Keyon Lee of Buffalo NY gives us a pile of buffalo chips in the latest stupid comment of the day

This is Keyon Lee. When he isn't busy selling trashy ghetto clothes at his shop "City Swagg Fashions" taking pics of women with their butts hanging out, he is moonlighting at his other job as a "victim advocate." In a recent article, he's not claiming to be part of an organization called the "Buffalo Center for Prevention and Treatment of Child Sex Abuse." Interestingly enough, there is no mention of this organization anywhere until now. It reminded me of the "Committee of Concerned Parents" from the novel-turned-movie "Little Children," manned by only one person, a renegade ex-cop with a grudge. 

This clown obviously holds a grudge but in his desperation to be relevant at anything at all, he figures the only way to be relevant is to promote something stupid. Thus, he is trying to push the city of Buffalo to publish the info of all 600 people on the local registry and distribute them to everyone in the city. That is a bad idea in itself, but what this moron says in the Channel 4 article makes his statement Shiitake-worthy:

http://wivb.com/2015/10/19/local-group-pushes-for-hard-copy-sex-offender-registry/

The problem, according to Keyon Lee, of the Buffalo Center for Prevention and Treatment of Child Sex Abuse, is that not enough of his neighbors know.

“It’s chilling. It’s chilling because you have 600 registered pedophiles in the city of Buffalo, and those are just the registered ones. We’re not talking about the ones that we don’t know about,” Lee told News 4.

Lee, who is helping to lead the charge to change at City Hall, says there’s a disconnect between the information, which can be found online at the New York State Sex Offender Registry, and the people who need it.

“A lot of people are not computer savvy. We have a lot of foreigners in our city, who may not be able to read and write correct English. We need the registration list to be sent out. The disconnect is that they’re not providing this to us,” he said.

First of all, if you say "registered pedophile," you are definitely worthy of ridicule. Second, when Keyon Lee says a lot of folks cannot read or write correct English, he is obviously referring to himself. Obviously he did not get the memo that most folks on the registry are not "pedophiles." 

Maybe he should spend less time spewing bullshiitake about the registry and more time addressing the sexually provocative ads on his own website:

Buffalo's newest victim industry advocate's "other" job

Chris Hansen is back but this time as an Everyday Zero candidate

We've heard about this pile of bovine excrement and it seems that fallen NBC yellow journalist Chris Hansen has come back to squeeze an extra minute of two from his 15 minutes of fame. Now, do I really have to discuss the past of this piece of shiitake? We should all know who this asshat is, but I'm betting you are wondering why he's only getting a nod for an Everyday Zeroes Award and not his usual Worst News Mutt. The answer is simple-- He's running his new "show" -- Hansen v. Predator if you must know -- as an independent show and he is not sponsored by any media outlet, just a bunch of online idiots who donated to his Crowdfunding project. 

So Chris Hansen is back to doing the ONLY thing he will ever be known for-- entrapping folks on the internet. 

At the moment, it is unclear if he is using the retards from Perverted Justice as he did once before. 

The folks from the Floridiotic KidsSafe Foundation is giving him an award in March. Lets see if he gets a Shiitake Award in February. 

Damn, Hansen has not aged well at all. 

http://www.newrepublic.com/article/123138/chris-hansen-back-catching-predators

Chris Hansen Is Back To Catching Predators

Only this time there's no NBC, just a star and his crowd-funded crew of online vigilantes.

BY SPENCER WOODMAN

OCTOBER 18, 2015

n mid-August, the police department in Fairfield, Connecticut, received a most unusual phone call. It was from Chris Hansen, former host of the infamous NBC reality series To Catch A Predator, which filmed the arrests of men caught soliciting sex from underage decoys online. Hansen informed the department that he was setting up a sex sting in Fairfield that would mirror the operations he became famous for a decade ago, with one key difference: This time, he was going at it without the backing of a major—or any—television network. It was just Hansen and his small team of producers, technicians, and security personnel. Hansen had chosen Fairfield as the site of America’s first-ever Kickstarter-funded sex sting.

To Fairfield’s deputy police chief, Christopher Lyddy, the operation appeared well underway: Hansen vs. Predator, as Hansen named the project, had quietly scouted for a staging house in town and had already courted an array of putative predators on social media. Hansen vs. Predator would follow the familiar format: Hansen’s crew would pose online as underage boys and girls to lure men to a house rigged with hidden cameras ready to record Hansen’s confrontation with them, and their arrests. Lyddy said that it seemed clear the sting was going down with or without the police department’s help, but it could be involved in the arrests—and the publicity—if it wanted.

Hansen’s sting posed a set of difficult decisions for the police department, Lyddy said. Fairfield had never conducted such an operation, and had not identified the online solicitation of underage partners as a particularly large problem facing the community. Not only would Hansen’s group be attracting potentially dangerous men into Lyddy’s jurisdiction, but Hansen’s brand of reality TV had proven dangerous in the past. In November 2006, in Murphy, Texas, an assistant district attorney and suspected sex criminal named Louis Conradt shot himself while being confronted by a local SWAT team while Hansen’s crew waited outside his home. To Catch A Predator was ultimately cancelled, and in 2008, NBC paid Conradt’s family an undisclosed sum to settle a wrongful death suit against the network.

“We thought long and hard about this,” said Lyddy, "but at the end of the day we completely understood that this was going to happen no matter what, and that we really had a responsibility to become involved and to ensure this neighborhood was safe.”

Beginning on October 1, Hansen’s camera crew camped out with police for four days at a decoy house in an undisclosed Fairfield neighborhood. “Every time I thought I’ve seen every possible scenario, something else comes up,” said Hansen, whom I interviewed by phone about the Fairfield sting. “You just have to be prepared at every level.”

Hansen said one man showed up with a gun in his car; another, when confronted by Hansen and his cameras said he knew him from commuting on the Metro North train together and pleaded, “No, Chris, please don’t do this to me”; another admitted to police to having previously sodomized a 15-year-old. “In almost every case they were extremely specific about what they wanted to do, which sexual acts, how they would start,” Hansen told me. “You could see the grooming process in action: ‘we’ll do this in the kitchen together, we’ll take a bath together, we’ll go to bed.’”

In all, Hansen’s sting netted ten men, all arrested by Fairfield PD and booked into the local jail with bond set as high as $1.1 million. The charges range from attempted sexual assault to “impairing the morals of a minor.” Lyddy was pleased with the sting’s results, and he said that Hansen and his team were not only excellent to work with but that, without their technological resources, the operation would not have been conducted as efficiently. But when the sting concluded without a hitch in Fairfield, Lyddy breathed a sigh of relief. “This was a four-day operation,” he said, “and we worried about things going wrong up until the very last moment of the very last day.”

Hansen was thrilled with how things went. “As Fairfield demonstrated, this is still very much a huge issue,” Hansen told me the first time we spoke. And then later, he asserted: “We just made that the safest neighborhood in America.”

