rapist information project. opinions?

Well, I think it's a great idea. :) I know that some cities have mandatory notification laws, but many do not. I was shocked when I found my state's sex offender database several years ago and realized how many convicted rapists and child molesters were within a 30-mile radius of my house. I feel that upsetting and ostracizing a sex offender is a small price to pay if it prevents him from hurting even one more person, yk?

I'd suggest doing it in the middle of the night, with several people in case any drama comes up (safety in numbers and all). I don't know about the legality of it, but I'd say it's worth the risk. Good luck and let us know how it goes!

sounds good to me! i'm sure it's illegal in some way, but it shouldn't be, since your project aims to fill in the gap between what the gov says we deserve to know and what we actually are told and can find out reasonably. wheatpasting is illegal in a lot of places though.

will it be people accused, or people found guilty or both? i suppose if someone's charges were listed wrong, or they were later aquitted or had the charges dropped, it could be libel.

even worse than getting arrested though, would be having the rapists know you did it, or catch you doing it, so be extra careful. when you go home at the end of doing it, don't go straight to your house, and i know it's totally sucky, but some male rapists are scared off by the presence of another guy, so if you have a male friend to go alone, that'd be good.

just don't get caught!

Wheatpaste is illegal. I was in a postering campaign and wheat pasting anything in public is considered vandalism and carries the same penalty as spray painting.
But I don't think that spreading public information could be considered harassment. I think what you're doing is great.

I'm going to be honest about this, because my feelings are quite mixed and I'm not too sure about whether or not I'm absolutely positive regarding how I feel about this. I'm not looking to be attacked for my opinion though and I am a rape survivor, so please bear with me and be kind.

I think this project is questionable and if I need to say whether or not I think it is a good idea, I would say that it is not. When I think about it this way, I ask myself what I know and how I feel, and what this information would cause me to know and how I would likely feel in that situation. What I know now is that because the number of offenders is so high and thus there are likely many offenders living near me, it is probably not the case that I do not live near at least one offender. How do I feel about that? I am somewhat uncomfortable and sadly, it is something I accept as a part of life. This may be traumatising for some of you, and that is understandable. But, I do know that these people are around me. I do know that these people could form some of the population of people that I, personally, interact with. So, what I think the difference would be, between what I already know and what this project would cause me to know is that I would have specifics. This may not seem like a big difference to man, to me however, it would change my life.

There would be no question, I would avoid the area of the offender's residence. I would not frequent places where I would know them to be. I would go out at night or when it is otherwise dark, less. I would avoid my evening or early morning runs. I would discourage friendships (or at least the visiting of friends' houses) between my son and others, within the offender's vicinity. I would likely not be too comfortable venturing out without the company of another - especially my partner. I would likely do less with my son, after school, outside of our house on nights where it would be only him and I. This is a short list. What does it generally consist of? Fear.

I know that looking at it in black and white, the difference is only the extent to which I know that I live in a society of human rights violators. But, in a way that I almost can't explain, this difference is huge. My current situation is life. The situation you propose increases all those lingering problems within my psyche, that I already deal with on a day to day basis. The become almost imminent, rather than just things that I accept as possibilities..kwim? Your proposed situation scares me. I shouldn't have to be more scared. I shouldn't have to deal with more stress. I do not need to worry more. Am I asking for ignorance? I'm not so sure. I don't think that this is even close to leafleting about, say, greenhouse gases. This will change peoples' lives significantly, and for me, it is in a way that I do not want.

Right now I know that I probably live near a rapist. And somehow, it would be significantly different to know exactly where they are living. My life would change for the worst..I feel that I would almost lose whatever I have overcome in the 15 years since my experience stopped occurring. I know I haven't explained it too well, but these are my preliminary, personal thoughts.

Additionally, while I do believe rapists to be scum, I think the disclosure of their activities would almost create a certain feeling of a 'right' within at least a few people, where it would seem that it would be okay to carry out human rights violations against the perpetrator. This is an entirely different subject, but the quick run-through is that I believe in forfeiture of liberty when one violates another's human rights. Rapists lose liberty, they don't become exempt from the right to not be abused, for instance. So my general thought is that it is generally not okay to grant one's self the power to hurt another, no matter who they are. My fear is thus that the feeling that would cause us to react to a rapist could serve as a rationality to abuse him, and I wouldn't agree with that. Please note that this is a bit of a tangent, I think this is a real concern, by my first concern is how I, as a rape survivor would feel with this info. And, I think I would feel pretty bad.

I completely appreciate how you are trying to help. I really do. But, I don't thik that I could handle it.

