III. Who are Youth Sex Offender Registrants?
The enactment across the United States of increasingly comprehensive sex offender registration laws has brought predictable results: the number of individuals (adult and youth offenders) placed on sex offender registries has exploded. In February 2001, approximately 386,000 individuals nationwide were listed on sex offender registries.[90] By 2011, there were 747,408 registered sex offenders in the country.[91]
While it may be safe to assume that the number of registered youth offenders has expanded alongside adult registrants, there are no disaggregated national statistics on youth sex offenders. This chapter therefore contains information Human Rights Watch culled mainly from our interviews with 281 youth sex offenders and the family members of another 15 youth (comprising 296 cases).[92] The interviewees were identified through chain-referral sampling (where attorneys, family members, advocates, and registrants recruit future subjects from among their networks), so the resulting data involves selection bias.[93] Even with that limitation, our interviews provide important insights into the backgrounds of many youth offenders on sex offender registries.
Age
Throughout the United States, children as young as nine years old who are adjudicated delinquent may be subject to sex offender registration laws. For example, in Delaware in 2011, there were approximately 639 children on the sex offender registry, 55 of whom were under the age of 12.[94] In 2010, Michigan counted a total of 3,563 youth offenders adjudicated delinquent on its registry, a figure that does not include Michigan’s youth offenders convicted in adult court.[95] In 2010, Michigan’s youngest registered sex offenders were nine years old.[96] A 2009 Department of Justice study, which focused only on sex crimes committed by children in which other children were the victims, found that one out of eight youth sex offenders committing crimes against other children was younger than 12.[97]
Human Rights Watch recorded several important dates for each of the youth sex offenders interviewed for this report, allowing us to determine their age at conviction and the age they were first placed on the registry. The median age at conviction or adjudication was 15. The median age at first registration was 16. Eight interviewed registrants were age 10 or younger at the time of their conviction and when registration began, with the youngest being 9 years old. A full 84 percent of those interviewed by Human Rights Watch were 17 years old or younger when they began registering.
Offenses
Most jurisdictions mandate registration of children convicted of a wide range of sex offenses in adult court. The federal Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act (SORNA) expanded the range of sex offenses requiring registration.[98] Notably, it was expanded to include certain sex offenses committed by children adjudicated delinquent in juvenile court.[99] Under the Act, a “sex offense” includes offenses having “an element involving a sexual act or contact with another”;[100] “video voyeurism”; having possession, producing, or distributing child pornography; and “[a]ny conduct that by its nature is a sex offense against a minor.”[101] The “sexual act[s]” or “contact” covered under SORNA include (i) oral-genital or oral-anal contact, (ii) any degree of genital or anal penetration, and (iii) direct genital touching of a child under the age of 16.[102]
Implementation of registration, including the federal SORNA provisions, varies across jurisdictions, resulting in a wide variety of offenses and offenders triggering registration requirements. For example:
- In Kansas, any child convicted of a sex offense in adult court is subject to the same registration requirements as adults. Juveniles adjudicated delinquent for a sex offense in Kansas are also subject to registration for a long list of offenses including rape, indecent liberties with a child, criminal sodomy, indecent solicitation of a child, aggravated incest, electronic solicitation, and unlawful sexual relations. The list also includes attempt or conspiracy to commit the above crimes, criminal solicitation of the crimes, or “any act determined beyond a reasonable doubt to have been sexually motivated.”[103]
- In Arkansas, the courts have discretion to order registration requirements for youth offenders convicted in adult court as well as children adjudicated delinquent for “any offense with an underlying sexually motivated component.”[104]
- Maryland applies registration requirements to youth offenders convicted in adult court, but has different requirements for children adjudicated delinquent.[105]
The following are examples of the wide range of offenses that can trigger registration requirements for youth sex offenders:
- In 2005, in Orange County, California, three boys were convicted of sexually assaulting a 16-year-old girl and videotaping the incident. The crime occurred when one of the boys was 16 and two were 17 years old. All three are subject to sex offender registration requirements.[106]
- In 1997, in Texas, a 12-year-old boy pled guilty to aggravated sexual assault. He inappropriately touched a 7-year-old girl at his babysitter’s house. After completing two years of juvenile probation and therapy, he had to register for ten years. He was finally removed from the registry at age 25.[107]
- In 2004, in Western Pennsylvania, a 15-year-old girl was charged with manufacturing and disseminating child pornography for having taken nude photos of herself and posted them on the internet. She was charged as an adult, and as of 2012 was facing registration for life.[108]
- In March 2010, in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, an 18-year-old young man pled guilty to two felony counts of sexual assault and two of indecent assault, which will require him to register. The crimes occurred between October 2003 and December 2008, when the offender was between 11 and 16 years old, and involved multiple rapes of a six- or seven-year old girl and a six-year-old boy.[109]
- In 2006, a 13-year old girl from Ogden, Utah was arrested for rape for having consensual sex with her 12-year-old boyfriend. The young girl, impregnated by her younger boyfriend at the age of 13, was found guilty of violating a state law that prohibits sex with someone under age 14. Her 12-year-old boyfriend was found guilty of violating the same law for engaging in sexual activity with her, as she was also a child under the age of 14 at the time.[110]
- In 2000, in New Jersey, then-12-year-old T.T. inserted a “douche” (feminine product) in his 6-year-old half-brother’s anus on one occasion.[111] When asked why he did it, T.T. responded, “I don’t know.”[112] T.T. subsequently pled guilty to aggravated sexual assault and was sent to a juvenile placement. After incarceration, T.T. was given three years of probation and required to register for life.
