Other things that could get you on the registry include visiting a nude beach in California or being an 18-year-old high school student with a 17-year-old girlfriend and having your sexual activity discovered by a vindictive parent (that last one will get you the bonus bar of shame of criminal activity involving a minor). The registries are rather blunt tools and also end up doing things like making getting housing difficult (there was a news story I saw in the 90s about an encampment under a freeway in Florida as it was the only place people on the sex offender registry could legally live in a major city (I think Miami but this was 30 years ago). A more recent story in Chicago pointed out that a restriction on sleeping on the CTA would cause homeless people on the registry to end up being unable to meet the terms of their parole). I don’t really have much sympathy for child sex abusers, but if people are such dangers to society that they can only live under a freeway or will be reincarcerated on unavoidable technicalities, something is very wrong.
“I’m very, very bitter that the likes of Savile and the rest of them were allowed to continue. I did my bit, I said what I had to. But they didn’t air that.”
> an encampment under a freeway in Florida as it was the only place people on the sex offender registry could legally live
I listened to a podcast that talked about this encampment years ago. The people living there are quite literally trapped. They aren't allowed to move to another city because of their parole and the city they are in has no other location that isn't within some distance of schools, playgrounds, etc that they're forbidden from being near.
One person interviewed had some petty offense like peeing in public when drunk and talked about the violence and crime that occurred in the camp. Listening to him made me so angry at the injustice that people caught in edge cases are subjected to. He drinks too much, pees on the side of a building, and is now forced to live among rapists and predators.
The OP mentioned high school students in totally normal relationships being criminalized. Another example given in the podcast ep was teens sending nude selfies to their bf/gf that got charged and convicted for distributing csam. This is not how enforcement of these laws should work. I'm glad I grew up before smart phones cause I was really stupid when I was a teen.
The only case of public urination -> sex offender which people can point to is Juan Matamoros. He claims this, but the actual case is too old to verify it, and we should not take his word for it.
Arrested in Massachusetts in 1986, charged with two counts of open and gross lewdness, sentenced to two years.
As of [0] lived in Florida, and was in jail for violating probation on a charge of cocaine possession with the intent to sell.
From the article:
Paul Mishkin, the Boston lawyer who represented Matamoros in 1986, could not recall details of the case this week, but said it was clear the judge considered the incident very serious.
“He [Matamoros] told his side of the story to the judge, but clearly there was evidence that made the judge disagree,” said Mishkin. “A two-year sentence in this incident is a fairly severe sentence. You’d have to think there’s evidence to support that.”
It's a weird grey zone of laws where the beaches are not officially nude beaches, but they are advertised this way. Many are run by the federal park police. Most anti nudity laws are state laws and as a result, there is kind of a loophole with enforcing it.
Of course, the act of being nude in public can make many believe they have been assaulted when it's just nudity.
