8 ms·

Sex offender registries are just registries. They only work if someone decides to actually do a query. It might prevent them from getting a childcare job, but i

by phire 8mo ago

Sex offender registries are just registries. They only work if someone decides to actually do a query. It might prevent them from getting a childcare job, but it doesn't really prevent them from accessing children at all. The registers are also massively bloated, some people get put on them for nothing more than public urination. The only sex offenders who actually get regular checks that might identify this type of thing, are those on parole, or similar court ordered programs.

Aurornis 8mo ago
The salient point was that the person was in a relationship to the child’s mother.
- phire 8mo ago
  They didn't know who the child was, yet alone the mother. All they had were photos of an unnamed girl being abused.
  - koolba 8mo ago
    I didn’t understand that part. The child has a mother, why wasn’t she reported missing?
    - rationalist 8mo ago
      A child does not need to be missing to be abused. Most abuse happens by people the child knows.
    - butlike 8mo ago
      There's also a long dark road down "just because they birthed you doesn't mean they want to parent you."
- Loudergood 8mo ago
  Indeed, he may not have even been on the lease or title of the residence.
jiqiren 8mo ago
How many of these sex offenders bought this couch and live close to this brick factory in homes built in that time period?
- phire 8mo ago
  About 0.3% of the adult population is on registries in the US. With 40,000 couch sales, there would be roughly 120 sex offenders would have bought that couch. You can see what I mean about the registries being bloated. Doesn't really narrow things down until you add the brick factory, but then they already had it down to 40 houses. But it's a mistake to even assume the couch was bought by the same house as the offender. The offender could just be visiting, or the couch could have been moved to a different house since purchase (sold second hand, or the owner moved). And you are assuming the offender had been caught before, or was even on the sex offender registry for abusing children.
  - hsbauauvhabzb 8mo ago
    So ~1m people are registered sex offenders? As in, 1m people who were arrested and found guilty of sex offences? That’s insane.
    - phire 8mo ago
      It's more like 800,000 But I used number of adults, not total population. Because most children aren't registered sex offenders, or buying expensive furniture.
    - infecto 8mo ago
      Just look up how many folks local to your area are on the list. It’s quite shocking.
  - nkrisc 8mo ago
    > But it's a mistake to even assume the couch was bought by the same house as the offender. It’s not a mistake, it’s a convenient assumption to make until it’s proven otherwise, especially when you have basically no other information to go on. I have no doubt these investigators are intelligent enough to have considered that possibility.
MisterTea 8mo ago
Right but I'll be honest, I've never thought about looking up the people I've dated in the past. No one really talked about it when I was younger. I don't remember my mother telling me to do criminal background checks on people I'm seeing. Happened to me. Went out with somebody who turned out to be a serial shop lifter who operated with a small gang of other shop lifters. Everything looked fine up front until they disappeared when we had plans without contact for days. Thought I was ghosted. Turns out they were arrested. A friend went out with someone who destroyed his car after he broke up because she was violent twords him. He had to get a restraining order. A friend of his dug up a link to a FL police site. Turns out she did a little time down there for assaulting another woman, beating her with a coat rack during a fight. He never thought to look her up either and she seemed nice at first. Shit happens. Don't blame the victim for not being paranoid that everyone they're dating might be a criminal. Especially when there are damn good liars out there.
- zdragnar 8mo ago
  Back when my wife and I were renting, we only found out our landlord was on the list because his parole officer stopped by and asked if he'd informed us as he was legally required to do. We moved out rather quickly after that. If we were in a situation where we had to rent again, and went with an individual renting their own house rather than a company, checking out the registry is on the checklist of things to do.
  - infecto 8mo ago
    Honestly I am surprised more real estate agents don’t already bake this into the workflow. Thinking about Zillow as well. There should absolutely be a way to identify all the folks during your home search (buying or renting) that are on the registry.
    - mystraline 8mo ago
      I found that realtors can't even do basic searches to determine which ISPs serve the house. To expect them to be aware of multiple GIS layers is likely way out of their normal scope. Maybe it shouldn't be? But thats how things are now. You, the client, should also do your own data collection from public and semi-public sources for things that are strictly outside MLS data capture.
ndiddy 8mo ago
