Of sex and injustice

Some years ago, I talked to a heartbroken woman who lived near the Ohio border. Her daughter, who was younger than 16, the legal age of consent in Michigan, had been willingly having sex with her 17-year-old boyfriend, an honor student. The kids wouldn't stop doing it, surprise, surprise, and the mom then took them to court.

When the boy, who was hoping for scholarships and acceptance at an Ivy League school, learned that he was going to end up on the Michigan Sex Offender Registry, he felt that his life was ruined. Soon after, he drove his car into the path of an oncoming tractor-trailer. He left no note, and his death technically could have been an accident, but everyone knew it wasn't.

Welcome to our wonderful world of stigma.

It's called the Michigan Sex Offender List, and is a terrible thing that needs to be abolished — as soon as possible. It was born of a half-baked noble idea that was rushed into law in Lansing and turned into something dangerously bad. This all started in 1994, when Megan Kanka, a 7-year-old New Jersey girl, was brutally raped and murdered. The scum who did it was a convicted felon who had served time for other sex crimes, and who lived across the street. Megan's parents had no idea of his background.

A national outcry led to Congress requiring persons convicted of sex crimes against children to notify law enforcement of any future change of address or employment, in some cases, for the rest of their lives. That itself ought to make us a bit uneasy; it sounds like something that would happen in a place like the Soviet Union, where prisoners often weren't allowed to leave Siberia even after they did their time. However, given the nature of sex criminals, and our legitimate interest in protecting children, this action might conceivably be justifiable in the interests of society.

What happened next, however, wasn't. New Jersey passed something known as "Megan's Law," which required the state to maintain a database listing all released sex offenders — and to notify communities whenever an offender moved into the neighborhood. Supposedly, that's so parents can keep little Billy away from the pervert's house. In fact, that sounds like a sure-fire way to make it impossible for these folks ever to rehabilitate themselves, and maybe even an open invitation to vigilante action. (Little Susie's late coming home from school? Let's string up the neighborhood pervs!)

Michigan then did something even worse. We created a registry listing people convicted of all sorts of "sex" crimes, showing people's driver's license pictures, telling where people live and indicating something about the severity of their crimes through a vague and confusing system of numbered categories.

Investigations have shown that the site is frequently out of date and lists wrong addresses. Worse, serial child rapists are there next to people who — when they were 16 — had sex with their eager and willing 15-year-old girlfriend or boyfriend. You can even get on the sex offender registry for indecent exposure, meaning it may well contain some drunken frat boys arrested for urinating in the South Quad.

> Email Jack Lessenberry