RSSNew Hampshire Civil Liberties Union File Lawsuit Claiming Dover City Ordinance Keeping Sex Offenders Away from Schools Unconstitutional
Rights for sex offenders? It would seem that they gave up any such rights to 
live near where children congregate when they chose to commit sex acts against children.
How misguided could some people truly be? In Dover, NH the New Hampshire Civil Liberties Union has filed a lawsuit challenging the ordinance on behalf of a man convicted of sexually assaulting a 15-year-old girl in 2000. Yeah that it, lets protect the rights of the child molesters and not the right and protection of the children.
The city’s ordinance, adopted in 2005, bans registered sex offenders from living within 2,500 feet of a school. The New Hampshire Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit this week challenging the ordinance on behalf of a man convicted of sexually assaulting a 15-year-old girl in 2000.
The group says the ordinance essentially bans sex offenders from the city because it encompasses most of the downtown area where the most affordable housing is located. But City Attorney Allan Krans says the city will aggressively defend the ordinance as a tool to keep the public safe.
In essence a sex offender is not allowed to live with 800 yards of a school. Is that all? New Hampshire Civil Liberties Union lawyer and misguided uber-liberal Barbara Keshen states that the laws are ineffective and claims the laws are a knee jerk reaction. Knee jerk reaction, huh? Well, they do not let us imprison them for life, castrate them or make them where a shirt at all times that says, BEWARE OF SEX OFFENDER. Maybe the answer is to have them all live with or in and around Barbara Keshen.
131-20. Registered Sex Offender Restrictions. [Added 10-19-05 by Ord. No. 18-2005] Go to page 12.
Sex Offenders living in Dover, NH … 03820
Dover residents have little sympathy for sex offender
“There’s a reason they’re not allowed to be around schools,” Crotty said. “Even though I believe people can change, I think certain rules are in place for a reason, and you have to live within the rules set forth.”
Lisa Cressey, of Dover, said you can never be too safe, especially if children are involved.
“I don’t think it (the ordinance) could ever be too strict,” Cressey said. “They haven’t come up with hard research where it can be proven offenders can be rehabilitated to the point where they won’t offend again.”
NHCLU sues Dover over sex-offender restrictions
If the ordinance is struck down in the superior court, it would open the door to legal challenges in the four other communities with similar ordinances. A decision against the ordinance from the state supreme court would effectively nullify all of the sex offender residency restriction ordinances in the state.
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16 Responses to “New Hampshire Civil Liberties Union File Lawsuit Claiming Dover City Ordinance Keeping Sex Offenders Away from Schools Unconstitutional”
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These civil liberties assholes want to have child rapists next to kids?
Why don’t we start with their kids?
If they have any.
The government has no interest in protecting children from sex offenders. It has a big interest in removing our constitutional rights, however. They figure they can chip away at those rights by going after sex offenders and creating new laws that apply, for now, only to them. Knowing few will be willing to defend the rights of sex offenders, the government is able to easily establish unconstitutional laws for pedophiles, etc which will one day apply to us all. Get it? Sex offenders rights must therefore be vigorously defended.
By the way, why do you think the government is having sex offenders register every where they go? Because sex offenders are being used as a testing ground. Why? Because one day very soon, we will all be forced to register wherever we go and about whatever we do. When that day comes, you will all lament not having defended the constitutional rights of the sex offender. Wake up!!
Actually, I expect to see more and more of these types of lawsuits. Within the past year, more and more communities in Wisconsin have taken to changing the distance that these “people” can reside from 1000 feet to 2500 feet from “anyplace” children congregate. This includes schools, but it also could include parks, recreation areas, arcades and many more places. As the major cities have rewritten their ordinances it has caused a domino affect. Outlying municipalities are now doing the same thing because it is forcing those who are identified as sex offenders out of the cities completely.
While I favor the idea, it is going to cost more money in the long run for the tax payer. There are no rural housing facilities which are being built that would be as economical as the in town apartment complexes. Jobs are difficult to find so as a society we do end up subsidizing to a greater extent.
It is just the price we will pay for making our children safer. There are arguments being presented that perhaps this will have no real impact on safety. I will reserve my judgement on that for the time being.
Bob,
I am hardly a big govt person; however, I do have to disagree with your Libertarian thoughts. There is a difference say between gun registration for those who have committed no crime and sex offenders who have committed a crime against a child. They lose their rights to be like the rest as they are not like the rest.
There are always places for sex offenders to live. The idea that they need to live near a school is BS.
The idea that it will have no impact on our society is wrong in itself. If parents have peace of mind that child rapist are not living near schools then it is a benefit.