The whole thing about people getting put on the sex offender registry for public urination is a myth and there's no verifiable cases of it happening. There are two cases that are relatively close. The first is James Birch, who pled guilty to indecent exposure for peeing on a Taco Bell because he was representing himself and didn't understand that meant he'd have to register as a sex offender. He realized his mistake and the court let him undo the plea and the charges were dropped. The second is Juan Matamoros, a meth dealer from Florida who claimed in the mid-2000s that the reason why he got put on the Massachusetts sex offender registry in the 80s was public urination. Due to the age of the case and Massachusetts privacy laws the court records aren't publicly available and his lawyer from the 80s responded to a request for interview about the case with "no judge I am aware of would allow someone to be put on the sex offender registry for peeing in public". If anyone tells you that's why they're on the sex offender registry, it's extremely likely they're lying about it and you should really look them up.
- kgwxd 8mo ago
  There was also that Chicago Sunroof incident.
- holmesworcester 8mo ago
  It was standard practice by the police and DA in 2000s Massachusetts. Neighbors were annoyed at loud college parties at the school I went to, so local police waited in bushes to catch people peeing in them, arrested them, and one of the charges was indecent exposure. Happened to one person I knew personally so it must have happened to several others at just this school. My friend plead out to some lower charge or probably got a continuance, but it massively increased the leverage they had over him and the fees and fines they could collect, and it massively lowered the chance of him doing any pushback that could have lead to a jury trial, which at least as far as he understood at the time would have put him on the registry, and which is why they abused the law and charged people this way.
  - nandomrumber 8mo ago
    Are you entitled to a jury trial for peeing in the bushes in the USA? That isn’t the case here in Australia. You can go to trial, but it will be a judge-only trial, and is typically conducted by the magistrate who saw you for your first appearance on the matter, in the magistrates court, which is the lowest court here. I believe most of the colonies are approximately the same.
Ancapistani 8mo ago
I hav heard this many times, but never found a single example - and I’ve looked. Everyone I’ve researched on the registry richly deserved it. I challenge you and anyone else reading this to find an example of someone who is on the sex offender registry due to public urination.
- ipaddr 8mo ago
  https://law.justia.com/cases/massachusetts/supreme-court/2019/sjc-12594.html https://law.justia.com/cases/massachusetts/supreme-court/201...
  - deleted 8mo ago
    [deleted]
  - somenameforme 8mo ago
    I'm not sure that's what you meant to link to. The description there is beyond lurid, and that guy only ended up on a registry after a lot of shenanigans.
    - iso1631 8mo ago
      > he was convicted in 2015 of two counts of open and gross lewdness for displaying his genitals to a neighbor through the window of his home So he was naked in his own home? #Land of the free
      - doubled112 8mo ago
        It's all about levels here. First level? Open and gross lewdness for the home owner. Third level? Voyeurism for the person outside.
        tempaccount420 8mo ago
        The disgusting, gross lewdness of a naked body. Thank God someone did something.
aussieguy1234 8mo ago
> some people get put on them for nothing more than public urination When minor offences can get people put on the register, this dilutes the meaning of being on the register. Every actual sex offender will claim they're on there not because of the serious crimes they committed, but because they went nude on the wrong beach, or something similarly minor.
- furyofantares 8mo ago
  Have you ever looked at one of the registries? The ones I've seen have had details about the offense(s).
  - aussieguy1234 8mo ago
    We don't have public ones here in Australia, so no I've never looked at one. Having details would make it harder to play down the offenses. But only if someone bothers to check.
    - liamwire 8mo ago
      Queensland allows residents to see the details of offenders in our local area, but you need to provide extensive ID to do so, and leaking that information is itself a crime. Daniel's Law was introduced in 2025 so this is pretty recent.
    - dirasieb 8mo ago
      you've never looked at any of them but you have an opinion on how they should and shouldn't be?
dhosek 8mo ago
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.
- jahnu 8mo ago
  Louis Theroux did a very interesting but quiet sad documentary on this https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b040qrxw https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b040qrxw
  - alecco 8mo ago
    There's no BBC doc on how they (BBC) covered for Jimmy Savile for decades, though. https://www.theguardian.com/music/2015/sep/24/john-lydon-says-he-was-banned-from-bbc-over-jimmy-savile-comments https://www.theguardian.com/music/2015/sep/24/john-lydon-say... “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.”
- e40 8mo ago
  How can visiting a nude beach get be a trigger?
  - michelb 8mo ago
    America?

