Letters To The Editor - Archives
Letters are linked to the Edition of the RSOL e-Magazine to which they reference.
Subject: GEO GroupLetter to Editor: If any of you RSOL participants have family members being held in a GEO Group run facility (this is a for-profit, private prison company), perhaps your hearts may be lifted by the recent news that one of their major board members - John Perzel, has been indicted on 82 counts of corruption in Pennsylvania. He has resigned from the GEO Board.
Meanwhile, other Board members have suddenly left GEO, cashing in their stock holdings as they leave. The President & Vice-President of GEO Group (a publicly held stock - shameful!) have quickly sold off their holdings of thousands of shares, as if they're all jumping ship.
GEO runs Florida Civil Commitment Center and a few other notorious institutions around the U.S. After a little investigation, I've discovered this company to be in tremendous debt. One investment strategist commented that GEO Group could be the next Enron - a lot of fluff up front with nothing behind it.
I would also like to comment that I do not believe we are losing the war. Everyday people that I speak to say that our justice system is all wrong. People are tired of paying outrageous taxes to uphold laws and keep our people in prisons when there are better alternatives.
The Author Responds: [Article: We Are Losing The Battle]
I remain discouraged that the war on sex offenders is going to slow down any time soon. It may take a generation to get lawmakers, listening to their scared voters, to enact humane statutes and policies toward this demonized group. Like other civil rights movements, this one will do most of its winning in courthouses.
I am encouraged, though, that legal scholars and academic researchers widely understand the campaign against sex offenders is unreasonable, unfair and counter productive.
Chris Dornin
[Editor:] The following important dialogue between the Author of We Are Losing the War and a reader ensued and is reproduced here.
Dear Mr. Dornin:
I work with B4U-ACT (www.b4uact.org), a non-profit organization in Maryland funded by Baltimore Mental Health Systems. Our goal is to promote communication and understanding between mental health professionals and people who are emotionally and sexually attracted to prepubescent children or to young adolescents. These people are called "pedophiles" and "hebephiles," respectively. They do not choose to have these feelings any more than straight people choose to be attracted to same-age people of the opposite gender, or gay people choose to be attracted to the same gender.
Your article says the following:
"The roster even includes a small percentage of stereotypical, mean-stranger, serial pedophiles. One of them could keep rotting corpses in his house."
Please take a look at http://b4uact.org/facts.htm. The word "pedophile" refers to feelings of attraction, not to behavior, so the phrase "serial pedophile" is nonsensical. Pedophiles are no more violent than people attracted to adults; in fact, research shows no signs of psychopathology or any other particular characteristics, other than the attraction to prepubescent children. The idea that pedophiles "keep rotting corpses in their houses" is ridiculous.
Most pedophiles realize their attraction to children in early adolescence. The stigma and hatred for pedophiles causes many of these young teenagers to have internalized self-hatred and severe depression, and some consider or attempt suicide. I know a young man who at the age of 14 was cutting himself with razor blades because of this, and this past summer I received a plea from a 17 year old who said he was seriously considering suicide. He knew he was a pedophile when he was 13.
The sentence in your article perpetuates a most inaccurate and horrible stereotype of the kind that encourages these kids to commit suicide. These monstrous stereotypes and demonization directed at pedophiles and hebephiles force them into hiding. How does this help society or protect children? RSOL should never reinforce horrendously destructive and blatantly wrong stereotypes. It should never demonize people for feelings they do not choose to have.
Richard Kramer
B4U-ACT
P.O. Box 1754
Westminster, MD 21158
http://www.b4uact.org
The Author Responds:
Richard-
My editor passed along your well written letter taking umbrage with my choice of wording in the article about the war we are losing against sex offenders because the campaign does mostly harm and destroys some democratic principles our forefathers paid in blood to earn. Believe it or not, I wrote the piece at some cost to myself to do my small part to help stop the war on sex offenders. If my phrase was sloppy or facile, I apologize to you and to the people you work with. I respect and admire what you're trying to do. The last thing in the world I want is to make your task harder.