However, if stats show that perps keep offending even with these laws, then further and more restrictive ones need to be made. Like setting them forth into the desert with a days ration of food and water.
Safety for children should never have to be compromised because of a bunch of scumbags and some liberal idiot attys who would dare link sex offenders with every day people’s rights
Does anyone else see this coming. When the law abiding citizens have no recourse and eventually will take things into there own hands?
Our gevernment has never been a proponent for childrens rights, ever. Only education, when they can get their good old freinds jobs in an education system bloated with administrators rather than teachers.
If there is no justification (in the eyes of those who file this lawsuit) for this law …
How, then, can they justify a “drug-free zone” around schools, in which the penalties for selling drugs within 500 feet, or whatever the distance may be, of a school are more severe than the penalties for sales further away?
That will be the next lawsuit. In my mind, the penalty for drug sales should be uniform.
If the idea is that selling drugs closer to schools presents more of a threat to the kids … then wouldn’t it follow that kids are more in danger if sex offenders live nearby?
GreatOwl (#4) … are you saying that in Wisconsin, taxpayers are expected to subsidize the rents of sex offenders? The logic behind that idea completely baffles me. If they can’t live within a certain area of a school, okay; but the idea that they are entitled to any kind of support from the government because they can’t do so seems ridiculous to me.
Like so much else that goes on these days.
By the same token, would the ACLU or any other group argue that convicted sex offenders should not be prohibited from being employed in a public (or private) school?
I PRESUME that such a ban is in effect; I don’t know.
On an earlier thread, I posted an article about a founding member of some group called the North American Man-Boy Love Association, or NAMBLA.
This “person” was employed as a junior high science teacher in the Bronx High School of Science, or some such name. During his time there, he helped edit a NAMBLA newsletter that, among other things, gave information on how grown men could ‘seduce’ teen boys and on ways to avoid being discovered by the police.
So what happened?
You guessed it: the school district of NYC ruled that his MEMBERSHIP in the group was not, in and of itself, illegal. Then some parents got wind of it, and brought the matter to court.
The scum was ousted, and apparently the Supreme Court upheld his ouster. Once the school district got some unfavorable publicity, it decided that there was, after all, some reason to think that someone who openly advocated this kind of perversion (oh, am I being judgemental?) didn’t belong in the public schools.
Here’s the information on the person above. My mistake: the case was heard by a federal appeals court, not the Supreme Court. It’s on Wikipedia.
Too bad that this blog doesn’t allow the use of bold type, to highlight key points. Anyway, those of you who are parents; would YOU want your children to be in a class with a teacher who belonged to this group? I wouldn’t. But who are we the people to argue with the ‘professionals’ who run the schools … and who know best?
Or at least, who tell us they do.
Peter Melzer served as a NAMBLA treasurer, Steering Committee Member, fundraiser, spokesman, and Bulletin editor. In his private life he was a tenured physics teacher at the elite Bronx High School of Science, where he had taught for over three decades. The school district knew of his membership in NAMBLA in 1985 but did not act as mere membership was not an adequate cause for discipline. In 1993 a local TV news expose revealed that he was a NAMBLA member. As a result the New York City Department of Education commissioned a report. The report states that Melzer had personally expressed a sexual interest in boys up to age 16, and that he had written about having acted on those desires. The report also asserts that, while he was editor, the NAMBLA Bulletin printed instructions for seducing young boys and avoiding law enforcement along with sensual accounts of sexual encounters between adults and minors. Further, the investigators claim not to find any significant attempts by NAMBLA to advocate for changing the age of consent laws, and claim that the self-definition of advocacy group is a misleading attempt by NAMBLA to cover itself with a political purpose. Melzer was removed as a school teacher, but no criminal charges were filed in connection with the matter. The case went as far as the federal appeals court, which affirmed the dismissal of Melzer in 2003
Isn’t the most sacrad of all our liberties,
the freedom to persue happiness…
What happiness results in being
the victim of sexual abuse?
If we cannot protect the most innocent among us,
who can we protect?
Is it in the interest of The People
to protect the rights of the ‘Sexual Offender’
or is it the rights of the CHILD that REQUIRES
our protection?
Peter Melzer?
f-YOU!
Never in my life, did I ever think that there would come a time that protecting children in school would be a question. It’s odd when you think about all the rights that we have fought to protect over the years, with great complexity, and; now, we could lose one of the most basic.
What is the world coming to?
