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	Guest Column: Do-over Needed: Sex-offender Law Based on Myths By Dave Spencer Des Moines Register June 27, 2009 http://www.desmoinesregister.com/article/20090627/OPINION01/906270309/-1/NEWS04 Iowans concerned about family safety should read this carefully. The Iowa General Assembly passed a bill this spring, SF 340, that keeps registered sex offenders out of schools, libraries and swimming pools and keeps the "worst offenders" subject to the prohibition against living within 2,000 feet of a school or child-care center. Will this protect your children better than the old law? Gov. Chet Culver signed the bill into law because he says these measures will make Iowa safer and law enforcement's job more effective. Concerned citizens should consider three points of reality both the governor and General Assembly seem to have ignored in their rush to impress you on TV. First, this new law (as it presumes better public safety) is still predicated on the same old clinically and factually disproven myths. One is that sex offenders always reoffend. This is false, as proven by a federal study using 2004 data for Iowa that shows about 3 percent of registered sex offenders reoffend sexually, even though about 45 percent have or will commit other general crimes. The national statistic for general criminal recidivism is 68 percent. Many general criminal offenders have several convictions for similar crimes, but the average sex offender has about 1.5 sex-offense convictions, according to federal statistics and a state report. Another myth concerns "stranger danger." Iowa law was written in apparent contempt for known facts about society and sexual abuse. Of Americans who have grown up at least since the 1920s, about 95 percent have either been a victim of or witness to sexual abuse, according to 1990s clinical studies by experts such as Schwartz/Cellini (Massachusetts Treatment Center) and Robert Longo ("Sex Abuse in America: Epidemic of the 21st Century"). Data also show that 87 percent of all child sexual abuse is committed by a first-time offender, 95 percent of the time by a family member, teacher, priest or a close family friend or neighbor. Adult rape reflects a similar profile 64 percent of the time. Finally, the new law takes those with the more criminally ridiculous "sex offense" charges, such as public urination and teenage consensual sex, off the registry, but does two wrongs to the public. It continues making restoration, reintegration and stability of former offenders difficult if not impossible, and it violates constitutional guarantees. The concept of rehabilitation includes the ability to reintegrate to society after incarceration. For former sex offenders, being persecuted and repressed makes society less safe, and it defeats the supposed public-safety purpose of the informative, administrative regulation the original federal registration laws intended. Iowa legislators were under pressure to comply with the federal Adam Walsh Act, which sets minimum standards for sex-offender registration and notification, or risk losing federal law-enforcement funds. Federal pressure like that on states defeats the 10th Amendment's guarantees of state sovereignty and the power of the people's self-determination - a step toward fascism. It also affects certain personal-guarantee issues, in terms of the right to have a place to live, the right to personal liberty and the right to equal protection under the law that is afforded every other former convict. Almost 100 percent of child sex abuse is not "stranger danger." To stop sexual abuse, Iowa should proactively engage in available programs of prevention combined with community treatment of offenders and a prison sex-offender treatment program truly designed to help people habilitate better thought and behavior patterns for a better life. That will help eliminate the victimization of children and adults that happens mostly because some people have treatable, untended biopsychosocial problems. Contact: curedes10@yahoo.com
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