Methodology

This report is based primarily on an investigation conducted at Human Rights Watch by Soros Senior Justice Advocacy Fellow Nicole Pittman, between September 2011 and early March 2013. Pittman is considered a leading national expert on the application of sex offender registration and notification laws to children. Before joining Human Rights Watch, she worked as an attorney at the Defender Association of Philadelphia, where she specialized in and consulted nationally on child sexual assault cases and registries. Pittman has provided testimony to numerous legislatures, including the US Congress, on the subject.

In this report, in line with international law, the terms “child” and “children” refer to a person or persons below the age of 18. We use the term “youth sex offender” to describe any person who was below the age of 18 at the time they committed the sex offense that led to their placement on a registry, even if they are now an adult. Individuals who were required to register as sex offenders while they were below age 18 are referred to in this report as “youth registrants” or “child registrants.”

In all, we investigated 517 cases of individuals who committed sexual offenses as children across 20 states for this report, including in Delaware, Florida, Louisiana, Maryland, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Washington. Additional information was collected from Arizona, California, Colorado, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Nevada, Ohio, South Carolina, Virginia, and Wisconsin.

We conducted in-person interviews with 281 youth sex offenders, as well as immediate family members of another 15, in those 20 states. These 296 in-person interviews form the basis for many of the findings of this report.

Human Rights Watch selected the 20 states because of their geographic diversity and different policy approaches to youth sex offenders. At the time of our research:  

• Ten of the 20 research states were deemed to have “substantially implemented” the national Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act (Delaware, Florida, Kansas, Maryland, Michigan, Missouri, Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and South Carolina).[2]
• Four of the 20 states did not subject any children found delinquent of sex offenses in juvenile court proceedings (as opposed to criminal court proceedings) to sex offender registration (Georgia, Nevada, New York, and Pennsylvania).
• Ten of the states subjected children found guilty in both juvenile and criminal court proceedings to sex offender registration laws, and had done so since the mid-1990s (Arizona, Delaware, Illinois, Kansas, Michigan, Missouri, New Jersey, Texas, South Carolina, and Washington). Several of the states had no minimum age of juvenile jurisdiction and had put children as young as eight on their registries.
• The three states with the largest number of registered sex offenders (adults and children) were California (106,216), Texas (68,529), and Florida (57,896).[3]

In addition to our interviews with people placed on sex offender registries for offenses committed as children, we spoke with family members of registrants, defense attorneys, prosecutors, judges, law enforcement officials, academic experts, juvenile justice advocates, mental health professionals, and victims of child-on-child sexual assault. Individuals placed on the registry for offenses committed as adults were not interviewed for this report.

Approximately 95 percent of the youth offenders we interviewed were found delinquent of sex offenses in juvenile court proceedings; less than five percent were convicted in criminal courts. Many of the registrants were subjected to the same sex offender registration, public disclosure, and residency restrictions as adults.

We identified the majority of interviewees through a written request we posted in a bulletin circulated among loved ones of individuals on registries, mental health treatment providers, juvenile advocates, social workers, and defense attorneys. Approximately 100 interviewees were identified by a search of state sex offender registries. In addition to seeking geographic diversity, we sought registrants from an array of locations (including both rural and urban areas) and ethnic and racial backgrounds.

The overwhelming majority of the individuals interviewed for this report started registering when they were children (under age 18). Registrants were between the ages of 14 and 48 at the time we interviewed them. We made a substantial effort to interview registrants of various ages to better assess the impact of being a child or adolescent on the sex offender registry. The majority of the interviews with youth offenders were conducted at their homes. All interviews were conducted in private. A family member or significant other was present for a portion of most of the interviews. 

Interviews were semi-structured and covered a range of topics related to how, if at all, being on the sex offender registry affected aspects of a registrant’s life—such as the ability to go to school, obtain and maintain employment, secure housing, and associate with family. Registrants were also asked a series of questions to determine whether the registrant experienced psycho-social harm, felt vulnerable to or experienced violence, or was subject to discrimination because of his or her status as a registrant.

Before each interview, Human Rights Watch informed each interviewee of the purpose of the investigation and the kinds of issues that would be covered, and asked whether they wanted to participate. A parent or guardian gave permission before contact was made with potential interviewees under the age of 18. We informed interviewees that they could discontinue the interview at any time or decline to answer any specific questions without consequence. No financial incentives were offered or provided to persons interviewed.

Human Rights Watch has disguised with pseudonyms the identities of all interviewees, except in two cases where the degree of publicity surrounding the cases made disguising the identities impossible, and we had the informed consent of the two individuals to use their real names. All documents cited in the report are publicly available or on file with Human Rights Watch.