One of the keynote speakers at the national RSOL conference this August made the very point you called me on: that the spectrum of sexual orientation is incredibly broad, and that some people only feel drawn to children or teens and not to adults. It's the way they are made. I knew or should have known that when I wrote the article, but you caught me using a thoughtless and damaging stereotype. I believe I should have said "serial child rapist" or "serial child molester" and not "serial pedophile."
As for research, I've been reading sex offender studies and court cases for several months and I'm barely started covering the literature. I'd like to learn a lot more about your efforts and the people you serve. I'm trying to do the right thing, and you're obviously doing that too. We both see the same huge injustice. It will take thousands of folks like you and me to turn things around while there is still time to do it. I don't like where things are heading at all.
Chris Dornin.
My comment is this: Whenever a child goes missing, one of the first things police do is question all the registered sex offenders in the area. I suppose no one is forced to talk to the cops, unless they are threatened with interfering with an investigation if they don't.
I'm curious what gives the police the right to question all those people. All or most of them had nothing to do with the missing person, so what gives the cops the right to question them?
When a house is broken into, the police don't go question everyone in the area who's ever been convicted of burglary. When a car's been stolen, they don't contact all the car thieves.
I know they're trying to solve a case, but I don't think that gives them the right to single out completely innocent people for questioning. That could cause problems for some people: What if a guy was living with a girl and had not informed her that he was a registered sex offender, then the police show up to ask questions.
Personally, I hate the cops, due to a BS charge I've been fighting for 8 years, and there's no way I'm talking to one if someone in our area is missing. They have no more right to question me than anyone else in the area. Being subjected to random questioning was NOT part of my registration requirements!
I'd like to see some awareness brought to this issue, and legislation passed against unlawful questioning.
Anonymous
Dear Editor:
Subject: Family Based Visa Restrictions
Some of you may have heard of my plight with The United States State Dept. and Homeland Security as I attempt to obtain a Visa for my wife and child to come live with me in the U.S. (Our son is a U.S. citizen that was born overseas, he has a Birth certificate from the State Department, he has a Social Security card and U.S. Passport) so he is in fact a U.S. Citizen, My wife is not.
I have been trying since 2006 to obtain a visa for them to come here and for us to be a family. This visa procedure normally takes 6 months to 9 months to complete. After 1 year and no answer as to why we have heard nothing back on our petition and why my 6 requests for information as to why we have heard nothing back have gone unanswered, we went to an attorney.
The attorney said we needed to file a different type of petition, a I-130 which is for a family member to come to live here. So that's what we did. The time frame for this type of visa is 6 months. 8 months had past with no answer to our petition so our attorney filed a writ of Mandamus which gave the Government a deadline to answer our application. 5 days before the deadline we received a (notice of intent to deny). This notice to deny was based on my being a sex offender and the Adam Walsh Act. The Government stated that if I can prove I am not a threat to the safety of my wife and child that the visa could be processed. (now let me go in to what I was convicted of so you all can better understand that I pose no threat to my wife and child). In 1993 I was convicted of giving Cocaine to a minor and playing strip poker with her. (2 counts of child enticement.) In the police report it clearly is stated by my victim I never touched her and never tried to touch her. They went on to explain that I must prove 100% I am no threat and that Homeland Security decision is unreviewable meaning I cannot appeal their decision. They gave me 87 days to provide my proof or our case would be considered abandoned.
I spent the the next 80 days trying to gather as much documentation that I pose no threat to my wife. I gathered multiple letters from family members, from business associates, from churches that I support financially by paying the rent on their food pantry building. Letters from other tenants where I live, even the ones that have children wrote letters saying they do not consider me a threat to their children. I had documentation from the courts in Wisconsin that they awarded me join custody of my 4 year old daughter that I had before my marriage to my now wife. So the courts found me to be no threat, or they surely would not have done that. I got a letter from the psychologist I received sex offender treatment from and he stated I had no violence in my history and he does not find me to be a threat. One of the most important documents that I needed was the documents from prison. I completed another sex offender treatment program while locked up and they deemed me to be no threat and with a very low likelihood to re-offend based on the fact that I was more a drug addict than a sex offender. I was unable to get this document because the Dept. of corrections said it would take them 6 months to find my file and copy the papers I needed.
