Twenty-two years late, but finally here
Sep. 1st, 2006 08:27 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elfsIf you live in Ohio, and you're into S&M, or are gay, or have any interest in sex outside of the missionary position, get out of there now. Really. And make sure that the evil that has come to Ohio doesn't follow you wherever you go.
An Ohio legislative panel yesterday approved-- without debate or opposition-- a bill that would create a Civil Sex Offenders Registry. The law would allow the country prosecutors or, at the request of an aggreived citizen, a state judge, to place anyone-- anyone at all-- on the registry even if they have never been charged with, much less convicted of, a crime.
A person on the registry would be treated as a sex offender for the purpose of public notification: his name, photograph and address would be published on the Internet and community notification requirements would be in place wherever he lived. After six years he could petition the court to have his name removed. The court would consider any new complaints in that period and would interview the registered person to assess whether or not that person was likely to abuse in the future.
Ed Brayton has more. And I think he doesn't go far enough: I think every legislator who failed to consider this bill and let it go through unopposed should have a big fucking tattoo across his forehead: Destroyed lives without due process.
An Ohio legislative panel yesterday approved-- without debate or opposition-- a bill that would create a Civil Sex Offenders Registry. The law would allow the country prosecutors or, at the request of an aggreived citizen, a state judge, to place anyone-- anyone at all-- on the registry even if they have never been charged with, much less convicted of, a crime.
A person on the registry would be treated as a sex offender for the purpose of public notification: his name, photograph and address would be published on the Internet and community notification requirements would be in place wherever he lived. After six years he could petition the court to have his name removed. The court would consider any new complaints in that period and would interview the registered person to assess whether or not that person was likely to abuse in the future.
Ed Brayton has more. And I think he doesn't go far enough: I think every legislator who failed to consider this bill and let it go through unopposed should have a big fucking tattoo across his forehead: Destroyed lives without due process.
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no subject
Date: 2006-09-01 03:48 pm (UTC)I'd been thinking of moving to Wisconsin....perhaps now might be a good time.
~E
no subject
Date: 2006-09-01 03:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-09-01 04:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-09-01 04:16 pm (UTC)And that Supreme Court judge who declined to answer the perfectly reasonable - according to his judgements, anyway - question about whether or not he sodomised his wife. I mean, what's the guy hiding?
no subject
Date: 2006-09-01 06:24 pm (UTC)I'll be happy to write a script that automates submissions to that list, if there is a web interface. And if someone wants to import an entire city phonebook full of names...
no subject
Date: 2006-09-01 05:35 pm (UTC)Still, even if this panel is a rubber-stamp operation, it's not doing a proper job. Such registers get abused in all sorts of ways, even when somebody has to be convicted of something, and not even attempting due process is so blatantly wrong.
no subject
Date: 2006-09-01 05:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-09-01 06:45 pm (UTC)One of the other bits of the law seems a bit bizarre to me, though utterly tangential to the primary idiocy at hand:
Sec. 2151.421. (4)(c) outlines three conditions which, when met, anull the privilege of the cleric-penitent relationship (the privilege which waives the requirement that the cleric report abuse). (So, when the privilege is anulled, the cleric is compelled under law to report on what the penitent said.)
The three conditions, which must all be met, are:
(i) The penitent is under 18 (or under 21 and mentally or physically disabled)
(ii) The cleric knows or believes the penitent has been abused/neglected or is likely to be abused/neglected
(iii) The abuse or neglect does not arise from the penitent's attempt to have an abortion performed on a child under 18 (or under 21 and disabled) without parental notification
What the hell is condition iii about? The language is very slippery, but as best I can pin it down, it appears to be intended to apply to children confessing abuse as a result of attempting to get an abortion without telling their parents. Why are those children exempted from the abuse-reporting mandate? If the aim of this law is to protect children, then why are they explicitly defining a class of children and denying them protection?
This whole law smells - even the fairly innocuous provisions have strange riders...
no subject
Date: 2006-09-02 01:59 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-09-11 08:04 am (UTC)