Before To Catch A Predator, Hansen had enjoyed a successful career in broadcast journalism. But the sex sting show quickly launched him into a new and very particular sort of fame, while also reviving Dateline’s NBC ratings. More recently, Predator has been reportedly sold for millions to television stations around the world.

During and after the filming of Predator, Hansen also hosted a variety of less salacious operations on NBC in which—with equal vigor that he applied to suspected pedophiles—he chided petty bicycle thieves, pimps, and Nigerian scammers. Yet this apparently didn’t do it for his fans, who have frequently demanded the return of To Catch A Predator. “There was a pent up demand,” Hansen told me. “The most-asked question on Twitter or Facebook or any other social media that I participate in was: ‘When are you going to do another one?’” Finally, Hansen decided to give them what they wanted.

In crafting the Kickstarter campaign, Hansen enlisted the help of a crowd-funding expert at his talent agency, William Morris Endeavor, and put together a pitch that centered on, and almost fetishized, the intense first moments of confrontation with the men who wandered into his set houses: Funders chipping in as little as $50 could receive coffee mugs, signed photographs, and t-shirts showing Hansen’s scowling face and his famous catchphrase: “Have a seat.” Those who chipped in at least $1,200 would get to “have a seat with Chris Hansen, literally”—a lunch with the host in New York City. The campaign exceeded its initial $80,000 funding goal, bringing in $89,068. Hansen told me that he plans to at least initially release the new show as an online series, perhaps on a subscription model, but that he is currently in talks with multiple broadcast networks and digital platforms interested in picking up Hansen vs. Predator.

Many of the ingredients that make To Catch A Predator irresistible to its fans—Hansen’s raw face-to-faces, the vigilantism, and the voyeurism of public shame—have generated significant scrutiny of the show.

Critics have accused Hansen of taking men who might not be dangerous predators and facing them with a moral obstacle course that could land them in prison. Others have expressed concern that by subjecting the merely accused to the potential of mass public humiliation, the show neglects the common notion of innocent until proven guilty.

And then there’s the sheer emotional charge of Hansen’s confrontations: It might be downright dangerous. “We see situations that in a second turn volatile,” said James Drylie, a professor of criminal justice at Kean University, who has studied the ways in which arrests lead to suspects becoming violent and suicidal. “Imagine hearing: ‘lights, camera, action, you’re on TV.’ A person can just explode — they’re looking to escape and they’ll use any means.” Drylie asserts that, for these reasons, it would be necessary for a television crew to work with trained law enforcement personnel when conducting undercover sex stings.

“As Fairfield demonstrated, this is still very much a huge issue,” Hansen told me. “We just made that the safest neighborhood in America.”

And Hansen agrees—almost. “I think it would be socially irresponsible, and, from a production standpoint, unsatisfying to the viewer to conduct an investigation like this without the police,” Hansen said. But when I asked him whether he would move forward with a sting in a town without the involvement of a police force, he stopped short of ruling out the possibility. (His first two episodes of Predator were filmed without police.) “We would take a look at it certainly,” Hansen said, “depending on what kind of investigation it was, and how urgent it was.”

Sally Berenzweig, co-founder of the Boca Raton-based KidSafe Foundation, which teaches and promotes child safety, says that although the vast majority of child sexual abuse is perpetrated by family members and other acquaintances, Hansen’s show exposed what she believes to be the new hazards of strangers taking to the internet to finding children to exploit in real life. “Technology is a wonderful thing: It brings our children to the world but it also brings the world to our children.”

In March, Berenzweig’s organization will honor Hansen with its “Child Advocate of The Year” award. She says Hansen was a key figure not only in spreading the word about the dangers of online pedophiles but his show also likely played an important role in deterring would-be online predators. “He was the one that raised awareness,” Berenzweig said, “and I’m very appreciative for what he's done.”

Before Hansen set up shop in Fairfield, it had been nearly a decade since he had confronted an alleged pedophile. Yet in his absence, the influence of To Catch A Predator had only expanded, and not just in its seemingly interminable off-hour NBC reruns. The show found new life in myriad small towns and mid-sized cities where copycat stings have become wildly popular among local law enforcement. The police frequently film the stings, footage of which they distribute to local news. Even now, regional media coverage still attributes the local sex stings’ inspiration to Hansen’s former show.

Hansen vs. Predator’s Facebook page in particular praises an operation spearheaded by Grady Judd, Sheriff of Polk County, Florida, who has become the figurehead of the national trend of pedophile stings. In the years after Hansen’s show was cancelled, Judd—an evangelical Christian who routinely preaches in uniform—has built a cult of personality around conducting massive undercover sex crime operations that can net more than 100 people at a time.  “We were going after predators, pedophiles, people who were trying to attack your children online,” Judd said during a 2013 press conference about an underage sex sting that concluded on Father’s day and that he described as “our gift to not only to fathers but to all of those that have children.”

Judd’s stings themselves have courted controversy. Critics characterize them as ploys for elected sheriffs to get easy press attention. The Florida stings have also been lucrative for departments around the state: The police can sell the suspected predator’s car, which deputies frequently seize after making arrests at decoy houses.

“They target military men, they target gay men, and they target young, stupid men,” says Peter Aiken, a Florida defense attorney who represents alleged sex criminals. “Most of these guys can’t afford a good lawyer and they plead to four, five, or six years in prison,” Aiken said. “Then they get out and they’re on a sex offender registry and their lives are over.”

Hansen, who has no involvement with the Florida stings, says that his team follows strict protocols to avoid luring non-predators into making bad decisions. “The online decoy can never make the first approach,” Hansen says, adding that the online personality must be “unmistakably” underage. Hansen also says that, as a policy, his team reminds the target of the decoy’s age multiple times “so that there’s no question” as to the predator’s intent. “We approach this with integrity, Hansen said, “we’re completely transparent about our methodology and that’s the key to it.” Hansen says that his Fairfield sting used 12- and 13-year-old decoys “so that there’s no grey area.”

One of the men arrested in Hansen’s Fairfield sting was a teenager himself: a 19-year-old from upstate New York who had allegedly planned to meet a 12-year-old for sex. When I asked Hansen whether he would air the footage of the young suspect, he said: “that editorial decision hasn’t been made yet.”

But it is the editorial—or perhaps entrepreneurial—forces behind the stings that worry Drylie, the criminology professor. Drylie fears that television programs might have incentives that clash with norms of law enforcement. “What about ratings?” Drylie said. “Viewers generate shows right? So is something being done for a commercial purpose?” Drylie says he’s not worried about entrapment in the legal sense, but his concern lies rather in the ethical hazards of a television show “generating an incident” that would not otherwise occur. “You can have fantasies all day long,” Drylie said, giving the hypothetical example of a reformed sex offender, “so what if you ignite a spark in a person that otherwise would not have been reignited?” “So I wonder sometimes: is art imitating life?” Drylie said, “or is art directing life?”

