Message to Registered Persons: You may as well plan your funeral under a tRUMP presidency

 A second tRUMP presidency is bad news for Registered Persons.

Some folks were lulled into the belief a Donald Trump presidency is good for us based on him signing the First Step Act, an act that helped expand good time for federal prisoners taking treatment/rehab courses, but SOs were excluded from the benefits of the bill, except a single offense but I'm sure that was merely an oversight they may add to the exclusion list once the bill is up for reauthorization. An equally fallacious argument is because Trump is a convicted felon & held to be liable for rape (in a civil, not criminal court), Trump will be sympathetic to our cause. But SCOTUS Justice Clarence Thomas, yet has consistently voted in favor of the state in challenges to registry laws. Trump said in a July 2024 rally that you can’t “teach a criminal not to be a criminal.” Back in 2015, Trump likened Ben Carson to an SO during a rally, stating, “If you’re pathological, there’s no cure for that, folks. There’s no cure for that… If you’re a child molester, a sick puppy, you’re a child molester, there’s no cure for that. There’s only one cure, we don’t want to talk about that cure. That’s the ultimate cure. Well, there’s death, and there’s the other thing. But if you’re a child molester, there’s no cure, they can’t stop you. Pathological, there’s no cure."

But the thing that concerns me deeply is that Trump plans on implementing the Heritage Foundation's Project 2025. P2025's chapter on reforming the DOJ mostly covers stuff directly related to ending the investigations into Trump’s criminal activities while in office & the J6 insurrectionists. BUT, this passage disturbs me: “Enforce the death penalty where appropriate & applicable. Capital punishment is a sensitive matter, as it should be, but the current crime wave makes deterrence vital at the federal, state, & local levels. However, providing this punishment without ever enforcing it provides justice neither for the victims’ families nor for the defendant. The next conservative Administration should therefore do everything possible to obtain finality for the 44 prisoners currently on federal death row. It should also pursue the death penalty for applicable crimes—particularly heinous crimes involving violence & sexual abuse of children—until Congress says otherwise through legislation.”–p.554

It sounds to me like they want to allow death penalty for ALL cases UNLESS Congress EXPLICITLY states this crime should not be punishable by death. No doubt this was thrown into the mix after FL Gov. Ron DeathSantis pushed to challenge Kennedy v Louisiana 554 US 407 (2008), which stated execution for non-murder offenses was unconstitutional, by signing a law in FL to execute folks convicted of sex offenses against those under age 13. TN passed a similar statute earlier this year & other states like MO & ID considered it. While Trump has claimed he “knows nothing” about P2025, his Agenda47 is reposting numerous suggestions from P2025 & over 200 Trump staffers worked on P2025. The Heritage Foundation sponsored the RNC. In Aug 2024, the Trump campaign announced that Trump will seek the death penalty for “child rapists & child traffickers.”

Trump never got the chance to sign such sweeping legislation tied to SOR laws, he signed FOSTA-SESTA — the Allow States & Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act & Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act, an internet censorship bill. Both these laws have led to massive internet censorship & helped exacerbate the existing wave of human trafficking panic. P2025 seeks to “Ensure that (the DOJ) is agile enough to devote sufficient resources and attention to other emerging threats that involve federal interests such as increases in sextortion, ransomware, and the continued proliferation of CP.” P2025 also wants to outlaw ALL porn. “Pornography should be outlawed. The people who produce and distribute it should be imprisoned. Educators & public librarians who purvey it should be classed as RSOs. And telecommunications and technology firms that facilitate its spread should be shuttered.”–p.5

One other issue of concern—vigilante groups that harass RPs &/or engage in online entrapment operations are promoting right-wing conspiracies. Recently, the Millersville PD (in TN) worked with an online vigilante group “Veterans for Child Rescue”; the asst. chief Shawn Taylor promoted debunked conspiracies like Pizzagate (the false claim a Pizza shop in DC tied to Clinton’s campaign mgr. was a front for human trafficking). An arrestee was even sent to a jail “where it was likely that he might not come out alive.” Taylor is still on the force.  Police are largely turning a blind eye to crimes against RPs. A Trump win may encourage more vigilante activity & may be sanctioned by police. Trump also told rally-goers in July he would grant immunity to police in all actions, which could lead to cops violating our rights during compliance checks or at the registration office.