by phire 8mo ago

Aurornis 8mo ago

The salient point was that the person was in a relationship to the child’s mother.

phire 8mo ago
They didn't know who the child was, yet alone the mother. All they had were photos of an unnamed girl being abused.
- koolba 8mo ago
  I didn’t understand that part. The child has a mother, why wasn’t she reported missing?
  - rationalist 8mo ago
    A child does not need to be missing to be abused. Most abuse happens by people the child knows.
  - butlike 8mo ago
    There's also a long dark road down "just because they birthed you doesn't mean they want to parent you."
Loudergood 8mo ago
Indeed, he may not have even been on the lease or title of the residence.

jiqiren 8mo ago

How many of these sex offenders bought this couch and live close to this brick factory in homes built in that time period?

phire 8mo ago
About 0.3% of the adult population is on registries in the US. With 40,000 couch sales, there would be roughly 120 sex offenders would have bought that couch. You can see what I mean about the registries being bloated. Doesn't really narrow things down until you add the brick factory, but then they already had it down to 40 houses. But it's a mistake to even assume the couch was bought by the same house as the offender. The offender could just be visiting, or the couch could have been moved to a different house since purchase (sold second hand, or the owner moved). And you are assuming the offender had been caught before, or was even on the sex offender registry for abusing children.
- hsbauauvhabzb 8mo ago
  So ~1m people are registered sex offenders? As in, 1m people who were arrested and found guilty of sex offences? That’s insane.
  - phire 8mo ago
    It's more like 800,000 But I used number of adults, not total population. Because most children aren't registered sex offenders, or buying expensive furniture.
  - infecto 8mo ago
    Just look up how many folks local to your area are on the list. It’s quite shocking.
- nkrisc 8mo ago
  > But it's a mistake to even assume the couch was bought by the same house as the offender. It’s not a mistake, it’s a convenient assumption to make until it’s proven otherwise, especially when you have basically no other information to go on. I have no doubt these investigators are intelligent enough to have considered that possibility.

MisterTea 8mo ago

Right but I'll be honest, I've never thought about looking up the people I've dated in the past. No one really talked about it when I was younger. I don't remember my mother telling me to do criminal background checks on people I'm seeing. Happened to me. Went out with somebody who turned out to be a serial shop lifter who operated with a small gang of other shop lifters. Everything looked fine up front until they disappeared when we had plans without contact for days. Thought I was ghosted. Turns out they were arrested. A friend went out with someone who destroyed his car after he broke up because she was violent twords him. He had to get a restraining order. A friend of his dug up a link to a FL police site. Turns out she did a little time down there for assaulting another woman, beating her with a coat rack during a fight. He never thought to look her up either and she seemed nice at first. Shit happens. Don't blame the victim for not being paranoid that everyone they're dating might be a criminal. Especially when there are damn good liars out there.

zdragnar 8mo ago
Back when my wife and I were renting, we only found out our landlord was on the list because his parole officer stopped by and asked if he'd informed us as he was legally required to do. We moved out rather quickly after that. If we were in a situation where we had to rent again, and went with an individual renting their own house rather than a company, checking out the registry is on the checklist of things to do.
- infecto 8mo ago
  Honestly I am surprised more real estate agents don’t already bake this into the workflow. Thinking about Zillow as well. There should absolutely be a way to identify all the folks during your home search (buying or renting) that are on the registry.
  - mystraline 8mo ago
    I found that realtors can't even do basic searches to determine which ISPs serve the house. To expect them to be aware of multiple GIS layers is likely way out of their normal scope. Maybe it shouldn't be? But thats how things are now. You, the client, should also do your own data collection from public and semi-public sources for things that are strictly outside MLS data capture.

