Research on sex offender laws and their effects on people and society
Revision History
The following is a fairly comprehensive, chronological account of additions and changes to this site, starting from the content of the intial proposal.
- August 24, 2007: Posted first content for review and discussion, including:
- August 26, 2007
- Analysis of the Sex Offender Registries: Added explanation of Offenders column. Corrected and expanded explanation of Frequency column. Added note about further statistical analysis intended and about concerns on data integrity. Added designation of “unknown” for Total numbers in Offenders and Frequency columns. Added row for Guam and hid rows for Manitoba and Ontario.
- Criminalizing Child’s Play: Moved questions on data integrity to Analysis of the Sex Offender Registries.
- Footnotes: Added table of contents. Under Restrictions on RSOs [Note I-17, Note I-19, Note I-20], added reference to CNN story about RSOs living under a bridge and modified note about Jack McClellan based on recent court ruling.
- Main page: Added section headings, Updated line, and Revision History section
- September 20, 2007
- Counting and Over-Counting Sex Offenders: New name for Analysis of the Sex Offender Registries and major revision. Moved information about ages of registrants to Criminalizing Child’s Play.
- Criminalizing Child’s Play: Added three new data tables on age characteristics of children on the registries.
- Footnotes:
- Guilty until proven innocent [Note I-8]: Added reference to article in Daily Express.
- Culture of fear [Note I-10]: Added links to two Wall Street Journal articles and a letter to Dear Prudence, a graphic of a Virginia billboard, and statistics about largest category of child abusers being mothers!
- False accusations destroying lives of innocent people [Note I-11]: Added links to Falsely-Accused website, to articles from Salon.com, The Guardian, The Independent, and the Australian News Network, to academic papers by Roland C. Summit and Lee Coleman, and to video by Patrick Clancy. Removed author’s note about vigilante murder in UK to be referenced. Added author’s note about reference for links to news stories.
- Unsubstantiated recovered memories used to convict [Note I-13]: Added two references to Falsely-Accused.
- Treatment and mistreatment of RSOs [Note I-17 and Note I-18]: Added author’s note about reference for links to news stories.
- Restrictions on RSOs [Note I-17, Note I-19, Note I-20]: Added references to articles from the Daily Herald, Journal Sentinel, and CityBeat.
- How many registered sex offenders? [Note I-22]: Revised comments.
- Recidivism rates [Note S-19]: New section. Added three references from the US Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics.
- History of the Sex Offender Registries [later moved to Work Needed]: New section. Added three references.
- Other data [later moved to Work Needed]: New section. Added six references from the US Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics.
- Introduction: Replaced spectacle icons with superscripted footnote numbers for links to supporting information.
- Main page: Removed memo. Moved Author’s Local Pages and Revision History to separate pages.
- Throughout: Corrected spelling mistakes on several pages.
- September 26, 2007
- Criminalizing Child’s Play: Corrected error in picture table that left out Kansas. Moved the picture table to a separate page so the report loads faster.
- Footnotes:
- Treatment and mistreatment of RSOs [Note I-17 and Note I-18]: Added reference to Tom Watson’s website.
- Recidivism rates [Note S-19]: Added reference from American Chronicle and links to seven state studies
- History of the Sex Offender Registries [History]: Added references to CAPTA and a video from Falsely-Accused.
- September 29, 2007
- Footnotes, Treatment and mistreatment of RSOs [Note I-17 and Note I-18]: Added references on Coalinga State Hospital from Wikipedia, state Department of Mental Health, The Guide magazine, and a Friends & Family group.
- January 10, 2008: Major revision
- Put a banner at the top and bottom of all proposal pages indicating that this is a proposal and
not an official part of the RSOL website.
- Expanded the number of footnote links in the Introduction
from 18 to 30 and put 31 footnote links in the Statement.
- Footnotes: Removed titles from the footnotes and removed the box around the quoted referring text. Completed the text for most of the footnotes, which is a major part of the new content in this revision.