- In 1997, Stella A., a 17-year-old high school student, was arrested and pled guilty to sodomy for performing consensual oral sex on a 15-year-old male classmate.[113] Stella was placed on probation and required to register on the state’s sex offender registry. Her photograph, address, and identifying information were publicly available for neighbors and the public to see.
The 296 cases examined for this report had a total of 352 convictions (often due to multiple charges arising from the same incident).[114] For purposes of practicality, we grouped the convictions into 53 offense categories, based on similar offense descriptions. Sexual battery was the most common category of conviction, followed by “lewd lascivious molestation” and “unlawful criminal sexual contact.”
|
Offense Category |
Number of Convictions |
Percentage of Convictions |
|
Sexual Battery |
70 |
7.6% |
|
Lewd Lascivious Molestation |
38 |
4.1% |
|
Unlawful Criminal Sexual Contact |
34 |
3.7% |
|
Sexual Assault |
24 |
2.6% |
|
Aggravated Sexual Assault – Child |
21 |
2.3% |
|
Sexual Abuse |
13 |
1.4% |
|
Rape |
11 |
1.2% |
|
Sodomy |
10 |
1.1% |
|
Sexual Battery (multiple counts) |
10 |
1.1% |
|
Indecency with a child – contact |
10 |
1.1% |
|
There were an additional 111 convictions in 43 other crime categories |
||
|
Total |
352 |
Statutory RapeWhen sexual interactions involve a non-consenting party, the sexual interactions are, by definition, abusive.[115] In these circumstances, the person (adult or child) who forces sex is referred to as the “perpetrator” and the non-consenting person is recognized as a “victim” of sexual abuse.[116] When it comes to child-on-child sexual behavior, the lines between “willingness” and “consent” often become blurred.[117] A child may be “willing” to engage in sexual interactions with a peer, but however willing they may be in one sense, children do not have the psychological capacity to give consent.[118] Therefore, in a state in which the legal age of consent is 14 years old, a 14-year-old female engaging in consensual sexual interactions with her 13-year-old neighbor is a crime. Under many current laws, she could be adjudicated delinquent and required to register as a sex offender. Some children are convicted and required to register after engaging in allegedly consensual sex with other children. These cases, known as statutory rape cases, have received a great deal of press attention and have in some cases led states to reform their laws so that children convicted of statutory rape are not required to register. The intent of sex offender registration and notification laws is to protect children from sexual victimization and exploitation by adults,[119] and it was not the original intent of federal legislators to criminalize sexual interactions between adolescent peers when there is no evidence of coercion.[120] Unfortunately, such criminalization occurs all too frequently. For instance, in Michigan, 17-year-old Alexander D. was convicted of criminal sexual conduct for having sex with his 15-year-old girlfriend.[121] He has been registering as a sex offender since 2003. Alexander and his girlfriend met when they were freshmen in high school and dated for nearly a year before having sex. In Michigan, the legal age of consent is 16.[122] Alexander has been penniless, has lost jobs, and has been called a “pedophile” by passing strangers.[123] His girlfriend’s parents have written letters on his behalf, asking for his removal from the registry. However, Alexander will remain on the sex offender registry until the year 2028. In Florida, an 18-year-old boy, Grayson A., had sex with his 15-year-old girlfriend. The girlfriend, Lily A., became pregnant and the couple got married. Despite their marriage, Grayson was arrested and subsequently convicted of “lewd or lascivious molestation.” Originally charged with rape, Grayson pled no contest to the lewd or lascivious molestation charge.[124] He served two years in prison and was required to register as a sex offender for life.[125] The couple, now ages 31 and 35, have two children together. In a 2009 interview, Grayson stated that he lost at least 17 jobs because of being on the sex offender registry.[126] Because his wife was also his victim, the couple could not live together. Grayson became homeless and ended up living in his car.[127] In 2008, the couple consulted a lawyer to challenge the impact the law was having on their family. In 2009, Attorney General Bill McCollum voted to pardon the conviction and remove Grayson from Florida’s registry.[128] |
Date of Registration, Race, and Gender
States and local jurisdictions have had registration systems in place for more than two decades; however, with the advent of federal efforts to set minimum registration standards in 1994, followed by the passage of Megan’s Law in 1996, more and more youth offenders became subject to registration. With SORNA’s passage in 2006, registrations increased. Among those interviewed by Human Rights Watch for this report, the majority were first placed on sex offender registries between 2007 and 2011. Over 60 percent of the interviewees had been registered for five years or less at the time of our interviews with them.