ndiddy 8mo ago

The whole thing about people getting put on the sex offender registry for public urination is a myth and there's no verifiable cases of it happening. There are two cases that are relatively close. The first is James Birch, who pled guilty to indecent exposure for peeing on a Taco Bell because he was representing himself and didn't understand that meant he'd have to register as a sex offender. He realized his mistake and the court let him undo the plea and the charges were dropped. The second is Juan Matamoros, a meth dealer from Florida who claimed in the mid-2000s that the reason why he got put on the Massachusetts sex offender registry in the 80s was public urination. Due to the age of the case and Massachusetts privacy laws the court records aren't publicly available and his lawyer from the 80s responded to a request for interview about the case with "no judge I am aware of would allow someone to be put on the sex offender registry for peeing in public". If anyone tells you that's why they're on the sex offender registry, it's extremely likely they're lying about it and you should really look them up.

kgwxd 8mo ago
There was also that Chicago Sunroof incident.
holmesworcester 8mo ago
It was standard practice by the police and DA in 2000s Massachusetts. Neighbors were annoyed at loud college parties at the school I went to, so local police waited in bushes to catch people peeing in them, arrested them, and one of the charges was indecent exposure. Happened to one person I knew personally so it must have happened to several others at just this school. My friend plead out to some lower charge or probably got a continuance, but it massively increased the leverage they had over him and the fees and fines they could collect, and it massively lowered the chance of him doing any pushback that could have lead to a jury trial, which at least as far as he understood at the time would have put him on the registry, and which is why they abused the law and charged people this way.
- nandomrumber 8mo ago
  Are you entitled to a jury trial for peeing in the bushes in the USA? That isn’t the case here in Australia. You can go to trial, but it will be a judge-only trial, and is typically conducted by the magistrate who saw you for your first appearance on the matter, in the magistrates court, which is the lowest court here. I believe most of the colonies are approximately the same.

Ancapistani 8mo ago

I hav heard this many times, but never found a single example - and I’ve looked. Everyone I’ve researched on the registry richly deserved it. I challenge you and anyone else reading this to find an example of someone who is on the sex offender registry due to public urination.

ipaddr 8mo ago
https://law.justia.com/cases/massachusetts/supreme-court/2019/sjc-12594.html https://law.justia.com/cases/massachusetts/supreme-court/201...
- deleted 8mo ago
  [deleted]
- somenameforme 8mo ago
  I'm not sure that's what you meant to link to. The description there is beyond lurid, and that guy only ended up on a registry after a lot of shenanigans.
  - iso1631 8mo ago
    > he was convicted in 2015 of two counts of open and gross lewdness for displaying his genitals to a neighbor through the window of his home So he was naked in his own home? #Land of the free
    - doubled112 8mo ago
      It's all about levels here. First level? Open and gross lewdness for the home owner. Third level? Voyeurism for the person outside.
      - tempaccount420 8mo ago
        The disgusting, gross lewdness of a naked body. Thank God someone did something.

aussieguy1234 8mo ago

> some people get put on them for nothing more than public urination When minor offences can get people put on the register, this dilutes the meaning of being on the register. Every actual sex offender will claim they're on there not because of the serious crimes they committed, but because they went nude on the wrong beach, or something similarly minor.

furyofantares 8mo ago
Have you ever looked at one of the registries? The ones I've seen have had details about the offense(s).
- aussieguy1234 8mo ago
  We don't have public ones here in Australia, so no I've never looked at one. Having details would make it harder to play down the offenses. But only if someone bothers to check.
  - liamwire 8mo ago
    Queensland allows residents to see the details of offenders in our local area, but you need to provide extensive ID to do so, and leaking that information is itself a crime. Daniel's Law was introduced in 2025 so this is pretty recent.
  - dirasieb 8mo ago
    you've never looked at any of them but you have an opinion on how they should and shouldn't be?

dhosek 8mo ago

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.

jahnu 8mo ago
Louis Theroux did a very interesting but quiet sad documentary on this https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b040qrxw https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b040qrxw
- alecco 8mo ago
  There's no BBC doc on how they (BBC) covered for Jimmy Savile for decades, though. https://www.theguardian.com/music/2015/sep/24/john-lydon-says-he-was-banned-from-bbc-over-jimmy-savile-comments https://www.theguardian.com/music/2015/sep/24/john-lydon-say... “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.”
e40 8mo ago
How can visiting a nude beach get be a trigger?
- michelb 8mo ago
  America?