“People can say: Okay, it’s not the old-fashioned traditional journalism that took place in the Houston Chronicle in 1975—it’s different,” Hansen said. “But that’s also why newspapers are having a hard time staying relevant, you know? You have to reassess the way you do things and be creative and enterprising about it, and this is a perfect example of that.”

Hansen considers what he does to be investigative journalism, and asserts that he got into the sex sting business primarily out of an interest in exposé storytelling, rather than an urge to deter criminal activity through public shame.

Hansen told me that, initially, his primary motivation was to examine the psychology “of these guys, to figure out what they were thinking.” And he believes that the dozens upon dozens of men successfully prosecuted as a consequence his investigations represent results that speak for themselves.

“When you put it all together,” Hansen said, discussing the sting in Fairfield, “not only does it take you inside the minds of one of these guys, it’s very dramatic television.”

Spencer Woodman is a freelance reporter based in New York. You may contact him on Twitter or by email at spencer.woodman@gmail.com.

FloriDUH state senator Dorothy Hukill is "droning" on and on with her perverted thoughts

I can't help but wonder how perverted this woman really is. after all, if she spends this much time thinking perverted ideas like using drones to spy on naked kids, then it is she has some issues and is in need of therapy.

http://bbn.frn.com/fis/storydisplay.asp?site=wbob&storyID=24526

Unmanned Drones and Sex Offenders

by Rick Flagg and Alan McBride

TALLAHASSEE, FLA. -- A state lawmaker from Central Florida has filed a bill that would make it a crime for registered sex offenders to use a remote control drone to spy on kids or take their pictures. 

Senator Dorothy Hukill of Port Orange says predators are required to stay away from schools, playgrounds and other places where children gather... but there's nothing in the law about drones.

"What they can't do personally, they can do with a drone," she said. "They can do it pretty unobtrusively without people being aware or knowing what they're doing."

Hukill admits she's never heard of a case where a sex offender used a drone to stalk a child, but she contends it's bound to happen eventually.

She says her bill is all about prevention.

Ohio HB 353 will require Registered Citizens to give info of every adult in the household to the state. You just know something stupid is about to happen...

Cross-posted with ReFORM-Ohio.

If there is a state that could challenge FloriDUH for the sheer stupidity of sex offender laws, it is the state of Ohio (or as I call it, "D'Oh-I-O). Ohio was the one state that finally dethroned FloriDUH's Shiitake Award dynasty (if only for a year), and D'OHio was the first state to pass the Adam Walsh AND is the only state that can place people on the sex offender registry through a civil trial. 

So now the great state of D'OHio wants to remind us that our legislators can be as birdbrained as FloriDUH. State Rep. Margaret Ann Ruhl has introduced HB 353, which will "amend sections 2950.04, 2950.041, and 2950.99 of the Revised Code to require a sheriff to mail a notice to every adult member of a household where a person who is required to register as a sex offender resides informing those household members that the person has committed a sexually oriented offense or a child-victim oriented offense."

Now, it is already a stupid idea to waste millions of dollars of taxpayer money to send a notice to every adult living in the household with a Registered Citizen that they are indeed living with a Registered Citizen. It seems as asinine as placing warning labels on jars of peanut butter that peanut butter contains peanuts. I can't imagine a single scenario where this is even necessary or helpful. Obviously, people living with a Registered Person knows they are living with a Registered Citizen. What's next? Notices that water is wet?

But this isn't the worst part of the law. If passed the Ohio Revised Code will be revised again, adding to the information collected by the Sheriff's Office, "Regarding an offender or delinquent child who is registering under a duty imposed under division (A)(2), (3), or (4) of this section as a result of the offender or delinquent child residing in this state or temporarily being domiciled in this state for more than three days, a list of every other person age eighteen or older who resides at the residence at which the offender plans to reside."

What this means is the state will expect Registered Citizens to register the names of every adult living in the household with the Sheriff's Office. I know that Anti-Registry activists like to use the expression, "When someone is forced to register, the entire family registers," but it seems Ohio is taking this expression literally. 

But hey, it isn't like something like a computer glitch would accidentally add dozens of people to the Ohio sex offender registry or anything, right? Oh wait...

http://www.10tv.com/content/stories/2011/11/02/columbus-sex-offender-registry-mistake.html

Dozens Mistakenly Added To Ohio Sex Offender Registry

Wednesday November 2, 2011 6:33 PM 

UPDATED: Wednesday November 2, 2011 7:45 PM

COLUMBUS, Ohio - Some people raised questions on Wednesday, wondering how dozens of people could have been wrongfully included to a statewide sex offender registry.

Outdated and inaccurate information was put into the system by an outside company that helped run the registry, 10TV's Chuck Strickler reported.

It took more than two weeks to figure out what the problem was.   The site was then shut down and fixed. 

The state had been working to switch the entire registry operation over to a Louisiana company called Watch Systems. 

In early October, the state said the company took control of the search operation of the registry and mistakenly put inaccurate information into the system for all to see, Strickler reported.

The state attorney general's office said the problem was a result of human error. 

"There were probably hundreds, but we don't know exactly because we didn't take the time to go through the records individually," said Steven Raubenolt, Deputy Superintendent of BC&I.

                                                                                                                                          

Members of the group 'Families Against the Registry' said they were concerned that people who were no longer required to register were listed again during the glitch. 

"Watch Systems and the Ohio Attorney General do not seem to care that when you list a man on the registry, his wife and children suffer," said Ellen Shores of Families Against the Registry.

"Obviously we are sorry this happened.  As I said, we don't want bad or inaccurate data being displayed to the public," said Raubenolt.

I see nothing but problems arising from this idiotic bill. Ohio has already screwed up and added innocent people to the registry once before, so this bill is a disaster waiting to happen. Florida had similar problems recently, so obviously non-registered citizens understand that being mistaken for a "sex offender" is a pretty bad thing. The last thing Ohio would want is for a non-registrant to be beaten to death by a deranged vigilante, as has happened in Florida. 

This smiling face is that of State Representative Margaret Ann Ruhl, by the way. This is the woman listed as the primary sponsor. Rep. Heather Bishoff, Rep. Cheryl L. Grossman, Rep. Brian Hill, and Rep. Martin J. Sweeney are co-sponsors. I have added direct links to their representative pages. Feel free to contact them and ask them what they were thinking when sponsoring this stupid bill. 

NJ Assemblyman Robert Auth uses Predator Panic to attempt to repeal a law. Well, that's a first...

Something smells in New Jersey. Oh wait, New Jersey always smells. Well, something smells worse than usual in NJ.

I see Predator Panic used to pass bad laws, but how often do you see Predator Panic REPEAL laws?