- Added a Topical Index to allow people to look up footnotes and reports by subject, rather than just from links in the Introduction and Statement themselves.
- Added a highlights flier, a one-page summary of information (later removed pending further development).
- Updated content of the six existing reports and added three new ones:
Look Who’s a Sex Offender Now!,
False Accusations of Child Sexual Abuse (later renamed False Accusations of Sex with Juveniles), and
Throwing Away the Key.
- Added four new background reports:
“Produce Material Mail Ship Transport” (later removed pending further development),
age analyses of the
PROTECT and
Walsh acts, and
Relative Severity of Federal Offenses.
- Added a personal message introducing myself and explaining, as well as I can, my dedication to this project (later removed and replaced with links to my website).
- January 11, 2008
- Fixed links in RSOL banners and other links in the Introduction and
Statement that point to pages on the RSOL site, so that they work.
- Corrected spelling, punctuation, and other minor errors.
- January 15, 2008
- January 16, 2008
- In Footnotes, shortened the text of Note I-8, Note S-14, and Note S-15.
- In Ignoring Mistreatment of Children in the USA (later merged back into Note I-6) and the associated Note I-6, corrected the numbers used to summarize the statistics and removed the rhetorical question at the end of the introductory paragraph.
- In False Accusations of Child Sexual Abuse, added 2004 case in France.
- In Throwing Away the Key, removed the bullet item on the David Hicks case because it is really one of a false accusation and the dubiousness of the case cannot be supported in that brief snippett.
- January 17, 2008
- January 24, 2008
- Footnotes:
- New notes added: Note I-1 with basic information on registries, Note I-16 on employment discrimination and restrictions, and Note S-34 through Note S-42 in the list of actions in the RSOL Statement.
- New content: In Note S-3, added cases of streaker and public urination by a construction worker. In Note S-18, added reference to Juvenile Offenders and Victims and chart made from its data. In Note S-32, added information about Gallup poll.
- In Look Who’s a Sex Offender Now!, added case of public urination by a construction worker.
- In Justice under Attack (later merged back into Note I-4), added reference to HRW's Supplemental Submission to the HRC.
- In Criminalizing Child’s Play: Added Issues section with information from two NCJJ Megan's Law studies and with offender age profile information and graph, also from NCJJ. In the News section, added case of high school senior exposing himself and eight cases from Human Rights Watch report.
- In Work Needed, added the new project on Distinguishing violent from peaceful sexual offenses and added note to cite 2000..01 NIBRS data in Note S-18.
- January 25, 2008
- Reformatted proposal cover page (no longer online).
- Updated page headers and footers with note about magenta notes and links to main proposal pages.
- In The Law section of Ignoring Mistreatment of Children in the USA (later merged back into Note I-6), changed the discussion of the jurisdictional hook to reflect its dependence on the Commerce Clause. Added an author's note that this change calls also for a change in the sharp criticism of the government for Project Safe Childhood's focus on pornography.
- In Is there a National Age of Consent in the US?, added the note about the age of sexual consent for sex outside the country not having an exception for marriage.
- February 1, 2008
- Brought formatting of section headings into conformity with the style of the RSOL site.
- Footnotes: Added new Note S-33 comparing the RSOL call to action with the Human Rights Watch recommendations. Added brief explanation of what civil commitment is to Note I-29 and wrote content for Note S-31 on organizations and people who have been "raising a red flag."
- In Criminalizing Child’s Play, in the Cases section (renamed from In the News), added the case of the ten-year-old boy touching a six-year-old girl's breast and the case of the seven- and five-year-old siblings.
- In False Accusations of Child Sexual Abuse, added three Wisconsin cases from the Center for Public Integrity.
- Shortened and renamed the Author page (later removed and replaced with links to my website).
- In Work Needed, added reference to FindLaw articles under History project.
- February 2, 2008
- Footnotes: Added reference to John Stossel's essay in Note S-31. Added additional information about Gallup polls in Note S-32.
