By Emilia Benton
An article published in Monday’s edition of The New York Times outlined the resistance from states regarding efforts to track sex offenders throughout the nation due to various legal challenges from sex offenders, among others.
This initiative, which was approved by Congress in 2006, requires all states to enact strict regulations for registering sex offenders in an effort to prevent them from evading law enforcement officials, particularly when they move from state to state. According to The Times and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC), approximately 100,000 sex offenders are not living where they are registered, unbeknownst to their current neighbors, which should raise concern particularly to those with children. When 25-year-old Brooklyn resident Laura Garza disappeared last month after last being seen leaving a Manhattan nightclub with 23-year-old Michael Mele, it was quickly revealed that Mele had a history as a sex offender-critical information that had not been relayed to his neighbors, many of whom responded angrily upon learning this, and rightfully so, as some included families with children and teenagers. Mele is currently jailed on related charges, while Garza is still missing-much to the dismay of her distraught family in Texas.
However, many state officials are arguing against the law due to cost issues and suggestions that federal regulations violate states’ rights to enact their own policies with regard to such issues-even though such policies could be leaving children needlessly vulnerable to sexual predators. The law in question is the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act (AWCPSA), which makes it a federal felony to fail to reregister as a sex offender after having moved out of state; additionally, it requires states to impose stronger penalties, now often misdemeanors, for failing to register at all and requires offenders deemed especially dangerous to register for life and to do so in-person four times a year. This law also broadens the number of crimes sex offenders are required to register for and mandates that states to collect more of their personal information and post much of it publicly. This law, which has civil liberties groups up in arms about offenders’ rights, has helped the Marshals Service bring charges against 615 sex offenders for failing to register or update their registration information with authorities. It is incredibly disheartening that one of the nation’s strongest child-protection initiatives, which was named for America’s Most Wanted host John Walsh’s 6-year-old son, who was abducted and murdered in 1981, is faltering.
The need to protect America’s children from potential predators shouldn’t simply rest on the shoulders of lawmakers, however. The reality is that parents share just as much responsibility when it comes to educating their kids about the dangers of meeting people they “know” from chatting with them online. It was revealed last week that MySpace.com (appropriately described by PC World magazine as “Facebook.com’s sleazy second cousin”) recently identified and removed approximately 90,000 sex offenders from the popular social networking Web site. Spokespeople for both MySpace and Facebook have stated that protecting their Web sites’ younger users has always been a priority. However, if we’re talking children, then these Web sites, shouldn’t even have “younger users” to begin with. Children are very impressionable are unlikely to question the identity of someone they’ve met online. According to the NCMEC, approximately 28 to 30 million children use the Internet every day, and one in seven of those kids will be sexually solicited online. It is incredibly irresponsible for parents to allow their kids to utilize such sites without cautioning them about the dangers of meeting people on the Internet, and I cannot understand why so many of today’s parents are seemingly so lax when it comes to such issues. If I were a parent in today’s age of technology, no child of mine would be chatting up strangers online and posting personal contact information on social networking sites.
Evidently, much remains to be done as we anticipate the fate of the AWCPSA. Prohibiting sex offenders from being able to join such Web sites is a step in the right direction, but it’s not enough. Web sites such as Facebook and MySpace should additionally make an effort to prevent young children from joining altogether as this could easily help eliminate their rampant lack of security. To put it bluntly, danger lurks in cyberspace and the last thing America needs is more fodder for Dateline NBC’s “To Catch a Predator.”
Emilia Benton is a senior print journalism student. You may e-mail her at [email protected].