Well, if NJ Assemblyman Robert Auth has his way, a law putting red decals on drivers ages 16-21 will be removed from car tags. His justification? This is the Shiitake Awards, so take a wild guess what he is using to repeal the decal law.

http://nj1015.com/a-move-to-do-away-with-nj-learners-permit-decals/

Are the red decals young drivers have to put on their license plates an invitation to potential sex offenders? Are they advertising that there’s probably a teenager in the car?
Some people think so, while others say they’re a valuable tool for law enforcement.

Kyleigh’s Law has been controversial since it was first enacted in the Garden State in 2009. There is now another move to repeal the decal requirement and hold parents and guardians responsible if their kids don’t obey the Graduated Drivers License law.

“These decals identify youthful drivers to the public and while most of the public is rational and sane there are people who have nefarious thoughts for youthful drivers, youthful people in general and have sinister thoughts with regard to interacting with them,” said Assemblyman Robert Auth (R-Cresskill).

Legislation (A-822), introduced by Auth, would repeal the requirement that the holders of GDLs display a decal on the car they are driving and require parents and guardians of graduated driver licensees under the age of 21 to enforce restrictions that apply to these young drivers.

“There’s no empirical evidence that any of the problems they seek to correct in this legislation are real. I see no point in entertaining legislation that accomplishes nothing,” said Assembly Transportation Committee chairman John Wisniewski (D-Sayreville), who sponsored Kyleigh’s Law.

Under New Jersey’s GDL program, drivers under the age of 21 are allowed to have one passenger allowed with the exception of a parent, cannot use of cell phones even if they’re hands-free devices and they have a nighttime curfew of 11 p.m. Under Kyleigh’s Law, they must also display a red decal so that law enforcement can easily identify them.

Under Auth’s bill, a young potential driver would not get a permit or license unless their parent or guardian pledges, in writing, to accept responsibility for enforcing the GDL laws and conditions. The measure would increase the penalties for GDL drivers who violate the restrictions and also impose penalties on the parents or guardians of these drivers.

“How will anyone figure out whether or not kids did not abide by the law? Will the parents turn them in so that the parents themselves could then be penalized,” Wisniewski asked.

The GDL law is valuable and important, Auth said and he pointed that that he has no problem with the statute itself. The decals were his only concern.

On Aug. 6, 2012, the New Jersey Supreme Court unanimously upheld Kyleigh’s Law in a ruling that said the statute did not make young drivers vulnerable to pedophiles which meant it did not run afoul of the federal Driver’s Privacy Protection Act.

“The young drivers subject to (Kyleigh’s Law) have no reasonable expectation of privacy in their age group because a driver’s age group can generally be determined by his or her physical appearance,” the court wrote.

According to Paul Loriquet, communications director for the Attorney General, Highway Traffic Safety is aware of only one reported incident in which a teen driver was stopped by someone who was not a police officer. The incident, Loriquet said, happened within the first year that the law went into effect.

“It involved an individual impersonating a police officer who stopped a vehicle with a teenage driver. No details were provided,” he said. “Apparently the teenage driver drove away without any further incident.”

The "D'oh Fund" -- A shelter threatens to close down rather than accept registered citizens in their shelters

Every time I think people can't do anything dumber when it comes to reacting Predator Panic, I'm proven wrong every time. There are few things more disgusting than seeing a program that is supposed to be helping the homeless refuse services to registered city. It is bad enough seeing Ron Book abuse his authority as head of Miami's Homeless Trust, now you have the damned Yankee version of Book in Alexander Horowitz, who states he'd rather shut down his program than help a single registered citizen. 

I could use a new job and it looks to be Horowitz will be out of a job soon. 

http://gothamist.com/2015/09/11/doe_fund_sex_offender.php

Doe Fund Fights Sex Offender Relocation To Its East Williamsburg Shelter

BY ARVIND DILAWAR IN NEWS ON SEP 11, 2015 9:50 AM

Management of an East Williamsburg homeless shelter says they would rather close the facility than make room for 50 sex offenders being sent there by New York City’s Department of Homeless Services.

Administrators from The Doe Fund, a nonprofit organization which independently owns and operates the Peter Jay Sharp Center for Opportunity, believe the transfers to be level two and three sex offenders, classified by the state to be moderate to high risks for reoffending, respectively.

“DHS did not identify them as such, but we know that levels two and three are most likely to be homeless and in the system because of the legal restrictions imposed upon them,” says The Doe Fund’s director of external affairs, Alexander Horwitz.

Those legal restrictions include prohibitions outlawing certain sex offenders from living within 1,000 feet of an area where children congregate. According to state law, sex offenders under parole or probation supervision, regardless of their risk level, are subject to residency restrictions if their victims were under the age of 18. Level three sex offenders on parole or probation, regardless of the age of their victims, also are subject to residency restrictions.

Due to the density of schools, parks and playgrounds in New York, these restrictions mean that many homeless sex offenders can legally reside at one of only 17 compliant shelters — a list that the Sharp Center, being more than 1,500 feet away from the nearest school (and three blocks from the Morgan L stop) found itself on for the first time in April.

The 400-bed Sharp Center is legally obligated to accept anyone referred to it by DHS if it has vacancies, but management says they are at capacity, and claims that this is the first time in the facility’s 12-year history that the department has attempted to forcibly move in sex offenders.

“We’ve had a long-standing agreement with the city to send us individuals who can benefit from our program, so as not to waste what are very valuable bed spaces for folks who can go to work and get back on their feet,” says Horwitz, referring to Ready, Willing & Able, The Doe Fund’s transitional housing and employment program, which operates in part from the Sharp Center.

Developed over the last 25 years, Ready, Willing & Able provides homeless men with a year or more of housing, employment and vocational training. Program members progress from working in their facilities to cleaning streets as part of “Men in Blue” crews to becoming professionally licensed in one of six careers, such as commercial driving, culinary arts and building maintenance. The final step is obtaining full-time employment and unsubsidized housing.

With Ready, Willing & Able, the Sharp Center and its other programs and facilities, The Doe Fund aims to help more than 2,000 homeless people each year. It has assisted 22,000 since the organization’s inception in 1985.

“There’s never been another administration that didn’t see the value in Ready, Willing & Able, and make an effort not to send us sex offenders,” says The Doe Fund’s co-founder, Harriet McDonald.

McDonald believes that DHS’s recent efforts are a panicked response to the murder of a Bronx shelter director by a former resident in April, as well as the sexual assault charges against a Kips Bay shelter resident and previously convicted rapist that same month.

“There was a definite knee-jerk reaction to these two terrible incidents, where all of a sudden [DHS was] saying, ‘We have to do something because the media is all over us and Kips Bay is going crazy and we look incompetent,’” says McDonald. “It’s not that the sex offenders suddenly appeared in the shelter system, of course. But [DHS] never developed a plan.”

DHS’s new plan appears to be forcibly relocating the homeless sex offenders to compliant shelters regardless of the cost.