- In Criminalizing Child’s Play, section on Cases, added seven cases.
- February 28, 2008
- April 23, 2008
- May 11, 2008
- Footnotes: Merged the initial content prepared for the report, Justice under Attack, back into Note I-4, and likewise merged Death Penalty for Sex Offenders back into Note I-15. (Those footnotes may spawn separate reports again later upon the completion of additional research.) Added comment by Mark Pendergrast to Note I-13. Removed the two oldest references from Note S-14, for which no online sources had been found.
- September 7, 2008
- Updated the report, Counting and Over-Counting Sex Offenders, with the latest data and moved the large table in it to two separate background reports, Published Counts of the US Registries and Count Analysis of the US Registries.
- In Criminalizing Child’s Play, added cases about a twelve-year-old, another twelve-year-old, and a thirteen-year-old in Washington, and about a 16-year-old in Michigan.
- Footnotes:
- Rewrote Note I-15 in light of recent Supreme Court decision banning death penalty for non-murder cases.
- Added Note I-23 and Note I-24 about the number of “noncompliants” and of sex offenders in prison, and about the total number of people registered and in prison for sex offenses.
- Added mention of International Megan's Law of 2008 to Note I-19. Added reference to California Lawyer article about civil commitment to Note I-29. Added a redefinition of “violent” in federal law to Note I-30.
- Reorganized, reformatted, and made minor edits to several footnotes.
- Merged first part of Ignoring Mistreatment of Children in the USA (Data section and first point of Law section) back into Note I-6. Second point of Law section (about the “jurisdictional hook”) and its background report, “Produce Material Mail Ship Transport”, removed pending further development.
- Removed Author page and replaced with links to author’s website.
- Removed Highlights flier pending further development.
- Removed notations in footnotes and reports calling for review by a lawyer, but kept list of items that might benefit from such review in Work Needed. Converted notations pointing out questions of law from magenta notes to regular content, also listed in Work Needed. Removed other magenta notes indicating issues to be looked into, but added list of them in Work Needed.
- September 11, 2008
- Fixed bad internal links on some pages.
- September 22, 2008
- January 28, 2009
- Upon approval by RSOL, moved footnotes page to their website, created new SOL Research (SOLR) website, and moved reports there. Made associated formating changes and conversion of files to php for RSOL site or to asp for SOLR site. Placed associated footnote links in RSOL Introduction and Statement along with revision of some claims in them to conform with findings of research. (See Revisions to the RSOL Pages.)
- Spun out the bulk of contents of several detailed footnotes into new reports:
- Major revision of Criminalizing Child’s Play and added background report, Discerning Use of Force in Sexual Offenses (assigned as background for How Children are Harmed). Also added case about a 14-year-old in Kenya.
- Major revision of Throwing Away the Key, with new table on sentencing guidelines for consensual sexual activity with a juvenile and revisions in text explaining all the guidelines discussed and the example cases of lengthy sentences. Also made changes to table in related background report, Relative Severity of Federal Offenses, adding offenses from Guidelines §2G1.3 and correcting treatment of §2A3.
- In Counting and Over-Counting Sex Offenders and Note I-22, adjusted the figures of 500,000 RSOs and 200 men per SO man to 550,000 and 220 respectively based on improved analysis in Count Analysis of the US Registries. Also, in the table in Published Counts of the US Registries, changed the calculation of sex offenders per 100,000 of population to a percentage instead.
- Changed title of Is there a National Age of Consent in the US? to The US Federal Age of Sexual Consent and added introductory paragraph about the complexity of designating the age of sexual consent in any jurisdiction.
- In Look Who’s a Sex Offender Now!, added reference to similar listing by Derek Logue.
- Changed title of False Accusations of Child Sexual Abuse to False Accusations of Sex with Juveniles.
