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Sex offender list reviewed at hearing
Mal Leary
13 Sep 2006 12:00 am
Convicted sex offenders and members of their families called Tuesday for changes in Maine's sex offender registry, but members of the Legislature's Criminal Justice Committee said lawmakers are limited by federal law in what can be changed - even if they agreed changes were needed.
State police investigators determined that earlier this year a Nova Scotia man accessed the state's sex offender registry Web site before he traveled to Maine, where he killed William Elliott of Corinth and Joseph Gray of Milo before killing himself when police were about to arrest him.
Those murders prompted the review of Maine's registry law that led to the hearings.
"The addresses should not be listed there for vigilantes to come to their homes and murder them outright in their doorway," said Shirley Turner, Elliott's mother. He was shot and killed on Easter Sunday at his home.
She urged lawmakers to change the current sex offender registry to remove offenders like her son, whom she said had had sex with his underage girlfriend, and limit the information posted on the publicly available Web site.
Several witnesses repeated the theme that Maine's law treats all offenders the same, regardless of the risk they pose to the community.
"He is not a sexual predator or a rapist or a violent sexual criminal. He is a young man that fell in love with a girl who lied about her age," said Steve Perry of Raymond of his son Joshua. He said his son is serving time at the Windham Correctional Facility for having sex with his underage girlfriend.
"I would ask you to please change the registry so that other young men are not put on this list," Perry said.
Sex offender ordinance revisions are ready for a public hearing
Rachel Lovejoy
05 Sep 2006 12:00 am
A newly revised sex offender ordinance will go before Waterboro residents at a public hearing set for Sept. 12.
Selectmen will present changes in the restricted zones and a more specific definition of schools and daycare centers.
The changes in the ordinance were discussed at a public workshop held Aug. 29 that was attended by three people. The workshop came a week after selectmen passed a temporary ordinance.
The revisions still target registered sex offenders who commited crimes against victims aged 16 and under, and must register every 90 days for the rest of their lives.
Selectmen agreed that the definition of what constitutes a daycare would have to be revised and will run ads inviting all local providers to register with the town's code enforcement office. There was also a question of whether home-schooling situations would be covered, and how the ordinance would be enforced.
Man Accused Of Raping Teen Has History Of Violence Against Women
Chris Facchini
16 Aug 2006 1:46 pm
33-year-old Albert Dumas Junior of Whitefield is listed on Maine's Sex Offender Registry as a Violent Sexual Predator. Dumas was convicted of gross sexual assault in 1992 and served about 7 years of a 12 year sentence.
He was convicted of kidnapping and attempted gross sexual assault in 2000 and was just released from prison last October after serving only 5 years of an 8 year sentence.
Now Augusta police say he kidnapped a 14-year-old girl and raped her multiple times. Augusta Police Lieutenant Keith Brann said, "she (the victim) had been abducted by a stranger at knifepoint, she had been dragged to a vehcile and driven to various locations in Augusta, Windsor and Whitefield. The female victim was eventually driven back to Augusta and released where she made contact at a residence she was familiar with and reported what had happened."
Augusta man nabbed in Internet sex sting
16 Aug 2006 12:00 am
An Augusta man is among two people being charged with using the Internet to solicit sex with a minor.
[He] was arrested following a monthlong investigation in which representatives of "Perverted Justice" -- an Internet sex sting group -- posed as a 13-year-old, with whom the two men were supposed to meet.
[They] allegedly participated in sexually explicit Internet chats with a person they believed to be a 13-year-old female from South Portland, police said.
Is it time to limit the sex-offender registry?
28 Jul 2006 12:00 am
The goals of this country's criminal justice system are to achieve justice, reduce crime and provide equal protection to those subject to the system. As lawmakers consider changes in Maine's sex-offender registry law, they would do well to keep those goals in mind. Placing the names, photographs, and home and work addresses of certain convicted sex-offenders' on the state's Web site has real public safety benefits. But while the pressure is understandably strong to maintain as comprehensive a list as possible in order to reduce potential crimes against the innocent, the rights of those already punished for their crimes -- as well as the severity of those crimes -- must also be taken into consideration.