Citing an upcoming court date with The Doe Fund over the transfers, DHS Press Secretary Nicole Cueto was unable to comment on the situation beyond issuing the following statement:

DHS must house residency-restricted sex offenders in facilities that are in compliance with the state guidelines that are at least 1,000 feet away from schools. This site is one of them. We have been very willing to work with the provider - including more funding and personnel for security, mental health and social service - but we have a legal mandate from New York State to provide shelter to anyone in need, and we can’t cherry-pick our clients.

The Sharp Center’s management says DHS fails to distinguish between their own specialized programming and “cherry-picking clients.”

“Sex offenders are inhibited, by the laws on the books and by their condition, from reintegrating with society, and because that is what our program is about, we can’t serve them,” says Horwitz. “The population that we work with ... are people who have been denied economic opportunity. From [DHS’s] standpoint, that person is the same as a person who’s homeless because they’re a sex offender? It doesn’t make any sense.”

City Council Member Antonio Reynoso, whose district includes the Sharp Center, raises another aspect of the issue: that of “fair share,” or each neighborhood doing its part in hosting services that may be undesirable to local residents but which are necessary for the city’s well-being.

While declining to speak with Gothamist, the councilmember issued a statement supporting the Doe Fund, but stressing that he is “committed to the principle of fair share.”

“There are many types of facilities that no one in any community wants in their backyard, yet all communities need to do their part,” Reynono says in his statement. “I encourage members of my community to approach this issue remembering that we need to do our part to end the homelessness crisis.”

Contradicting Council Member Reynoso’s appeal to neighborhood fairness is The New York Daily News’ survey of sex offenders by neighborhood. Relying on data from the State Sex Offender Registry, The Daily News’ map illustrates that the Sharp Center’s zip-code (11237) belongs to a cluster of Brooklyn neighborhoods with the largest populations of sex offenders in New York City. Thirty-six sex offenders reside in 11237, while just 18 reside in 11368 (Corona, Queens), the most populous zip code in the entire city.

Regardless of sex-offender-to-resident ratios, many of the Sharp Center’s neighbors are not happy about DHS’s plan. Local business owner and landlord Michelle Sandoval has lived in the area for more than 30 years and has two children who attend school not far from the shelter. She and the regular customers of her deli are concerned about the safety of the neighborhood’s young students.

“It’s definitely nerve-wracking to have to worry about that and know that she could possibly encounter someone going to school, coming home from school,” says Sandoval, referring to her 15-year-old daughter. “I don’t pick her up, I don’t drop her off; she goes on her own with her friends. It’s a big fear for me and for a lot of people in the neighborhood that I’ve been speaking with …. Everybody’s in a little uproar about it.”

If the relocation of the sex offenders does go through, Sandoval plans to start escorting her children to and from school, as well as asking her customers to write letters about the issue to their government representatives.

But it may not come to that. The Doe Fund has explicitly refused to eject any current members of Ready, Willing & Able to accommodate sex offenders. Sex offenders sent to the facility by DHS in the past have been transferred to other shelters, and The Doe Fund has sought a temporary restraining order against the 50 incoming offenders, though it was denied.

Since then, The Doe Fund has filed a suit against the city, DHS and its commissioner. According to management, losing the court case leaves them with only one option: shuttering the Sharp Center and, hopefully, finding a new home for its residents, as well as the Ready, Willing & Able program.

“These people need help, we’re not debating that,” says Horwitz of the sex offenders. “But they’re not going to get it in our facility.”

Arvind Dilawar is a writer/editor whose work has appeared in Newsweek, The Guardian, The New York Daily News and elsewhere. Follow him on Twitter — @ArvSux — or email him at arvind.dilawar@gmail.com.

Brown Betty: SCV News commentator Betty Arenson feeds us a pile of horseshit

Does anyone remember the episode from "King of the Hill" where Bobby Hill accidentally drops Peggy Hill's famous "Brown Betty" into a pile of horseshit and he scoops it up, saying, "no one will notice, and later folks eat it and get sick?

Well, that is essentially what this article is-- a Brown Betty mixed with horseshit. People DO notice and you are making them sick.

http://scvnews.com/2015/08/07/jessica-and-megan-commentary-by-betty-arenson/

Jessica and Megan
You Know I'm Right | Commentary by Betty Arenson
BETTY ARENSON | FRIDAY, AUG 7, 2015

Last week California Sen. Sharon Runner wrote about the fate of SB54, which addresses those convicted of sex-offense crimes and their subsequent residency restrictions once they are released from incarceration.

Runner stated her mission clearly: “The California Supreme Court decision (that ruled on a portion of Jessica’s Law as unconstitutional) creates uncertainty. County governments need a clear process to protect voter approved residency restrictions when possible and expedite relief when necessary; SB 54 provided much needed clarity.”

She tried to give jurisdiction to local county courts that would allow for the convicts to contest their restrictions.

I call that a democracy.

The blog responses were stunning. But for me, all of the comments from the bloggers – the vast majority being “anonymous” with some common first name or initials; no photos, of course – were completely divorced from any criticism of sex offenders but chose nastily to attack Runner personally and characterized her efforts as un-American and something called “Naxiism.”

The aforementioned group, with no exceptions, never discussed the real victims, just the pathetic rapists and murderers.

I don’t believe I’m alone is considering all of them as murderers. When a dominant figure molests, rapes or commits commits any similar act, the soul of the victim is killed. The victims are robbed of their senses of self-worth, trust, peace, safety, freedom and security for the rest of their lives.
Notably, not one of the negative bloggers invited the sex offenders to live near them.

If accurate, some of the bloggers had a sensible point to make, such as Runner being able to re-write and resubmit a bill. Others were simply inane.

“Will A.” wrote: “There is not a single American who supports residency restrictions. You people who do are not Americans.”

False. The press release on the subject says: “SB 54 garnered support from law enforcement and public safety groups including the Association of Code Enforcement Officers, Association of Deputy District Attorneys, California College and University Police Chiefs Association, California Narcotics Officers Association, Crime Victims United, the Los Angeles Deputy Sheriffs, the Los Angeles Police Protective League and the Riverside Sheriffs’ Association.”

Also, 70.5 percent of Californians voted “yes” on Jessica’s Law, with its residency restrictions. Are the voters “not Americans?”

“Chris” thinks: “The registry makes things more dangerous … it certainly doesn’t stop any crime … I don’t think reminding someone of a crime they committed, year after year, long after it is out of their day to day existence, only stirs feelings that are not necessarily good for the society.”

In rebuttal, I’m not caring that the pervert may be constantly reminded of his destructive behavior; it’s exactly what he chose to impose upon the victim for a lifetime.

“Susan” wrote: “There are no sex offenders required to register in California. California requires only former sex offenders to register.” What?

All offenders are required to register once they are duly convicted.