Although there are no national statistics on the race and gender of youth offenders subject to sex offender registration, a 2009 Department of Justice study of youth offenders, examining 2004 data on youth offenders committing sex offenses against other children, found that 93 percent of the offenders were male.[129] The study did not examine the race of the youth offenders or their victims. Among the youth offenders interviewed by Human Rights Watch for this report, 96.6 percent were male, 60 percent were white, 31 percent were black, and 5.7 percent were Latino.
[90] Devon Adams, Bureau of Justice Statistics, “Summary of State Sex Offender Registries, 2001,” March 1, 2002, http://bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/sssor01.pdf (accessed April19, 2013).
[91] “Number of Registered Sex Offender in the US Nears Three-Quarters of a Million,” National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) press release, January 23, 2012. NCMEC is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization established in 1984, authorized by Congress and working in partnership with the US Department of Justice. It is a public-private partnership, funded in part by Congress and in part by the private sector, which has operated under Congressional authority as the national resource center and clearinghouse on missing and exploited children. NCMEC created the survey in 2006, following the enactment of the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act in July of that year. Each year since the survey was created, NCMEC contacts the sex offender registry in each state as well as registries located in the District of Columbia and five US territories (Puerto Rico, the US Virgin Islands, Guam, American Samoa, and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands). The US Virgin Islands, St. Thomas, and St. Croix maintain separate sex offender registries, bringing the total number of registries surveyed to 57. NCMEC has conducted 13 sex offender register surveys since 2006, and they were performed quarterly until 2009. Since then, they have been done twice each year.
[92] Of these interviews, 281 were with the individuals themselves; 15 were conducted with family members of registrants.
[93] Since Human Rights Watch was seeking individuals willing to speak about the impact registration has had on their lives, it is impossible to know how those interviewed are similar or different from other registrants. Demographic information provided here is not generalizable to a larger population; it merely represents the experiences of the 296 individuals whose cases were examined in this report.
[94] Quyen Nguyen, Nicole Pittman, and Kirsten Rønholt, “Executive Report: A Snapshot of Juvenile Sex Offender Registration and Notification Laws,” Pennsylvania Juvenile Defenders, July 27, 2011, http://www.pajuvdefenders.org/file/snapshot.pdf. (These figures were clarified by the Delaware Public Defender Juvenile Chief, Lisa Minutola, in July 2011).
[95] Ibid. (citing David A. Garcia, “Juveniles crowd Michigan Sex Offender Registry: More than 3,500 teen and pre-teen sex offenders on state list,” The Michigan Messenger, February 10, 2010).
[96] Ibid. (citing Valerie Anderson, “Application of Mandatory Registration and Notification Laws to Juvenile Sex Offenders,” unpublished manuscript, March 26, 2010).
[97] Finkelhor, Ormrod, and Chaffin, “Juveniles Who Commit Sex Offenses Against Minors,” https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/ojjdp/227763.pdf.
[98] The Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act (SORNA) is Section 111 of the Adam Walsh Act Child Protection and Safety Act of 2006, codified at 42 U.S.C. §16911.
[99] 42 U.S.C.S. § 16911(8) (Lexis Nexis 2011).
