Based Operations.”  The slide used a fictitious address of “666 Dead Sex Offender Lane.” This was yet another subtle, passive-aggressive swipe at Registered Persons. I also met a tribal elder from a Montana Indian tribe who bragged that his people banish Registrants from his nation. 

One of the workshops during the Symposium discussed the use of DNA to solve a 1988 rape/ murder case of April Tinsley. The killer had no prior adult arrest record (but had a juvenile sex offense arrest), and lacked records in the DNA and fingerprint databases. The investigator used the term “pervert” a few times throughout the lecture and engaged in some typical police chest-thumping., like bragging how he would have “taken him down” if the suspect entered a nearby park. (It is also worth noting the presenter described a minor who found and a note taunting the police as a “victim.”) This case had 1300 suspects, but was only able to eliminate 900 cases due to jail records or DNA. 

The SMART Office also publishes a biased online report called the “Sex Offender Management Assessment and Planning Initiative (SOMAPI).” The report includes studies from three controversial researchers—Gene Abel, Robert Prentky, and Sean Ahlmeyer.

The SMART Office cited Abel’s 1987 primary report covering “paraphilias.” Paraphilia means any act considered deviant by societal norms, which should not be confused with pedophilia; it seems Scurich and John failed to notice the difference. Abel’s study had a number of problems –few offenders were voluntary (which would compel false admissions), inclusion of non-criminal paraphilias such as consensual homosexual relations, and Abel lists an estimated number of acts and victims over a lifetime. Abel states the study suggested paraphiliacs, “through coercion or varying degrees of compliance, repeated acts are carried out with the same victims or partners.” Abel provides a Mean and Median estimate of acts and number of victims. The Mean is the sum of all the numbers in the set divided by the amount of numbers in the set. The Median is the middle point of a number set, in which half the numbers are above the median and half are below. Scurich and John cited the highest number possible found in the Abel study, the mean number of estimated number of lifetime acts by those with male victims, listed in the Abel study as 281.7, but the researchers fail to mention the mean number, which is 10.1, far lower than the scarier number. Since half of those in the Abel study committed LESS than 10.1 paraphilic acts while the average (mean) number of acts was assumed to be 281.7, then there must be a small group of people that have grossly inflated the average. (Note 6)

The SOMAPI report also cites the 1997 Prentky study, which made the controversial claim that after 25 years sex offenders’ recidivism is 52% for child molesters and 39% for rapists. However, these numbers were not a true re-offense rate, but a “survival/ failure rate”, i.e., “the estimated probability that child molesters would ‘survive’ in the community without being charged, convicted, or imprisoned for a sexual offense over the 25-year study period.” Prentky himself warned against misusing the stats, primarily because the study involved recidivists who were civilly committed between 1959 and 1985, meaning this was not representative of everyone on the sex offense registry. It is worth noting that even the SMART Office report recognized the limitations of the report, nor does it claim rates presented in the report as an accurate number. (Note 7)

The SOMAPI report also cited Sean Ahlmeyer’s 2000 study which relied on polygraphs and self-reports. Polygraphs are inadmissible in court but utilized as intimidation tools. The Ahlmeyer study consisted of 60 adult male sexual offender (35 inmates and 25 parolees), which concluded that more incidents and victims were reported, but a second test reported low numbers though they concluded 80% were “deceptive.” But it is worth noting that polygraph studies in general have relied on self-reporting by the subjects and been conducted in settings where incentives were offered to subjects for cooperation. (the controversial 2007 Butner study is the most egregious examples of this.) (Note 8)

The SOMAPI report concludes, “While the magnitude of the difference between observed and actual reoffending needs to be better understood, there is universal agreement in the scientific community that the observed recidivism rates of sex offenders are underestimates of actual reoffending.” It cites the 2004 Harris and Hanson study (Note 9) to claim elevated recidivism levels, but the study is a multinational study so the results are not valid for understanding American recidivism. (For example, the age of consent in Canada was raised from 14 to 16 in 2008, while the age of consent in America is between 16 and 18, thus some sexual acts legal in Canada before 2008 were illegal in America.) While the SMART Office study does not cite the Langevin or Prentky rates as true recidivism rates, it uses them as justification for propagating the myth of widespread underreporting.

The SMART Office has also defended a misleading statistic that claims “sex offenders are 4 times more likely to reoffend than non-sex offenders,” a claim cited by Supreme Court Justice Alito in upholding the use of public registries. The SMART Office tried to defend the myth by citing the Hanson multinational study (that mixes rearrests and conviction rates) and appealed to emotions about having a “duty” to protect children.

In debunking this false light statement, the Washington Post stated, “The reference to sex offender rearrest trends in Alito’s opinion is quite misleading. It measures the likelihood of sex offenders to be arrested for sex crimes after release from prison, and compares it to the likelihood of non-sex offenders to be arrested for sex crimes after release. This makes it seem like recidivism among sex offenders to be a uniquely bad problem, but it is an apples-to-oranges comparison.”

“This opinion cites previous opinions that use outdated data going back to the 1980s — more than 30 years ago. Moreover, it obscures the fact according to 2005 data, the percentage of sex offenders getting rearrested for the same crime is low compared to non-sex offenders, with the exception of people convicted of homicide. It does the public no service when the Supreme Court justices make a misleading characterization like this. We award Three Pinocchios.”

The AWA needs to be abolished

The public sex offense registry has destroyed lives for over a quarter of a century and needs to be abolished. At the very least, the Adam Walsh Act should be repealed. The AWA has not created the universal standard it claims to create. Many states considered AWA compliant have wildly varied rules. Even the SMART Office finds deviations from the AWA in states they consider “substantially compliant. Delaware was AWA compliant, then fell off the list, then was considered AWA compliant again. States like Ohio which ruled against the AWA’s retroactive application are still considered AWA compliant. 

Since the AWA is not a universal standard, the laws are as confusing as ever. A registrant moving from Alabama (a state where everyone registers for life) moves to Ohio (with a 3-Tiered system) and is automatically considered a “Tier 3” without a fair trial. I know this because it happened to me. While Alabama does not consider me a high risk, Ohio declared me so simply because of my lifetime status from Alabama, and Nebraska categorized me as a Level 3 because Ohio did the same. 

There are better solutions than this public government blacklist. The registry should be abolished. The government wastes billions on enforcing this useless blacklist that could be better spent on prevention and education. There are positive forms of treatment such as Circles of Support and Accountability. Supporting evidence-based methods would save valuable taxpayer dollars that could go towards other, more important and effective programs like renewable energy, saving the US Postal Service, or maybe even some tax relief for the poor. 

I’d like to think that there are better use of limited financial resources considering we are in the midst of a pandemic and a looming economic crisis on par with the Great Depression. Global warming is making the summers hotter than ever. The trade war has cost the local economy millions here in the Heartland. Yet, here we are wasting time on a worthless feel-good measure that most US States had the good sense to reject in the first place. I doubt states will place this on a list of priorities while they worry about the next fiscal year and start looking for ways to trim the fat from their budgets.  

I’d love to go out and get a real job again someday and pay taxes, but I cannot do it while the registry exists. My life is in your hands. 

--Derek W. Logue of OnceFallen.com