Trump’s VP pick JD Vance has only been a US Senator since 2022 & none of his sponsored bills impact RPs; he has yet to give his stance on criminal justice issues since media attention is focused on his weird, authoritarian statements, but i doubt he'll do us any favors, either.

WHY IT MATTERS WHO WON: The President may not influence SO laws directly, but they can pass laws by Executive Order. (An executive order is a type of written instruction that presidents use to work their will through the executive branch of government.) SO Laws have always been passed by legislation, not by Executive Order. If a federal SO bill is placed on the desk of Trump, I doubt it would get vetoed.

The Presidential election still matters to us in one key matter—the President selects SCOTUS justices. In my article following the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, I noted that liberal justices like RGB, Sotomayor, & Kagan have voted against SO law expansion, while conservative justices like Gorsuch, Thomas, & Alito have consistently voted in favor of stricter penalties for us. Repubs accused Justice Katanji Brown-Jackson of being “soft on SOs.” Chief Justice Roberts was the state’s attorney in the 2003 Smith v. Doe, where he successfully argued the SOR was NOT punishment. We now have a 6-3 conservative supermajority, which ends any hope of revisiting that terrible ruling anytime soon.

With tRUMP reclaiming this power, we can be assured that if Alito and Thomas are ousted, they will merely be replaced with equally ultra-conservative justices, and if any of the three remaining liberal justices are ousted, the conservative supermajority will last for our lifetimes. All chances of overturning Smith v Doe is lost.

SO Laws have the support of both sides of the political aisle. Conservatives fulfil their moralistic, tough-on-crime agendas, while liberal receive their “justice” for alleged & real crime victims & the belief they are protecting the vulnerable. Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell has a long record of rejecting criminal justice reforms, & had to be pressured by both parties just to get the First Step Act on the floor. This is why registry reform is a hard sell. It is not impossible, since some harsh laws have been scaled back, although most reforms were merely responses to lawsuits.

However, a tRUMP administration all but kills what little momentum we ever had and puts us all in danger of death.

https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/6382/text

In the meantime, this is the next potentially harmful bill on the federal level. H. R. 6382. It contains three provisions that are harmful to some of us:

1. Submit a list of persons convicted of certain offenses to the US Attorney General for potential federal charges. )The term ‘‘sexually dangerous person’’ means a person suffering from a serious mental illness, abnormality, or disorder, as a result of which the individual would have serious difficulty in refraining from sexually violent conduct or child molestation., under the AWA, i.e., those who would be eligible for civil commitment. This can be rather vague at times.)

2. These persons would be ineligible for Medicare Parts A and B unless they're in civil commitment.

3. More broadly, the registry info would be enhanced to include "Information about any relevant court case.'' I'm not entirely sure if it is limited only to the conviction or just sex offense accsations or any potential charge.

As a final note, I'd like to add the fact that vigilante groups I have monitored and wrote about for years are tRUMP supporters, and his reelection has emboldened these vigilantes even more.

Perhaps our future efforts should focus on helping Registrants survive in a country that has made it all but fully legal to use us for target practice.