I need to ask;

-What, specifically, do you think that this will accomplish?
-Do you think that you have the right to take the law into your own hands?
-Are you willing to deal with the responsibility that will be yours, should any individual choose to use the information for the purpose of human rights violations?

This makes me really uneasy, and I'm actually weary of checking my mail now. Sorry this is incomplete, my mom just got here and I need to go.

I have mixed feelings about this too.

Have you thought about passing the flyers door to door just on the street of the sex offenders street & surrounding streets instead of pasting them to phone poles. or maybe making a flyer with info on how to look up sex offenders in your area including the megans law web site, the phone number & address of all local police department (I'm pretty sure they have binders of sex offenders you can look through) & a copy of the laws about a your rights to finding out if sex offenders like in your area.

thanks for bringing up another perspective to chew on, Lori.

riverpiedra said
"as for the rest: I guess it's more of a metaphorical, or moral triage question if you will- does the fact that you (a general you) is negatively affected by the spread of information negate the benefit and greater good that could come from people being empowered by knowledge? "

this is how i was looking at it. with any community action project, some people don't like it. that's something we just have to accept as part of anything we do, because there are dissenters and opponents to any kind of initiative. what has to happen is a weighing in the minds of the project managers as to whether or not the risk to the opponents is greater than the benefit to others. that analysis will need to be continuously done throughout the life of the project.
sex offenders have the highest recidivism rate out of any criminal. it generally isn't a crime born out of need, drug addiction, anger at the victim. instead, it comes from opportunity. sex offenders often have a "type," but they will easily go against type if the opportunity for assault presents itself, or can be sought out by them. because of this, the community has a right to know, just like they have a right to know if the power plant down the street is leaking toxic chemicals into the air, or the building they live in is made with asbestos. better to know before someone gets sick or hurt, i'd say.
in addition, one person's plea for ignorance (and i don't use the word to mean stupid, i use it to mean not desiring a particular set of knowledge) can't be used to choose ignorance for everyone else. if someone is harmed, imagine how his or her family would react to knowing that a project to give information about the perpetrator had been considered, but denied because some people were uncomfortable with it.

lori said
"-What, specifically, do you think that this will accomplish?
-Do you think that you have the right to take the law into your own hands?
-Are you willing to deal with the responsibility that will be yours, should any individual choose to use the information for the purpose of human rights violations? "

I don't think it would be her responsibility if harm came to the rapists. The information she's putting out there would be obtained from the sex offender registry, not from any privileged knowledge she had. She would just be providing it in a different and more accessible form. People are still responsible for their own actions and reactions. If you read my girlfriend's LJ and saw that she was cheating on me and told me, and then I harmed her in some way, I couldn't blame you. It would be my own responsibility. You can't kill the messanger, you know?
Handing out flyers isn't taking the law into her hands. Wheatpasting is illegal, yes, but I don't think that's really here nor there in this conversation. The registry was created to let the public know, and this project would be an extension of that.

I think the farther reaching effects of the project could be incredible. We live in a rape culture, and one of the ways to overthrow that is to spread awareness about sexual violence. Unfortunately, ignorance is a huge part of that rape culture. We blame women when they are raped, because obviously they must not have been doing something right. In order to get rid of that belief, there will have to be some popping of bubbles and probing into sensitive spots. Drawing attention to the fact that sex offenders live nearby could get a whole lot of people angry about sexual violence that hadn't been before. Things only affect some people when those things are in their backyard, and in this case, they literally are, they just don't know it. I would hope that the project woulds result in a sort of "Sexual offenders don't all fit your stereotypes. This is how common sexual violence is, and these are ways that we can band together to protect our community members from this threat."
Perhaps including on the flyer things to do, such as petition landlords, contact the city, create a neighborhood watch, hold meetings at a local school, and

I believe in the Mother Trip, Ariel Gore talks about how police officers put up flyers warning women to stay indoors, because a rapist was on the loose. Some women fought back, hanging up signs that warned the rapist that there were fearless women who would cut their dick off on the loose. (I apologize for the abysmal paraphrasing of the story..I just looked through the mother trip and I couldn't find it, so perhaps someone can remember where it is.) Perhaps the community could follow that lead, uniting together in order to mitigate that fear? I would hope so..