The Legislature's Joint Standing Committee on Criminal Justice and Public Safety is conducting a review of the sex-offender registry, in part, because of a tragic event this past spring.
We recognize that alerting residents that there is a sexual predator in their midst who is statistically likely to offend again may serve the public interest by making residents more vigilant about their safety; it serves little interest to go out of our way to alert residents that there's someone in their midst who does not pose a comparable risk.
State sex offenders shouldn't be anonymous
Rebecca Lambert
28 Apr 2006 12:00 am
I can't believe people are even questioning whether we should have sex offenders' addresses online. Have the public and our law makers forgotten the definition of sex offender? They prey on the unsuspecting and most innocent in our communities. Are we really ready to give up the knowledge of a sex offender's presence in our neighborhoods to protect his right to live more safely? Am I the only one seeing the irony in this?
[Ed. note: Building-Block condemns acts of violence against perpetrators, except in cases of self-defense. Deep pain and anger are natural responses to sexual assault, but vigilantism will not make our communities and kids safer.]
Vigilante murders incite review of sex offender registry
Douglas Wright and Victoria Wallack
28 Apr 2006
There will be no immediate changes to the state sex offender registry in response to the Easter Sunday murders of two convicted offenders.
At the hearing, Public Safety Commissioner Michael Cantara testified that he would not recommend change now, but rather suggested the legislative committee engage in a review of what the sex offender registry should contain and how it should be displayed.
As reprehensible as the two murders were on Easter Sunday, the questions you’re grappling with transcend those two murders, Cantara said.
Motive for Maine sex offender killings probably stems from Nova Scotia suspect’s youth in U.S.
Even those who loved and helped raise Stephen Marshall say they can only guess at what transformed the soft-spoken dishwasher from Cape Breton into the man who police believe gunned down two sex offenders in Maine before turning the gun on himself.
Investigators in Canada and the United States still don’t know what link, if any, Marshall had with the two victims — one of whom was listed on the public registry for having sex with a girlfriend when he was 19 and she was just days shy of her 16th birthday.
“My son was not a pedophile,” Shirley Turner told the Boston Globe. “He’d be alive today,” were it not for the registry, she said.
Maine Killings Raise Vigilantism Fears
The Maine Department of Public Safety has no plans to change the state's Web-based sex offender registry despite the killings of two sex offenders whose addresses were apparently obtained online.
A Canadian man used the registry to obtain personal information about the victims, authorities said, renewing fears that such lists expose ex-convicts to vigilante violence.
Police find no links between sex offenders, shooting suspect
A day after two sex offenders were found shot to death in separate towns in Maine and a suspect killed himself on a bus in Boston, investigators said Monday they still didn't know how or if the three men were connected.
After the killings, Maine State Police removed a list of 2,200 sex offenders from the Web site as a precaution.
A sex offender registry Web site in Washington state was cited in the deaths of two convicted child rapists last summer. Michael Anthony Mullen, 35, said he targeted the pair after finding them on Whatcom County's online list. He pleaded guilty to two counts of second-degree murder and was sentenced to more than 44 years in prison.
Sexual assault: victim’s father speaks out
“I don’t think Coffin’s sentence was nearly high enough for how he traumatized this little boy and changed his life, most likely, forever,” Diamond said. “There is a mandatory five-year sentence for lying on an application to buy a handgun and yet he only gets eight years for what he did. These guys – they know the system: if I fess up then I get to cut my sentence in half. There’s a clear strategy.”
According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, “Maine has the most lenient range of penalties available in New England for gross sexual assaults against children less than 12 years of age.” It also reports that Maine is ranked among the top eight states with the weakest penalty ranges for sex crimes against children.