SOSEN: A Requiem

SOSEN.org went offline earlier this week, and it was almost like losing an old friend. A few weeks before SOSEN went offline forever, I wrote a eulogy that was thankfully captured by the Internet Archive as a final message from SOSEN. It has been reposted here for those times the Internet Archive isn't working. 

https://web.archive.org/web/20240609153742/https://sosen.org/blog/2024/06/07/sosen-a-requiem.html

SOSEN: A REQUIEM

by Derek W. Logue • June 7, 2024 • 0 Comments

I spend about half of my childhood living in the small town in Moulton, AL, a community with a population about 3000 people. I moved away in 1990, and I returned for a brief visit in 2010 as I was planning to move away from that state forever. Even in a rural community like Moulton, things inevitably change. My mom worked a few months in a pizzeria; when I visited Moulton in 2010, it was a steak and seafood restaurant, and thanks to Google Maps, I can see the building is now acting as a food pantry. The skating rink across the street, however, is still in business as a skating rink. Next to it was Hill’s Auto Sales, where my stepfather worked until he finished his CDL training; by 2020, the lot had been abandoned, but the office shack and garage was still there, with the faded business sign sitting at the back of the open air garage. According to Google maps, it is still up, moved away from the road to make room for a body shop.

Just off AL Hwy 157, just a few hundred feet from these places, there was a beautiful two-story house next to a big oak tree. I had tamed a squirrel we named “Chipper.” When I returned in 2010, the house had long been abandoned; it was in disarray, with smashed windows and walls, and the process to recycle the bricks had begun. That house has since been demolished.

Change is always bittersweet. We have nostalgia for days gone by to some extent. Places die, just like people do, and we feel a bit of sadness to see a business we may have patronized or a home where we once lived altered or demolished.

It may hit slightly differently to envision the end of a website as opposed to driving past your childhood community. There are no bricks and mortar, no physical buildings, no signposts, and no physical roads to drive along to see the remnants as a monument to this nostalgia. But to those of us who patronized this virtual establishment, the bittersweet feelings are no less real. Such is the news that SOSEN will be shutting down around Mid-July 2024, just a few weeks from the day this article is posted.

It has been said. ”Necessity is the mother of invention.” From such necessity was born SOSEN. Founded in 2003, the “Sex Offender Support and Education Network” (SOSEN), as at first a Yahoo Group comprised of Registered Persons and their loved ones. There was also a sosen.org landing page which would also direct people to sign up for the Yahoo Group. There was a dispute with a group using a similar moniker; the other group known as the “Social Outcasts Support and Education Network (using the extension sosen.info). In the fall of 2007, the dispute was resolved, and sosen.org migrated to the extension sosen.us. The web extension was changed back to sosen.org in 2009, with the forums hosted separately on the sosen.us extension.

As noted in their “about us” page from 2009, “Though their numbers were small and organization loose, the group’s mission was profound. The members experienced firsthand a need for a place for the growing numbers of registered former offenders and their families to find comfort and support. They also saw firsthand that the direction legislators were taking regarding the laws being passed was counterproductive to the goals sought.

Between 2004 and 2005 the Yahoo Group was expanded and membership grew. New groups were added including creating separate state groups, among others. During this time of growth, as with any fledgling project there were differences of opinion and thus the need for strong, unbiased, committed leadership. As a step to providing a stable organization and effective leadership, discussions began on the topic of incorporation in the first quarter of 2006.

The discussions on the subject continued for the next year. Then in May/June of 2007, SOSEN was officially incorporated, making SOSEN the first among the RFSO groups to have this distinction. Also during this time bylaws were written, board positions defined, staff members recruited, and a new forum was created.

As with any great idea there were also bumps in the road. When SOSEN began to emerge as a leader in Sex Offender Issues, it caught the attention of hate groups. These groups deliberately and willfully attacked the SOSEN Yahoo group boards, so the Yahoo Groups were disbanded. The small victory of the vigilantes encouraged them to continue their attacks. Both through slander and outright attacks on the SOSEN website the vigilantes continued their illegal assaults which have included copyright infringement…

There are many stories where SOSEN has helped individuals and family members. Not to be forgotten are the many former victims among the SOSEN family who have found a loving, compassionate home among our widely varied membership.”

SOSEN racked up numerous accomplishments in their early years, including assisting Sarah Tofte’s 2007 Human Rights Watch report, “No Easy Answers: Sex Offender Laws in the US, participating Jill Levinson’s collateral damage study, working with other organizations in efforts of locating housing for former offenders due to residency restrictions across the country, sending reports to therapists, criminal defense attorneys, reporters and politicians upon request, and SOSEN members have spoken to many social justice students, law makers and committees.