The California DOJ / Office of Attorney General / Megan’s Law specifies: “By law, persons convicted of specified sex crimes are required to register as sex offenders with a local law enforcement agency. Prior to release from prison, jail, a mental hospital, or on probation, sex offenders are notified in writing of their duty to register, and a copy of the notification form is forwarded to DOJ. When a sex offender is released into the community, the agency forwards the registration information to DOJ.”

The document continues with specific time guidelines, etc.

Also, California says: “The Sex Offender Tracking Program at the California Department of Justice (DOJ) maintains the registered sex offender database.”

Runner did not invent sex offender laws.

DOJ’s Sex Offender Tracking Program has been in force since 1947, with California being first to enact a sex offender registration law. Many states didn’t catch up until the 1990s. It’s a lifetime sex offender registration requirement in California, whose population exceeds 35 million. “California today has the largest number of registered sex offenders of any state.”

The Jessica Lunsford Act arose out of Florida when 9-year-old Jessica fell prey in 2005 to a repeat sexual pervert, John E. Couey, who held and raped her for days, then buried her alive to suffocate in plastic bags. She tried to claw her way out. But for dying in prison of anal cancer, he’d still be sitting there with all of his “rights” and costly appeals on death row.

Megan’s law arose from New Jersey after the death of 7-year-old Megan Kanka. She was raped and murdered by “a known child molester who had moved across the street from the family without their knowledge.”

President Bill Clinton signed Megan’s Law into law on May 17, 1996. Every state has some form of Megan’s Law.

Sen. Runner, many applaud your sensible efforts to protect our families and communities while generously affording “rights” to those who violently breach the society they then make demands upon.

There will be more on this subject.

Betty Arenson has lived in the SCV since 1968 and describes herself as a conservative who’s concerned about progressives’ politics and their impacts on the country, her children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. She says she is unashamed to own a gun or a Bible, couldn’t care less about the color of the president’s skin, and demands that he uphold his oath to protect and follow the Constitution of the United States in its entirety.

Janine Reyes of WFTV finds her sweeps week story at a yard sale. I bet her brain was bought there, too.

Any time a reporter makes a story this asinine, the Shiitake Awards will make room for her. So the big story of the day is shelter that houses registered citizens sells toys at a yard sale (among other things). So what's the big deal, especially if none of the shelter residents interact with the yard-salers. And kids don't go to yard sales alone, parents go. 

Reyes made problems for a shelter doing good work for the community. Why? For ratings, obviously. Next week, Reyes could run a story on sex offenders using public bathrooms. She can get exclusive footage of me dropping a valigator all over this Shiitake-Worthy story.

It isn't enough she ran this story, but her Twitter page suggests she's hoping some residents are violated.

[By the way, it seems "The Dirty" has an article about Janine Reyes.]

http://www.wftv.com/news/news/local/apopka-sex-offender-facility-sells-childrens-toys-/nmhPj/

Posted: 6:38 p.m. Saturday, June 20, 2015
Apopka sex offender facility sells children’s toys at yard sale

APOPKA, Fla. — An Apopka complex that houses nearly 30 sex offenders has been having yard sales for years, but some of the items are tailored to children, worrying neighbors.
Channel 9’s Janine Reyes found stuffed animals, baby toys, Legos and other items for children during a yard sale Saturday at The Lighthouse Mission.

Reyes found out the yard sale will be the last at the facility for a while, due to a violation of city code that allows yard sales only twice a year.
“It doesn’t say anywhere you’re entering a premise where there (are) 26 registered sex offenders,” Reyes said.  “Why should it? I don’t have it in front of my house that I’m on disability,” said Gloria Hoffpauir, who helps run The Lighthouse Mission with her mother.
Hoffpauir said the sex offenders who live in the complex are not identified as predators, but some residents said the complex should prominently display who lives there during a yard sale.
Hoffpauir said the sex offenders do not sell the items, but they do help set up the sale and move items.
“So they could be out here while there are children here?” Reyes asked Hoffpauir.
“Kids don’t come up here by themselves. Their parents are with them,” Hoffpauir said.
Nearby residents said it’s not right.
“I just don’t want kids to be around violators,” said Stephen Vasquez.
“It doesn’t say anywhere you’re entering a premise where there (are) 26 registered sex offenders,” Reyes said.  “Why should it? I don’t have it in front of my house that I’m on disability,” said Gloria Hoffpauir, who helps run The Lighthouse Mission with her mother.
 Hoffpauir said the sex offenders do not sell the items, but they do help set up the sale and move items

NH State Rep Dick(head) Marston derails relief plan against aggressive collection of registry fees

This guy's name is "Dick," but his last name should be "Head" after derailing a bill that would have abolished the $50 annual fee the state forces registered persons to pay. Of course, it wasn't enough to vote against the bill-- Dickhead Marston claimed if this bill passed, the registry would eliminate the registry. If that is true, then I see no reason NOT to pass this bill. The money saved from eliminating the registry could increase his salary, which means better glasses and some Hair Club for Men.

http://patch.com/new-hampshire/concord-nh/dornin-pay-50-year-forever-or-maybe-not

Dornin: Pay $50 a Year Forever ... Or Maybe Not

HB 587 would have abolished the annual fee former sex offenders pay to be listed in the state's online database.

By Chris Dornin, Founder, CCJR

Lawmakers killed a good crime bill this year.

Citizens for Criminal Justice Reform wrote and recruited sponsors for HB 587, which would have abolished the $50 annual “fee” the state charges citizens to register as former sexual offenders, often for the rest of their lives. The charge buys them the privilege of being publicly shamed on the State Police website. Failure to pay can get them arrested and theoretically sent to prison.

Our bill died on the House floor based in part on misinformation by state Rep. Dick Marston, R-Manchester, who posted the following blurb in the House calendar before the vote:

“There is a provision in the law that would currently allow the fee to be waived if the offender was unable to afford it. The (House Criminal Justice) committee determined that repealing the fee would have resulted in virtually eliminating the registry, which would be a disservice to the citizens of NH.”

Marston misled lawmakers, perhaps intentionally. Yes, eliminating the fee would cost the state the $93,400 a year it squeezes from registrants to pay for their scarlet letter. But the registry costs state and local government far more than that. The State Police testified they employ seven people full time to keep the registry up to date. The Manchester Police say they assign two full-time officers to track their 440 registrants on the State Police website. If that is a best practice, the rest of New Hampshire needs another eight or 10 officers full time to handle the remaining 2100 registrants. The total cost easily exceeds ten times what the state collects from registrants.

We would submit the state has no right to make registrants pay anything for being pilloried on the Department of Safety’s website. They have already paid for their crimes. Registration is not voluntary and being on the registry is not a privilege. Why should registered citizens have to pay for it? Good evidence suggests sex offender registries do nothing to protect the public anyway, despite what lawmakers say.

Former offenders have every legal and moral right to challenge the fee under state law. Sex offender registration already has crippling effects on registered citizens’ financial viability. Once a potential employer finds out a person is a registered sex offender, the door of opportunity closes. We know of many registrants who are unemployed or under employed because of their registrant status. But, if they don’t pay the state $50 every year, they can be charged with yet another crime.