I contacted Senator Feingold's office and asked them for their help obtaining these documents, they said they would be able to get them, but even after repeated calls to his office as the time ticked by I had to send all my documents in without these papers.
My attorney was very surprised to see the documentation I had gathered from so many different aspects of life and he feels that I should have proven my case to them.
Well I was informed by Homeland Security that I could expect their decision with- in 60 days. It's now been 113 days and still no answers,
It's been a year since I last seen my wife and son, due to the state of the economy and the cost of travel. Our son has no idea who his father is , the way this is going it will be years before they are here. Other men are going thru this as well and some of them have been told it may take 2 years or more to get an answer.
This Adam Walsh Act. was enacted to protect children, in congress they stated there was a need to protect the children of the woman that sex offenders were bringing here to marry. That they wanted to make sure the women knew that the men were sex offenders. My wife knows my past, she has always known my past. I have lived with her in her country 12 of the last 36 months. My son is a U.S. citizen so they are not protecting him, he can come here and stay with me when ever we want. But I will not separate him from his mother. For any one that may say this must be a sex offender that married a very young girl, that is not the case, my wife is 45 years old. But that is just another excuse the Government uses to justify their actions.
Has any one thought about this... this A.W.A. takes a group of society, targets them and takes away God given inherent rights, constitutional rights, civil rights and human rights.
In my case they also further target me... I must prove I am no threat to my wife in order to bring her here to be a family. But yet other sex offenders that marry here in the U.S. do not have to prove they are no threat to their wives in order to be a family. If I had fallen in love and married a U.S. Citizen there would be no issue....
To take a group of society and set such unreasonable restriction on them the way they are doing and then make it even harder on a segment of that same group like they have done to me is even harder to believe.
What is happening to this country?
P.S. Another note to this: Senator Feingold and his office was looking into this matter to help but as soon as the Adam Walsh Act came in to play they treated me like a leper. That says to me if I were a regular citizen having these problems they would help, but seeing as I am a sex offender I don't even have the right for my Senator to get involved.
P.P.S. Does anyone have any suggestions as to a way to help me get my family here?
Greg,
In addition to this posting, I have forwarded it to the RSOL Administrative Team to locate more resources. Additionally, I have forwarded it to a reporter I have contact with at CNN, and an Associated Press Reporter.
If you will tell me what state you are in, I will make every effort to get that state's ACLU engaged on your behalf and will have our Correspondence Committee Minute men do an email and surface mail raid on your Federals Members of Congress.
Editor
Dear Editor:
Dear Alex and S.O. family:
I appreciated the work of RSOL, effort and dedication, being a family of S.O., you guys have been true forerunners. I would and will support 110% of the cause of RSOL.
There is one thing we may not be aware of the negative impact it may carry, but it is absolutely critical to the success of the cause of RSOL: I've started to notice a quote from chinese buddhism in this month's e-magazine. As an asian myself, I highly recommend RSOL to stay away from eastern cultural/religion or New Age as a whole. This statement may shock you or even have offended some people, but trust me, things are already difficult as it is, it will be more opposing if we get involved (even slightly) with eastern cultural/religious stuffs such as these two (or more). Remember, we still have a very long battle ahead of us. Every inch of ground we gained could be easily taken back by the enemies if we dilute ourselves. Therefore, I would caution to proceed knowing that our help is from one source and one source only. GOD is righteous and listens to prayers, and He is putting things in place as it goes (at its best timing). I also see His Hands putting the right people, resources to expose unrighteousness, also to flip things around in our favor.
gratefully abide,
MKC
Contact the