ISLAND VOICES
Legislature should approve Megan's Law

By Rep. William Stonebraker

Hawai'i residents rightfully hold deep concerns over whether convicted child molesters are in our community. Those of us with children would wisely worry if someone convicted of a sex crime moved in next door to us.

According to the National Institute of Mental Health, a typical child offender molests an average of 117 children, and most of them did not report the offense.

Furthermore, recidivism rates for untreated child molesters show an alarming 13 to 40 percent for those who sexually molest boys and 10 to 29 percent for those who sexually abuse girls (Adult Sex Offender Recidivism Study, Washington State Institute for Public Policy).

A case in point is the recent abduction, molestation and brutal murder of 9-year-old Jessica Lunsford. John Couey, arrested for the crime, was a convicted sex offender at the time of the molestation, with a 30-year criminal history and 24 arrests.

Megan's Law makes public the addresses and whereabouts of released sex offenders. Consistent with Megan's Law are state House Bill 599 and Senate Bill 708, which would apply Megan's Law to our state so that the public can know who the sex offenders are in their community. As we have a right to protect our children, we parents certainly have a right to know if our keiki may be at risk of becoming crime victims.

Brook Hart, a defense attorney who has long defended those accused of such sex crimes, participated in the Act 59 Task Force for the state Legislature. Unfortunately, the task force, composed of many who toed the party line of the American Civil Liberties Union, was highly biased against Megan's Law from the start, so its opposition to HB599 and SB708 surprised no one.

Hart says HB599 and SB708 "enable the public access to a wide range of registration information, including the registrant's name; residence address; temporary residence ad-dress(es); ... the street location of the institution(s) where a registrant is or will be employed or enrolled as a student; the year, make, model, color and license number of the motor vehicles owned or operated by the registrant; and a 'recent photograph' of the registrant. Public access to such personal information could commence 'the next working day following the filing of a judgment of conviction."

All that sounds good to me and other concerned parents. But Hart complains that this is "unreasonably broad public access."

Before we condemn these bills as infringements on civil liberties, let us remind ourselves that they only apply to known sex offenders.

Those who purport to defend civil liberties by opposing these bills seem to forget the very definition and nature of liberty in the first place. "Liberty" is the state of a society in which the government protects the rights of innocent people from violence, of which sex crimes qualify. A just government exercises its legal monopoly in the use of force against people whom the courts have rationally ascertained to have used violence against the rights of innocent people.

When someone chooses to violate the rights of children by molesting them, that person forfeits many of his rights. It is necessary for the government to keep such a person in check to reduce the chances of violating the rights of any more innocent people.

The right to privacy is an important civil liberty, but an even greater civil liberty is the right to protect one's children from being raped and physically brutalized by convicted criminals.

In her highly biased "findings" for the Act 59 Task Force, deputy public defender Susan Arnett asserts that the public would be better protected if the sex offenders' privacy were protected since their likelihood of repeat offense is reduced if they receive treatment and secret monitoring from the government, as opposed to being publicly shamed by their own communities.

However, the Washington state study concludes that repeat offenders may reoffend many years after an initial sex offense and that deviant sexual behavior "may be a lifelong pattern."

The Act 59 Task Force apparently prioritizes the so-called rights of sex offenders to privacy over the right of innocent people to protect their children from violence.

Instead of protecting sex offenders from the law-abiding public, we should be protecting the law-abiding public from sex offenders. That is why HB599 and SB708 deserve passage.

Republican William Stonebraker represents the 17th House District (Hawai'i Kai, Kalama Valley).