- Footnotes:
- Added Note S-1 to have a link in the Statement to general informatrion on the registries and Note S-38 on the difference between the punishment of sexual versus nonsexual juvenile offenders.
- In Note I-3, added information about ages of victims from statistical analysis of sex offenders that is in process. In Note I-6, added Time magazine image of physical abuse. In Note I-10, added peragraph about decline in male teachers with two references. In Note S-22, added evidence that juveniles are subject to civil commitment.
- Removed the footnote about people being held for long periods in isolation and without charge because validation was not found for it (see Revisions to the RSOL Pages). Changed the footnote linked from the Statement about the death penalty to Note S-43 about the first achievement of an element of the RSOL call to action.
- Made numerous other less substantive edits in other reports and footnotes.
- Added automated tags at the end of each footnote, report, and other page, providing the revision history of that item.
- Created Revisions to the RSOL Pages for RSOL site.
- Organized information in the RSOL Footnotes into a list of Q & A about Sex Offender Laws for the SOLR site. Also on that site, created a home page and a slightly modified version of the Topical Index and added a Site Map. Added a contact page and Take Action to guide readers interested in political action to RSOL.
- Added Q&A # 21 on false accusations of rape and Q&A # 37 as a cross-reference on civil commitment of juveniles.
- January 29, 2009
- Reorganized the home page to be more helpful in finding information. Removed the “Did you know …” list and moved its contents to a new page, Key Findings.
- February 1, 2009
- February 3, 2009
- February 6, 2009
- Case of David Hicks in Cases of False Accusation: Sex with Juvenile updated to reflect refuting correspondence received from Melissa Hicks.
- February 16, 2009
- March 5, 2009
- May 31, 2009
- In Work Needed, added links to 1964 Life article on homosexuality and 1948 Saturday Evening Post article on sex crimes.
- June 17, 2009
- June 27, 2009: Technical changes:
- Since Reform Sex Offender Laws has now installed the footnotes and other associated pages on their site, fixed links on this site to those pages to go directly to those pages on that site.
- Changed file name for Topical Index from “topics_S.asp” to “topics.asp.”
- June 29, 2009: Mainly cosmetic changes:
- On Key Findings, added bold headings to the four bullet points, changed “teenage experimentation” to “teenage love affairs,” and added “As of 2007” to the point about the number of registered sex offenders.
- Throughout the site, changed the designation of SOLR articles to SOLR reports. Added new page with list of reports.
- Minor changes in bullet list on home page to make it read more clearly.
- Split the menu banner at the top of all pages into two lines.
- August 26, 2009
- September 7, 2009
- In Origin of the Sex Offender Registries, added sidebar with summary history of registry and added table of contents.
- On the home page, added box with link to latest report, corrected “see any errors or lacking information” to “notice any errors or omissions,” and changed the e-mail address to a link to the contact page.
- Site-wide, changed color of page and section titles from red to black and of links from red to blue.
- September 8, 2009
- September 11, 2009
- Fixed problems with references to items from National Public Radio.
- June 23, 2010
- In Cases of False Accusation: Sex with Juvenile
- Amirault case: Added note in reference to Hardoon letter that it is a refutation.
- Friedman case: Added reference to two Leadership Council pages refutating the Friedman’s innocence: Geraldo interview and bibliography.
- Robert Halsey case: Added three new references from Lona Manning and three refuting references from Ross Cheit.
- Hicks case: Added “Refutation” label to note about correspondence from Melissa Hicks and updated note to indicate that no further correspondence has been received from her.
- Keller case: Added references for the 1992 police report and three recent items from the Austin Chronicle. Added photographs of Dan and Fran Keller.
- Shanley case: Added references from CNN (2), Forbes, Nation (3), Chicago Reader, National Journal, and CounterPunch. Added photograph of Shanley.
- Technincal: Updated database software to (a) separate source titles and source publishers, and (b) add field for citation details.
- August 15, 2010
This page posted on August 26, 2007, moved September 20, 2007, updated on dates shown above.
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