As far as CCJR knows, no one has actually been arrested for not paying the registry fee, though some have been threatened with arrest if they didn’t cough up the money. The point of the fee is to raise money for the State, of course, so it’s not in the state’s interest to arrest non-payers. Putting just a few registrants in prison for failing to pay a $50 charge would soon use up all the money the State hopes to collect.

As Rep. Marston suggested, the law is not entirely heartless. It provides a way for the indigent to be excused from paying. Registered citizens can ask for a hearing before the Commissioner of Safety to decide if they are unable to pay. As you can imagine, these hearings are like having a friendly talk with the fictional Don Corleone, who famously said, “Let me make you an offer you can’t refuse.”

States normally determine indigence based strictly upon income and assets. But the Department of Safety wants to know how impoverished registrants spend their limited resources. We know of registrants who have been asked if they smoke. If so, they should smoke less and pay the fee. The same goes for cell phones and cars. The threat is always the same, pay up or get arrested.

We believe this is no way to run a free state. So we’re encouraging all registrants making less than 125% of federal poverty levels to apply for a waiver of the fee. We have posted on our website clear instructions on how to do so and, if denied, how to appeal that decision into the Superior Courts. Just follow the link ccjrnh.org/challenge_the_registry_fee.

Our hope is that many registrants will exercise their rights this way. But, even if just a few end up appealing to the Courts, the State will soon spend all the money it hopes to collect through this extortionist scheme, and somebody in power will finally figure out the registry fee is not a good idea.

“If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being.” ― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago 1918-1956

Chris Dornin is the founder of Citizens for Criminal Justice Reform.

Judge Dennis "The Menace" Wiley proves Sen. Rick Jones lied when he claimed R&J cases aren't prosecuted in Michigan

This is Dennis "The Menace" Wiley, judge in Berrien Co., MI. He is not exactly an ethical judge, and is apparently no stranger to controversy, including being censured by the Michigan Bar. Now, he has ruined the life of a 19-year-old just because he can.

This is a rather long read, but is a very comprehensive article on this case. So much for Sen. Rick Jones's bogus claim that Romeo and Juliet cases don't get registry time in Michigan.

http://www.southbendtribune.com/news/local/was-justice-served-after-teen-s-encounter-with-girl/article_bede1df7-505d-5d39-b9d8-256719f553d9.htm

Was justice served after teen's encounter with girl?

Posted: Wednesday, May 20, 2015 9:30 am | Updated: 5:04 pm, Tue May 26, 2015.
By Virginia Black South Bend Tribune

When the Niles girl came down the stairs early one December evening all made up and her hair looking especially nice, her mother said, "Dang! Where are you going?"
The girl, who struggles with epilepsy, didn't answer. Her mother assumed she was merely heading down the street, so the mother decided to give her daughter space.
Outside the house, the girl climbed into a car with 19-year-old Zachery Anderson.
The two first met on the Facebook-hosted Hot or Not website, in the over-18 section. When they were communicating online and in text messages, she told him she was 17. They went to a nearby school and talked a while before having sex. Zach recalls dropping her back at home later, where he gave her a hug before he drove back to his parents' Elkhart home.
But the girl was only 14, on the cusp of 15.
After she had not quickly returned, her mother worried about her daughter missing a dose of her medicine and possibly having a seizure, so she called police. Officers were at the house when the girl returned, not even an hour after the girl left.
The next time the teens would see each other was in a Niles courtroom, where Zach would ultimately be ordered to spend 90 days in the county jail, five years on probation and 25 years on Michigan's sex offender registry. He would lose the work he'd completed toward a computer-related degree this semester and be forced to give up his field of study — and, as part of his sentence, even the use of a smartphone or being around anyone else with one.
A longtime Michigan law often applies in cases like Zach's, calling for lenient sentences and, perhaps more importantly, allowing first-time offenders to avoid the sex offender registry. The victim and her mother even pleaded for leniency. But the judge in Zach's case chose to not give the first offender a break, even after false information about the 19-year-old in a pre-sentence report was flagged. The judge's sentence came with a lecture about the dangers of the Internet.
And, critics say, cases like Zach's raise questions about sex-offender laws that are meant to protect the public but sometimes have unintended consequences.

'How old are you really?'

Zach Anderson is wearing dark green scrubs now, in a dorm of the Berrien County Jail in St. Joseph.
The girl was the first he met in person through Hot or Not, he said. The Tribune is not identifying the girl or her mother to protect the girl's identity as a sex crime victim.
Anderson doesn't remember which of them proposed sex, although he said he wasn't pressing the girl. She also had not mentioned having epilepsy, he said.
Shortly after their Dec. 19 meeting, he traveled with his family to Florida and, he said, the first he knew trouble was brewing was when the girl sent him a message saying "something like, 'Oh, we're in a lot of trouble.' "
Why, he asked?
"I asked, 'How old are you really?' and then she told me," Anderson said.
In early January, two detectives visited him while he was working as a lube tech at Auto Village Service Center in Goshen. He cooperated. They confiscated his phone.
He turned himself in Feb. 24, posted bond and was released on house arrest, living in his parents' home. Anderson began to work for their small business as he attended his first semester on scholarship at Ivy Tech Community College in Elkhart.
He was aiming for a computer-related degree, because "I've been building computers and stuff since I was 12," he said. "I'm a technology-type guy."
His defense attorney, John Gardiner, had advised that if he pleaded guilty to criminal sexual conduct 4th degree — a "high-court misdemeanor," according to Michigan law — he would be a suitable candidate for Holmes Youthful Trainee Act status. HYTA is meant for first-time offenders older than 17 but not yet 21. It allows a defendant to avoid harsher penalties and, in the case of more minor sex crimes, not be subject to a state-mandated 25-year listing on the sex offender registry.
But Berrien County District Court Judge Dennis Wiley decided against leniency.

'Out of whole cloth?'

