A handful of U.S. states introduced sex offender registration requirements in the 1940s and 1950s, but the nationwide fervor for sex offender registries didn’t take hold until the 1990s.
While several states introduced registry requirements of their own accord during the first few years of that decade, the landslide of registration requirements can be traced to 1994 federal legislation that “encouraged” states to create registries by allowing the federal government to withhold 10% of the state’s federal crime control grant.
At least 26 states enacted registry laws between 1994 and 1996. Today, all 50 states, the District of Columbia, several U.S. territories and dozens of Native American tribes require sex offenders to register and make varying degrees of information available to the public.
The case that arguably started this snowball rolling–the murder of 7-year-old Megan Kanka–was horrific. There’s little doubt that legislators set out with a sincere motivation to ensure that parents and other community members had the information they needed to keep their families safe.
Unfortunately, decades later, we are left with a mass of inconsistent laws that cause irreparable harm to some while making it nearly impossible for parents, teachers, and others to determine who poses a real threat. In most states, child murderers who haven’t molested their victims aren’t subject to registration at all, while in several states college kids urinating in alleys and teenagers in consensual sexual relationships with other teenagers end up on registries for decades–or life.
This website was created to tell the story of one man who has been caught in that trap for most of his adult life and the upcoming book about his journey. But, in researching that book, it emerged that a great many Americans don’t know–or simply don’t believe–it’s that easy to end up on a sex offender registry.
So, in addition to Robert’s story, we’ll also be using this website to share stories of others whose lives have been derailed by teen sex laws and registry requirements, and information about the laws that make that type of irreparable harm possible.
It’s been more than two years since we embarked on this project, and we expected the book to be completed long ago. We’ve been in a holding pattern for quite a while waiting for an additional update to the law–one that will allow Robert to petition to convert his existing conviction to Underage Sexual Activity (a misdemeanor) and remove his name from the Wisconsin sex offender registry. In April of 2020, the legislature ended its session without voting on the additional bill, meaning that it will have to be reintroduced for the 2020-21 session.
In the interim, we’re still at work gathering the pieces, listening to others’ stories and sharing whatever information we can to help others in Robert’s situation and teens and young adults in states that still impose draconian punishments on teens who engage sexually with their peers.