[100] 42 U.S.C.S. § 16911(5)(A)(i) (Lexis Nexis 2011).
[101] 42 U.S.C.S. § 16911(7)(F)-(I) (Lexis Nexis 2011).
[102] 42 U.S.C.S. § 16911(8)(Lexis Nexis 2011).
[103] KANSAS STAT. ANN. § 22-4906(h)(1) (2011).
[104] ARK. CODE ANN. § 9-27-356(b)(1) (2011).
[105] MD. CODE ANN., CRIM. PROC. § 11-704.1(b)(1).
[106] Claire Luna, “3 Guilty of Sexual Assault in O.C. Gang-Rape Retrial,” Los Angeles Times, March 24, 2005, http://articles.latimes.com/2005/mar/24/local/me-haidl24 (accessed March 21, 2013).
[107] Human Rights Watch interview with Mason T., Pinehurst, Texas, April 27, 2012.
[108] Human Rights Watch telephone interview with Sheila F., Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, September 28, 2012.
[109] Riley Yates, “Bethlehem Teen Sentenced for Rapes,” Morning Call, March 3, 2010, http://articles.mcall.com/2010-03-03/news/all-a7_3gonzalez2.71939672mar03_1_unstable-childhood-giordano-assaulting (accessed March 21, 2013).
[110] Human Rights Watch telephone interview with C.C., Utah, February 21, 2012; State ex rel. Z.C., 2007 UT 54, 165 P.3d 1206 (2007). In 2011, the conviction requiring the young girl to register was reversed when the Utah Supreme Court concluded that while the children violated this particular law as it is worded, the law was not intended to apply to such cases.
[111] In the Matter of Registrant T.T., 188 N.J. 321 (N.J. 2006): Application for Judicial Review of Notification (A-58-2005) NJ Appellate Division (2005).
[112] Ibid.
[113] Human Rights Watch interview with attorneys for Stella A., Southern Center for Human Rights, Atlanta, Georgia, March 3, 2012; Whitaker v. State, 283 Ga. 521 (Ga. 2008).
[114] Some individuals were convicted of multiple offenses in the same case, while others were convicted of crimes over a period of years. If an individual was convicted of multiple counts of the same crime, this was labeled as a “single conviction (multiple counts).” If there were two convictions with different codes, these were coded as separate offense categories.
[115] H.E. Barbaree, W.L. Marshall, and S.M. Hudson, eds., The Juvenile Sex Offender (New York: The Guilford Press, 1993).
[116]Ibid.
[117]Ibid.
[118] B. Rind, P. Tromovitch, and R. Bauserman, “A Meta-Analytic Examination of Assumed Properties of Child Sexual Abuse Using College Samples,” Psychological Bulletin, vol. 124, no. 1 (1998), http://digilib.bc.edu/reserves/sc563/mcgu/sc56310.pdf (accessed March 21, 2013), pp. 22–53.
[119] Barbaree, Marshall, and Hudson, The Juvenile Sex Offender.
[120] Ibid.
[121] Human Rights Watch interview with Alexander D., Muskegon, Michigan, March 22, 2012.
[122] Lee Higgins, “Young Pittsfield Township man struggles with the sex offender label,” AnnArbor.com, December 18, 2009, http://www.annarbor.com/news/a-young-man-struggles-with-the-sex-offender-label/ (accessed March 21, 2013).
[123] Human Rights Watch interview with Alexander D., March 22, 2012.
[124] Human Rights Watch interview with Bert Oram, attorney, Tallahassee, Florida, July 2009.
[125] Human Rights Watch interview with Grayson A., Panama City Beach, Florida, May 3, 2012.
[126] Bill Kaczor, “Crist delays decision on Florida ‘Romeo and Juliet’ Case,” South Florida Sun-Sentinel, June 11, 2009, http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/florida/sfl-romeo-juliet-sex-offender-061009,0,1939750.story (accessed March 5, 2013).
[127] Human Rights Watch interview with Bert Oram, July 2009.
[128] Opinion Staff, “Sex Offender No More,” The Palm Beach Post, August 3, 2009, http://blogs.palmbeachpost.com/opinionzone/2009/08/03/sex-offender-no-more/ (accessed April 19, 2013).
[129] Finkelhor, Ormrod, and Chaffin, “Juveniles Who Commit Sex Offenses Against Minors,” https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/ojjdp/227763.pdf (citing “Using the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) to Investigate Juvenile Sex Offenders”).