SOSEN played a major role in the 2007 “Silent No More” rally in Columbus, Ohio. This rally was the Anti-Registry Movement’s first successful public awareness event, despite death threats and a counter-protest staged by members of a biker gang, an online vigilante group tied to the Dateline NBC TV show, and a vigilante who had made appearances on daytime talk shows of the era. The 2007 rally, in turn, helped form the Anti-Registry Movement into the modern structure that endures today.

In 2009, SOSEN changed the “S” in the acronym from “Support” to “Solutions” at the suggestion of those who had stated legislators and media would shut down on them if they explained that the S stood for support. As one member noted, “This was a great SOLUTION to the problem people encountered when talking with legislators and others and then saying we were with SOSEN. As soon as you said Sex Offender Support… the immediate mindset of the person you were speaking with changed as their immediate thoughts went to something like “these people are supporting the idea that it is alright to have sex with children?” or some similar negative idea. Using the work Solutions in our name allows us to not change SOSEN except by indicating in our name that we are working towards SOLUTIONS in the way our society is presently addressing sex offender issues.”

Kyle Sandusky, an advocate who passed away in the mid-2000s, had created a website called “Sex Offender Solutions – Network” (SOS-NET) when he was alive, so the name change from “support” to “solutions” was a dedication to his efforts.

SOSEN grew dramatically under the leadership of Mary Duval, a blind woman whose son landed on the registry for having consensual relations with a classmate. Mary Duval, with assistance of SOSEN members, had visited the Registered Persons forced to live under the Julia Tuttle Causeway in Miami, FL. Mary and a man named Kevin hosted a podcast on Talkshoe called “Americans’ Reality Check,” which had included guests from under the bridge, and even interviewed Ron Book, the mastermind of the law that forced Registered Persons to live under the bridge. Mary Duval made numerous media appearances during her life, and was among the first to bring the national media to the Anti-Registry Movement. The movement suffered a great loss when Mary Duval passed away in 2011, but she helped inspire a new generation of activists to step up their game. At one time, SOSEN boasted of nearly 800 active members, an impressive feat for the era.

Central to the longevity of SOSEN was the members’ forums, a private and protected forum where Registered Persons and their loved ones could speak to one another, share important news and legal commentary, or simply to share memes and stories with each other. SOSEN’s forums supported attachments up to 4MB and could support numerous file formats. It even contained “smileys” (emojis).

But after 21 years, the time has finally come for SOSEN to shutter its doors.

To paraphrase a modern expression. “SOSEN walked so that others may run,” The concept of a national group with state chapters had previously been tried with both SOSEN and SOHopeful, their early contemporary, but it was ReformSexOffenderLaws.org, the group that eventually rebranded into NARSOL, that had the greatest success with implementing the “state affiliate” system. This also made it difficult to attract people to SOSEN. SOSEN helped lay the groundwork for other groups to exist and thrive and surpass even the wildest dreams of the founders. But few of the early pioneers of this movement are alive today, much less have stuck around for over 20 years. Virtually all of SOSEN’s original staff have either passed away, moved on to head other groups, or have dropped out of anti-registry activism altogether.

The forum format utilized by SOSEN was innovative for its time, but eventually, other formats surpassed the abilities of the forum to share media. In 2008, the forum was sufficient to share info with fellow activists and encourage them to comment on articles. The MP4, the PDF, and other modern file formats grew too large for sharing certain files in the forums. Some activists wanted a “one stop shop” for all their online needs, so some activists decided they would rather create groups through Facebook, a social media platform that bans Registered Persons. In addition, news outlets also shifted to Facebook-only commenting, which led to a decline in participation from members joining in on calls of action to spread anti-registry comments. Ironically, even Facebook, the choice of many activists in the early 2010s, is also on the decline as a dominant platform as activists continue to move on to other platforms for sharing information or to engage in activism.