Richard, it is not a direct subsidy. What this is doing is moving the half way houses, which are government funded, out of the residential areas. Many of those just released from prison or on probation do not have drivers licenses, so transportation becomes difficult. That affects the job search and yes, then those people collect money in the form of housing subsidy because they do not earn enough. They are eligible for food stamps and even medical insurance. As I said, there is a price we pay to keep our children safe.
Even if the person can obtain a driver’s license it poses another problem of electronic surveillance
Scared Monkeys,
Would you say sounds good, but history tells us that if one group isn’t protected, then the unconstitutional laws will eventually extend to thers. An example is that today a pastor who warns his flock that God considers homosexuality to be an abomination, can be arrested for “hate speech.” This same pastor may now lament not caring to uphold the first amendment rights of the Klan or the neo-nazis.
“I am hardly a big govt person; however, I do have to disagree with your Libertarian thoughts. There is a difference say between gun registration for those who have committed no crime and sex offenders who have committed a crime against a child. They lose their rights to be like the rest as they are not like the rest.”
Obviously you have an issue with the notion of second chances for former offenders, but when a person serves his time, that should be it. We don’t bother restricting the living arrangements of other offenders; if we restricted drunk drivers from bars, pony kegs and grocery stores, how big a dent do you think we would make in the number of drunk driving convictions? It would be seen as a pointless exercise and people would lament over the rights of drunk drivers
“There are always places for sex offenders to live. The idea that they need to live near a school is BS.”
First of all if you live in the city, there really isn’t a place you can live that ISN’T around one of these restricted places. In Ohio, where there was a mere 1000 foot restriction fro schools only, I found only 3 out of 131 places were available to former offenders, and if the instrictions were increased, even those three would be off limits (http://www.oncefallen.com/HousingStudy2006.html).
“The idea that it will have no impact on our society is wrong in itself. If parents have peace of mind that child rapist are not living near schools then it is a benefit.”
A false sense of security, since most sex crimes are committed by someone the child knows, usually at home, and usually by a family member (http://www.geocities.com/voicism/index-charts.html). And Iowa already has 2000 foot restrictions making damn near the entire state off limits, and it had no impact on sex crimes in that state(http://www.siouxcityjournal.com/articles/2007/02/06/news/legislature/9ec903cdae436aa58625727a000cfc8e.txt). You are erring in assuming all sex crimes are committed by registered sex offenders; most sex crimes are committed by first time offenders
[US Department of Justice study “Sex Inmates In Prison” (1997)
Only 14% of inmates in prison on sex crimes had prior sex crimes (recidivists); 75% had no prior violent offense convictions; 25% had a violent (non-sex) conviction; In short, 86% in prison were first-time offenders, or about six out of seven.]
“However, if stats show that perps keep offending even with these laws, then further and more restrictive ones need to be made. Like setting them forth into the desert with a days ration of food and water.”
Hmpf. Better hope you (or someone you give a crap about) are never accused of a sex crime, because these days, accusation=conviction, and when you are cast into he desert, you’ll have wished you never supported such foul proposals
“Safety for children should never have to be compromised because of a bunch of scumbags and some liberal idiot attys who would dare link sex offenders with every day people’s rights”
Lets see, some states have expanded registries to include violent crimes, gun crimes, domestic violence, meth makers, even vicious dogs. Maryland has a medical AIDS registry; in 2004 they tried to make it public. I wish they would, because I want to make sure that woman I’m wanting to sleep with is HIV free. Of course, it wouldn’t tell me if she has the clap, crabbies, herpies, etc. Oh, and don’t forget HIV could take up to 6 months to appear on tests. But I digress. Ohio has a “civil registry” for people accused, but not convicted, of a sex crime. Its a step towards testing EVERYONE. After all, we have plethysmographs. You say you’re not a threat, so lets strap this bad boy up to you so we can be sure. We just want to make sure there isn’t a 5% increase in bloodflow to your genitals when they flash nudies of 11 year olds to you. You can fool yourself all you want, but that day is coming.
http://www.oncefallen.com/ResidenceRestrictionsFacts.html
http://WWW.BISHOPACCOUNTABILITY.ORG
McCormack supports NAMBLA….the ACLU is NAMBLA
Let’s sue them for children’s rights
What background checks are performed on the newly outsourced cleaning company employees? Since Dover fired their custodians and hired this company, the police arrested some of the employees using controlled substances on school property. What does the district know about the screening of these out of state temp employees?
“The fallen One” is Derek Logue, a Tier III sexual Predator, who served years of prison time for molesting an 11 year old girl. He is violent, cuts himself and has lost numerous appeals to be reclassified. He is a danger to children.