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What's wrong with SO labels/registries?

Just about everything, actually. For starters, they include everyone from true pedophiles and rapists, to people who have had consensual sex with other adults to people who went skinny dipping or appeared naked in public, to others who are actually innocent of any crime. Also, registries in many states are literally covered with advice to parents about how to protect their children from child molesters when many people on the registry have never molested a child in their lives. Yet, the fact remains that 90% of all sex offenses are committed not by strangers, but trusted family members, friends, babysitters, clergymen, and others.

Reople on these registries, regardless of how well they are doing in therapy (and a lot has changed since one of the earlier posters went to psych school in 1984) or how much of a threat they are to nobody, are often prohibited from getting housing and employment. Their children and spouses also routinely become targets of discrimination and harrassment.

Now, when any ex-offender finds himself without a support system or a job, he gets despondent and may even give up. How is he to pay for his therapy (yes, he often must pay for that himself) ... or contribute to child support ... or pay his mortgage if he cannot make any money? What is there to keep him from acting out his frustrations by committing a crime, any crime?

Regarding the island idea, it's just another example of conservative knee-jerk reaction to a problem, rather than well-thought-out answers. We condemn sex offenders for nothing thinking with their heads, yet most of you who have posted on this site are not thinking with your heads, either.

As for the self-proclaimed Christian in this group, I say that you possess none of the true Christian values. If you did, you would not be judging people, but rather leaving that to God. You would not have so much hatred in your heart, nor would you be so gleeful about killing or banishing any group of people, however heinous their crimes.

Why do I care so much about this issue? For several reasons, actually. First, I am myself a victim as I was sexually assaulted repeatedly by a 30-year-old "friend" of the family when I was in my early teens. Years later, one of my own daughters was herself once victimized at age 7 by a child molester (the never-before-convicted son of a sweet old lady who babysat my daughter's best friend), a man my daughter and I both put in prison and who is now deceased. Next, I worked for several years as an educator in a prison where there was a sex offender treatment program, and I got to know many offenders personally. It was strangely healing for me to see how human and pathetic people who commit these heinous crimes can actually be, to see how much many of them hate themselves or do not fully understand why they feel the way they do, how many of them actually want to take back what they've done but cannot. Of course, some were beyond hope, but not all. Finally, I actually found myself on the registry -- not because I am a pedophile or a rapist, but because I allowed myself to get intimately involved with a grown man, a college-educated prisoner (not a sex offender) who worked as a teacher-tutor in my GED classrooms, when my two-decades-old marriage fell apart. I consider myself one of the lucky ones on the registry. At least I have unrestricted access to children, including my own beautiful granddaughter; I am able to get passes to leave the state to visit family and friends; I have a wonderfully supportive family and boyfriend; and I was able to purchase a condominium before sentencing and losing my teaching job. Somehow, I have managed to find work, sometimes by lying about my SO status, other times by being honest (although it is extremely rare to find people willing to hire someone on the registry, regardless of his/her offense or threat level). However, my prospects for long-term, well-paid employment are not so great right now.

Say what you will about how stupid I was to act on my feelings for a prisoner who made me believe he loved me ... but as an otherwise law-abiding woman now classified as a sex offender, do you really think I belong on that island? If so, perhaps I can help to educate them and we can then turn that island into another Australia, a wonderful country that was once a penal colony for Great Britain.