SOSEN has continued to provide information and the forums to those who needed it, but with the passing away of SOSEN staff members came the challenge of trying to retrieve control of meager resources left behind by those who passed on. SOSEN was (and is) still a repository for the thoughts, theories, and legal commentaries of the era in which it existed. In the mid-200s, as SOSEN was forming and growing, most legal commentary was merely prognostication and speculation on potential legal challenges to relatively new laws like residency restrictions. But today, there have been numerous challenges to post-conviction sanctions, so legal theories and commentaries no longer hold the same value it once did.

Twenty-one years is a long time. SOSEN was founded the year of my release from prison. A lot has changed for all of in those years. Unfortunately, in a crowded field, some businesses fall behind and eventually go out of business. It is not a condemnation of the product, but a simple fact of life. SOSEN helped get the ball rolling but it went as far as it could go as people left for greener virtual pastures. The fight for the rights of Persons Forced to Register to be allowed the opportunity to reintegrate and not endure draconian laws continues, but we are far better organized than when SOSEN’s journey began.

There will always be the Web archive for those who want to take a virtual stroll down memory lane or read some of the articles published in the later years of the site, but when the website goes offline in mid-July, the forums will no longer be accessible. Gone will be the conversations, the sharing of stories, and even the silly banter between members.

One off-topic conversation on the forums in 2009 began with a discussion on the then-new Star Trek movie. What followed was an exchange between a few members that only those attuned to anti-registry activism could truly understand and find both sad and silly simultaneously:

“I wonder if sex offenders have a 2000 parsec rule to follow by the time we catch up with the 24th century…”

“Nope, it’ll be 2000 LIGHTS YEARS, from any planet with LIFE on it!” (Note: A parsec is actually about 3.26 light years, so it would be longer than a light year.)

“If that’s the deal I am cutting a deal with the Romulians.” (thumbs-up smiley)

“Unfortunately, they will have passed the Intergalactic Megan’s Law bill by then and we won’t be allowed to leave the sector without our papers.” (Note: We may have predicted “International Megan’s Law” in this exchange)

“I will simply find an uncharted worm hole and abscond to the Delta quadrant.” (thumbs-up smiley)

“LOL!! Let’s see them follow us THERE!!! But we gotta watch out for the place that sucks ships in, where the ships feed off new arrivals….”

“Got to watch out for those Borg! Resistance is futile…..You will be assimilated…” (thumbs-up smiley)

“Now that could work. When they arrive we shove the politicians and media and idiots like Lunsford out first…Once they are assimilated… the Borg will be so STUPID they will be trying to assimilate EACH OTHER and leave the rest of us ALONE.” (Note: We may also have predicted the mid-2020s social and political climate, except for the leaving us alone part.)

“‘the place that sucks ships in, where the ships feed off new arrivals’… Do you mean the dreaded ‘Politico’ galaxy? LMAO”

“Great. We send Walsh and Lunsford and our politicos and media hounds out and they’ll simply exaggerate the amount of bullcrap going on here on earth and turn the whole federation into a bunch of intergalactic helicopter moms”

“The Lunsford Nebula located in the f*cktard galaxy ruled by Helicopter Borg?..LOL Now that’s a show I want to see”

SOSEN had a good run but eventually everything comes to an end. It may be the end of SOSEN’s story, but the fight to abolish the public registry continues. Those who experienced it will hopefully have good memories of the old website. Farewell, old friend. SOSEN, 2003-2024.

OnceFallen 2023 Annual Report

Since 2016, OnceFallen has published an annual report summarizing the efforts of our anti-registry activism.  Most of the activism performed by OnceFallen is either the maintenance of the OnceFallen.com website, responding to inquiries, or through prisoner outreach. When needed, OnceFallen is willing to attend activist events, conduct media interviews, and legislative meetings addressing sex offense laws when necessary. OnceFallen runs on a shoestring budget BUT rarely needs donations unless that need involves traveling to events. 