At Anderson's original sentencing hearing on April 13, the girl and her mother pleaded with Wiley in his Niles courtroom.
"I feel that nothing should happen to Zach," the girl said, according to transcripts of the hearing.
Her mother elaborated, telling the judge the girl's emotional state over her epilepsy "plays a role in what she has done, and she feels guilty about what happened and she says, 'Why can't I be in trouble for what happened?' ... I hope you'll really consider the fact of just dropping the case."
Gardiner took issue in open court with the pre-sentence investigation, which a document a judge considers when issuing a sentence. Gardiner pointed out what he called incorrect information that was not attributed to any source.
The April 7 report describes, for instance, a police investigation about a suspect named Zach who had been targeting underage girls on the site.
"Zach was asking victims sexual questions, asking if they were virgins, asking for them to show him pictures of their private parts and indicating to them if they don't play his games or show him naked pictures of themselves, he will send naked pictures of them to all of his contacts," wrote the pre-sentence investigator, Joseph Tourangeau, recommending against HYTA consideration. "This information strongly suggests that this defendant has engaged in pre-offense, predatory conduct."
Police later said they determined Zach Anderson was not that perpetrator.
Tourangeau also wrote that Anderson had mental health and substance abuse problems and recommended a long list of suggested sentencing conditions "to punish the defendant, deter others from committing like offenses and for the protection of the community."
When Gardiner, the defense attorney, challenged the accuracy of the report on April 13, Wiley responded, "You mean what you're saying is that Mr. Tourangeau created this out of whole cloth?"
The investigator was summoned to the courtroom, and, according to the transcript of the hearing, Wiley postponed the sentencing "until we get additional information."
On April 27, Tourangeau did not attend the rescheduled hearing, nor had Gardiner or Assistant Prosecutor Jerry Vigansky received a new or amended report.
"Apparently the DOC (Department of Corrections) is not prepared to meet that challenge, so it'll be stricken," Wiley said, according to a video recording of the hearing. "Apparently there was some report somewhere that (the investigator) received, but apparently it has disappeared from the face of the earth, so ..." The judge did not finish the thought.
Vigansky clarified during the hearing that police told him Anderson was not a suspect in any other crimes.
Officials in Berrien County's probation office did not respond to requests for comment last week, but DOC spokesman Chris Gautz acknowledged a section of the pre-sentence report — particularly the part about Zach Anderson having a history of seeking out 10- to 14-year-olds and threatening them — came from an incorrect reference to another case in a police report.
Gautz said a regional administrator will meet with the judge as soon as Monday, to see what, if anything, a corrected pre-sentence report would have on his decisions in the case.
The DOC spokesman also said he was told the information in the report was "upheld by the prosecutor and the judge" during the April 27 hearing. Yet the court recording of that hearing shows differently.

'No excuse for this, whatsoever'

Gardiner recommended the judge grant his client "youthful training" status under HYTA, citing Anderson's clean record, the fact the girl had lied about her age and even that the girl and her mother had asked for leniency. The young man had cooperated with authorities and had been engaging in weekly counseling with a pastor of Granger Community Church, where the family attends.
Gardiner pointed out the 4th degree offense to which he pleaded guilty is not eligible for expungement should the court deny his recommendation for leniency.
Vigansky did not recommend against using HYTA but reminded the judge of other cases just this year with the same factors in play, and that Anderson's sentence should be similar.
Those "two or three" other cases, Vigansky told a reporter later, also involved men between 17 and 21 who met younger girls who had lied about their ages on Hot or Not, also had sex with them and and also had previously clean records.
"I apologize sincerely and this won't happen again," Anderson told the judge. "In the last couple of months, I've changed a lot."
But Wiley, without giving a reason, said, "I'm not going to place you on Holmes Youthful Training status...And Mr. Gardiner, contrary to your belief, it is an expungeable conviction..So we shall see how he does."
But the judge was apparently wrong. Michigan lawmakers recently passed legislation that, as of Jan. 12, now includes Anderson's offense among those that are never expungeable.
The judge did not respond to a request for comment.
"The Internet's wonderful, thank you, Al Gore. But it also is a danger," Wiley told Anderson, according to the recording of the sentencing. "You went online, to use a fisherman's expression, trolling for women to meet and have sex with. That seems to be part of our culture now: meet, hook up, have sex, sayonara. Totally inappropriate behavior. There is no excuse for this, whatsoever."
Then the judge, despite having thrown out the earlier pre-sentence report, read his sentencing conditions, which appeared to be the same as those recommended by the pre-sentence investigator.
Despite Gardiner's appeal, Wiley refused to reconsider the ban on computer usage. Anderson was two weeks away from finals for his semester's classwork at Ivy Tech, but the judge ordered him to serve his 90 days immediately.
As deputies escorted Anderson out of the courtroom, the girl wiped tears from her eyes, and her mother gasped and was so overcome with emotion she left the courtroom.

'I don't think they're pedophiles'

Anderson's parents say they will appeal the case.
"I can't think of a better case for (HYTA) than Zach's," Gardiner, the defense attorney, said last week. "He will forever in current Michigan law have this on his record, the rest of his life."
The attorney said most pre-sentence reports he has seen include a victim impact statement or information from an interview with a victim, and refer to specific police reports.
And Gardiner is still puzzled by some of the terms, such as forcing Anderson to change his college major: "What did happen was the punishment so grossly outweighed the crime."
Miriam Aukerman, an attorney with ACLU Michigan, said legislators have reacted out of "fear and not facts" when it comes to sex-offender laws. She is involved with a case where a federal judge recently ruled that many of the stringent requirements for those on the state's sex offender registry are unconstitutional.
"Whenever we make legislation in response to horrible crimes, we run the risk of making bad law," Aukerman said of increasing requirements for listing offenders on the registry, which is now the fourth-largest in the country and includes nearly 42,000 offenders. "We don't think about all of the other people who are caught up in these laws."
That includes cases like Zach Anderson's, she said.
"HYTA recognizes you don't want to tar somebody for life because of the stupid things we do at that age," Aukerman said.
Legislators have argued that stringent sex-offender laws and registries are meant to protect children and the community. After the recent ruling on Michigan's sex offender registry, State Sen. Rick Jones, R-Grand Ledge, chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, was quoted in the Detroit Free Press last month saying, "This is one judge's ruling and the law will soon be changed." He told the newspaper he is already drafting a legislative fix to "protect our children from sex predators."
Vigansky, the assistant prosecutor, was involved in all three recent Berrien County cases involving young men meeting underage girls on Hot or Not. He said HYTA was not invoked in any of them, all plea agreements, although he did not recommend one way or the other.
He wouldn't comment specifically on the cases or the judge's decision, although when pressed a bit, he acknowledged, "I don't think they're pedophiles."

'It's hurt our families greatly'

Zach's parents, Lester and Amanda Anderson, acknowledge their son made a mistake. They recalled always teaching their four boys that sex is for marriage.
"But he's only been on earth 19 years, and his punishment is longer than he's been alive," his father said.
Amanda called the judge's comments in court "vicious."
" 'Learn from it' — that's what he should have said. Is the law supposed to cripple people, or is it supposed to correct people and rehabilitate their lives?" she said. "This really did no justice to anybody."
The girl's mother is still distraught over the ruling and says her whole family has sought counseling.
Anderson, the mother has learned, is "very nice. He's concerned about you. He's just different. He's not a jerk."
She's still outraged that neither the prosecutor nor judge took into account her daughter's wishes in pressing forward with the case. "It's hurt our families greatly," she said.
Meanwhile, Anderson is spending his time in jail sleeping, playing cards or watching TV. He's hoping for a successful appeal.
He says he's grown closer to God in the last few months and is grateful for his family's support.
"I wouldn't use any of those different apps at all," he would tell other young people. "They're not safe."