Ive been in a community where some folks took this kind of action, with the flyers and everything and it was not a bad idea and no legal problems arose from it. The person it was done to was a known drug dealer, and probably couldn't have sought any sort of legal action anyway so i dont know if you could get fucked over for it.

this was done after she had confronted him twice. the first time making excuses about how she wasnt too young to have sex (as if that was the point) and sort of saying he didnt mean to do that, but barely. the second time he just said he had no clue what she was talking about.

while that guy hasnt really been around, a lot of his pals (part of the "hippie drug" subculture, which is not to say all hippies do drugs or all drug users are hippies, but theres definately a clique in that area) said that the girl was lying when there was a confrontation at a local farmers market. Another girl who he raped basically took the blame for it herself, and said she "needs to be more aware of her body". It was a good indicator of who really gave a shit, and who was a peice of shit.

i wish you luck in what your doing, and i hope that if people react the way a lot of the supposedly hip or radical or whatever the fuck they call themselves reacted to it in my area, that it doesnt discourage you, or make the warnings less worthwhile to those who would really need them.

oooh yea

julie "I don't think it would be her responsibility if harm came to the rapists. The information she's putting out there would be obtained from the sex offender registry, not from any privileged knowledge she had."

Thats something that was included in the flyers in my area- at the bottom it encouraged people to "let this person know that this is intolerable" or something like that. But it didnt say how or what or anything. Its entirely up to the people who do that to decide what methods they use.

and about taking the law into our own hands- I dont personally beleive in laws or universal morals (since different things work for different people) but im often subjected to those things, and if it was up to me i would not be governed by laws. Also, taking your LIFE into your own hands is important, and that includes dealing with threats. No universal right-ness needed to do that. You dont need to be better than anyone else or elected by anyone else. Its your life. Justification doesnt have to come from anywhere but you.

what about posting signs with the website and/or phone numberwhere people in your neighborhood can get info on neighborhood registered sex offenders.
That way you can give people info and they can take it or leave it.

I like BCPR's idea, a lot. You could even state that there is one (or several) living within that neighbourhood, but generally, so anyone who didn't want specifics, wouldn't have to..

I don't, either, but I do believe in human rights. I believe they are reasons to treat each other well (that is to say that I don't think they are rights by virtue of being human). And part of what is necessary to allow for forfeiture (like I described above) is some sort of enforcement. I'd like to get into this more, but I don't think that this is the thread for it.

p.s. when I said this:

I really meant partial responsibility, such as that of an enabler, if you know what I mean. Julie, when you say that the offense is the responsibility of the offender, I agree and understand, I was more alluding to the guilt that one might feel as a result of that situation occurring. Sorry for inferring otherwise.

Because this just occurred to me, I'd like to add that this situation is akin to posting sexual abuse triggers on this board. It says trigger, in case people don't want to read it..the flyers would be harder to avoid, once you already have it in your hands..if you know what I mean. This is why I like Betty Crocker's idea, because it allows me to not deal with this stuff, if I don't want to. Generally, lately, I have not been wanting to, because I have been triggered a lot at school this term, and I am experiencing many bad consequences as a result.

I really respect the spread of information, but like revolt said, these things can trigger shit for people who need to not feel any more scared. I like the idea of not giving the specifics of address and offense, but rather explaining how to access that information

And erhaps you even want to forget the whole "warning, sex offender nearby" message and just post warnings to the rapist/sex offender.

Put a picture of his face or write his name in large type so that it catches his eye (and everyone else's) saying that your community knows what he's done. That, in addition to the url for the database, could be very powerful. It puts a different spin on things, you know?

As for respecting his rights, I'm totally on the fence. I can't even go there. But I do feel that posting a flyer saying something like "[Rapist]: your community does not tolerate sexual violence. We know who you are and we know what you've done," along with the way to access the info, is NOT a violation of anyone's rights. That seems perfectly legit to me.

I love the idea of turning the tables! I too hate the message of "everyone fear this person!" even though I can somewhat see the benefits of it. I just hate it, you know? I get that we need to be informed, but all I can see is the single mother, who maybe can't afford to move, who feels vulnerable when really, there is nothing we can do.

It all goes back to the question, what can a potential victim really do to prevent sexual violence? Can we really be defensive enough, aware enough, so that this doesn't happen to us? Can the knowledge of who is doing this, where and when and how this is most likely to happen to us, truly protect us from sexual violence? Can it truly end this? Can the message that we must be aware, must defend ourselves, ever truly end this? Change society's perception that sexual violence is NEVER the fault of the victim, never the result of something they did or did not do?

I love the story of women posting up fliers telling the rapist that it's time to be afraid. That society knows who is really at fault, that society does not accept this. I love the message, also, that it sends to women. The fact is, even living in the area of a known registered convicted card carrying sex offender, you are still more likely to be sexually assaulted by a partner. We can't just live in fear. We shouldn't have to. I'd love to see fliers that reflect this in my own area. Maybe I should start something up!