OnceFallen major accomplishments in 2023:

1. Organized the DC Vigil in March 2023 to protest 20 years of the terrible Smith v. Doe ruling, and gave the eulogy at the event. 

2. Assisted a record number of individuals, averaging over 2 per day. 

3. Was featured in the book, “From Rage to Reason: Why We Need Sex Crime Laws Based on Facts, Not Fear” by Emily Horowitz (2023). No media contacts were made and no OpEds were published, however. 

4. Conducted 2 surveys, a larger 99-question survey of anti-registry activists, of which there were 695 participants (final paper still in progress), and a smaller 19-question survey on Insurance and Travel issues for Registered Persons (final report published in Dec. 2023)

INITIAL CONTACT STATS

Total New Contacts 2023 – 788 (710 in 2022, +78, an 11% increase over 2022)

Reasons for initial contact, in order of most to least common reasons for first contact. Please note, this is only for INITIAL contact, and in the case of prisoners, it may begin with a “general info” contact followed by a later resource request: Housing (202), “General Inquiries” (i.e., those with general questions or unclear about needs (167)), sex offense law questions (69), state law summaries (54), ICoN/Informational Corrlinks Newsletter (32), Your Life on The List book (30), Attorneys (28), Activism (22), jail/prison issues (21), Information Sharing (20), PO Issues (17), Thank You (13), and Treatment issues (10). There were many individual inquiries; also, some services people seek are not services I provide, like attorney lists or issues related to treatment while incarcerated, but people still send requests me way in hopes of getting their personal issues resolved. 

New contacts were spread across 46 US States, Puerto Rico, and the USVI, in addition to one contact each from Australia, Brazil, and Germany. I made no known contact with anyone from AK, ND, MA and ME in 2022. 

States ranked from most to least inquiries: Wisconsin (153); FloriDUH (45); Texas (33); Indiana (34); Missouri (29); California (28); Ohio (25); Illinois (21); Pennsylvania (20); North Carolina (17); Georgia (15); Virginia (13); Kansas (12); Alabama (11); New York (10); Kentucky/Michigan/Oregon/Washington State (9 each); Arizona/Louisiana/New Jersey (8 each); Nevada/South Carolina (7 each); Colorado/Tennessee (6 each); Arkansas/Iowa (5); Delaware/Mississippi/New Mexico/Oklahoma/Utah (4 each); Nebraska/New Hampshire/Wyoming (3 each); Connecticut/Hawaii/Maryland/Minnesota/South Dakota/Vermont/West Virginia (2 each); Idaho/Montana/Puerto Rico/US Virgin Islands (1 each)

Initial Contact Type from most to least common: Email (246), Corrlinks (233), letter/postal mail (159), phone (97), text (35), Facebook (17), LinkedIn (1)

New contacts by month; January (94), February (62), March (87), April (83), May (62), June (59), July (59), August (60), September (68), October (63), November (41), December (56)

Corrlinks Informational Newsletter (ICoN) subscribers: At the end of 2023, I had 1315 total Corrlinks subscribers (up from 1315 in 2022), but of those, 446 are state prisoners (up from 392 in 2022), and because it costs extra to send email to state prisoners, these 446 do not receive monthly newsletters. That leaves 1005 federal and CCA prisoners receiving the newsletters. In 2022, there were 923 subscribers, so this is an increase of 82 subscribers, or 8.9%.

Letter Stats: OnceFallen received 296 total requests by mail (note: many were repeat requests), which is 3.5 (%) more than last year. 

Financial Resources & Expenses

Financial support decreased over 2022 numbers by about 44.5%. Since OnceFallen typically operates on a shoestring budget, donations are generally not needed nor have they been solicited when not in immediate need, so even small donations significantly change the numbers. Typical expenses include supplies related to prisoner outreach, including envelopes, stamps, printer toner, phone expenses, the occasional free book to prisoners, etc. Largest expense was related to the DC event, but as costs were offset by a transportation sale and a fellow activist opening his home to OnceFallen reps, expenses were minimal for this trip.